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Acropolis of Athens
The Acropolis of Athens or Citadel of Athens is the best known acropolis (Gr. akros, akron, edge, extremity + polis, city, pl. acropoleis) in the world. Although there are many other acropoleis in Greece, the significance of the Acropolis of Athens is such that it is commonly known as The Acropolis without qualification. The Acropolis was formally proclaimed as the pre-eminent monument on the European Cultural Heritage list of monuments on 26 March 2007. The Acropolis is a flat-topped rock that rises above sea level in the city of Athens, with a surface area of about 3 hectares. It was also known as Cecropia, after the legendary serpent-man, Cecrops, the first Athenian king.
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Aegean Sea
The Aegean Sea (, Egeo Pelagos ; ) is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea located between the southern Balkan and Anatolian peninsulas, i.e., between the mainlands of Greece and Turkey respectively. In the north, it is connected to the Marmara Sea and Black Sea by the Dardanelles and Bosporus. The Aegean Islands are within the sea and some bound it on its southern periphery, including Crete and Rhodes. The Aegean Region consists of nine provinces in southwestern Turkey, in part bordering on the Aegean sea.
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Alexandria
http://wn.com/Alexandria -
Antioch
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Areopagus
:This article concerns the place where a classical judicial body met. It is also the term for the judicial body which met there. For the 16th century literary movement, see Areopagus (poetry). For the regional government during the Greek War of Independence, see Areopagus of Eastern Continental Greece. For the modern Greek Supreme Court, see Court of Cassation (Greece).
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Attalid dynasty
The Attalid dynasty was a Hellenistic dynasty that ruled the city of Pergamon after the death of Lysimachus, a general of Alexander the Great. The Attalid kingdom was the rump state left after the collapse of the Lysimachian Empire. One of Lysimachus' officers, Philetaerus, took control of the city in 282 BC. The later Attalids were descended from his father, and they expanded the city into a kingdom. Attalus I proclaimed himself King in the 230s BC, following his victories over the Galatians. The Attalids ruled Pergamon until Attalus III bequeathed the kingdom to the Roman Republic in 133 BC to avoid a likely succession crisis.
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Classical Athens
The city of Athens during the classical period of Ancient Greece (508-322 BC) was a notable polis (city-state) of Attica, Greece, leading the Delian League in the Peloponnesian War against Sparta and the Peloponnesian League. Athenian democracy was established in 508 BC under Cleisthenes following the tyranny of Hippias. This system remained remarkably stable, and with a few brief interruptions remained in place for 180 years, until 322 BC (aftermath of Lamian War) . The peak of Athenian hegemony was achieved in the 440s to 430s BC, known as the Age of Pericles.
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Cornell University
Cornell University (, {{respell|kor-) is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York. It is a private land-grant university which receives funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions.
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Crete
http://wn.com/Crete -
Cyprus
http://wn.com/Cyprus -
Dardanelles
The Dardanelles (, ), formerly known as the Hellespont
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Ephesus
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Euboea
For the mythological figure, see Euboea (mythology)
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Greece
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Ionian Sea
The Ionian Sea is an arm of the Mediterranean Sea, south of the Adriatic Sea. It is bounded by southern Italy including Calabria, Sicily and the Salento peninsula to the west, and by southwestern Albania, including Saranda and Himara, and a large number of Greek islands, including Corfu, Zante, Kephalonia, Ithaka, and Lefkas to the east. The islands are collectively referred to as the Ionian Islands, and other islands include the Strophades, Sphagia, Schiza, Sapientza and Kythira. The sea is one of the most seismic areas in the world.
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Lesbos
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Lesbos Island
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Lyceum (Classical)
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Macedon
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Miletus
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Parthenon
The Parthenon (Ancient Greek: ) is a temple in the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, dedicated to the Greek goddess Athena, whom the people of Athens considered their protector. Its construction began in 447 BCE and was completed in 438 BCE, although decorations of the Parthenon continued until 431 BCE. It is the most important surviving building of Classical Greece, generally considered to be the culmination of the development of the Doric order. Its decorative sculptures are considered some of the high points of Greek art. The Parthenon is regarded as an enduring symbol of Ancient Greece and of Athenian democracy and one of the world's greatest cultural monuments. The Greek Ministry of Culture is currently carrying out a programme of selective restoration and reconstruction to ensure the stability of the partially ruined structure.
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Peloponnese
http://wn.com/Peloponnese -
Pergamon
http://wn.com/Pergamon -
Platonic Academy
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Rome
Rome (; , ; ) is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . In 2006 the population of the metropolitan area was estimated by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to have a population of 3.7 million.
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Sparta
http://wn.com/Sparta -
Stageira
http://wn.com/Stageira -
Temple of Hephaestus
http://wn.com/Temple_of_Hephaestus -
Temple of Zeus
The Temple of Zeus at Olympia, was an ancient Greek temple in Olympia, Greece, dedicated to the chief of the gods, Zeus. It was the very model of the fully-developed classical Greek temple of the Doric order. The temple, built between 472 and 456 BC, stood in the most famous sanctuary of Greece, which had been dedicated to local and Pan-Hellenic deities and had probably been established towards the end of the Mycenaean period. The Altis, the enclosure with its sacred grove, open-air altars and the tumulus of Pelops, was first formed during the tenth and ninth centuries BCE, when the cult of Zeus was joined the already establish cult here of Hera.
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Thermopylae
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Thessaloniki
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Troy
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A. J. Ayer
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Adolph Stöhr
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Aeschylus
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Aesop
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Alan Ross Anderson
Alan Ross Anderson (1925 – 1973) was an American logician and professor of philosophy at Yale University and the University of Pittsburgh.
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Alan Turing
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Albert Einstein
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Alberto Jori
Alberto Jori (born 1965) is an Italian Neo-Aristotelian philosopher.
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Albertus Magnus
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Alcaeus of Mytilene
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Alcibiades
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Alcmaeon of Croton
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Alexander Bain
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Alexander the Great
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Alfred Tarski
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Alkindus
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Alonzo Church
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Ammonius Hermiae
Ammonius Hermiae (; c. 440-c. 520) was a Greek philosopher, and the son of the Neoplatonist philosophers Hermias and Aedesia. He was a pupil of Proclus in Athens, and taught at Alexandria for most of his life, writing commentaries on Plato, Aristotle, and other philosophers.
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Anaxagoras
Anaxagoras (, "lord of the assembly"; c. 500 BC – 428 BC) was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. Born in Clazomenae in Asia Minor, Anaxagoras was the first philosopher to bring philosophy from Ionia to Athens. He attempted to give a scientific account of eclipses, meteors, rainbows, and the sun, which he described as a fiery mass larger than the Peloponnese. He was accused of contravening the established religion and was forced to flee to Lampsacus.
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Anaximander
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Andronicus of Rhodes
Andronicus of Rhodes (fl. c. 60 BC) was a Greek philosopher from Rhodes who was also the eleventh scholarch of the Peripatetic school.
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Antipater
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Antisthenes
Antisthenes (; c. 445-c. 365 BCE) was a Greek philosopher and a pupil of Socrates. Antisthenes first learned rhetoric under Gorgias before becoming an ardent disciple of Socrates. He adopted and developed the ethical side of Socrates' teachings, advocating an ascetic life lived in accordance with virtue. Later writers regarded him as the founder of Cynic philosophy.
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Archilochus
:For the hummingbird genus, see ''Archilochus.
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Archimedes
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Aristo of Ceos
Aristo of Ceos (; fl. c. 225 BC) was a Peripatetic philosopher and a native of the island of Ceos, where his birthplace was the town of Ioulis. He is not to be confused with Aristo of Chios, a Stoic philosopher of the mid 3rd century BC.
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Aristophanes
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Aristotle
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Aristoxenus
Aristoxenus (; fl. 335 BC) of Tarentum was a Greek Peripatetic philosopher, and a pupil of Aristotle. Most of his writings, which dealt with philosophy, ethics and music, have been lost, but one musical treatise, Elements of Harmony, survives incomplete, as well as some fragments concerning rhythm and meter.
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Arthur Schopenhauer
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Aspasia
Aspasia (ca. 470 BC–ca. 400 BC, Greek: ) was a Milesian woman who was famous for her involvement with the Athenian statesman Pericles. Very little is known about the details of her life. She spent most of her adult life in Athens, and she may have influenced Pericles and Athenian politics. She is mentioned in the writings of Plato, Aristophanes, Xenophon, and other authors of the day.
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Aspasius
Aspasius (ca. 100-150 AD) was a Peripatetic philosopher. Boethius, who frequently refers to his works, says that Aspasius wrote commentaries on most of the works of Aristotle. The following commentaries are expressly mentioned: on De Interpretatione, the Physica, Metaphysica, Categoriae, and the Nicomachean Ethics. A portion of the commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics (books 1, 2, 4, 7, and 8) is still extant. It is notable as the earliest extant commentary on any of Aristotle's works. From Porphyry, who also states that Aspasius wrote commentaries on Plato, we learn that his commentaries on Aristotle were used in the school of Plotinus.
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August Boeckh
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Auguste Comte
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Augustine of Hippo
: For other uses, see Augustine, Augustinus and Saint Augustine.
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Augustus De Morgan
Augustus De Morgan (27 June 1806 – 18 March 1871) was a British mathematician and logician. He formulated De Morgan's laws and introduced the term mathematical induction, making its idea rigorous. The crater De Morgan on the Moon is named after him.
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Averroes
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Avicenna
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Ayn Rand
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Bacchylides
Bacchylides () (5th century BC) was an Ancient Greek lyric poet. Later Greeks included him in the canonical list of nine lyric poets which included his uncle Simonides. The elegance and polished style of his lyrics have been a commonplace of Bacchylidean scholarship since at least Longinus (De Sublimitate 33,5). Some scholars however have associated these qualities with superficial charm. He has often been compared unfavourably with his contemporary, Pindar, as "a kind of Boccherini to Pindar's Haydn", yet the differences in their styles doesn't allow for easy comparison and "to blame Bacchylides for not being Pindar is as childish a judgement as to condemn...Marvel for missing the grandeur of Milton." His career coincided with the ascendency of dramatic styles of poetry, as embodied in the works of Aeschylus or Sophocles, and he is in fact one of the last poets of major significance within the more ancient tradition of purely lyric poetry. The most notable features of his lyrics are their clarity in expression and simplicity of thought, making them an ideal introduction to the study of Greek lyric poetry in general and to Pindar's verse in particular.
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Baruch Spinoza
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Benjamin Lee Whorf
Benjamin Lee Whorf (April 24, 1897 in Winthrop, Massachusetts – July 26, 1941) was an American linguist. Whorf is widely known for his ideas about linguistic relativity, the hypothesis that language influences thought. An important theme in many of his publications, he has been credited as one of the fathers of this approach, often referred to as the "Sapir-Whorf hypothesis", named after him and his mentor Edward Sapir. Originally educated as a chemical engineer, he took up an interest in linguistics late in his life, studying with Sapir at Yale University. In the last ten years of his life he dedicated his spare time to linguistic studies, doing field work on Native American languages in the US and Mexico. He managed to become one of the most influential linguists of his time, even while still working as a fire inspector for the Hartford Fire Insurance Company. He published a grammar of the Hopi language, studies of Nahuatl dialects, Maya hieroglyphic writing, and the first attempt at a reconstruction of Uto-Aztecan. He also published many articles in the most prestigious linguistic journals, many of them dealing with the ways in which he saw that different linguistic systems affected the thought systems and habitual behaviour of language users.
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Bertrand Russell
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Boethus of Sidon
Boethus of Sidon (; c. 75-c. 10 BC) was a Peripatetic philosopher from Sidon, who lived towards the end of the 1st century BC.
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Bryan Magee
Bryan Edgar Magee (born 12 April 1930) is a noted British broadcasting personality, politician, and author, best known as a popularizer of philosophy.
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C. D. Broad
C. D. Broad (full name Charlie Dunbar Broad; 30 December 1887 - 11 March 1971) was an English epistemologist, historian of philosophy, philosopher of science, moral philosopher, and writer on the philosophical aspects of psychical research. He was known for his thorough and dispassionate examinations of arguments in such works as The Mind and Its Place in Nature, published in 1925, Scientific Thought, published in 1930, and ''Examination of McTaggart's Philosophy'', published in 1933.
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Carl Gustav Hempel
Carl Gustav "Peter" Hempel (born January 8, 1905 in Oranienburg, Germany died November 9, 1997 in Princeton, New Jersey) was a philosopher of science and a major figure in 20th-century logical empiricism. He is especially well-known for his articulation of the Deductive-nomological model of scientific explanation, which was considered the "standard model" of scientific explanation during the 1950s and 1960's. He is also known for the Raven paradox, which highlights the problem of induction.
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Charles Lyell
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Charles Singer
Charles Joseph Singer (2 November 1876 - 10 June 1960) was a British historian of science and medicine.
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Chrysippus
Chrysippus of Soli (Ancient Greek: , ; c. 279–c. 206 BC) was a Greek Stoic philosopher. He was a native of Soli, Cilicia, but moved to Athens as a young man, where he became a pupil of Cleanthes in the Stoic school. When Cleanthes died, around 230 BC, Chrysippus became the third head of the school. A prolific writer, Chrysippus expanded the fundamental doctrines of Zeno of Citium, the founder of the school, which earned him the title of Second Founder of Stoicism.
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Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero (; Classical Latin: ; January 3, 106 BC – December 7, 43 BC; sometimes anglicized as "Tully"), was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.
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Clearchus of Soli
Clearchus or Clearch of Soli (, Klearkhos) was a Greek philosopher of the 4th-3rd century BCE, belonging to Aristotle's Peripatetic school. He was born in Soli in Cyprus.
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Confucius
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Critolaus
Critolaus (or Kritolaos, ; c. 200-c. 118 BC) of Phaselis was a Greek philosopher of the Peripatetic school. He was one of three philosophers sent to Rome in 155 BC (the other two being Carneades and Diogenes of Babylon), where their doctrines fascinated the citizens, but scared the more conservative statesmen. None of his writings survive. He was interested in rhetoric and ethics, and considered pleasure to be an evil. He maintained the Aristotelian doctrine of the eternity of the world, and of the human race in general, directing his arguments against the Stoics.
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Daniel Dennett
Daniel Clement Dennett (born March 28, 1942 in Boston) is an American philosopher and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. He graduated from Harvard with a B.A in philosophy, then after completing his D.Phil at the University of Oxford. He is currently the co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies, the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, and a University Professor at Tufts University. Dennett is a noted atheist and secularist, a member of the Secular Coalition for America advisory board, as well as a prominent advocate of the Brights movement.
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Dante Alighieri
Dante Alighieri (May/June c.1265September 14, 1321), commonly known as Dante, was an Italian poet of the Middle Ages. He was born in Florence; he died and is buried in Ravenna.
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David Hilbert
David Hilbert (; January 23, 1862 –
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David Hume
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Democritus
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Demosthenes
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Derek Parfit
Derek Parfit (born December 11, 1942) is a British philosopher who specializes in problems of personal identity, rationality and ethics, and the relations between them. His 1984 book, Reasons and Persons (described by Alan Ryan in The Sunday Times as "something close to a work of genius") has been very influential. He has worked at Oxford for the whole of his academic career, and is presently a Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. He is also a Visiting Professor of Philosophy at New York University, Harvard University, and Rutgers University. Between 1965-66 he was Harkness Fellow at Columbia University and Harvard University [http://as.nyu.edu/object/aboutas.globalprofessor.DerekParfit].
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Dicaearchus
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Diodorus of Tyre
Diodorus () of Tyre, was a Peripatetic philosopher, and a disciple and follower of Critolaus, whom he succeeded as the head of the Peripatetic school at Athens c. 118 BC. He was still alive and active there in 110 BC, when Licinius Crassus, during his quaestorship of Macedonia, visited Athens. Cicero denies that he was a genuine Peripatetic, because it was one of his ethical maxims, that the greatest good consisted in a combination of virtue with the absence of pain, whereby a reconciliation between the Stoics and Epicureans was attempted.
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Diogenes Laërtius
Diogenes Laertius (ancient Greek: , Diogenes Laertios; fl. c. 3rd century) was a biographer of the Greek philosophers. Nothing is known about his life, but his surviving Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers is one of the principal surviving sources for the history of Greek philosophy.
