Documents for "Philosophy: Biographies":

• Abano, Pietro d' 1250?-1316?, Italian physician and philosopher, a professor of medicine in Padua. His famous work Conciliator differentiarum was an attempt to reconcile Arab medicine and Greek speculative natural philosophy and was considered authoritative as late as the 16th cent. His efforts marked the rise of the Paduan school as a...

• Abelard, Peter Fr. Pierre Abélard , 1079-1142, French philosopher and teacher, b. Le Pallet, near Nantes.

• Aben Ezra see Ibn Ezra, Abraham ben Meir.

• Acosta, Uriel or Uriel da Costa , c.1585-1640, Jewish rationalist, b. Oporto, Portugal. His original name was Gabriel da Costa, and his family had been converted to Roman Catholicism. When he reached manhood, he was restive in the...

• Adelard of Bath fl. 12th cent., English scholastic philosopher, celebrated for his study of Arabic learning. He translated Euclid from Arabic into Latin. His major works were Perdifficiles quaestiones naturales,...

• Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund 1903-69, German philosopher, born as Theodor Adorno Wiesengrund. Forced into exile by the Nazis (1933), he spent 16 years in England and the United States before returning to Germany to take up a...

• Aenesidemus Greek skeptic philosopher, fl. probably 1st cent. BC Thought to be a native of Knossos, Crete, he taught in Alexandria. Although his writings have been lost, it is known that his main...

• Alain de Lille c.1128-c.1202, French scholastic philosopher, a Cistercian, honored by his contemporaries as the Universal Doctor. He was born in Lille; he taught at Paris and Montpellier before retiring to...

• Alexander of Aphrodisias fl. AD 200, Greek Peripatetic philosopher. A celebrated ancient commentator on Aristotle, he was often called the Exegete. Among his extant writings are portions of commentaries on several of...

• Alexander of Hales d. 1245, English scholastic philosopher, called the Unanswerable Doctor by his fellow scholastics. He was a Franciscan and a lecturer at the Univ. of Paris. His Summa universae theologiae was the first systematic exposition of Christian doctrine to introduce Aristotle as a prime authority. His eclectic work also contains elements of Neoplatonism and Augustinian and Arabic ideas...

• Alexander, Samuel 1859-1938, British philosopher, b. Australia. From 1893 to 1924 he was professor of philosophy at Victoria Univ., Manchester. Strongly influenced by the theory of evolution, Alexander conceived of...

• Alfarabius see Farabi, al- -.

• Aliotta, Antonio 1881-1964, Italian philosopher, b. Salerno. He taught at the universities of Padua and Naples. He wrote a critical analysis of contemporary philosophy, The Idealistic Reaction Against Science (1912, tr. 1914), and then became identified with pragmatism, primarily in opposition to the idealism of Benedetto Croce and Giovanni Gentile. His complete works, in Italian, were published in 7...

• Amalric of Bena d. 1207?, French professor of philosophy. He taught heretical precepts concerning God, a pantheistic universe, and a progressive Trinity. Before he died, he publicly retracted, but his followers...

• Anaxagoras c.500-428 BC, Greek philosopher of Clazomenae. He is credited with having transferred the seat of philosophy to Athens. He was closely associated with many famous Athenians and is thought to have...

• Anaximander c.611-c.547 BC, Greek philosopher, b. Miletus; pupil of Thales. He made the first attempt to offer a detailed explanation of all aspects of nature. Anaximander argued that since there are so many different sorts of things, they must all have originated from...

• Anaximenes Greek philosopher, 6th cent. BC, last of the Milesian school founded by Thales. With Thales he held that a single element lay behind the diversity of nature, and with Anaximander he sought a principle to account for diversity. He believed that single element to be air. The principle of diversification he taught was rarefaction and condensation. Different objects were...

• Anderson, John 1893-1962, Scottish-Australian philosopher, b. Scotland. A graduate of the Univ. of Glasgow, he taught (1918-27) at the universities of Cardiff, Glasgow, and Edinburgh before becoming professor of...

• Antisthenes b. 444? BC, d. after 371 BC, Greek philosopher, founder of the Cynics. Most of his paradoxical views stemmed from his early Sophist orientation, even though he became one of Socrates' most ardent followers. He believed that man's happiness lay in cultivating virtue...

• Aquinas, Saint Thomas see Thomas Aquinas, Saint.

• Arcesilaus c.316-c.241 BC, Greek philosopher of Pitane in Aeolis. He was the principal figure of the Middle Academy. Despite his position in the Academy , his teachings diverged from Platonic doctrine. By emphasizing the doubt expressed by Socrates as to the possibility of gaining knowledge, he took a position comparable to that of the Skeptics (see skepticism ). He argued that knowledge and opinion could not be distinguished from each other, so that what anyone claims to know may be more or less probable but not certain. In denying the possibility of...

