Castoriadis, Cornelius

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 18:34:36 +0000

Cornelius Castoriadis (1922-1997) Cornelius Castoriadis was an important intellectual figure in France for many decades, beginning in the mid-1940s. Trained in philosophy, Castoriadis also worked as a practicing economist and psychologist while authoring over twenty major works and numerous articles that span many of the traditional philosophical subjects, including politics, economics, psychology, anthropology, and ontology. [...]

Anscombe, G. E. M.

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 03:18:47 +0000

G. E. M. Anscombe (1919-2001) Elizabeth Anscombe, or Miss Anscombe as she was known, was an important twentieth century philosopher and one of the most important women philosophers of all time.  A committed Catholic, and translator of some of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s most important work, she was an influential and original thinker in the Catholic tradition [...]

Wang Chong (Wang Ch’ung)

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 17:41:47 +0000

Wang Chong (Wang Ch’ung) (25-100 C.E.) Wang Chong (Wang Ch’ung) was an early Chinese philosopher who wrote during the Eastern Han dynasty. He is often interpreted as offering a materialist and skeptical philosophical system.  Wang’s essays on physics, astronomy, ethics, methodology, and criticism are collected in the Lunheng (“Balanced Discussions”), the work for which he [...]

Ficino, Marsilio

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 21:57:51 +0000

Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) Marsilio Ficino was a Florentine philosopher, translator, and commentator, largely responsible for the revival of Plato and Platonism in the Renaissance. He has been widely recognized by historians of philosophy for his defense of the immortality of the soul, as well as for his translations of Plato, Plotinus, and the Hermetic corpus [...]

Hadot, Pierre

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 04:24:47 +0000

Pierre Hadot (1922-2010) Pierre Hadot, classical philosopher and historian of philosophy, is best known for his conception of ancient philosophy as a bios or way of life (manière de vivre). His work has been widely influential in classical studies and on thinkers, including Michel Foucault. According to Hadot, twentieth- and twenty-first-century academic philosophy has largely lost sight [...]

Frantz Fanon

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 19:02:38 +0000

Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) Frantz Fanon was one of a few extraordinary thinkers supporting the decolonization struggles occurring after World War II, and he remains among the most widely read and influential of these voices.  His brief life was notable both for his whole-hearted engagement in the independence struggle the Algerian people waged against France and [...]

Husserl, Edmund

Sat, 20 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) Although not the first to coin the term, it is uncontroversial to suggest that the German philosopher, Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), is the “father” of the philosophical movement known as phenomenology.  Phenomenology can be roughly described as the sustained attempt to describe experiences (and the “things themselves”) without metaphysical and theoretical speculations. Husserl [...]

Thrasymachus

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Thrasymachus (fl. 427 BCE) Thrasymachus of Chalcedon is one of several “older sophists” (including Antiphon, Critias, Hippias, Gorgias, and Protagoras) who became famous in Athens during the fifth century BCE. We know that Thrasymachus was born in Chalcedon, a colony of Megara in Bithynia, and that he had distinguished himself as a teacher of rhetoric [...]

Goethe

Sun, 07 Aug 2011 20:10:08 +0000

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) Goethe defies most labels, and in the case of the label ‘philosopher’ he did so intentionally. “The scholastic philosophy,” in his opinion, “had, by the frequent darkness and apparent uselessness of its subject- matter, by its unseasonable application of a method in itself respectable, and by its too great extension [...]

Shaftesbury

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 06:08:57 +0000

The Third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713) Anthony Ashley Cooper, the Third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713) was an English philosopher who profoundly influenced 18th century thought in Britain, France, and Germany.  As a part of an important social circle of English Freethinkers along with early deists such as John Toland, Matthew Tindal, and Anthony Collins, Shaftesbury’s [...]