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Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope ( Diogenes ho Sinopeus), was a Greek philosopher and one of the founders of Cynic philosophy. Also known as Diogenes the Cynic, he was born in Sinope (modern-day Sinop, Turkey) in 412 or 404 BCE
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Dorothy Emmet
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Duns Scotus
Blessed John (Johannes) Duns Scotus, O.F.M. (c. 1265 – 8 November 1308) was one of the more important theologians and philosophers of the High Middle Ages. He was nicknamed Doctor Subtilis for his penetrating and subtle manner of thought.
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Edward Sapir
Edward Sapir (), (January 26, 1884 – February 4, 1939) was a German-born American anthropologist-linguist and a leader in American structural linguistics. He was one of the creators of what is now called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. He was a highly influential figure in American linguistics, influencing several generations of linguists across several schools of the discipline.
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Empedocles
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Epaminondas
Epaminondas (Greek: ) (ca. 410 BC – 362 BC) or Epameinondas was a Theban general and statesman of the 4th century BC who transformed the Ancient Greek city-state of Thebes, leading it out of Spartan subjugation into a preeminent position in Greek politics. In the process he broke Spartan military power with his victory at Leuctra and liberated the Messenian helots, a group of Peloponnesian Greeks who had been enslaved under Spartan rule for some 230 years, having been defeated in the Messenian War ending in 600 BC. Epaminondas reshaped the political map of Greece, fragmented old alliances, created new ones, and supervised the construction of entire cities. He was militarily influential as well, inventing and implementing several major battlefield tactics.
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Epicurus
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Ernst Mayr
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Ernst Schröder
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Euclid
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Eudemos of Rhodes
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Eudemus of Rhodes
:Eudemus is also the name of a general of Alexander the Great (died 316 BC).
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Euripides
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Felix Jacoby
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Francis Bacon
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Franz Boas
Franz Boas (July 9, 1858 – December 21, 1942) was a German American anthropologist a pioneer of modern anthropology who has been called the "Father of American Anthropology" and "the Father of Modern Anthropology." Like many such pioneers, he trained in other disciplines; he received his doctorate in physics, and did post-doctoral work in geography. He applied the scientific method to the study of human cultures and societies; previously this discipline was based on the formulation of grand theories around anecdotal knowledge.
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Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; in English , ) (October 15, 1844 August 25, 1900) was a 19th-century German philosopher and classical philologist. He wrote critical texts on religion, morality, contemporary culture, philosophy and science, displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony and aphorism.
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G. E. Moore
:"G.E. Moore" redirects here. For the cofounder of Intel, see Gordon Moore.
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G. E. R. Lloyd
Sir Geoffrey Ernest Richard Lloyd (born 25 January 1933 in Swansea) is a historian of Ancient Science and Medicine at the University of Cambridge. He is the Senior Scholar in Residence at the Needham Research Institute in Cambridge, England.
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Galileo
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Galileo Galilei
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Geoffrey Chaucer
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Georg Cantor
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George Berkeley
George Berkeley ( ) (12 March 1685 14 January 1753), also known as Bishop Berkeley (Bishop of Cloyne), was an Irish philosopher whose primary achievement was the advancement of a theory he called "immaterialism" (later referred to as "subjective idealism" by others). This theory contends that individuals can only know directly sensations and ideas of objects, not abstractions such as "matter". The theory also contends that ideas are dependent upon being perceived by minds for their very existence, a belief that became immortalized in the dictum, "esse est percipi" ("to be is to be perceived"). He published his chief philosophical work A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge in 1710.
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George Boole
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George Boolos
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Gerard of Cremona
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Gerhard Gentzen
Gerhard Karl Erich Gentzen (November 24, 1909, Greifswald, Germany – August 4, 1945, Prague, Czechoslovakia) was a German mathematician and logician. He had his major contributions in the foundation of mathematics, proof theory, especially on natural deduction and sequent calculus. He died in 1945 after the Second World War, because he was deprived of food after being arrested in Prague.
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Gilbert Ryle
Gilbert Ryle (19 August 1900, Brighton – 6 October 1976, Oxford), was a British philosopher, and a representative of the generation of British ordinary language philosophers that shared Wittgenstein's approach to philosophical problems, and is principally known for his critique of Cartesian dualism, for which he coined the phrase "the ghost in the machine". Some of his ideas in the philosophy of mind have been referred to as "behaviourist" (not to be confused with the psychological behaviourism of B. F. Skinner and John B. Watson). Ryle's best known book is The Concept of Mind (1949), in which he writes that the "general trend of this book will undoubtedly, and harmlessly, be stigmatised as 'behaviourist'." Ryle, having engaged in detailed study of the key works of Bernard Bolzano, Franz Brentano, Alexius Meinong, Husserl, and Heidegger, himself suggested instead that the book "could be described as a sustained essay in phenomenology, if you are at home with that label."
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Giuseppe Peano
Giuseppe Peano (; 27 August 1858 – 20 April 1932) was an Italian mathematician, whose work was of exceptional philosophical value. The author of over 200 books and papers, he was a founder of mathematical logic and set theory, to which he contributed much notation. The standard axiomatization of the natural numbers is named in his honor. As part of this axiomatization effort, he made key contributions to the modern rigorous and systematic treatment of the method of mathematical induction. He spent most of his career teaching mathematics at the University of Turin.
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Gorgias
Gorgias (, ca. 485-c.380 BCE) "the Nihilist", Greek sophist, pre-socratic philosopher and rhetorician, was a native of Leontini in Sicily. Along with Protagoras, he forms the first generation of Sophists. Several doxographers report that he was a pupil of Empedocles, although he would only have been a few years younger. "Like other Sophists he was an itinerant, practicing in various cities and giving public exhibitions of his skill at the great pan-Hellenic centers of Olympia and Delphi, and charged fees for his instruction and performances. A special feature of his displays was to invite miscellaneous questions from the audience and give impromptu replies."
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Gottlob Frege
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Greeks
Ethnic group
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Gustav Bergmann
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Hans-Georg Gadamer
Hans-Georg Gadamer (; February 11, 1900 – March 13, 2002) was a German philosopher of the continental tradition, best known for his 1960 magnum opus, Truth and Method (Wahrheit und Methode).
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Haskell Curry
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Henri Bergson
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Henri Poincaré
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Henry Babcock Veatch
Henry Babcock Veatch, Jr. (September 26, 1911 – July 9, 1999) was a twentieth-century American philosopher.
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Henry Sidgwick
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Hephaestion
Hephaestion (Greek: , alternative spelling: "Hephaistion"; c. 356 BC – 324 BC), son of Amyntor, was a Macedonian nobleman and a general in the army of Alexander the Great. He was "... by far the dearest of all the king's friends; he had been brought up with Alexander and shared all his secrets." This friendship lasted their whole lives, and was compared, by others as well as themselves, to that of Achilles and Patroclus.
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Heraclitus
Heraclitus of Ephesus (Ancient Greek: — ; c. 535–c. 475 BCE) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, a native of the Greek city Ephesus, Ionia, on the coast of Asia Minor. He was of distinguished parentage. Little is known about his early life and education, but he regarded himself as self-taught and a pioneer of wisdom. From the lonely life he led, and still more from the riddling nature of his philosophy and his contempt for humankind in general, he was called "The Obscure," and the "Weeping Philosopher."
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Herbert Spencer
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Herodotus
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Hesiod
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Hilary Putnam
Hilary Whitehall Putnam (born July 31, 1926) is an American philosopher who has been a central figure in analytic philosophy since the 1960s, especially in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science. He is known for his willingness to apply an equal degree of scrutiny to his own philosophical positions as to those of others, subjecting each position to rigorous analysis until he exposes its flaws. As a result, he has acquired a reputation for frequently changing his own position. Putnam is currently Cogan University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University.
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Hipparchus
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Hippocrates
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Hipponax
Hipponax of Ephesus was an Ancient Greek iambic poet.
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Homer
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Hugh of Saint Victor
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Hypatia
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Ibn Khaldun
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Ibycus
Ibycus (Ancient Greek: ) (6th century BC), was an Ancient Greek lyric poet. He was included in the canonical list of nine lyric poets by the scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria. The extant fragments of his work contain the earliest-known example of the triadic choral lyric and epinician poetry.
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Immanuel Kant
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Imre Lakatos
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Isaac Newton
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J. L. Austin
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J. L. Mackie
John Leslie Mackie (25 August 1917–12 December 1981) was an Australian philosopher, originally from Sydney. He made significant contributions to the philosophy of religion, metaphysics, and the philosophy of language, and is perhaps best known for his views on meta-ethics, especially his defence of moral skepticism.
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Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida () (15 July 1930 – 8 October 2004) was a French philosopher born in Algeria. He developed the critical technique known as deconstruction, and his work has been associated both with post-structuralism and postmodern philosophy. His prolific output of more than 40 published books, together with essays and public speaking, has had a significant impact upon the humanities, particularly on literary theory and continental philosophy. His best known assertion with regard to his methodology is that "there is no outside-the-text."
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Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, existentialism, and Marxism, and his work continues to influence fields such as Marxist philosophy, sociology, and literary studies. Sartre was also noted for his long relationship with the author and social theorist, Simone de Beauvoir. He was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature but refused the honour.
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Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham ( or ; 15 February 1748 – 6 June 1832) was an English jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer. He became a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law and a political radical whose ideas influenced the development of welfarism. He is best known for his advocacy of utilitarianism and the ethical treatment of animals, and the idea of the panopticon.
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John Dewey
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John Locke
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John Philoponus
John Philoponus (lang-el|; AD. 490–AD. 570), also known as John the Grammarian or John of Alexandria, was a Christian and Aristotelian commentator and the author of a considerable number of philosophical treatises and theological works. A rigorous, sometimes polemical writer and an original thinker who was controversial in his own time, John Philoponus broke from the Aristotelian-Neoplatonic tradition, questioning methodology and eventually leading to empiricism in the natural sciences.
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John Rawls
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John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 8 May 1873) was a British philosopher and civil servant. An influential contributor to social theory, political theory, and political economy, his conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. He was a proponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by Jeremy Bentham, although his conception of it was very different from Bentham's. Hoping to remedy the problems found in an inductive approach to science, such as confirmation bias, he clearly set forth the premises of falsification as the key component in the scientific method. Mill was also a Member of Parliament and an important figure in liberal political philosophy.
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Jon Barwise
__NOTOC__
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Jonathan Barnes
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Jürgen Habermas
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Kant
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Karl Barth
Karl Barth ( – ) (pronounced "Bart") was a Swiss Reformed theologian whom critics hold to be among the most important Christian thinkers of the 20th century; Pope Pius XII described him as the most important theologian since Thomas Aquinas. Beginning with his experience as a pastor, he rejected his training in the predominant liberal theology typical of 19th-century European Protestantism. Instead he embarked on a new theological path initially called dialectical theology, due to its stress on the paradoxical nature of divine truth (e.g., God's relationship to humanity embodies both grace and judgment). Other critics have referred to Barth as the father of neo-orthodoxy — a term emphatically rejected by Barth himself. The most accurate description of his work might be "a theology of the Word." Barth's theological thought emphasized the sovereignty of God, particularly through his innovative doctrine of election.
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Karl Popper
http://wn.com/Karl_Popper -
Kurt Gödel
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Larry Laudan
Larry Laudan (b. Austin, Texas 1941) is a contemporary philosopher of science and epistemologist. He has strongly criticized the traditions of positivism, realism, and relativism, and he has defended a view of science as a privileged and progressive institution against popular challenges. Laudan's philosophical view of "research traditions" is seen as an important alternative to Imre Lakatos's "research programs."
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Leonard Bloomfield
http://wn.com/Leonard_Bloomfield -
Leonidas I
http://wn.com/Leonidas_I -
Leopold Löwenheim
http://wn.com/Leopold_Löwenheim -
Leucippus
http://wn.com/Leucippus -
Lev Vygotsky
http://wn.com/Lev_Vygotsky -
Linnaeus
http://wn.com/Linnaeus -
List of ethicists
List of ethicists including religious or political figures recognized by those outside their tradition as having made major contributions to ideas about ethics, or raised major controversies by taking strong positions on previously unexplored problems.
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Lucretius
http://wn.com/Lucretius -
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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Lyco of Troas
Lyco (or Lycon, ; c. 299-c. 225 BC) of Troas, son of Astyanax, was a Peripatetic philosopher and the disciple of Strato, whom he succeeded as the head of the Peripatetic school, c. 269 BC; and he held that post for more than forty-four years.
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Lycurgus of Sparta
http://wn.com/Lycurgus_of_Sparta -
Lysander
http://wn.com/Lysander -
Maimonides
http://wn.com/Maimonides -
Martha Nussbaum
Martha Nussbaum (born Martha Craven on May 6, 1947) is an American philosopher with a particular interest in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, political philosophy and ethics.
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Martin Heidegger
http://wn.com/Martin_Heidegger -
Mazdak
http://wn.com/Mazdak -
Mencius
:For the book with the same name, see Mencius (book).
http://wn.com/Mencius -
Milo of Croton
http://wn.com/Milo_of_Croton -
Mortimer Adler
http://wn.com/Mortimer_Adler -
Mozi
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Neleus of Scepsis
Neleus () of Scepsis, was the son of Coriscus of Scepsis. He was a disciple of Aristotle and Theophrastus, the latter of whom bequeathed to him his library, and appointed him one of his executors. Neleus supposedly took the writings of Aristotle and Theophrastus from Athens to Scepsis, where his heirs let them languish in a cellar until the 1st century BC, when Apellicon of Teos discovered and purchased the manuscripts, bringing them back to Athens.
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Nicolaus Copernicus
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Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky ( or ; born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and political activist. He is an Institute Professor and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Chomsky is well known in the academic and scientific community as one of the fathers of modern linguistics, and a major figure of analytic philosophy. Since the 1960s, he has become known more widely as a political dissident and an anarchist, referring to himself as a libertarian socialist. Chomsky is the author of more than 100 books and has received worldwide attention for his views, despite being typically absent from the mainstream media.
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Otto Neurath
Otto Neurath (Vienna, December 10, 1882 - Oxford, December 22, 1945) was an Austrian philosopher of science, sociologist, and political economist. Before he was forced to flee his native country for Great Britain in the wake of the Nazi occupation, Neurath was one of the leading figures of the Vienna Circle.
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P. F. Strawson
Sir Peter Frederick Strawson FBA (23 November 1919 – 13 February 2006) was an English philosopher. He was the Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at the University of Oxford (Magdalen College) from 1968 to 1987. Before that he was appointed as a college lecturer at University College, Oxford in 1947 and became a tutorial fellow the following year until 1968. On his retirement in 1987, he returned to the college and continued working there until shortly before his death.
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Parmenides
Parmenides of Elea (Greek: ; fl. early 5th century BCE) was an ancient Greek philosopher born in Elea, a Greek city on the southern coast of Italy. He was the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy. The single known work of Parmenides is a poem which has survived only in fragmentary form. In this poem, Parmenides describes two views of reality. In The Way of Truth (a part of the poem), he explains how reality is one, change is impossible, and existence is timeless, uniform, and unchanging. In The Way of Opinion, he explains the world of appearances, which is false and deceitful. These thoughts strongly influenced Plato, and through him, the whole of Western philosophy.
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Paul Bernays
http://wn.com/Paul_Bernays -
Paul Feyerabend
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Paul Grice
Herbert Paul Grice (March 13, 1913, Birmingham, England – August 28, 1988, Berkeley, California), usually publishing under the name H. P. Grice, H. Paul Grice, or Paul Grice, was a British-educated philosopher of language, who spent the final two decades of his career in the United States.
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Paul Ricœur
http://wn.com/Paul_Ricœur -
Paul Tillich
http://wn.com/Paul_Tillich -
Pausanias (general)
http://wn.com/Pausanias_(general) -
Pericles
http://wn.com/Pericles -
Peter Geach
Peter Thomas Geach (; born March 29, 1916) is a British philosopher. His areas of interest are the history of philosophy, philosophical logic, and the theory of identity.