• Ardigò, Roberto 1828-1920, Italian positivist philosopher. His early life was spent in the priesthood, from which he withdrew in dissatisfaction at the age of 43. Later he was a professor at the Univ. of Padua...

• Areopagite see Dionysius the Areopagite, Saint.

• Aristippus c.435-c.360 BC, Greek philosopher of Cyrene, first of the Cyrenaics. He held pleasure to be the highest good and virtue to be identical with the ability to enjoy. His doctrines, comprising the first...

• Aristotle 384-322 BC, Greek philosopher, b. Stagira. He is sometimes called the Stagirite.

• Augustine, Saint Lat. Aurelius Augustinus, 354-430, one of the four Latin Fathers, bishop of Hippo (near present-day Annaba, Algeria), b. Tagaste (c.40 mi/60 km S of Hippo).

• Austin, John Langshaw 1911-60, British philosopher. A graduate of Oxford, he was a fellow of All Souls (1933-35) and Magdalen (1935-52) colleges before he became White's professor of moral philosophy (1952-60), also at...

• Avempace Arabic Ibn Bajja, d. 1138, Spanish-Arab philosopher. Little is known of his life, but he was born in Zaragoza and died in Fès, Morocco. Developing the tradition of Islamic Aristotelian-Neoplatonism begun in the east...

• Averroës Arabic Ibn Rushd, 1126-98, Spanish-Arab philosopher. He was far more important and influential in Jewish and Christian thought than in Islam. He was a lawyer and physician of Córdoba and lived for some time in...

• Avicebron see Ibn Gabirol, Solomon ben Judah.

• Avicenna Arabic Ibn Sina, 980-1037, Islamic philosopher and physician, of Persian origin, b. near Bukhara. He was the most renowned philosopher of medieval Islam and the most influential name in medicine from 1100 to 1500...

• Ayer, Sir Alfred Jules 1910-89, British philosopher, b. London, grad. Oxford, 1932. From 1933 to 1944 he was lecturer and research fellow at Oxford's Christ Church College and then was fellow (1944-45) and dean...

• Bachelard, Gaston 1884-1962, French philosopher. He held degrees in physics, mathematics, and philosophy and taught at Dijon (1930-40) and the Univ. of Paris (1940-54). Bachelard regarded knowing as a result of the...

• Bacon, Francis 1561-1626, English philosopher, essayist, and statesman, b. London, educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and at Gray's Inn. He was the son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, lord keeper to Queen Elizabeth...

• Bacon, Roger c.1214-1294?, English scholastic philosopher and scientist, a Franciscan. He studied at Oxford as well as at the Univ. of Paris and became one of the most celebrated and zealous teachers at Oxford...

• Bain, Alexander 1818-1903, Scottish philosopher and psychologist. He was educated at Marischal College, Aberdeen, where he later taught for three years. He taught one year (1845) at Anderson's Univ., Glasgow, but...

• Bax, Ernest Belfort 1854-1926, English socialist philosopher. He studied music and philosophy in Germany. In England, influenced by Marxist and other radical thought, he became active in socialist groups, especially...

• Bayle, Pierre 1647-1706, French philosopher. Born a Huguenot, he converted to Roman Catholicism and then returned to Protestantism. To avoid French intolerance of Protestants, he moved in 1681 to Rotterdam,...

• Bentham, Jeremy 1748-1832, English philosopher, jurist, political theorist, and founder of utilitarianism. Educated at Oxford, he was trained as a lawyer and was admitted to the bar, but he never practiced; he devoted himself to the scientific analysis of morals and legislation. His greatest work was...

• Bergson, Henri 1859-1941, French philosopher. He became a professor at the Collège de France in 1900, devoted some time to politics, and, after World War I, took an interest in international affairs. He is well...

• Berkeley, George 1685-1753, Anglo-Irish philosopher and clergyman, b. Co. Kilkenny, Ireland. Educated at Trinity College, Dublin, he became a scholar and later a fellow there. Most of Berkeley's important work in...

• Bias fl. 6th cent. BC, Greek sage, b. Priene. He is at best semilegendary but was called one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece. Many epigrams were attributed to him by ancient writers.

• Black, Max 1909-88, American analytical philosopher, b. Baku, Russia (now Baky, Azerbaijan), grad. Cambridge Univ., Ph.D. Univ. of London, 1939. He taught at the Univ. of Ill. (1940-46) before going to...

• Bloch, Ernst 1885-1977, German Marxist philosopher. He taught at the Univ. of Leipzig (1918-33), drifting toward Marxist thought during the 1920s. He fled the Nazis after 1933, moving first to Switzerland and...

• Blondel, Maurice 1861-1949, French Catholic philosopher, b. Dijon. He was a professor at the universities of Montauban, Lille, and Aix-Marseille during his influential career. Like his contemporary Henri Bergson he was antirationalist and scorned science. In his first work, L'Action (1893, rev. ed. 1950), he laid the groundwork for his later thought. Blondel held that action alone could never satisfy the human yearning for the transfinite, which could only be fulfilled by God,...