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Peter Singer
Peter Albert David Singer (born 6 July 1946) is an Australian philosopher. He is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, and laureate professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE), University of Melbourne. He specialises in applied ethics, approaching ethical issues from a secular preference utilitarian perspective.
http://wn.com/Peter_Singer -
Phanias of Eresus
Phanias of Eresus (also Phaenias or Phainias) was a Greek philosopher from Lesbos, important as an immediate follower of and commentator on Aristotle. He came to Athens about 332 BCE, and joined his compatriot, Theophrastus, in the Peripatetic school. His writings on logic and science appear to have been commentaries or supplements to the works of Aristotle and Theophrastus. He also wrote extensively on history. None of his works have survived.
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Philip II of Macedon
http://wn.com/Philip_II_of_Macedon -
Philippa Foot
http://wn.com/Philippa_Foot -
Pierre Duhem
http://wn.com/Pierre_Duhem -
Pierre Gassendi
Pierre Gassendi (January 22, 1592 – October 24, 1655) was a French philosopher, priest, scientist, astronomer, and mathematician. With a church position in south-east France, he also spent much time in Paris, where he was a leader of a group of free-thinking intellectuals. He was also an active observational scientist, publishing the first data on the transit of Mercury in 1631. The lunar crater Gassendi is named after him.
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Pindar
http://wn.com/Pindar -
Plato
:For other uses, see Plato (disambiguation) and Platon (disambiguation).
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Plotinus
http://wn.com/Plotinus -
Plutarch
http://wn.com/Plutarch -
Polybius
http://wn.com/Polybius -
Praxiphanes
http://wn.com/Praxiphanes -
Prodicus of Ceos
http://wn.com/Prodicus_of_Ceos -
Protagoras
Protagoras (Greek: ) (ca. 490– 420 BC) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher and is numbered as one of the sophists by Plato. In his dialogue Protagoras, Plato credits him with having invented the role of the professional sophist or teacher of virtue. He is also believed to have created a major controversy during ancient times through his statement that man is the measure of all things. This idea was very revolutionary for the time and contrasting to other philosophical doctrines that claimed the universe was based on something objective, outside the human influence.
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Ptolemy
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Ptolemy I Soter
:For the astronomer, see Ptolemy; for others named "Ptolemy" or "Ptolemaeus", see Ptolemy (disambiguation).
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Pyrrhus of Epirus
Pyrrhus or Pyrrhos (, Pyrros; 319-272 BC) was a Greek general of the Hellenistic era. He was king of the Greek tribe of Molossians, of the royal Aeacid house (from ca. 297 BC), and later he became King of Epirus (306-302, 297-272 BC) and Macedon (288-284, 273-272 BC). He was one of the strongest opponents of early Rome. Some of his battles, though successful, cost him heavy losses, from which the term "Pyrrhic victory" was coined. He is the subject of one of Plutarch's Parallel Lives.
http://wn.com/Pyrrhus_of_Epirus -
Pythagoras
Pythagoras of Samos (, O Pythagoras o Samios, "Pythagoras the Samian", or simply ; c. 570-c. 495 BC) was an Ionian Greek philosopher and founder of the religious movement called Pythagoreanism. Most of our information about Pythagoras was written down centuries after he lived, thus very little reliable information is known about him. He was born on the island of Samos, and may have travelled widely in his youth, visiting Egypt and other places seeking knowledge. Around 530 BC, he moved to Croton, a Greek colony in southern Italy, and there set up a religious sect. His followers pursued the religious rites and practices developed by Pythagoras, and studied his philosophical theories. The society took an active role in the politics of Croton, but this eventually led to their downfall. The Pythagorean meeting-places were burned, and Pythagoras was forced to flee the city. He is said to have ended his days in Metapontum.
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Pythias
Pythias () was the adoptive daughter of Hermias of Atarneus, as well as Aristotle's first wife.
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R. G. Collingwood
http://wn.com/R_G_Collingwood -
R.B. Braithwaite
http://wn.com/RB_Braithwaite -
Raphael
http://wn.com/Raphael -
Raymond Smullyan
Raymond Merrill Smullyan (born May 25, 1919) is an American mathematician, concert pianist, logician, Taoist philosopher, and magician.
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Rembrandt
http://wn.com/Rembrandt -
René Descartes
http://wn.com/René_Descartes -
Robert Drew Hicks
http://wn.com/Robert_Drew_Hicks -
Robert Kilwardby
http://wn.com/Robert_Kilwardby -
Roger Bacon
http://wn.com/Roger_Bacon -
Romanian philosophy
Romanian philosophy is a name covering either a) the philosophy done in Romania or by Romanians, or b) an ethnic philosophy, which expresses at a high level the fundamental features of the Romanian spirituality, or which elevates to a philosophical level the Weltanschauung of the Romanian people, as deposited in language and folklore, traditions, architecture and other linguistic and cultural artifacts.
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Rudolf Carnap
Rudolf Carnap (May 18, 1891 – September 14, 1970) was an influential German-born philosopher who was active in Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. He was a leading member of the Vienna Circle and a prominent advocate of logical positivism.
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Russian philosophy
http://wn.com/Russian_philosophy -
Sappho
Sappho ( in English; Attic Greek ' , Aeolic Greek ' ) was an Ancient Greek poet, born on the island of Lesbos. Later Greeks included her in the list of nine lyric poets. Her birth was sometime between 630 and 612 BC, and it is said that she died around 570 BC, but little is known for certain about her life. The bulk of her poetry, which was well-known and greatly admired throughout antiquity, has been lost, but her immense reputation has endured through surviving fragments.
http://wn.com/Sappho -
Saul Kripke
Saul Aaron Kripke (born November 13, 1940) is an American philosopher and logician. He is a professor emeritus at Princeton and teaches as a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at CUNY Graduate Center. Since the 1960s Kripke has been a central figure in a number of fields related to mathematical logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, metaphysics, epistemology, and set theory. Much of his work remains unpublished or exists only as tape-recordings and privately circulated manuscripts (see "Unpublished Manuscripts and Online Lectures" below). Kripke was the recipient of the 2001 Schock Prize in Logic and Philosophy. A recent poll conducted among philosophers ranked Kripke among the top ten most important philosophers of the past 200 years.
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Simonides of Ceos
http://wn.com/Simonides_of_Ceos -
Socrates
http://wn.com/Socrates -
Solon
Solon (ancient Greek: , c. 638 BC–558 BC) was an Athenian statesman, lawmaker, and poet. He is remembered particularly for his efforts to legislate against political, economic and moral decline in archaic Athens. His reforms failed in the short term yet he is often credited with having laid the foundations for Athenian democracy.
http://wn.com/Solon -
Sophocles
http://wn.com/Sophocles -
Stephen Cole Kleene
http://wn.com/Stephen_Cole_Kleene -
Stephen Toulmin
Stephen Edelston Toulmin (25 March 1922 - 4 December 2009) was a British philosopher, author, and educator. Influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein, Toulmin devoted his works to the analysis of moral reasoning. Throughout his writings, he sought to develop practical arguments which can be used effectively in evaluating the ethics behind moral issues. His works were later found useful in the field of rhetoric for analyzing rhetorical arguments. The Toulmin Model of Argumentation, a diagram containing six interrelated components used for analyzing arguments, was considered his most influential work, particularly in the field of rhetoric and communication, and in computer science.
http://wn.com/Stephen_Toulmin -
Stesichorus
Stesichorus (Ancient Greek: , circa 640 - 555 BC) was the first great poet of the Greek West. He is best known for telling epic stories in lyric metres but he is also famous for some ancient traditions about his life, such as his opposition to the tyrant Phalaris, and the blindness he is said to have incurred and cured by composing verses first insulting and then flattering to Helen of Troy. He was ranked among the nine lyric poets esteemed by the scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria and yet his work attracted relatively little interest among ancient commentators, which in turn left a disproportionate number of gaps in the modern record as one scholar observed in 1967: "Time has dealt more harshly with Stesichorus than with any other major lyric poet." Recent discoveries, recorded on Egyptian papyrus (notably and controversially, the Lille papyrus, in 1974), have enhanced modern understanding of his work, confirming his role as a link between Homer's epic narrative and the lyric narrative of poets like Pindar.
http://wn.com/Stesichorus -
Strabo
http://wn.com/Strabo -
Søren Kierkegaard
http://wn.com/Søren_Kierkegaard -
Terence Irwin
Terence Irwin (born 21 April 1947, in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland) is a scholar and philosopher specializing in ancient Greek philosophy and the history of ethics (i.e. the history of Western moral philosophy in ancient, medieval, and modern times).
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Thales of Miletus
http://wn.com/Thales_of_Miletus -
Themistocles
Themistocles (Greek: ; "Glory of the Law"); c. 524–459 BC, was an Athenian politician and general. He was one of a new breed of politicians who rose to prominence in the early years of the Athenian democracy, along with his great rival Aristides. As a politician, Themistocles was a populist, having the support of lower class Athenians, and generally being at odds with the Athenian nobility. Elected archon in 493 BC, he took steps to increase the naval power of Athens, which would be a recurring theme in his political career. During the first Persian invasion of Greece, he fought at the Battle of Marathon, and was possibly one of the 10 Athenian strategoi (generals) in that battle.
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Theophrastus
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Thomas Hobbes
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Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel (born July 4, 1937 in Belgrade, in present-day Serbia) is an American philosopher, currently University Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University, where he has taught since 1980. His main areas of philosophical interest are philosophy of mind, political philosophy and ethics. He is well-known for his critique of reductionist accounts of the mind in his essay "What Is it Like to Be a Bat?" (1974), and for his contributions to deontological and liberal moral and political theory in The Possibility of Altruism (1970) and subsequent writings.
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Thomas Samuel Kuhn
http://wn.com/Thomas_Samuel_Kuhn -
Thoralf Skolem
http://wn.com/Thoralf_Skolem -
Thucydides
http://wn.com/Thucydides -
Timocreon
Timocreon, of Ialysus in Rhodes, was a Greek lyric poet who flourished about 480 BC.
http://wn.com/Timocreon -
W. V. Quine
http://wn.com/W_V_Quine -
W.V.O. Quine
http://wn.com/WVO_Quine -
Wilhelm von Humboldt
http://wn.com/Wilhelm_von_Humboldt -
Wilhelm Windelband
http://wn.com/Wilhelm_Windelband -
Wilhelm Wundt
Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt (16 August 1832 - 31 August 1920) was a German medical doctor, psychologist, physiologist, philosopher, and professor, known today as one of the founding figures of modern psychology. He is widely regarded as the "father of experimental psychology". In 1879, Wundt founded one of the first formal laboratories for psychological research at the University of Leipzig.
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Will Durant
William James Durant (November 5, 1885 – November 7, 1981) was a prolific American writer, historian, and philosopher. He is best known for The Story of Civilization, 11 volumes written in collaboration with his wife Ariel and published between 1935 and 1975. He was earlier noted for The Story of Philosophy, written in 1926, which one observer described as "a groundbreaking work that helped to popularize philosophy."
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William of Moerbeke
Willem van Moerbeke, O.P., known in the English speaking world as William of Moerbeke (c. 1215 – 1286) was a prolific medieval translator of philosophical, medical, and scientific texts from Greek into Latin. His translations were influential in his day, when few competing translations were available, and, more to the point, are still respected by modern scholars.
http://wn.com/William_of_Moerbeke -
William of Ockham
http://wn.com/William_of_Ockham -
William Whewell
William Whewell (24 May 1794 – 6 March 1866) was an English polymath, scientist, Anglican priest, philosopher, theologian, and historian of science. His surname is .
http://wn.com/William_Whewell -
Xenophon
http://wn.com/Xenophon -
Zeno of Citium
http://wn.com/Zeno_of_Citium
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Three Minute Philosophy: Aristotle
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:21
- Published: 07 Dec 2007
- Updated: 09 Oct 2012
Warning! Not a viable alternative to an actual philosophy degree.
http://wn.com/Three_Minute_Philosophy_Aristotle
Aristotle Part 1
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:00
- Published: 24 Nov 2008
- Updated: 08 Oct 2012
Aristotle is one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy. He was the first to create a comprehensive system of Western philosophy, encompassing morality and aesthetics, logic and science, politics and metaphysics. Aristotle's views on the physical sciences profoundly shaped medieval scholarship, and their influence extended well into the Renaissance, although they were ultimately replaced by modern physics. In the biological sciences, some of his observations were only confirmed to be accurate in the nineteenth century. His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, which were incorporated in the late nineteenth century into modern formal logic
http://wn.com/Aristotle_Part_1
The Mark Steel Lectures-Aristotle 1/3
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:52
- Published: 09 Sep 2008
- Updated: 03 Oct 2012
Written and delivered by Mark Steel, each scripted lecture presents persuasive, yet witty, arguments for the importance of a historical figure.
http://wn.com/The_Mark_Steel_Lectures-Aristotle_1_3
Aristotle in 90 Minutes
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 75:53
- Published: 13 Feb 2012
- Updated: 09 Oct 2012
I do not claim to own the content of this video and am distributing it for educational purposes only
http://wn.com/Aristotle_in_90_Minutes
Martha Nussbaum on Aristotle: Section 1
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:21
- Published: 22 Aug 2008
- Updated: 26 Sep 2012
In this program, the far-reaching philosophical ideas of Plato's star pupil are examined by noted Brown University professor Martha Nussbaum. Aristotle overcomes Plato's dualism of the intelligible and sensible worlds with his principle of inseparable nature of eternal matter and form. The principles of potentiality and actuality are examined, along with Aristotle's theory of the four causes—material, formal, efficient, and final—which account for changes in all things. These theories of constancy and change are credited with the progress of scientific inquiry over the ages.
http://wn.com/Martha_Nussbaum_on_Aristotle_Section_1
Philosophy Aristotle 1
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:46
- Published: 07 Jun 2007
- Updated: 17 Sep 2012
Subject:on the knowable Music:Orbital Title:Great Ideas Of Philosophy
http://wn.com/Philosophy_Aristotle_1
Aristotle metaphysics
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:56
- Published: 15 Oct 2008
- Updated: 08 Oct 2012
A very brief introduction to Aristotle's metaphysics
http://wn.com/Aristotle_metaphysics
Aristotle's Lagoon (BBC Documentary)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 57:17
- Published: 08 Sep 2012
- Updated: 09 Oct 2012
Please Subscribe To The Evolution Documentary YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com Broadcast 2010. In the 4th century BC the Greek philosopher Aristotle travelled to Lesvos, an island in the Aegean teeming, then as now, with wildlife. His fascination with what he found there, and his painstaking study of it, led to the birth of a new science - biology. Professor Armand Leroi follows in Aristotle's footsteps to discover the creatures, places and ideas that inspired the philosopher in his pioneering work.
http://wn.com/Aristotle's_Lagoon_BBC_Documentary
Aristotle Politics
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 555:01
- Published: 01 Jul 2011
- Updated: 09 Oct 2012
The Politics, by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, is one of the most influential texts in political philosophy. In it, Aristotle explores the role that the political community should play in developing the virtue of its citizens. One of his central ideas is that "Man is a political animal," meaning that people can only become virtuous by active participation in the political community. Aristotle also criticizes his teacher Plato, classifies and evaluates six different types of constitutions and political institutions, and describes his vision of the ideal state. Aristotle's views on women and slavery are unenlightened by today's standards, but his work remains enduring and relevant to this day.
http://wn.com/Aristotle_Politics
Aristotle: on Rhetoric
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 10:00
- Published: 26 Aug 2008
- Updated: 06 Oct 2012
by Chris Misurellit through Professor Rev. Dr. James Kenneth Powell II, opensourcebuddhism.org This project examines Aristotle's renowned work on the subject of rhetoric: the art of public speaking, the means to persuade audiences to a different point of view. The secrets are unveiled in this very fine work by Misurelli
http://wn.com/Aristotle_on_Rhetoric
Aristotle the movie
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:14
- Published: 19 Dec 2006
- Updated: 29 May 2012
A brief summary on Aristotles life.
http://wn.com/Aristotle_the_movie
Aristotle's Lagoon 1 of 4
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 14:29
- Published: 13 May 2011
- Updated: 08 Oct 2012
In the 4th century BC the Greek philosopher Aristotle travelled to Lesvos, an island in the Aegean teeming, then as now, with wildlife. His fascination with what he found there, and his painstaking study of it, led to the birth of a new science - biology. Professor Armand Leroi follows in Aristotle's footsteps to discover the creatures, places and ideas that inspired the philosopher in his pioneering work. Aristotle's Lagoon Playlist: www.youtube.com 1 of 4: www.youtube.com 2 of 4: www.youtube.com 3 of 4: www.youtube.com 4 of 4: www.youtube.com . Aristotle Philosophy Philosophers Philosophical Eudemonia Eudaimonia Greek Greece Athens Ancient Reason Logic Peripatetic School Lyceum 4th Century BC Lesvos Island Aegean Wildlife Study Birth New Science Biology Student Plato Teacher Alexander Great Thinking Morality Aesthetics Politics Metaphysics Physics Poetry Theatre Music Rhetoric Government Ethics Zoology Ideas Human History Treatises 384 322 Aristotelianism Aristotéles Ἀριστοτέλης
http://wn.com/Aristotle's_Lagoon_1_of_4
What Did Aristotle Get Wrong?- QI - BBC comedy panel show
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:54
- Published: 15 Sep 2008
- Updated: 09 Oct 2012
Alan Davies, Dave Gorman and friends have fun with Stephen Fry in the Quite Interesting BBC panel show.
http://wn.com/What_Did_Aristotle_Get_Wrong?_QI_BBC_comedy_panel_show
John Maxwell on Aristotle and Inspiration
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:16
- Published: 21 Sep 2011
- Updated: 20 Apr 2012
One of the most established authorities on leadership writing today, John C. Maxwell speaks to over 350000 people each year and his most popular topic is THE 5 LEVELS OF LEADERSHIP, which he now shares with readers. The 5 Levels of Leadership, John C. Maxwell Center Street (Hardcover), October 4, 2011 www.hachettebookgroup.com
http://wn.com/John_Maxwell_on_Aristotle_and_Inspiration
Aristotle's Ethics, The Nature of Happiness and The Golden Mean With Will Durant
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:11
- Published: 20 Feb 2011
- Updated: 08 Oct 2012
Take advantage of audible.com's special offer and start listening to Audiobooks on your iPod or Smartphone today. Just click on the link Below. www.qksrv.net Get your first 3 months at 50% off. Just $7.49 a month. Aristotle (384 BC -- 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology. Together with Plato and Socrates (Plato's teacher), Aristotle is one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy. Aristotle's writings were the first to create a comprehensive system of Western philosophy, encompassing morality and aesthetics, logic and science, politics and metaphysics. Aristotle's views on the physical sciences profoundly shaped medieval scholarship, and their influence extended well into the Renaissance, although they were ultimately replaced by Newtonian physics. In the zoological sciences, some of his observations were confirmed to be accurate only in the 19th century. His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, which was incorporated in the late 19th century into modern formal logic. In metaphysics, Aristotelianism had a profound influence on philosophical and theological thinking in the Islamic and Jewish traditions in the Middle Ages, and it continues to influence Christian theology, especially the scholastic tradition of the <b>...</b>
http://wn.com/Aristotle's_Ethics,_The_Nature_of_Happiness_and_The_Golden_Mean_With_Will_Durant
Aristotle VS Plato
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:08
- Published: 03 Dec 2009
- Updated: 22 Sep 2012
Political Theory Project - Made it as corny as possible...just look at the awesome lightning effects
http://wn.com/Aristotle_VS_Plato
Stargate Atlantis: Aristotle and Averroes
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:13
- Published: 16 Sep 2007
- Updated: 31 Aug 2012
Stargate Atlantis: Aristotle and Averroes Artist: Kareem Salama Song: Aristotle and Averroes This video is a John and Rodney FRIENDSHIP video...although I'm sure people will take this anyway they want...anyway, new release from footinsink.
http://wn.com/Stargate_Atlantis_Aristotle_and_Averroes
Aristotle's Theory of Tragedy.avi
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 17:55
- Published: 09 Feb 2011
- Updated: 05 Oct 2012
This video explains Aristotle's theory of tragedy from Poetics. This is straight lecture as it was a video left for a substitute teacher.
http://wn.com/Aristotle's_Theory_of_Tragedyavi
"Poetics" by Aristotle, Preface (Video 1)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:45
- Published: 14 Jul 2010
- Updated: 29 Sep 2012
Translated by Ingram Bywater (1840-1914) Preface by Gilbert Murry Read by Robert Foster librivox.org This series is 18 videos long.
http://wn.com/Poetics_by_Aristotle,_Preface_Video_1
Aristotle Part 2
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- Duration: 9:02
- Published: 24 Nov 2008
- Updated: 14 Sep 2012
Aristotle is one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy. He was the first to create a comprehensive system of Western philosophy, encompassing morality and aesthetics, logic and science, politics and metaphysics. Aristotle's views on the physical sciences profoundly shaped medieval scholarship, and their influence extended well into the Renaissance, although they were ultimately replaced by modern physics. In the biological sciences, some of his observations were only confirmed to be accurate in the nineteenth century. His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, which were incorporated in the late nineteenth century into modern formal logic
http://wn.com/Aristotle_Part_2
Aristotle Quotation
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- Duration: 0:42
- Published: 10 May 2007
- Updated: 05 Aug 2012
Aristotle is one of the greatest philosophers that has ever lived, this, I think, is his best quote and it pretty much sums up the whole discipline of moral philosophy.
http://wn.com/Aristotle_Quotation
Intro. to Philosophy: Aristotle's Metaphysics, book 1
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 56:53
- Published: 01 Oct 2011
- Updated: 12 Sep 2012
In this lecture from my Fall 2011 Introduction to Philosophy class at Marist College, we discuss the first part of Aristotle's Metaphysics bk. 1, ranging from the human desire for knowledge, the development of the arts and sciences, the nature of metaphysics, and the four causes
http://wn.com/Intro_to_Philosophy_Aristotle's_Metaphysics,_book_1
Aristotle's Virtue Ethics (HD)
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- Duration: 2:11
- Published: 02 Jun 2010
- Updated: 05 Oct 2012
A little video on Virtue Ethics. Particularly useful is you're studying Philosophy and Ethics at AS-Level. Remember to comment, rate subscribe etc. This is my first proper video on youtube so please, be nice :)
http://wn.com/Aristotle's_Virtue_Ethics_HD
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"An Aesthetic Reading of Aristotle's Ethics"
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Some Notes on Causality in Aristotle
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For other uses, see Aristotle (disambiguation).
 Marble bust of Aristotle. Roman copy after a Greek bronze original by Lysippus c. 330 BC. The alabaster mantle is modern. |
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| Born | 384 BC Stageira, Chalcidice |
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| Died | 322 BC (age 61 or 62) Euboea |
| Era | Ancient philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Peripatetic school Aristotelianism |
| Main interests | Physics, Metaphysics, Poetry, Theatre, Music, Rhetoric, Politics, Government, Ethics, Biology, Zoology |
| Notable ideas | Golden mean, Reason, Logic, Syllogism, Passion |
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Influenced by
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Influenced
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Aristotle (Ancient Greek: Ἀριστοτέλης, Aristotélēs) (384 BC – 322 BC)[1] was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology. Together with Plato and Socrates (Plato's teacher), Aristotle is one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy. Aristotle's writings were the first to create a comprehensive system of Western philosophy, encompassing morality, aesthetics, logic, science, politics, and metaphysics.
Aristotle's views on the physical sciences profoundly shaped medieval scholarship, and their influence extended well into the Renaissance, although they were ultimately replaced by Newtonian physics. In the zoological sciences, some of his observations were confirmed to be accurate only in the 19th century. His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, which was incorporated in the late 19th century into modern formal logic. In metaphysics, Aristotelianism had a profound influence on philosophical and theological thinking in the Islamic and Jewish traditions in the Middle Ages, and it continues to influence Christian theology, especially the scholastic tradition of the Catholic Church. His ethics, though always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics. All aspects of Aristotle's philosophy continue to be the object of active academic study today. Though Aristotle wrote many elegant treatises and dialogues (Cicero described his literary style as "a river of gold"),[2] it is thought that the majority of his writings are now lost and only about one-third of the original works have survived.[3]
Contents
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Life[link]
Aristotle, whose name means "the best purpose,"[4] was born in Stageira, Chalcidice, in 384 BC, about 55 km (34 mi) east of modern-day Thessaloniki.[5] His father Nicomachus was the personal physician to King Amyntas of Macedon. Aristotle was trained and educated as a member of the aristocracy. At about the age of eighteen, he went to Athens to continue his education at Plato's Academy. Aristotle remained at the academy for nearly twenty years before quitting Athens in 348/47 BC. The traditional story about his departure reports that he was disappointed with the direction the academy took after control passed to Plato's nephew Speusippus upon his death, although it is possible that he feared anti-Macedonian sentiments and left before Plato had died.[6] He then traveled with Xenocrates to the court of his friend Hermias of Atarneus in Asia Minor. While in Asia, Aristotle traveled with Theophrastus to the island of Lesbos, where together they researched the botany and zoology of the island. Aristotle married Hermias's adoptive daughter (or niece) Pythias. She bore him a daughter, whom they named Pythias. Soon after Hermias' death, Aristotle was invited by Philip II of Macedon to become the tutor to his son Alexander the Great in 343 BC.[7]
Aristotle was appointed as the head of the royal academy of Macedon. During that time he gave lessons not only to Alexander, but also to two other future kings: Ptolemy and Cassander. In his Politics, Aristotle states that only one thing could justify monarchy, and that was if the virtue of the king and his family were greater than the virtue of the rest of the citizens put together.[8] Tactfully, he included the young prince and his father in that category. Aristotle encouraged Alexander toward eastern conquest, and his attitude towards Persia was unabashedly ethnocentric. In one famous example, he counsels Alexander to be 'a leader to the Greeks and a despot to the barbarians, to look after the former as after friends and relatives, and to deal with the latter as with beasts or plants'.[9]
By 335 BC he had returned to Athens, establishing his own school there known as the Lyceum. Aristotle conducted courses at the school for the next twelve years. While in Athens, his wife Pythias died and Aristotle became involved with Herpyllis of Stageira, who bore him a son whom he named after his father, Nicomachus. According to the Suda, he also had an eromenos, Palaephatus of Abydus.[10]
It is during this period in Athens from 335 to 323 BC when Aristotle is believed to have composed many of his works.[7] Aristotle wrote many dialogues, only fragments of which survived. The works that have survived are in treatise form and were not, for the most part, intended for widespread publication, as they are generally thought to be lecture aids for his students. His most important treatises include Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, De Anima (On the Soul) and Poetics.
Aristotle not only studied almost every subject possible at the time, but made significant contributions to most of them. In physical science, Aristotle studied anatomy, astronomy, embryology, geography, geology, meteorology, physics and zoology. In philosophy, he wrote on aesthetics, ethics, government, metaphysics, politics, economics, psychology, rhetoric and theology. He also studied education, foreign customs, literature and poetry. His combined works constitute a virtual encyclopedia of Greek knowledge. It has been suggested that Aristotle was probably the last person to know everything there was to be known in his own time.[11]
Near the end of Alexander's life, Alexander began to suspect plots against himself, and threatened Aristotle in letters. Aristotle had made no secret of his contempt for Alexander's pretense of divinity, and the king had executed Aristotle's grandnephew Callisthenes as a traitor. A widespread tradition in antiquity suspected Aristotle of playing a role in Alexander's death, but there is little evidence for this.[12]
Upon Alexander's death, anti-Macedonian sentiment in Athens once again flared. Eurymedon the hierophant denounced Aristotle for not holding the gods in honor. Aristotle fled the city to his mother's family estate in Chalcis, explaining, "I will not allow the Athenians to sin twice against philosophy,"[13][14] a reference to Athens's prior trial and execution of Socrates. He died in Euboea of natural causes within the year (in 322 BC). Aristotle named chief executor his student Antipater and left a will in which he asked to be buried next to his wife.[15]
Thought[link]
Logic[link]
Main article: Term logic
For more details on this topic, see Non-Aristotelian logic.
With the Prior Analytics, Aristotle is credited with the earliest study of formal logic, and his conception of it was the dominant form of Western logic until 19th century advances in mathematical logic. Kant stated in the Critique of Pure Reason that Aristotle's theory of logic completely accounted for the core of deductive inference.
History[link]
Aristotle "says that 'on the subject of reasoning' he 'had nothing else on an earlier date to speak of'".[16] However, Plato reports that syntax was devised before him, by Prodicus of Ceos, who was concerned by the correct use of words. Logic seems to have emerged from dialectics; the earlier philosophers made frequent use of concepts like reductio ad absurdum in their discussions, but never truly understood the logical implications. Even Plato had difficulties with logic; although he had a reasonable conception of a deductive system, he could never actually construct one and relied instead on his dialectic.[17] Plato believed that deduction would simply follow from premises, hence he focused on maintaining solid premises so that the conclusion would logically follow. Consequently, Plato realized that a method for obtaining conclusions would be most beneficial. He never succeeded in devising such a method, but his best attempt was published in his book Sophist, where he introduced his division method.[18]
[edit] Analytics and the Organon
Main article: Organon
What we today call Aristotelian logic, Aristotle himself would have labeled "analytics". The term "logic" he reserved to mean dialectics. Most of Aristotle's work is probably not in its original form, since it was most likely edited by students and later lecturers. The logical works of Aristotle were compiled into six books in about the early 1st century AD:
- Categories
- On Interpretation
- Prior Analytics
- Posterior Analytics
- Topics
- On Sophistical Refutations
The order of the books (or the teachings from which they are composed) is not certain, but this list was derived from analysis of Aristotle's writings. It goes from the basics, the analysis of simple terms in the Categories, the analysis of propositions and their elementary relations in On Interpretation, to the study of more complex forms, namely, syllogisms (in the Analytics) and dialectics (in the Topics and Sophistical Refutations). The first three treatises form the core of the logical theory stricto sensu: the grammar of the language of logic and the correct rules of reasoning. There is one volume of Aristotle's concerning logic not found in the Organon, namely the fourth book of Metaphysics.[17]
Aristotle's scientific method[link]
For more details on this topic, see Aristotle's theory of universals.
Like his teacher Plato, Aristotle's philosophy aims at the universal. Aristotle, however, found the universal in particular things, which he called the essence of things, while Plato finds that the universal exists apart from particular things, and is related to them as their prototype or exemplar. For Aristotle, therefore, philosophic method implies the ascent from the study of particular phenomena to the knowledge of essences, while for Plato philosophic method means the descent from a knowledge of universal Forms (or ideas) to a contemplation of particular imitations of these. For Aristotle, "form" still refers to the unconditional basis of phenomena but is "instantiated" in a particular substance (see Universals and particulars, below). In a certain sense, Aristotle's method is both inductive and deductive, while Plato's is essentially deductive from a priori principles.[19]
In Aristotle's terminology, "natural philosophy" is a branch of philosophy examining the phenomena of the natural world, and includes fields that would be regarded today as physics, biology and other natural sciences. In modern times, the scope of philosophy has become limited to more generic or abstract inquiries, such as ethics and metaphysics, in which logic plays a major role. Today's philosophy tends to exclude empirical study of the natural world by means of the scientific method. In contrast, Aristotle's philosophical endeavors encompassed virtually all facets of intellectual inquiry.
In the larger sense of the word, Aristotle makes philosophy coextensive with reasoning, which he also would describe as "science". Note, however, that his use of the term science carries a different meaning than that covered by the term "scientific method". For Aristotle, "all science (dianoia) is either practical, poetical or theoretical" (Metaphysics 1025b25). By practical science, he means ethics and politics; by poetical science, he means the study of poetry and the other fine arts; by theoretical science, he means physics, mathematics and metaphysics.
If logic (or "analytics") is regarded as a study preliminary to philosophy, the divisions of Aristotelian philosophy would consist of: (1) Logic; (2) Theoretical Philosophy, including Metaphysics, Physics and Mathematics; (3) Practical Philosophy and (4) Poetical Philosophy.