• Boethius Boetius , or Boece (Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius), c.475-525, Roman philosopher and statesman. An honored figure in the public life of Rome, where he was consul in 510, he became the able minister of the...

• Boetius Roman philosopher: see Boethius.

• Bosanquet, Bernard 1848-1923, English philosopher, educated at Oxford. He lectured there (1871-81) and at St. Andrews (1903-8). His major works include A History of Aesthetic (1892), The Philosophical Theory of the...

• Bowne, Borden Parker 1847-1910, American philosopher, b. Monmouth co., N.J. In 1876 he became head of the department of philosophy at Boston Univ. and later served as dean of the graduate school. In his philosophy,...

• Bradley, Francis Herbert 1846-1924, English philosopher. He was educated at Oxford, where he became a fellow of Merton College in 1876. His works include Ethical Studies (1876), Principles of Logic (1883), and Appearance and Reality (1893). In logic, Bradley attacked the psychological tendencies of empiricism by differentiating sharply between the mental act as a psychological event and its universal meaning; to him only the...

• Brentano, Franz 1838-1917, German philosopher and psychologist. He was a teacher (1866-73) at Würzburg, and in 1874 he became professor of philosophy at Vienna. In 1880 he retired to write and study. His...

• Brown, Norman Oliver 1913-2002, American scholar, philosopher, and social critic, b. El Oro, Mexico; grad. Oxford (1936), Univ. of Wisconsin (Ph.D.). A classicist much influenced by Freud , Brown thought that the degree to which sexuality was repressed in America led not only to the stifling of instincts but also to a perversion of human drives from life and art to money and death...

• Bruno, Giordano 1548-1600, Italian philosopher, b. Nola. He entered the Dominican order early in his youth but was accused of heresy and fled (c.1576) to take up a career of study and travel. He taught briefly at...

• Brunschvicg, Léon 1869-1944, French philosopher, b. Paris. From 1909 until his death he taught at the Sorbonne. Brunschvicg's philosophy, which has had considerable influence on modern European thought, is usually...

• Buber, Martin 1878-1965, Jewish philosopher, b. Vienna. Educated at German universities, he was active in Zionist affairs, and he taught philosophy and religion at the Univ. of Frankfurt-am-Main (1924-33). From...

• Buridan, Jean d. c.1358, French scholastic philosopher. Rector of the Univ. of Paris, he was a follower of William of Occam and a nominalist. Buridan promoted the theory of impetus, arguing that a projectile...

• Campanella, Tommaso 1568-1639, Italian Renaissance philosopher and writer. He entered the Dominican order at the age of 15, and although he was frequently in trouble with the authorities, he never left the church...

• Carnap, Rudolf 1891-1970, German-American philosopher. He taught philosophy at the Univ. of Vienna (1926-31) and at the German Univ. in Prague (1931-35). After going to the United States he taught at the Univ...

• Carneades 213-129 BC, Greek philosopher, b. Cyrene. He studied at Athens under Diogenes the Stoic, but reacted against Stoicism and joined the Academy , where he taught a skepticism similar to that of Arcesilaus. He denied the possibility of absolute certainty in knowledge; it is disputed whether he held that probable knowledge was adequate to guide a person's actions. He recognized three degrees of...

• Carpocrates fl. c.130-c.150, Alexandrian philosopher, founder with his son Epiphanes of a Hellenistic sect, notoriously licentious, related to Gnosticism. Epiphanes wrote a treatise, On Justice, that advocated communal ownership of property, including women; he died, age 17, at Cephalonia and was long worshiped as a deity there. The Carpocratians believed that men had formerly been united...

• Carus, Paul 1852-1919, American philosopher, born and educated in Germany. For many years he was editor of the Open Court and the Monist, periodicals devoted to philosophy and religion. His philosophy was monistic,...

• Cassirer, Ernst 1874-1945, German philosopher. He was a professor at the Univ. of Hamburg from 1919 until 1933, when he went to Oxford; he later taught at Yale and Columbia. A leading representative of the...

• Celsus 2d cent., Roman philosopher, an aggressive antagonist of Christianity. His works have been lost, but the substance of his True Discourse is given by Origen in his Against Celsus, ed. and tr. by...

• Chaadayev, Piotr Yakovlevich 1794-1856, Russian philosopher. An aristocrat by birth, he was converted to Roman Catholicism. In 1836 the first of his Philosophical Letters appeared in a Moscow journal. Its devastating attack on Russian institutions, such as autocracy, the church, and serfdom, created a sensation. Chaadayev was declared insane and was confined to his...

• Champeaux, William of see William of Champeaux.

• Chrysippus c.280-c.207 BC, Greek Stoic philosopher, b. Soli, Cilicia. He was a disciple of Cleanthes and succeeded him as head of the Academy in Athens. After Zeno, the founder of Stoicism , Chrysippus is considered the most eminent of the school. He systematized Stoicism and reconciled the factions that threatened to split the school. Chrysippus wrote with exquisite logic but also...

• Clarke, Samuel 1675-1729, English philosopher and divine. His chief interest was rational theology, and, although a critic of the deists, he was in sympathy with some of their ideas. He supported the theories of...

• Cleanthes 3d cent. BC, Greek philosopher, head of the Stoic school following Zeno.

• Cohen, Hermann 1842-1918, German philosopher. He was a founder of the Neo-Kantian Marburg school and was known for his commentaries on Kant. His own works include Logik der reinen Erkenntnis (1902), Ethik des reinen...

• Cohen, Morris Raphael 1880-1947, American philosopher, b. Minsk, Russia, grad. College of the City of New York, 1900, Ph.D. Harvard, 1906. He emigrated to the United States in 1892. At first an instructor in mathematics...

• Collingwood, Robin George 1889-1943, English philosopher and historian. From 1908 he was associated with Oxford as student, fellow, lecturer in history, and professor of philosophy. Collingwood believed that philosophy...

• Comte, Auguste 1798-1857, French philosopher, founder of the school of philosophy known as positivism , educated in Paris. From 1818 to 1824 he contributed to the publications of Saint-Simon, and the direction of much of Comte's future work may be attributed to this association. Comte was primarily...

• Condillac, Étienne Bonnot de 1715-80, French philosopher who developed the theory of sensationalism (i.e., that all knowledge comes from the senses and that there are no innate ideas). He took holy orders, and in 1768 he...

• Croce, Benedetto 1866-1952, Italian philosopher, historian, and critic. He lived mostly in Naples, devoting himself to studying and writing. He founded and edited (1903-44) Critica, a review of literature, history, and philosophy, which in 1944 became Quaderni della critica. Croce was made a senator in 1910 and was minister of education (1920-21). A staunch opponent of Fascism, he lived in retirement until 1943, when he became a leader of the Liberal party. Croce's...

• Crusius, Christian August 1715-75, German philosopher and theologian. He was educated at the Univ. of Leipzig, where he became professor of philosophy (1744) and theology (1750). He opposed the philosophies of G. W...

• Cudworth, Ralph 1617-88, English theologian and philosopher. He was a noted representative of the Cambridge Platonists. Cudworth's most ambitious work, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, was never completed....

• Cumberland, Richard 1631-1718, English philosopher. He was bishop of Peterborough from 1691. In his De legibus naturae [on natural laws] (1672) he first propounded the doctrine of utilitarianism and opposed the egoistic...

• Davidson, Donald Herbert 1917-2003, American philosopher, b. Springfield, Mass., grad. Harvard (B.A., 1939; Ph.D., 1949). A student of W. V. Quine , Davidson emerged as one of the major figures in post-World War II analytic philosophy. His early work in the theory of decision-making was followed by that in which he argued that reasons can be...

• Democritus c.460-c.370 BC, Greek philosopher of Abdera; pupil of Leucippus. His theory of the nature of the physical world was the most radical and scientific attempted up to his time. He avoided the...

• Derrida, Jacques 1930-2004, French philosopher, b. El Biar, Algeria. A graduate of the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, he taught there and at the Sorbonne, the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales,...

• Descartes, René Lat. Renatus Cartesius, 1596-1650, French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist, b. La Haye. Descartes' methodology was a major influence in the transition from medieval science and philosophy...

• Dessoir, Max 1867-1947, German philosopher. He earned doctorates from the universities of Berlin (philosophy, 1889) and Würtzburg (medicine, 1892). He was a professor at Berlin from 1897 until 1933, when the...

• Dewey, John 1859-1952, American philosopher and educator, b. Burlington, Vt., grad. Univ. of Vermont, 1879, Ph.D. Johns Hopkins, 1884. He taught at the universities of Minnesota (1888-89), Michigan (1884-88,...

• Dilthey, Wilhelm 1833-1911, German philosopher. He taught at the universities of Basel, Kiel, Breslau, and Berlin. He was one of the first to claim the independence of the human sciences as distinct from the...

• Diogenes c.412-323 BC, Greek Cynic philosopher; pupil of Antisthenes. He was born in Sinope and lived in Athens. He taught that the virtuous life is the simple life, and he dramatically discarded...

• Diogenes Laërtius fl. early 3d cent., Greek biographer. Extant is a work in 10 books on the lives and opinions of the philosophers from Thales to Epicurus, with whole books devoted to Plato and Epicurus. His work...

• Diogenes of Apollonia 5th cent. BC, Greek philosopher. An eclectic, he reverted to the Milesian tradition of a century earlier in seeking to explain the constitution of all matter in terms of a single basic stuff. He...