In the period between his two stays in Athens, between his times at the Academy and the Lyceum, Aristotle conducted most of the scientific thinking and research for which he is renowned today. In fact, most of Aristotle's life was devoted to the study of the objects of natural science. Aristotle's metaphysics contains observations on the nature of numbers but he made no original contributions to mathematics. He did, however, perform original research in the natural sciences, e.g., botany, zoology, physics, astronomy, chemistry, meteorology, and several other sciences.
Aristotle's writings on science are largely qualitative, as opposed to quantitative. Beginning in the 16th century, scientists began applying mathematics to the physical sciences, and Aristotle's work in this area was deemed hopelessly inadequate. His failings were largely due to the absence of concepts like mass, velocity, force and temperature. He had a conception of speed and temperature, but no quantitative understanding of them, which was partly due to the absence of basic experimental devices, like clocks and thermometers.
His writings provide an account of many scientific observations, a mixture of precocious accuracy and curious errors. For example, in his History of Animals he claimed that human males have more teeth than females.[20] In a similar vein, John Philoponus, and later Galileo, showed by simple experiments that Aristotle's theory that a heavier object falls faster than a lighter object is incorrect.[21] On the other hand, Aristotle refuted Democritus's claim that the Milky Way was made up of "those stars which are shaded by the earth from the sun's rays," pointing out (correctly, even if such reasoning was bound to be dismissed for a long time) that, given "current astronomical demonstrations" that "the size of the sun is greater than that of the earth and the distance of the stars from the earth many times greater than that of the sun, then...the sun shines on all the stars and the earth screens none of them."[22]
In places, Aristotle goes too far in deriving 'laws of the universe' from simple observation and over-stretched reason. Today's scientific method assumes that such thinking without sufficient facts is ineffective, and that discerning the validity of one's hypothesis requires far more rigorous experimentation than that which Aristotle used to support his laws.
Aristotle also had some scientific blind spots. He posited a geocentric cosmology that we may discern in selections of the Metaphysics, which was widely accepted up until the 16th century. From the 3rd century to the 16th century, the dominant view held that the Earth was the center of the universe (geocentrism).
Since he was perhaps the philosopher most respected by European thinkers during and after the Renaissance, these thinkers often took Aristotle's erroneous positions as given, which held back science in this epoch.[23] However, Aristotle's scientific shortcomings should not mislead one into forgetting his great advances in the many scientific fields. For instance, he founded logic as a formal science and created foundations to biology that were not superseded for two millennia. Moreover, he introduced the fundamental notion that nature is composed of things that change and that studying such changes can provide useful knowledge of underlying constants.
Geology[link]
As quoted from Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology:
He [Aristotle] refers to many examples of changes now constantly going on, and insists emphatically on the great results which they must produce in the lapse of ages. He instances particular cases of lakes that had dried up, and deserts that had at length become watered by rivers and fertilized. He points to the growth of the Nilotic delta since the time of Homer, to the shallowing of the Palus Maeotis within sixty years from his own time... He alludes ...to the upheaving of one of the Eolian islands, previous to a volcanic eruption. The changes of the earth, he says, are so slow in comparison to the duration of our lives, that they are overlooked; and the migrations of people after great catastrophes, and their removal to other regions, cause the event to be forgotten.
He says [12th chapter of his Meteorics] 'the distribution of land and sea in particular regions does not endure throughout all time, but it becomes sea in those parts where it was land, and again it becomes land where it was sea, and there is reason for thinking that these changes take place according to a certain system, and within a certain period.' The concluding observation is as follows: 'As time never fails, and the universe is eternal, neither the Tanais, nor the Nile, can have flowed for ever. The places where they rise were once dry, and there is a limit to their operations, but there is none to time. So also of all other rivers; they spring up and they perish; and the sea also continually deserts some lands and invades others The same tracts, therefore, of the earth are not some always sea, and others always continents, but every thing changes in the course of time.'[24]
Physics[link]
Main article: Physics (Aristotle)
Five elements[link]
Main article: Classical element
Aristotle proposed a fifth element, aether, in addition to the four proposed earlier by Empedocles.
- Earth, which is cold and dry; this corresponds to the modern idea of a solid.
- Water, which is cold and wet; this corresponds to the modern idea of a liquid.
- Air, which is hot and wet; this corresponds to the modern idea of a gas.
- Fire, which is hot and dry; this corresponds to the modern idea of heat.
- Aether, which is the divine substance that makes up the heavenly spheres and heavenly bodies (stars and planets).
Each of the four earthly elements has its natural place. All that is earthly tends toward the center of the universe, i.e. the center of the Earth. Water tends toward a sphere surrounding the center. Air tends toward a sphere surrounding the water sphere. Fire tends toward the lunar sphere (in which the Moon orbits). When elements are moved out of their natural place, they naturally move back towards it. This is "natural motion"—motion requiring no extrinsic cause. So, for example, in water, earthy bodies sink while air bubbles rise up; in air, rain falls and flame rises. Outside all the other spheres, the heavenly, fifth element, manifested in the stars and planets, moves in the perfection of circles.
Motion[link]
Main article: potentiality and actuality
Aristotle defined motion as the actuality of a potentiality as such.[25] Aquinas suggested that the passage be understood literally; that motion can indeed be understood as the active fulfillment of a potential, as a transition toward a potentially possible state. Because actuality and potentiality are normally opposites in Aristotle, other commentators either suggest that the wording which has come down to us is erroneous, or that the addition of the "as such" to the definition is critical to understanding it.[26]
Causality, The Four Causes[link]
Main article: Four causes
Aristotle suggested that the reason for anything coming about can be attributed to four different types of simultaneously active causal factors:
- Material cause describes the material out of which something is composed. Thus the material cause of a table is wood, and the material cause of a car is rubber and steel. It is not about action. It does not mean one domino knocks over another domino.
- The formal cause is its form, i.e. the arrangement of that matter. It tells us what a thing is, that any thing is determined by the definition, form, pattern, essence, whole, synthesis or archetype. It embraces the account of causes in terms of fundamental principles or general laws, as the whole (i.e., macrostructure) is the cause of its parts, a relationship known as the whole-part causation. Plainly put the formal cause is the idea existing in the first place as exemplar in the mind of the sculptor, and in the second place as intrinsic, determining cause, embodied in the matter. Formal cause could only refer to the essential quality of causation. A more simple example of the formal cause is the blueprint or plan that one has before making or causing a human made object to exist.
- The efficient cause is "the primary source", or that from which the change or the ending of the change first starts. It identifies 'what makes of what is made and what causes change of what is changed' and so suggests all sorts of agents, nonliving or living, acting as the sources of change or movement or rest. Representing the current understanding of causality as the relation of cause and effect, this covers the modern definitions of "cause" as either the agent or agency or particular events or states of affairs. More simply again that which immediately sets the thing in motion. So take the two dominos this time of equal weighting, the first is knocked over causing the second also to fall over. This is effectively efficient cause.
- The final cause is its purpose, or that for the sake of which a thing exists or is done, including both purposeful and instrumental actions and activities. The final cause or telos is the purpose or end that something is supposed to serve, or it is that from which and that to which the change is. This also covers modern ideas of mental causation involving such psychological causes as volition, need, motivation or motives, rational, irrational, ethical, and all that gives purpose to behavior.
Additionally, things can be causes of one another, causing each other reciprocally, as hard work causes fitness and vice versa, although not in the same way or function, the one is as the beginning of change, the other as the goal. (Thus Aristotle first suggested a reciprocal or circular causality as a relation of mutual dependence or influence of cause upon effect). Moreover, Aristotle indicated that the same thing can be the cause of contrary effects; its presence and absence may result in different outcomes. Simply it is the goal or purpose that brings about an event (not necessarily a mental goal). Taking our two dominos, it requires someone to intentionally knock the dominos over as they cannot fall themselves.
Aristotle marked two modes of causation: proper (prior) causation and accidental (chance) causation. All causes, proper and incidental, can be spoken as potential or as actual, particular or generic. The same language refers to the effects of causes, so that generic effects assigned to generic causes, particular effects to particular causes, operating causes to actual effects. Essentially, causality does not suggest a temporal relation between the cause and the effect.
Optics[link]
Aristotle held more accurate theories on some optical concepts than other philosophers of his day. The earliest known written evidence of a camera obscura can be found in Aristotle's documentation of such a device in 350 BC in Problemata. Aristotle's apparatus contained a dark chamber that had a single small hole, or aperture, to allow for sunlight to enter. Aristotle used the device to make observations of the sun and noted that no matter what shape the hole was, the sun would still be correctly displayed as a round object. In modern cameras, this is analogous to the diaphragm. Aristotle also made the observation that when the distance between the aperture and the surface with the image increased, the image was magnified.[27]
Chance and spontaneity[link]
According to Aristotle, spontaneity and chance are causes of some things, distinguishable from other types of cause. Chance as an incidental cause lies in the realm of accidental things. It is "from what is spontaneous" (but note that what is spontaneous does not come from chance). For a better understanding of Aristotle's conception of "chance" it might be better to think of "coincidence": Something takes place by chance if a person sets out with the intent of having one thing take place, but with the result of another thing (not intended) taking place. For example: A person seeks donations. That person may find another person willing to donate a substantial sum. However, if the person seeking the donations met the person donating, not for the purpose of collecting donations, but for some other purpose, Aristotle would call the collecting of the donation by that particular donator a result of chance. It must be unusual that something happens by chance. In other words, if something happens all or most of the time, we cannot say that it is by chance.
There is also more specific kind of chance, which Aristotle names "luck", that can only apply to human beings, since it is in the sphere of moral actions. According to Aristotle, luck must involve choice (and thus deliberation), and only humans are capable of deliberation and choice. "What is not capable of action cannot do anything by chance".[28]
Metaphysics[link]
Main article: Metaphysics (Aristotle)
Aristotle defines metaphysics as "the knowledge of immaterial being," or of "being in the highest degree of abstraction." He refers to metaphysics as "first philosophy", as well as "the theologic science."
Substance, potentiality and actuality[link]
See also: Potentiality and actuality (Aristotle)
Aristotle examines the concepts of substance and essence (ousia) in his Metaphysics (Book VII), and he concludes that a particular substance is a combination of both matter and form. In book VIII, he distinguishes the matter of the substance as the substratum, or the stuff of which it is composed. For example, the matter of a house is the bricks, stones, timbers etc., or whatever constitutes the potential house, while the form of the substance is the actual house, namely 'covering for bodies and chattels' or any other differentia (see also predicables) that let us define something as a house. The formula that gives the components is the account of the matter, and the formula that gives the differentia is the account of the form.[29]
With regard to the change (kinesis) and its causes now, as he defines in his Physics and On Generation and Corruption 319b-320a, he distinguishes the coming to be from:
- growth and diminution, which is change in quantity;
- locomotion, which is change in space; and
- alteration, which is change in quality.
The coming to be is a change where nothing persists of which the resultant is a property. In that particular change he introduces the concept of potentiality (dynamis) and actuality (entelecheia) in association with the matter and the form.
Referring to potentiality, this is what a thing is capable of doing, or being acted upon, if the conditions are right and it is not prevented by something else. For example, the seed of a plant in the soil is potentially (dynamei) plant, and if is not prevented by something, it will become a plant. Potentially beings can either 'act' (poiein) or 'be acted upon' (paschein), which can be either innate or learned. For example, the eyes possess the potentiality of sight (innate – being acted upon), while the capability of playing the flute can be possessed by learning (exercise – acting).
Actuality is the fulfillment of the end of the potentiality. Because the end (telos) is the principle of every change, and for the sake of the end exists potentiality, therefore actuality is the end. Referring then to our previous example, we could say that an actuality is when a plant does one of the activities that plants do.
"For that for the sake of which a thing is, is its principle, and the becoming is for the sake of the end; and the actuality is the end, and it is for the sake of this that the potentiality is acquired. For animals do not see in order that they may have sight, but they have sight that they may see."[30]
In summary, the matter used to make a house has potentiality to be a house and both the activity of building and the form of the final house are actualities, which is also a final cause or end. Then Aristotle proceeds and concludes that the actuality is prior to potentiality in formula, in time and in substantiality.
With this definition of the particular substance (i.e., matter and form), Aristotle tries to solve the problem of the unity of the beings, for example, "what is it that makes a man one"? Since, according to Plato there are two Ideas: animal and biped, how then is man a unity? However, according to Aristotle, the potential being (matter) and the actual one (form) are one and the same thing.[31]
Universals and particulars[link]
Main article: Aristotle's theory of universals
Aristotle's predecessor, Plato, argued that all things have a universal form, which could be either a property, or a relation to other things. When we look at an apple, for example, we see an apple, and we can also analyze a form of an apple. In this distinction, there is a particular apple and a universal form of an apple. Moreover, we can place an apple next to a book, so that we can speak of both the book and apple as being next to each other.
Plato argued that there are some universal forms that are not a part of particular things. For example, it is possible that there is no particular good in existence, but "good" is still a proper universal form. Bertrand Russell is a contemporary philosopher who agreed with Plato on the existence of "uninstantiated universals".
Aristotle disagreed with Plato on this point, arguing that all universals are instantiated. Aristotle argued that there are no universals that are unattached to existing things. According to Aristotle, if a universal exists, either as a particular or a relation, then there must have been, must be currently, or must be in the future, something on which the universal can be predicated. Consequently, according to Aristotle, if it is not the case that some universal can be predicated to an object that exists at some period of time, then it does not exist.
In addition, Aristotle disagreed with Plato about the location of universals. As Plato spoke of the world of the forms, a location where all universal forms subsist, Aristotle maintained that universals exist within each thing on which each universal is predicated. So, according to Aristotle, the form of apple exists within each apple, rather than in the world of the forms.
Biology and medicine[link]
In Aristotelian science, most especially in biology, things he saw himself have stood the test of time better than his retelling of the reports of others, which contain error and superstition. He dissected animals but not humans; his ideas on how the human body works have been almost entirely superseded.
Empirical research program[link]
Aristotle is the earliest natural historian whose work has survived in some detail. Aristotle certainly did research on the natural history of Lesbos, and the surrounding seas and neighbouring areas. The works that reflect this research, such as History of Animals, Generation of Animals, and Parts of Animals, contain some observations and interpretations, along with sundry myths and mistakes. The most striking passages are about the sea-life visible from observation on Lesbos and available from the catches of fishermen. His observations on catfish, electric fish (Torpedo) and angler-fish are detailed, as is his writing on cephalopods, namely, Octopus, Sepia (cuttlefish) and the paper nautilus (Argonauta argo). His description of the hectocotyl arm was about two thousand years ahead of its time, and widely disbelieved until its rediscovery in the 19th century. He separated the aquatic mammals from fish, and knew that sharks and rays were part of the group he called Selachē (selachians).[32]
Another good example of his methods comes from the Generation of Animals in which Aristotle describes breaking open fertilized chicken eggs at intervals to observe when visible organs were generated.
He gave accurate descriptions of ruminants' four-chambered fore-stomachs, and of the ovoviviparous embryological development of the hound shark Mustelus mustelus.[33]
Classification of living things[link]
Aristotle's classification of living things contains some elements which still existed in the 19th century. What the modern zoologist would call vertebrates and invertebrates, Aristotle called 'animals with blood' and 'animals without blood' (he was not to know that complex invertebrates do make use of haemoglobin, but of a different kind from vertebrates). Animals with blood were divided into live-bearing (humans and mammals), and egg-bearing (birds and fish). Invertebrates ('animals without blood') are insects, crustacea (divided into non-shelled – cephalopods – and shelled) and testacea (molluscs). In some respects, this incomplete classification is better than that of Linnaeus, who crowded the invertebrata together into two groups, Insecta and Vermes (worms).
For Charles Singer, "Nothing is more remarkable than [Aristotle's] efforts to [exhibit] the relationships of living things as a scala naturae"[32] Aristotle's History of Animals classified organisms in relation to a hierarchical "Ladder of Life" (scala naturae), placing them according to complexity of structure and function so that higher organisms showed greater vitality and ability to move.[34]
Aristotle believed that intellectual purposes, i.e., final causes, guided all natural processes. Such a teleological view gave Aristotle cause to justify his observed data as an expression of formal design. Noting that "no animal has, at the same time, both tusks and horns," and "a single-hooved animal with two horns I have never seen," Aristotle suggested that Nature, giving no animal both horns and tusks, was staving off vanity, and giving creatures faculties only to such a degree as they are necessary. Noting that ruminants had multiple stomachs and weak teeth, he supposed the first was to compensate for the latter, with Nature trying to preserve a type of balance.[35]
In a similar fashion, Aristotle believed that creatures were arranged in a graded scale of perfection rising from plants on up to man, the scala naturae or Great Chain of Being.[36] His system had eleven grades, arranged according "to the degree to which they are infected with potentiality", expressed in their form at birth. The highest animals laid warm and wet creatures alive, the lowest bore theirs cold, dry, and in thick eggs.
Aristotle also held that the level of a creature's perfection was reflected in its form, but not preordained by that form. Ideas like this, and his ideas about souls, are not regarded as science at all in modern times.
He placed emphasis on the type(s) of soul an organism possessed, asserting that plants possess a vegetative soul, responsible for reproduction and growth, animals a vegetative and a sensitive soul, responsible for mobility and sensation, and humans a vegetative, a sensitive, and a rational soul, capable of thought and reflection.[37]
Aristotle, in contrast to earlier philosophers, but in accordance with the Egyptians, placed the rational soul in the heart, rather than the brain.[38] Notable is Aristotle's division of sensation and thought, which generally went against previous philosophers, with the exception of Alcmaeon.[39]
Successor: Theophrastus[link]
Main articles: Theophrastus and Historia Plantarum
Aristotle's successor at the Lyceum, Theophrastus, wrote a series of books on botany—the History of Plants—which survived as the most important contribution of antiquity to botany, even into the Middle Ages. Many of Theophrastus' names survive into modern times, such as carpos for fruit, and pericarpion for seed vessel.
Rather than focus on formal causes, as Aristotle did, Theophrastus suggested a mechanistic scheme, drawing analogies between natural and artificial processes, and relying on Aristotle's concept of the efficient cause. Theophrastus also recognized the role of sex in the reproduction of some higher plants, though this last discovery was lost in later ages.[40]
Influence on Hellenistic medicine[link]
For more details on this topic, see Medicine in ancient Greece.
After Theophrastus, the Lyceum failed to produce any original work. Though interest in Aristotle's ideas survived, they were generally taken unquestioningly.[41] It is not until the age of Alexandria under the Ptolemies that advances in biology can be again found.
The first medical teacher at Alexandria, Herophilus of Chalcedon, corrected Aristotle, placing intelligence in the brain, and connected the nervous system to motion and sensation. Herophilus also distinguished between veins and arteries, noting that the latter pulse while the former do not.[42] Though a few ancient atomists such as Lucretius challenged the teleological viewpoint of Aristotelian ideas about life, teleology (and after the rise of Christianity, natural theology) would remain central to biological thought essentially until the 18th and 19th centuries. Ernst Mayr claimed that there was "nothing of any real consequence in biology after Lucretius and Galen until the Renaissance."[43] Aristotle's ideas of natural history and medicine survived, but they were generally taken unquestioningly.[44]
Psychology[link]
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This section requires expansion. |
Aristotle's psychology, given in his treatise On the Soul (peri psyche, often known by its Latin title De Anima), posits three souls ("psyches") in humans: the vegetative soul, the sensitive soul, and the rational soul. Humans share the vegetative soul with all living things, and the sensitive soul with all animals, but only humans of all beings in the world have a rational soul.
For Aristotle, the soul (psyche) was a simpler concept than it is for us today. By soul he simply meant the form of a living being. Since all beings are composites of form and matter, the form of living beings is that which endows them with what is specific to living beings, e.g. the ability to initiate movement (or in the case of plants, growth and chemical transformations, which Aristotle considers types of movement).[45]
Practical philosophy[link]
Ethics[link]
Main article: Aristotelian ethics
Aristotle considered ethics to be a practical rather than theoretical study, i.e., one aimed at becoming good and doing good rather than knowing for its own sake. He wrote several treatises on ethics, including most notably, the Nicomachean Ethics.
Aristotle taught that virtue has to do with the proper function (ergon) of a thing. An eye is only a good eye in so much as it can see, because the proper function of an eye is sight. Aristotle reasoned that humans must have a function specific to humans, and that this function must be an activity of the psuchē (normally translated as soul) in accordance with reason (logos). Aristotle identified such an optimum activity of the soul as the aim of all human deliberate action, eudaimonia, generally translated as "happiness" or sometimes "well being". To have the potential of ever being happy in this way necessarily requires a good character (ēthikē aretē), often translated as moral (or ethical) virtue (or excellence).[46]
Aristotle taught that to achieve a virtuous and potentially happy character requires a first stage of having the fortune to be habituated not deliberately, but by teachers, and experience, leading to a later stage in which one consciously chooses to do the best things. When the best people come to live life this way their practical wisdom (phronesis) and their intellect (nous) can develop with each other towards the highest possible human virtue, the wisdom of an accomplished theoretical or speculative thinker, or in other words, a philosopher.[47]
Politics[link]
Main article: Politics (Aristotle)
Like Aristotle, conservatives generally accept the world as it is; they distrust the politics of abstract reason – that is, reason divorced from experience.
Benjamin Wiker[48]
In addition to his works on ethics, which address the individual, Aristotle addressed the city in his work titled Politics. Aristotle considered the city to be a natural community. Moreover, he considered the city to be prior in importance to the family which in turn is prior to the individual, "for the whole must of necessity be prior to the part".[49] He also famously stated that "man is by nature a political animal." Aristotle conceived of politics as being like an organism rather than like a machine, and as a collection of parts none of which can exist without the others. Aristotle's conception of the city is organic, and he is considered one of the first to conceive of the city in this manner.[50]
The common modern understanding of a political community as a modern state is quite different to Aristotle's understanding. Although he was aware of the existence and potential of larger empires, the natural community according to Aristotle was the city (polis) which functions as a political "community" or "partnership" (koinōnia). The aim of the city is not just to avoid injustice or for economic stability, but rather to allow at least some citizens the possibility to live a good life, and to perform beautiful acts: "The political partnership must be regarded, therefore, as being for the sake of noble actions, not for the sake of living together." This is distinguished from modern approaches, beginning with social contract theory, according to which individuals leave the state of nature because of "fear of violent death" or its "inconveniences."[51]
Rhetoric and poetics[link]
Main articles: Rhetoric (Aristotle) and Poetics (Aristotle)
Aristotle considered epic poetry, tragedy, comedy, dithyrambic poetry and music to be imitative, each varying in imitation by medium, object, and manner.[52] For example, music imitates with the media of rhythm and harmony, whereas dance imitates with rhythm alone, and poetry with language. The forms also differ in their object of imitation. Comedy, for instance, is a dramatic imitation of men worse than average; whereas tragedy imitates men slightly better than average. Lastly, the forms differ in their manner of imitation – through narrative or character, through change or no change, and through drama or no drama.[53] Aristotle believed that imitation is natural to mankind and constitutes one of mankind's advantages over animals.[54]
While it is believed that Aristotle's Poetics comprised two books – one on comedy and one on tragedy – only the portion that focuses on tragedy has survived. Aristotle taught that tragedy is composed of six elements: plot-structure, character, style, spectacle, and lyric poetry.[55] The characters in a tragedy are merely a means of driving the story; and the plot, not the characters, is the chief focus of tragedy. Tragedy is the imitation of action arousing pity and fear, and is meant to effect the catharsis of those same emotions. Aristotle concludes Poetics with a discussion on which, if either, is superior: epic or tragic mimesis. He suggests that because tragedy possesses all the attributes of an epic, possibly possesses additional attributes such as spectacle and music, is more unified, and achieves the aim of its mimesis in shorter scope, it can be considered superior to epic.[56]
Aristotle was a keen systematic collector of riddles, folklore, and proverbs; he and his school had a special interest in the riddles of the Delphic Oracle and studied the fables of Aesop.[57]
Views on women[link]
Main article: Aristotle's views on women
Aristotle's analysis of procreation describes an active, ensouling masculine element bringing life to an inert, passive female element. On these grounds, Aristotle is considered by some feminist critics to have been a misogynist.[58] On the other hand, Aristotle gave equal weight to women's happiness as he did to men's, and commented in his Rhetoric that a society cannot be happy unless women are happy too: In places like Sparta where the lot of women is bad, there can only be half-happiness in society.[59]
Loss and preservation of his works[link]
See also: Corpus Aristotelicum
Modern scholarship reveals that Aristotle's "lost" works stray considerably in characterization[60] from the surviving Aristotelian corpus. Whereas the lost works appear to have been originally written with an intent for subsequent publication, the surviving works do not appear to have been so.[60] Rather the surviving works mostly resemble lecture notes unintended for publication.[60] The authenticity of a portion of the surviving works as originally Aristotelian is also today held suspect, with some books duplicating or summarizing each other, the authorship of one book questioned and another book considered to be unlikely Aristotle's at all.[60]
Some of the individual works within the corpus, including the Constitution of Athens, are regarded by most scholars as products of Aristotle's "school," perhaps compiled under his direction or supervision. Others, such as On Colors, may have been produced by Aristotle's successors at the Lyceum, e.g., Theophrastus and Straton. Still others acquired Aristotle's name through similarities in doctrine or content, such as the De Plantis, possibly by Nicolaus of Damascus. Other works in the corpus include medieval palmistries and astrological and magical texts whose connections to Aristotle are purely fanciful and self-promotional.[61]
According to a distinction that originates with Aristotle himself, his writings are divisible into two groups: the "exoteric" and the "esoteric".[62] Most scholars have understood this as a distinction between works Aristotle intended for the public (exoteric), and the more technical works intended for use within the school (esoteric). Modern scholars commonly assume these latter to be Aristotle’s own (unpolished) lecture notes (or in some cases possible notes by his students).[63] However, one classic scholar offers an alternative interpretation. The 5th century neoplatonist Ammonius Hermiae writes that Aristotle's writing style is deliberately obscurantist so that “good people may for that reason stretch their mind even more, whereas empty minds that are lost through carelessness will be put to flight by the obscurity when they encounter sentences like these.”[64] Another common assumption is that none of the exoteric works is extant – that all of Aristotle's extant writings are of the esoteric kind. Current knowledge of what exactly the exoteric writings were like is scant and dubious, though many of them may have been in dialogue form. (Fragments of some of Aristotle's dialogues have survived.) Perhaps it is to these that Cicero refers when he characterized Aristotle's writing style as "a river of gold";[65] it is hard for many modern readers to accept that one could seriously so admire the style of those works currently available to us.[63] However, some modern scholars have warned that we cannot know for certain that Cicero's praise was reserved specifically for the exoteric works; a few modern scholars have actually admired the concise writing style found in Aristotle's extant works.[66]
The surviving texts of Aristotle are technical treatises from within Aristotle's school, as opposed to the dialogues and other "exoteric" texts he published more widely during his lifetime. In some cases, the Aristotelian texts were likely left in different versions and contexts (as in the overlapping parts of the Eudemian Ethics and Nicomachean Ethics), or in smaller units that could be incorporated into larger books in different ways. Because of this, a posthumous compiler and publisher may sometimes have played a significant role in arranging the text into the form we know.[citation needed]
One major question in the history of Aristotle's works, then, is how were the exoteric writings all lost, and how did the ones we now possess come to us?[67] The story of the original manuscripts of the esoteric treatises is described by Strabo in his Geography and Plutarch in his Parallel Lives.[68] The manuscripts were left from Aristotle to his successor Theophrastus, who in turn willed them to Neleus of Scepsis. Neleus supposedly took the writings from Athens to Scepsis, where his heirs let them languish in a cellar until the 1st century BC, when Apellicon of Teos discovered and purchased the manuscripts, bringing them back to Athens. According to the story, Apellicon tried to repair some of the damage that was done during the manuscripts' stay in the basement, introducing a number of errors into the text. When Lucius Cornelius Sulla occupied Athens in 86 BC, he carried off the library of Apellicon to Rome, where they were first published in 60 BC by the grammarian Tyrannion of Amisus and then by philosopher Andronicus of Rhodes.[69][70]
Carnes Lord attributes the popular belief in this story to the fact that it provides "the most plausible explanation for the rapid eclipse of the Peripatetic school after the middle of the third century, and for the absence of widespread knowledge of the specialized treatises of Aristotle throughout the Hellenistic period, as well as for the sudden reappearance of a flourishing Aristotelianism during the first century B.C."[71] Lord voices a number of reservations concerning this story, however. First, the condition of the texts is far too good for them to have suffered considerable damage followed by Apellicon's inexpert attempt at repair. Second, there is "incontrovertible evidence," Lord says, that the treatises were in circulation during the time in which Strabo and Plutarch suggest they were confined within the cellar in Scepsis. Third, the definitive edition of Aristotle's texts seems to have been made in Athens some fifty years before Andronicus supposedly compiled his. And fourth, ancient library catalogues predating Andronicus' intervention list an Aristotelian corpus quite similar to the one we currently possess. Lord sees a number of post-Aristotelian interpolations in the Politics, for example, but is generally confident that the work has come down to us relatively intact.
As the influence of the falsafa grew in the West, in part due to Gerard of Cremona's translations and the spread of Averroism, the demand for Aristotle's works grew.[72] William of Moerbeke translated a number of them into Latin. When Thomas Aquinas wrote his theology, working from Moerbeke's translations, the demand for Aristotle's writings grew and the Greek manuscripts returned to the West, stimulating a revival of Aristotelianism in Europe to the point where Renaissance philosophy could be equated with Aristotelianism.[73]
Legacy[link]
More than twenty-three hundred years after his death, Aristotle remains one of the most influential people who ever lived. He contributed to almost every field of human knowledge then in existence, and he was the founder of many new fields. According to the philosopher Bryan Magee, "it is doubtful whether any human being has ever known as much as he did".[74] Aristotle was the founder of formal logic,[75] pioneered the study of zoology, and left every future scientist and philosopher in his debt through his contributions to the scientific method.[76][77] Despite these achievements, the influence of Aristotle's errors is considered by some to have held back science considerably. Bertrand Russell notes that "almost every serious intellectual advance has had to begin with an attack on some Aristotelian doctrine". Russell also refers to Aristotle's ethics as "repulsive", and calls his logic "as definitely antiquated as Ptolemaic astronomy". Russell notes that these errors make it difficult to do historical justice to Aristotle, until one remembers how large of an advance he made upon all of his predecessors.[7]
Later Greek philosophers[link]
The immediate influence of Aristotle's work was felt as the Lyceum grew into the Peripatetic school. Aristotle's notable students included Aristoxenus, Dicaearchus, Demetrius of Phalerum, Eudemos of Rhodes, Harpalus, Hephaestion, Meno, Mnason of Phocis, Nicomachus, and Theophrastus. Aristotle's influence over Alexander the Great is seen in the latter's bringing with him on his expedition a host of zoologists, botanists, and researchers. He had also learned a great deal about Persian customs and traditions from his teacher. Although his respect for Aristotle was diminished as his travels made it clear that much of Aristotle's geography was clearly wrong, when the old philosopher released his works to the public, Alexander complained "Thou hast not done well to publish thy acroamatic doctrines; for in what shall I surpass other men if those doctrines wherein I have been trained are to be all men's common property?"[78]
Influence on Islamic theologians[link]
Aristotle was one of the most revered Western thinkers in early Islamic theology. Most of the still extant works of Aristotle,[79] as well as a great number of the original Greek commentaries, were translated into Arabic and studied by Muslim polymaths, philosophers, scientists and scholars, whose knowledge of Aristotle thus stretched far beyond that of early Medieval Christian commentators. Oriental interpreters of Aristotle's work followed the Greek interpreters without chronological gap, and the Medieval western tradition was influenced equally by Christian thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas and Muslim theologians such as Averroes, Avicenna and Alpharabius, all of whom wrote on Aristotle in great depth, and frequently compared the teachings of Aristotle with those of the prophets of Islam. Alkindus considered Aristotle as the outstanding and unique representative of philosophy[80] and Averroes spoke of Aristotle as the "exemplar" for all future philosophers.[81] Medieval Muslim scholars regularly described Aristotle as the "First Teacher".[82] The title "teacher" was first given to Aristotle by Muslim scholars, and was later used by Western philosophers (as in the famous poem of Dante) who were influenced by the tradition of Islamic philosophy.[83]
In accordance with the Greek theorists, the Muslims considered Aristotle to be a dogmatic philosopher, the author of a closed system, and believed that Aristotle shared with Plato essential tenets of thought. Some went so far as to credit Aristotle himself with neo-Platonic metaphysical ideas.[79]
Influence on Christian theologians[link]
Aristotle is referred to as "The Philosopher" by Scholastic thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas. See Summa Theologica, Part I, Question 3, etc. These thinkers blended Aristotelian philosophy with Christianity, bringing the thought of Ancient Greece into the Middle Ages. It required a repudiation of some Aristotelian principles for the sciences and the arts to free themselves for the discovery of modern scientific laws and empirical methods. The medieval English poet Chaucer describes his student as being happy by having
- at his beddes heed
- Twenty bookes, clad in blak or reed,
- Of aristotle and his philosophie,[84]
The Italian poet Dante says of Aristotle in the first circles of hell,
- I saw the Master there of those who know,
- Amid the philosophic family,
- By all admired, and by all reverenced;
- There Plato too I saw, and Socrates,
- Who stood beside him closer than the rest.[85]
Post-Enlightenment thinkers[link]
The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche has been said to have taken nearly all of his political philosophy from Aristotle.[86] However implausible this is, it is certainly the case that Aristotle's rigid separation of action from production, and his justification of the subservience of slaves and others to the virtue – or arete – of a few justified the ideal of aristocracy. It is Martin Heidegger, not Nietzsche, who elaborated a new interpretation of Aristotle, intended to warrant his deconstruction of scholastic and philosophical tradition. Ayn Rand accredited Aristotle as "the greatest philosopher in history" and cited him as a major influence on her thinking. More recently, Alasdair MacIntyre has attempted to reform what he calls the Aristotelian tradition in a way that is anti-elitist and capable of disputing the claims of both liberals and Nietzscheans.[87]
List of works[link]
Main article: Corpus Aristotelicum
The works of Aristotle that have survived from antiquity through medieval manuscript transmission are collected in the Corpus Aristotelicum. These texts, as opposed to Aristotle's lost works, are technical philosophical treatises from within Aristotle's school. Reference to them is made according to the organization of Immanuel Bekker's Royal Prussian Academy edition (Aristotelis Opera edidit Academia Regia Borussica, Berlin, 1831–1870), which in turn is based on ancient classifications of these works.