• Dionysius the Areopagite, Saint fl. 1st cent. AD, Athenian Christian, converted by St. Paul. Acts 17.34. Tradition has made him a martyr and the first bishop of Athens. He has been confused with St. Denis. During the Middle Ages he was revered as the author of certain philosophical writings erroneously attributed to him since the 6th cent. These are ten letters and four treatises ( The Celestial Hierarchy, The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, The Divine Names, Mystical Theology ) written in Greek, possibly in Palestine, in the late 5th or early 6th cent. It is now customary to refer to their author as Pseudo-Dionysius. Their obscure style was no barrier to their study and...

• Driesch, Hans Adolf Eduard 1867-1941, German philosopher, b. Bad Kreuznach, grad. (zoology) Univ. of Jena, 1889. His early interest in biology was gradually overshadowed by involvement in philosophy. As an embryologist he...

• Drobisch, Moritz Wilhelm 1802-96, German philosopher and mathematician. He was a teacher at Leipzig and a follower and adherent of Johann Friedrich Herbart. Drobisch's works include Neue Darstellung der Logik [new exposition...

• Duns Scotus, John [Lat. Scotus =Irishman or Scot], c.1266-1308, scholastic philosopher and theologian, called the Subtle Doctor. A native of Scotland, he became a Franciscan and taught at Oxford, Paris, and Cologne. The exact...

• Empedocles c.495-c.435 BC, Greek philosopher, b. Acragas (present Agrigento), Sicily. Leader of the democratic faction in his native city, he was offered the crown, which he refused. A turn in political...

• Epictetus c.AD 50-c.AD 138, Phrygian Stoic philosopher. He wrote nothing, but his teachings were set down by his disciple Arrian in the Discourses and the Encheiridion. Epictetus emphasized indifference to...

• Epicurus 341-270 BC, Greek philosopher, b. Samos; son of an Athenian colonist. He claimed to be self-taught, although tradition states that he was schooled in the systems of Plato and Democritus by his...

• Erasmus or Desiderius Erasmus [Gr. Erasmus, his given name, and Lat., Desiderius =beloved; both are regarded as the equivalent of Dutch Gerard, Erasmus' father's name], 1466?-1536, Dutch humanist, b. Rotterdam. He was ordained priest of the Roman Catholic Church and studied at the Univ. of Paris. Erasmus' influence began to be felt in...

• Erigena, John Scotus [Lat. Scotus =Irish, Erigena =born in Ireland], c.810-c.877, scholastic philosopher, born in Ireland. About 847 he was invited by Charles II, king of the West Franks (later Holy Roman emperor), to take charge of the court...

• Eubulides 4th cent. BC, Greek philosopher, native of Miletus. He was a contemporary and adversary of Aristotle and was the successor of Euclid of Megara as head of the Megarian school.

• Eucken, Rudolf Christoph 1846-1926, German philosopher, studied at Göttingen and Berlin. He taught philosophy at Basel and became professor of philosophy at Jena (1874). His work attained wide popularity, and he won the...

• Euclid of Megara c.450-c.375 BC, Greek philosopher, a disciple of Socrates and traditional founder of the Megarian school. He combined the Eleatic doctrine of the unity of being with the Socratic teaching that...

• Euhemerus fl. c.300 BC, Cyrenaic philosopher, b. Sicily. He is famous for a theory of mythology embodied in his philosophical romance, Sacred History, a work of which only fragments remain. Euhemerus' theory, called after him euhemerism, was that the gods originated from the elaboration of traditions of distinguished historical persons. His...

• Eunapius b. c.347, Greek Neoplatonic philosopher, whose Lives of the Philosophers and Sophists is a most valuable primary source. His continuation of Dexippus' history is lost. Like many Neoplatonists he opposed...

• Farabi, al- d. 950, Islamic philosopher. He studied in Baghdad and later flourished in Aleppo as a sufi mystic (see Sufism ). He died in Damascus. Al-Farabi was the author of an encyclopedic work drawn largely from Aristotle; he was one of the earliest Islamic thinkers to develop a philosophical method reconciling...

• Ferguson, Adam 1723-1816, Scottish philosopher and historian. He was professor of philosophy at the Univ. of Edinburgh (1759-85). His Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767) criticized earlier theories of a...

• Ferrier, James Frederick 1808-64, Scottish philosopher. He was a professor at Edinburgh (1842-45) and at St. Andrews from 1845 until his death. His major work, the Institutes of Metaphysic (1854), denied the absolute existence...

• Feuerbach, Ludwig Andreas 1804-72, German philosopher, educated at Heidelberg and Berlin; son of Paul Johann Anselm von Feuerbach. At first a Hegelian, he abandoned absolute idealism for naturalistic materialism. He...

• Feyjóo y Montenegro, Benito Gerónimo 1676-1764, Spanish Benedictine scholar and critic, abbot at Oviedo, Asturias. Feyjóo led in bringing the Enlightenment to Spain. In his social and political ideas, in philosophy, science, and...

• Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 1762-1814, German philosopher. After studying theology at Jena and working as a tutor in Zürich and Leipzig, he became interested in Kantian philosophy. He received public recognition for his Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung [critique of all revelation] (1792), which was at first attributed to Kant himself, who highly commended the work. As professor of philosophy at Jena (1793-99), Fichte produced a number of works,...

• Ficino, Marsilio 1433-99, Italian philosopher. Under the patronage of Cosimo de' Medici, Ficino became the most influential exponent of Platonism in Italy in the 15th cent. He translated many of the Greek classics...

• Fludd, Robert 1574-1637, English mystic philosopher. Educated at Oxford and on the Continent, he became a London physician. Strongly influenced by the mystical doctrines of Paracelsus , he attempted to reconcile these speculations with the new science of the 17th cent. From his study of Paracelsus he arrived at the theory that spiritual and physical truth are identical. His...

• Foucault, Michel 1926-84, French philosopher and historian. He was professor at the Collège de France (1970-84). He is renowned for historical studies that reveal the sometimes morally disturbing power relations...

• Fouillée, Alfred Jules Emile 1838-1912, self-educated French philosopher and sociologist. Until 1875, when he retired, he was a teacher at various French universities. Fouillée regarded it as his particular work to "reconcile...

• Frankel, Charles 1917-79, American philosopher, b. New York City, grad. Columbia 1937, Ph.D., 1946. A teacher at Columbia since 1939, he became Old Dominion professor of philosophy and public affairs in 1970. His...

• Frege, Gottlob 1848-1925, German philosopher and mathematician. He was professor of mathematics (1879-1918) at the Univ. of Jena. Frege was one of the founders of modern symbolic logic , and his work profoundly influenced Bertrand Russell. He claimed that all mathematics could be derived from purely logical principles and definitions. He considered verbal concepts to be...

• Gabirol see Ibn Gabirol, Solomon ben Judah.

• Gadamer, Hans-Georg 1900-2002, German philosopher, b. Marburg. He taught at Kiel (1934-37), Marburg (1937-39), Leipzig (1939-74), and Frankfurt (1947-49) before becoming a professor at the Univ. of Heidelberg...

• Gemistus Pletho, Georgius c.1355-1452, Byzantine scholar and philosopher, b. Constantinople. He represented the Orthodox Eastern Church at the Council of Florence in 1439, led Cosimo de' Medici to found the Florentine...

• Genovesi, Antonio 1712-69, Italian philosopher and economist, a pioneer in writing philosophy in Italian instead of in Latin. Genovesi introduced new ideas, particularly those of Locke, Leibniz, and Hume into...

• Gentile, Giovanni 1875-1944, Italian philosopher and educator. He taught philosophy in several Italian universities and for many years contributed to the magazine of Benedetto Croce. In 1920 he founded the Giornale critico della filosofia italiana. An early supporter of the Fascist movement, he has been called the philosopher of Fascism. In 1922 he was made a senator and until 1924 was minister of public instruction. While in this office he...

• Gershon, Levi ben see Gersonides.

• Geulincx, Arnold 1624-69, Flemish Cartesian philosopher, b. Antwerp. One of the founders of occasionalism , his philosophy is characterized by a curious blending of rationalism and mysticism. Arguing that God is the sole active power, he denied any real interaction between finite things, which serve...

• Ghazali, al- 1058-1111, Islamic theologian, philosopher, and mystic. He was born at Tus in Khorasan, of Persian origin. He is considered the greatest theologian in Islam. Al-Ghazali was appointed professor at...

• Gilbert de la Porrée 1076-1154, French scholastic philosopher, b. Poitiers. He taught for 20 years at Chartres, where he was for some time chancellor. He later lectured at Paris. In 1142 he was made bishop of...

• Gilson, Étienne 1884-1978, French philosopher and historian, b. Paris. He taught the history of medieval philosophy at the Sorbonne (1921-32) and then took the chair of medieval philosophy at the Collège de...

• Glanvill, Joseph 1636-80, English clergyman and philosopher. He was chaplain in ordinary to Charles II and prebendary of Worcester Cathedral. An exponent of occasionalism and precursor to Hume, Glanvill sought to...

• Goodman, Nelson 1906-, American philosopher, b. Somerville, Mass., grad. Harvard (Ph.D. 1941). He taught at Tufts (1945-46), the Univ. of Pennsylvania (1946-64), and Brandeis Univ. (1964-67) before becoming...

• Gorgias c.485-c.380 BC, Greek Sophist. From his native city, Leontini, Sicily, he was sent as an ambassador to Athens, where he settled to teach and practice rhetoric. Gorgias pursued the negative...