See also[link]
- Aristotelian physics
- Aristotelian view of God
- List of writers influenced by Aristotle
- Conimbricenses
- Hylomorphism
- Otium
- Philia
Notes and references[link]
- ^ That these undisputed dates (the first half of the Olympiad year 384/3, and in 322 shortly before the death of Demosthenes) are correct was shown already by August Boeckh (Kleine Schriften VI 195); for further discussion, see Felix Jacoby on FGrHist 244 F 38. Ingemar Düring, Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition, Göteborg, 1957, p. 253.
- ^ Cicero, Marcus Tullius (106BC-43BC). "flumen orationis aureum fundens Aristoteles". Academica. http://www2.cddc.vt.edu/gutenberg/1/4/9/7/14970/14970-h/14970-h.htm#BkII_119. Retrieved 25-Jan-2007.
- ^ Jonathan Barnes, "Life and Work" in The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle (1995), p. 9.
- ^ Campbell, Michael. "Behind the Name: Meaning, Origin and History of the Name Aristotle". Behind the Name: The Etymology and History of First Names. www.behindthename.com. http://www.behindthename.com/name/aristotle. Retrieved April 6, 2012.
- ^ McLeisch, Kenneth Cole (1999). Aristotle: The Great Philosophers. Routledge. p. 5. ISBN 0-415-92392-1.
- ^ Carnes Lord, Introduction to The Politics, by Aristotle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).
- ^ a b c Bertrand Russell, "A History of Western Philosophy", Simon & Schuster, 1972
- ^ Aristotle, Politics, Book 3, Section 1288a.
- ^ Peter Green, Alexander of Macedon, 1991 University of California Press, Ltd. Oxford, England. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data, p.58–59
- ^ William George Smith,Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. 3, p. 88
- ^ Neill, Alex; Aaron Ridley (1995). The Philosophy of Art: Readings Ancient and Modern. McGraw Hill. p. 488. http://www.amazon.com/dp/0070461929/.
- ^ Peter Green, Alexander of Macedon, 1991 University of California Press, Ltd. Oxford, England. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data, p.379,459
- ^ Jones, W.T. (1980). The Classical Mind: A History of Western Philosophy. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. p. 216. http://www.amazon.com/dp/0155383124/.
- ^ Vita Marciana 41, cf. Aelian Varia historica 3.36, Ingemar Düring, Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition, Göteborg, 1957, T44a-e.
- ^ Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt by Hildegard Temporini, Wolfgang Haase Aristotle's Will
- ^ Bocheński, I. M. (1951). Ancient Formal Logic. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company.
- ^ a b Bocheński, 1951.
- ^ Rose, Lynn E. (1968). Aristotle's Syllogistic. Springfield: Charles C Thomas Publisher.
- ^ Jori, Alberto (2003). Aristotele. Milano: Bruno Mondadori Editore.
- ^ Aristotle, History of Animals, 2.3.
- ^ "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy". Plato.stanford.edu. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/philoponus/#2.2. Retrieved 2009-04-26.
- ^ Aristotle, Meteorology 1.8, trans. E.W. Webster, rev. J. Barnes.
- ^ Burent, John. 1928. Platonism, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 61, 103–104.
- ^ Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology, 1832, p.17
- ^ Physics 201a10-11, 201a27-29, 201b4-5
- ^ Sachs, Joe (2005), "Aristotle: Motion and its Place in Nature", Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://www.iep.utm.edu/aris-mot/
- ^ Michael Lahanas. "Optics and ancient Greeks". Mlahanas.de. http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Optics.htm. Retrieved 2009-04-26.
- ^ Aristotle, Physics 2.6
- ^ Aristotle, Metaphysics VIII 1043a 10–30
- ^ Aristotle, Metaphysics IX 1050a 5–10
- ^ Aristotle, Metaphysics VIII 1045a-b
- ^ a b Singer, Charles. A short history of biology. Oxford 1931.
- ^ Emily Kearns, "Animals, knowledge about," in Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed., 1996, p. 92.
- ^ Aristotle, of course, is not responsible for the later use made of this idea by clerics.
- ^ Mason, A History of the Sciences pp 43–44
- ^ Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought, pp 201–202; see also: Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being
- ^ Aristotle, De Anima II 3
- ^ Mason, A History of the Sciences pp 45
- ^ Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy Vol. 1 pp. 348
- ^ Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought, pp 90–91; Mason, A History of the Sciences, p 46
- ^ Annas, Classical Greek Philosophy pp 252
- ^ Mason, A History of the Sciences pp 56
- ^ Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought, pp 90–94; quotation from p 91
- ^ Annas, Classical Greek Philosophy, p 252
- ^ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, article "Psychology".
- ^ Nicomachean Ethics Book I. See for example chapter 7 1098a.
- ^ Nicomachean Ethics Book VI.
- ^ http://www.wnd.com/2010/08/191121
- ^ Politics 1253a19-24
- ^ Ebenstein, Alan; William Ebenstein (2002). Introduction to Political Thinkers. Wadsworth Group. p. 59.
- ^ For a different reading of social and economic processes in the Nicomachean Ethics and Politics see Polanyi, K. (1957) "Aristotle Discovers the Economy" in Primitive, Archaic and Modern Economies: Essays of Karl Polanyi ed. G. Dalton, Boston 1971, 78–115
- ^ Aristotle, Poetics I 1447a
- ^ Aristotle, Poetics III
- ^ Aristotle, Poetics IV
- ^ Aristotle, Poetics VI
- ^ Aristotle, Poetics XXVI
- ^ Temple, Olivia, and Temple, Robert (translators), The Complete Fables By Aesop Penguin Classics, 1998. ISBN 0-14-044649-4 Cf. Introduction, pp. xi–xii.
- ^ Harding, Sandra; Merrill B. Hintikka (31 December 1999). Discovering Reality,: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science. Springer. p. 372. http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/9027714967/.
- ^ Rhetoric 1.5.6
- ^ a b c d Terence Irwin and Gail Fine, Cornell University, Aristotle: Introductory Readings. Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. (1996), Introduction, pp. xi–xii.
- ^ Lynn Thorndike, "Chiromancy in Medieval Latin Manuscripts," Speculum 40 (1965), pp. 674–706; Roger A. Pack, "Pseudo-Arisoteles: Chiromantia," Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge 39 (1972), pp. 289–320; Pack, "A Pseudo-Aristotelian Chiromancy," Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge 36 (1969), pp. 189–241.
- ^ Jonathan Barnes, "Life and Work" in The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle (1995), p. 12; Aristotle himself: Nicomachean Ethics 1102a26–27. Aristotle himself never uses the term "esoteric" or "acroamatic". For other passages where Aristotle speaks of exōterikoi logoi, see W. D. Ross, Aristotle's Metaphysics (1953), vol. 2, pp. 408–410. Ross defends an interpretation according to which the phrase, at least in Aristotle's own works, usually refers generally to "discussions not peculiar to the Peripatetic school", rather than to specific works of Aristotle's own.
- ^ a b Barnes, "Life and Work", p. 12.
- ^ Ammonius (1991). On Aristotle's Categories. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-2688-X. p. 15
- ^ Cicero, Marcus Tullius (106BC-43BC). "flumen orationis aureum fundens Aristoteles". Academica. http://www2.cddc.vt.edu/gutenberg/1/4/9/7/14970/14970-h/14970-h.htm#BkII_119. Retrieved 25 January 2007.
- ^ Barnes, "Roman Aristotle", in Gregory Nagy, Greek Literature, Routledge 2001, vol. 8, p. 174 n. 240.
- ^ The definitive, English study of these questions is Barnes, "Roman Aristotle".
- ^ "Sulla."
- ^ Ancient Rome: from the early Republic to the assassination of Julius Caesar – Page 513, Matthew Dillon, Lynda Garland
- ^ The Encyclopedia Americana, Volume 22 – Page 131, Grolier Incorporated – Juvenile Nonfiction
- ^ Lord, Carnes (1984). Introduction to the Politics, by Aristotle. Chicago: Chicago University Press. p. 11.
- ^ Influence of Arabic and Islamic Philosophy on the Latin West entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- ^ Aristotelianism in the Renaissance entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- ^ Magee, Bryan (2010). The Story of Philosophy. Dorling Kindersley. p. 34.
- ^ W. K. C. Guthrie (1990). "A history of Greek philosophy: Aristotle : an encounter". Cambridge University Press. p.156. ISBN 0-521-38760-4
- ^ "Aristotle (Greek philosopher) – Britannica Online Encyclopedia". Britannica.com. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/34560/Aristotle. Retrieved 2009-04-26.
- ^ Durant, Will (1926 (2006)). The Story of Philosophy. United States: Simon & Schuster, Inc.. p. 92. ISBN 978-0-671-73916-4.
- ^ Plutarch, Life of Alexander
- ^ a b Encyclopedia of Islam, Aristutalis
- ^ Rasa'il I, 103, 17, Abu Rida
- ^ Comm. Magnum in Aristotle, De Anima, III, 2, 43 Crawford
- ^ al-mua'llim al-thani, Aristutalis
- ^ Nasr, Seyyed Hossein (1996). The Islamic Intellectual Tradition in Persia. Curzon Press. p. 59–60. ISBN 0-7007-0314-4.
- ^ Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, Prologue, lines 295–295
- ^ vidi ’l maestro di color che sanno seder tra filosofica famiglia.
Tutti lo miran, tutti onor li fanno:
quivi vid’ïo Socrate e Platone
che ’nnanzi a li altri più presso li stanno;
Dante, L’Inferno (Hell), Canto IV. Lines 131–135 - ^ Durant, p. 86
- ^ Kelvin Knight, Aristotelian Philosophy, Polity Press, 2007, passim.
Further reading[link]
The secondary literature on Aristotle is vast. The following references are only a small selection.
- Ackrill J. L. (2010). Essays on Plato and Aristotle, Oxford University Press, USA.
- Ackrill, J. L. (1981). Aristotle the Philosopher. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
- Adler, Mortimer J. (1978). Aristotle for Everybody. New York: Macmillan. A popular exposition for the general reader.
- Ammonius (1991). Cohen, S. Marc; Matthews, Gareth B. eds. On Aristotle's Categories. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-2688-X.
- Aristotle (1908-1952). The Works of Aristotle Translated into English Under the Editorship of WD Ross, 12 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Pless.
- Bakalis Nikolaos. (2005). Handbook of Greek Philosophy: From Thales to the Stoics Analysis and Fragments, Trafford Publishing ISBN 1-4120-4843-5
- Barnes J. (1995). The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle, Cambridge University Press.
- Bocheński, I. M. (1951). Ancient Formal Logic. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company.
- Bolotin, David (1998). An Approach to Aristotle's Physics: With Particular Attention to the Role of His Manner of Writing. Albany: SUNY Press. A contribution to our understanding of how to read Aristotle's scientific works.
- Burnyeat, M. F. et al. (1979). Notes on Book Zeta of Aristotle's Metaphysics. Oxford: Sub-faculty of Philosophy.
- Cantor, Norman F.; Klein, Peter L., eds. (1969). Ancient Thought: Plato and Aristotle. Monuments of Western Thought. 1. Waltham, Mass: Blaisdell Publishing Co..
- Chappell, V. (1973). Aristotle's Conception of Matter, Journal of Philosophy 70: 679–696.
- Code, Alan. (1995). Potentiality in Aristotle's Science and Metaphysics, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 76.
- Ferguson, John (1972). Aristotle. New York: Twayne Publishers.
- Frede, Michael. (1987). Essays in Ancient Philosophy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
- Fuller, B.A.G. (1923). Aristotle. History of Greek Philosophy. 3. London: Cape.
- Gill, Mary Louise. (1989). Aristotle on Substance: The Paradox of Unity. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
- Guthrie, W. K. C. (1981). A History of Greek Philosophy, Vol. 6. Cambridge University Press.
- Halper, Edward C. (2007). One and Many in Aristotle's Metaphysics, Volume 1: Books Alpha — Delta, Parmenides Publishing, ISBN 978-1-930972-21-6.
- Halper, Edward C. (2005). One and Many in Aristotle's Metaphysics, Volume 2: The Central Books, Parmenides Publishing, ISBN 978-1-930972-05-6.
- Irwin, T. H. (1988). Aristotle's First Principles. Oxford: Clarendon Press, ISBN 0-19-824290-5.
- Jaeger, Werner (1948). Robinson, Richard. ed. Aristotle: Fundamentals of the History of His Development (2nd ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
- Jori, Alberto. (2003). Aristotele, Milano: Bruno Mondadori Editore (Prize 2003 of the "International Academy of the History of Science") ISBN 88-424-9737-1.
- Kiernan, Thomas P., ed. (1962). Aristotle Dictionary. New York: Philosophical Library.
- Knight, Kelvin. (2007). Aristotelian Philosophy: Ethics and Politics from Aristotle to MacIntyre, Polity Press.
- Lewis, Frank A. (1991). Substance and Predication in Aristotle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Lloyd, G. E. R. (1968). Aristotle: The Growth and Structure of his Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Pr., ISBN 0-521-09456-9.
- Lord, Carnes. (1984). Introduction to The Politics, by Aristotle. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
- Loux, Michael J. (1991). Primary Ousia: An Essay on Aristotle's Metaphysics Ζ and Η. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
- McKeon, Richard (1973). Introduction to Aristotle (2d ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Owen, G. E. L. (1965c). "The Platonism of Aristotle". Proceedings of the British Academy 50: 125–150. [Reprinted in J. Barnes, M. Schofield, and R. R. K. Sorabji, eds.(1975). Articles on Aristotle Vol 1. Science. London: Duckworth 14–34.]
- Pangle, Lorraine Smith (2003). Aristotle and the Philosophy of Friendship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Aristotle's conception of the deepest human relationship viewed in the light of the history of philosophic thought on friendship.