• Green, Thomas Hill 1836-82, English idealist philosopher. Educated at Oxford, he was associated with the university all his life. He was professor of moral philosophy there from 1878 until his death. In his Introduction to Hume's Treatise on Human Nature (1874), Green struck a heavy blow at traditional British empiricism. Rejecting sensationalism, he argued that all reality lies in relations, that relations exist only for a thinking consciousness,...

• Hägerstrom, Axel 1868-1939, Swedish philosopher. He was a student (1886-93) at Uppsala Univ. and taught there from 1893 until his retirement in 1933. The son of a Lutheran minister, his interests shifted from...

• Høffding, Harald 1843-1931, Danish philosopher. He was professor at Copenhagen (1883-1915). His histories of philosophy have been enjoyed by a large audience, especially his History of Modern Philosophy (1894-95;...

• Habermas, Jürgen 1929-, German philosopher. He is a professor at the Univ. of Frankfurt (emeritus since 1994) and is the best-known contemporary proponent of critical theory, which is a social theory with Marxist...

• Hales, Alexander of see Alexander of Hales.

• Halevy, Judah see Judah ha-Levi.

• Hamilton, Sir William 1788-1856, Scottish philosopher. He was widely interested in law, physiology, and literature and was professor of history and philosophy at the Univ. of Edinburgh. Hamilton helped to reestablish...

• Hampshire, Sir Stuart Newton 1914-, British philosopher, grad. Oxford. He taught at Oxford, University College (London), London Univ., and Princeton Univ. before joining (1984, emeritus after 1990) the faculty of Stanford...

• Hartmann, Eduard von 1842-1906, German philosopher. His Philosophy of the Unconscious appeared in 1869 (tr., 3 vol., 1884; new ed. 1931). By the unconscious, Hartmann meant the inexplicable forces of nature which activate the world process, whether in atoms or in organisms...

• Hartmann, Nicolai 1882-1950, German philosopher, b. Latvia. He taught at Marburg (1922-25), Cologne (1925-31), Berlin (1931-45), and Göttingen (1945-50). Abandoning his early adherence to idealism, he propounded...

• Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 1770-1831, German philosopher, b. Stuttgart; son of a government clerk.

• Heidegger, Martin 1889-1976, German philosopher. As a student at Freiburg, Heidegger was influenced by the neo-Kantianism of Heinrich Rickert and the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. In 1923 he became professor at Marburg, where he wrote and published the only completed part of his major work, Sein und Zeit (1927; tr. Being and Time, 1962). On the basis of this work Heidegger was called (1928) to Freiburg to succeed Husserl in the chair of philosophy, which he occupied until his retirement in 1951. He actively supported Adolf...

• Helvétius, Claude Adrien 1715-71, French philosopher, one of the Encyclopedists. He held the post of farmer-general (i.e., tax collector), an exceedingly remunerative position. In 1751 he retired to the country, devoting...

• Heraclitus c.535-c.475 BC, Greek philosopher of Ephesus, of noble birth. According to Heraclitus, there was no permanent reality except the reality of change; permanence was an illusion of the senses. He...

• Herbart, Johann Friedrich 1776-1841, German philosopher and educator. Influenced by Leibniz, Kant, and Fichte, Herbart made many important contributions to psychology. In 1805 he lectured at Göttingen and from 1809 to 1833...

• Hobbes, Thomas 1588-1679, English philosopher, grad. Magdalen College, Oxford, 1608. For many years a tutor in the Cavendish family, Hobbes took great interest in mathematics, physics, and the contemporary...

• Hocking, William Ernest 1873-1966, American idealist philosopher, b. Cleveland, grad. Harvard (B.A., 1901; Ph.D., 1904). He was professor of philosophy at Harvard from 1914 until his retirement in 1943. His writings,...

• Holbach, Paul Henri Thiry, baron d' Ger. Paul Heinrich Dietrich, Baron von Holbach , 1723-89, French philosopher, one of the Encyclopedists. Although a native of the Palatinate, he lived in Paris from childhood. He became a member of a group of notable thinkers and literary men...

• Hook, Sidney 1902-89, American philosopher, b. New York City, grad. City College (B.S., 1923), Ph.D. Columbia Univ., 1927. He taught at New York Univ. (1927-72) and was long head of its philosophy department...

• Horkheimer, Max 1895-1973, German philosopher and sociologist. As director (1930-58) of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, he played an important role in the development of critical theory and...

• Hugh of Saint Victor 1096-1141, French or German philosopher and theologian, a canon regular of the monastery of St. Victor, Paris, from c.1115. In 1133 he was made head of the monastery school, which became under him...

• Hui Shih c.380-c.300 BC, Chinese logician, remembered for his paradoxes. Little is known about his life, except that he was a provincial prime minister, or about the thinking that led to his paradoxes,...

• Hume, David 1711-76, Scottish philosopher and historian. Educated at Edinburgh, he lived (1734-37) in France, where he finished his first philosophical work, A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40). His other philosophical works include An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748; a simplified version of the first book of the Treatise ), An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), Political Discourses (1752), The Natural History of Religion (1755), and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779). Hume also wrote an exhaustive History of England (1754-62), whose purity of style overcame the frequent faultiness of fact and made the work the standard history of England for many years. In 1763, Hume returned to Paris as secretary to the...

• Husserl, Edmund 1859-1938, German philosopher, founder of the phenomenological movement (see phenomenology ). He was professor at Göttingen and Freiburg and was greatly influenced by Franz Brentano. His philosophy is a descriptive study of consciousness for the purpose of discovering the structure of...

• Hutcheson, Francis 1694-1746, British philosopher, b. Co. Down, Ireland. He was a professor at the Univ. of Glasgow from 1729 until his death. His reputation rests on four essays published anonymously while he was...

• Hypatia d.415, Alexandrian Neoplatonic philosopher and mathematician, a woman renowned for her learning, eloquence, and beauty. Little is known of her writings. Her fame is largely owing to her barbarous...

• Iamblichus d. c.330, Syrian philosopher, a leading exponent of Neoplatonism. A pupil of Porphyry, he was deeply impressed by the doctrines of Plotinus. In his own teachings he combined with Plato's ideas many of those of Pythagoras and much that was mystical and even...

• Ibn Bajja see Avempace.

• Ibn Rushd see Averroës.

• Ibn Sina see Avicenna.

• Ibn Tufayl d. 1185/86?, 12th-century Spanish-Arab philosopher and physician, b. near Granada. His chief work was a philosophical romance, Hayy ibn Yaqzan, describing the development of a hermit, who, after long seclusion on an island, attains knowledge of the divine. He later comes into contact with a man trained in religion, the point of the work...

• Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich 1743-1819, German philosopher. Although educated for commerce, he early gave up business and became in 1770 a member of the council for the duchies of Berg and Jülich. A brilliant personality, he...

• Jamblichus see Iamblichus.

• James, Henry 1811-82, American student of religion and social problems, b. Albany, N.Y.; father of the philosopher William James and of the novelist Henry James. He rebelled against the strict Calvinist theology...

• James, William 1842-1910, American philosopher, b. New York City, M.D. Harvard, 1869; son of the Swedenborgian theologian Henry James and brother of the novelist Henry James. In 1872 he joined the Harvard faculty as lecturer on anatomy and physiology, continuing to teach until 1907, after 1880 in the department of psychology and philosophy. In 1890 he published his...

• Jaspers, Karl 1883-1969, German philosopher and psychopathologist, b. Oldenburg. After receiving his medical degree (1909) he became (1914) lecturer in psychology and in 1922 professor of philosophy at the...

• Joad, Cyril Edwin Mitchinson 1891-1953, English philosopher. He became head of the department of philosophy at Birbeck College, Univ. of London, in 1930. As a rationalist, he was a successful lecturer and writer. After his...

• John of Salisbury c.1110-1180, English scholastic philosopher, b. Salisbury. He studied in France at Paris and Chartres under Abelard and other famous teachers. He was secretary to Theobald, archbishop of...

• John Scotus see Duns Scotus, John ; Erigena, John Scotus.

• Johnson, Alexander Bryan 1786-1867, American philosopher and semanticist, b. Gosport, England. He emigrated (1801) to the United States and eventually became a wealthy banker in Utica, N.Y. Johnson anticipated many of the...

• Joubert, Joseph 1754-1824, French moralist. His Pensées (of which there are many English translations) rank with those of La Rochefoucauld in their finished style but have a greater range, including ethics,...

• Jouffroy, Théodore Simon 1796-1842, French philosopher. He was professor at the Collège de France and librarian at the Univ. of Paris. His translations of Thomas Reid and Dugald Stewart spread the influence of the...

• Kant, Immanuel 1724-1804, German metaphysician, one of the greatest figures in philosophy, b. Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia).

• Kierkegaard, Søren Aabye 1813-55, Danish philosopher and religious thinker. Kierkegaard's outwardly uneventful life in Copenhagen contrasted with his intensive inner examination of self and society, which resulted in...

• Kilpatrick, William Heard 1871-1965, American philosopher, b. White Plains, Ga., grad. Mercer College, 1891, Ph.D. Columbia, 1912, and studied at Johns Hopkins Univ. He taught at Teachers College, Columbia, from 1909,...

• Kindi, al- (Abu Yusuf Yakub ibn Ishak al-Kindi) , 9th cent. Arab philosopher, b. Basra, Iraq. He studied at Basra and at Baghdad and is noted as one of the earliest scholars in the Middle East to become thoroughly versed in the writings of...

• Kołakowski, Leszek 1927-, Polish philosopher, b. Radom. He taught at the Univ.