- Plato (1979). Allen, Harold Joseph; Wilbur, James B. eds. The Worlds of Plato and Aristotle. Buffalo: Prometheus Books.
- Reeve, C. D. C. (2000). Substantial Knowledge: Aristotle's Metaphysics. Indianapolis: Hackett.
- Rose, Lynn E. (1968). Aristotle's Syllogistic. Springfield: Charles C Thomas Publisher.
- Ross, Sir David (1995). Aristotle (6th ed.). London: Routledge. A classic overview by one of Aristotle's most prominent English translators, in print since 1923.
- Scaltsas, T. (1994). Substances and Universals in Aristotle's Metaphysics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
- Strauss, Leo (1964). "On Aristotle's Politics", in The City and Man, Chicago; Rand McNally.
- Swanson, Judith (1992). The Public and the Private in Aristotle's Political Philosoophy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
- Taylor, Henry Osborn (1922). "Chapter 3: Aristotle's Biology". Greek Biology and Medicine. Archived from the original on 2006-02-11. http://web.archive.org/web/20060327222953/http://www.ancientlibrary.com/medicine/0051.html.
- Veatch, Henry B. (1974). Aristotle: A Contemporary Appreciation. Bloomington: Indiana U. Press. For the general reader.
- Woods, M. J. (1991b). "Universals and Particular Forms in Aristotle's Metaphysics". Aristotle and the Later Tradition. Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy. Suppl. pp. 41–56.
External links[link]
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- Aristotle entry in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (general article)
- Scholarly surveys of focused topics from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: articles on Aristotle, Aristotle in the Renaissance, Biology, Causality, Commentators on Aristotle, Ethics, Logic, Mathematics, Metaphysics, Natural philosophy, Non-contradiction, Political theory, Psychology, Rhetoric
- The Catholic Encyclopedia (general article)
Diogenes Laërtius, Life of Aristotle, translated by Robert Drew Hicks (1925).- Works by Aristotle on Open Library at the Internet Archive
Collections of works
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology – primarily in English
- Project Gutenberg – English texts
- Tufts University – at the Perseus Project, in both English and Greek
- University of Adelaide – primarily in English
- P. Remacle's collection – Greek with French translation
- The 11-volume 1837 Bekker edition of Aristotle's Works in Greek (PDF|DJVU)
- Bekker's Prussian Academy of Sciences edition of the complete works of Aristotle at Archive.org: volume 1, volume 2, volume 3, volume 4, volume 5
Other
- Timeline of Aristotle's life
- Aristotle at PlanetMath
- Works by or about Aristotle in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
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| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Aristotle |
| Alternative names | Ἀριστοτέλης (Greek) |
| Short description | Greek philosopher |
| Date of birth | 384 BC |
| Place of birth | Stageira |
| Date of death | 322 BC |
| Place of death | Chalcis |
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This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
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 |
This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (November 2010) |
| Mark Steel | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Mark Steel in 2008 |
|
| Born | (1960-07-04) 4 July 1960 (age 51) Swanley, Kent, United Kingdom |
| Medium | Stand-up, Television, Radio |
| Nationality | British |
| Years active | 1983-present |
| Genres | Political satire |
| Subject(s) | Politics |
| Influences | Tony Cliff |
| Notable works and roles | The Mark Steel Lectures The Mark Steel Revolution The Mark Steel Solution Mark Steel's in Town |
| Website | http://www.marksteelinfo.com/ |
Mark Steel (born 4 July 1960)[1] is an English socialist columnist, author and comedian. A stand-up comedian known for his left-wing beliefs (he was a long-standing member of the Socialist Workers Party before he resigned in 2007), he has made many appearances on radio and television shows as a guest panellist, and has written regular columns in printed media. He is perhaps best known for presenting The Mark Steel Lectures, The Mark Steel Revolution, The Mark Steel Solution, and Mark Steel's in Town.
Contents |
Early life[link]
Steel was adopted a few days after he was born.[2] He grew up in Swanley, Kent. He was expelled from Swanley Comprehensive School for attending a cricket course at the age of 15,[clarification needed] and went on to work in a garage. From there he went on to make his first public performance as a poet.
In the late 1970s his father suffered a mental breakdown and was placed into care at Stonehouse Hospital. The shabby conditions of the home reinforced Steel's political beliefs.[3]
Career[link]
Steel has given varying accounts of his early life: he became bored with constantly being asked how he had started in comedy and took to telling the questioner the first thing that came into his head. He is often described as having worked as a television repair man[4] but confesses that he has no technical ability whatsoever. He worked the comedy circuit for several years, and then in 1992 presented a satirical radio show The Mark Steel Solution on BBC Radio 5, consisting of half-hour monologues which offered solutions to social problems. It ran to four series. It's Not a Runner Bean, a comic autobiography, was published in 1996, and this led to a column in The Guardian.
Steel wrote a column for The Guardian between 1996 and 1999. He was sacked by that newspaper, according to him because The Guardian wanted to "realign towards Tony Blair" - though The Guardian denies this. In 2000 he started writing a weekly column for The Independent, which appears in the Wednesday Opinion Column.
He has written and performed several radio and television series for the BBC, and authored several books, as detailed below.
In 2005 he toured the UK and Ireland, where he discussed the French revolution in a light-hearted style.
Personal life[link]
Steel is a supporter of Crystal Palace F.C. and Kent County Cricket Club and enjoys watching both play on occasion. He was interviewed by Jonathan Agnew on Test Match Special during the South Africa series, giving an interview on his love of cricket.[5]
He has a son (Elliot) and a daughter (Eloise) from a relationship, but he and his partner separated in 2006.[6]
Politics[link]
During the Thatcher years, when he was in his 20s, Steel developed his left-wing political views. His anger and frustration at society's injustices were vented by political protests, punk rock and poetry.
Seeing the Soviet Union as "shit", and state capitalist rather than truly socialist, Steel joined the Socialist Workers Party rather than the Communist Party.[3] He attended marches, strikes and demonstrations, and was present at the death of Blair Peach. In the early '80s he also persuaded his mother to allow striking steelworkers to spend a night in the Steel residence.[3] His political activism continued throughout the decade, from the miners' strike through to the Poll Tax Riots. During this time he moved into a squat with his old friend Mick Hannan, before taking up residence in a flat.[3]
In 2000 Steel took part in the London Assembly elections on behalf of the London Socialist Alliance (part of the Socialist Alliance) in the Croydon and Sutton constituency; he received 1,823 votes (1.5 per cent of the vote).
In 2007 he left the SWP and justified his decision in his book What's Going On? In the book he wrote that he left the party because whilst the membership base had become smaller and smaller, the members that remained became increasingly deluded regarding the size and relevance of the organisation. He also condemned the manner in which, at a time when there was broad public support for socialist ideals, increasingly bitter and futile in-fighting on the left made political success impossible. Alex Callinicos, International Secretary of the SWP, reviewed the book in the Socialist Review, arguing that it "evinces a kind of grandiose ignorance" and that "the only principle one can detect here is that the SWP is always in the wrong".[7] Literary critic Nicholas Lezard praised the book in The Guardian, particularly for its discussion of the break-up of Steel's relationship, which "gives it a poignancy and depth which at its outset one might not have expected".[8]
Steel is a Palestinian human rights activist, having been a member of the British-based ENOUGH! coalition that seeks to end the "Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip and West Bank."[9]
Radio and television[link]
Radio[link]
- The Mark Steel Solution (1992, 1994–1996) BBC Radio 5, BBC Radio 4, repeated BBC 7
- The Mark Steel Revolution (1998) BBC Radio 4, (2007) repeated BBC 7 Australia - Radio National 17.30 2009-01-13 to 2009-01-16 and 2009-01-19 to 2009-01-23
- The Mark Steel Lectures (1999–2002) BBC Radio 4, (2007) repeated BBC 7
- Dedicated Troublemaker (2004) BBC Radio 4
- Mark Steel's in Town (2009–2011) BBC Radio 4
He has also contributed to or appeared on the following shows:
- The Good Human Guide BBC Radio 2(1985). Contributing writer.
- Extra Time BBC Radio 5. Presenter. Sports programme.
- Late Edition BBC Radio 4 (1995). Regular panellist on this satirical talk show.
- The News Quiz BBC Radio 4 several occasions from the late 1990s onwards. Guest panellist on this satirical news based panel game.
- Loose Ends BBC Radio 4. Interviewee.
- Midweek BBC Radio 4. Interviewee.
- Excess Baggage BBC Radio 4. Interviewee.
- Test Match Special BBC Radio 4. Lunchtime interviewee, 1 August 2008 - England vs South Africa, 3rd test, Edgbaston.
- I've Never Seen Star Wars BBC Radio 4 (2008). Interviewee
- Heresy BBC Radio 4 (2009).
Television[link]
- The Mark Steel Lectures BBC Four (2003, 2004, 2006). Writer and Presenter. Television version of his radio programme of the same title. Produced in association with The Open University.
He also appeared in the following shows:
- Red Dwarf BBC Two (1989). Playing 'Ski-man' in episode "Timeslides" (non-speaking part).
- Loose Talk (1994). Guest.
- The Late Jonathan Ross (1996). Guest.
- Does China Exist. (1997).
- If I Ruled the World BBC Two (1998). Guest panellist.
- Lamarr's Attacks BBC Two (2000). Guest.
- Never Mind the Buzzcocks BBC Two (2000, 2001). Guest panellist on the satirical music based panel game.
- Have I Got News for You BBC One (2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009). Guest panellist on this satirical news based panel game.
- Question Time BBC One (2003, 2005, 2012). Guest panellist on discussion show.
- QI BBC Two, BBC Four (2004, 2005, 2006). Guest panellist.
- Mock the Week, BBC Two (2005, 2006). Guest panellist.
- Room 101 BBC Two, (2006). Guest
Bibliography[link]
- Printed
- Vive La Revolution (2003) ISBN 0-7432-0805-6, (2004) ISBN 0-7432-0806-4 History of the French Revolution.
- Reasons To Be Cheerful (2001) ISBN 0-7432-0803-X, (2002) ISBN 0-7432-0804-8 Autobiography concentrating on political activism.
- It's Not A Runner Bean (1996) ISBN 1-899344-12-8, (2004) ISBN 1-904316-43-3 Autobiography concentrating on his comedy career.
- What's Going On? The Meanderings of a Comic Mind in Confusion (2008) ISBN 1-84737-281-9 Autobiography charting changes to his own personal life and the politics of the left.
- Audiobooks
- Reasons to Be Cheerful: From Punk to New Labour Through the Eyes of a Dedicated Troublemaker (2001) cassette ISBN 0-7435-0062-8
See also[link]
References[link]
- ^ IMDb Mark Steel. Retrieved 2011-11-08.
- ^ "The Week with George Galloway". 4/11/2011.
- ^ a b c d Steel, Mark (2001). Reasons to be Cheerful. Scribner UK. ISBN 0-7432-0804-8.
- ^ "Open2.net: How did you get into comedy?". Open University. http://www.open2.net/marksteel/o2interview.htm. Retrieved 2008-10-18.
- ^ Interview on BBC's Test Match Special, 1 August 2008
- ^ "Anatomy of a break-up". The Independent. 24 September 2008. http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/love-sex/heartbreak/anatomy-of-a-breakup-939706.html. Retrieved 2009-03-31.
- ^ Callinicos, Alex (September 2008). "What's Going On?". Socialist Review. http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/article.php?articlenumber=10514. Retrieved 16 November 2010.
- ^ Lezard, Nicholas (11 April 2009). "Few things are funnier than ageing and disillusionment". The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/apr/11/mark-steel-review. Retrieved 16 November 2010.
- ^ "Emma Thompson bids for Palestinian Rights | The Electronic Intifada". electronicintifada.net. 27 January 2007. http://electronicintifada.net/content/emma-thompson-bids-palestinian-rights/3079. Retrieved 31 August 2011.
External links[link]
- Mark Steel's official website
- Open University site dedicated to the television version of The Mark Steel Lectures.
- Interviews at LeftLion, The Third Estate, and Socialist Review.
- Audio Files
- The Russian Revolution: Was It A Coup? - Lecture at Marxism 1999 (MP3)
- Karl Marx - Part 2 - Lecture at Marxism 2002 (MP3)
- The French Revolution - Part 2 - Lecture at Marxism 2002 (MP3)
- Viva La Revolution A Stand Up History Of The French Revolution - Part 2 - Lecture at Marxism 2003 (MP3)
- Large selection of audio (mp3) and video (mp4) files available at www.marksteelinfo.com/audiovideo/
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Steel, Mark |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | English comedian |
| Date of birth | 4 July 1960 |
| Place of birth | Swanley, Kent, United Kingdom |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
http://wn.com/Mark_Steel
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Steel
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
 Martha Nussbaum in 2008 |
|
| Born | Martha Craven (1947-05-06) 6 May 1947 (age 65) New York City |
|---|---|
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western Philosophy |
| School | Analytic |
| Main interests | Political philosophy, Ethics |
| Notable ideas | Capability approach Feminism |
|
Influenced by
|
|
Martha Nussbaum (born Martha Craven; May 6, 1947) is an American philosopher with a particular interest in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, political philosophy and ethics.
Nussbaum, though not a lawyer, is currently Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, a chair that includes appointments in the Philosophy Department, the Law School, and the Divinity School. She also holds Associate appointments in Classics and Political Science, is a member of the Committee on Southern Asian Studies, and a Board Member of the Human Rights Program. She previously taught at Harvard and Brown.
Contents |
Life and career[link]
Nussbaum was born in New York City, the daughter of George Craven, a Philadelphia lawyer, and Betty Warren, an interior designer and homemaker; during her teenage years, Nussbaum attended the Baldwin School in Bryn Mawr. She described her upbringing as "East Coast WASP elite...very sterile, very preoccupied with money and status".[1] She would later credit her impatience with "mandarin philosophers" as the "repudiation of my own aristocratic upbringing. I don't like anything that sets itself up as an in-group or an elite, whether it is the Bloomsbury group or Derrida".[2]
She studied theatre and classics at New York University, getting a B.A. in 1969, and gradually moved to philosophy while at Harvard University, where she received an M.A. in 1972 and a Ph.D. in 1975, studying under G. E. L. Owen. This period also saw her marriage to Alan Nussbaum (divorced in 1987), her conversion to Judaism, and the birth of her daughter Rachel, who is currently a history professor at Evergreen State College.[3] Her interest in Judaism has continued and deepened: on August 16, 2008 she became a bat mitzvah in a service at Temple K. A. M. Isaiah Israel in Chicago's Hyde Park, chanting from the Parasha Va-etchanan and the Haftarah Nahamu, and delivering a D'var Torah about the connection between genuine, non-narcissistic consolation and the pursuit of global justice.[4]
During her studies at Harvard, Nussbaum claims she encountered a tremendous amount of discrimination, including sexual harassment, and problems getting childcare for her daughter.[5] When she became the first woman to hold the Junior Fellowship at Harvard, Nussbaum received a congratulatory note from a "prestigious classicist" who suggested that since "female fellowess" was an awkward name, she should be called hetaira, for in Greece these educated courtesans were the only women who participated in philosophical symposia.[6]
She taught philosophy and classics at Harvard in the 1970s and early 1980s, where she was denied tenure by the Classics Department in 1982.[2] Nussbaum then moved to Brown University, where she taught until the mid-1990s. Her 1986 book The Fragility of Goodness, on ancient Greek ethics, made her a well-known figure throughout the humanities. More recent work (Frontiers of Justice) establishes Nussbaum as a theorist of global justice.
Nussbaum's work on capabilities has often focused on the unequal freedoms and opportunities of women, and she has developed a distinctive type of feminism, drawing inspiration from the liberal tradition, but emphasizing that liberalism, at its best, entails radical rethinking of gender relations and relations within the family.[7]
Nussbaum's other major area of philosophical work is the emotions. She has defended a neo-Stoic account of emotions that holds that they are appraisals that ascribe to things and persons, outside the agent's own control, great significance for the person's own flourishing. On this basis she has proposed analyses of grief, compassion, and love,[8] and, in a later book, of disgust and shame.[9]
Nussbaum has engaged in many spirited debates with other intellectuals, in her academic writings as well as in the pages of semi-popular magazines and book reviews and, in one instance, when testifying as an expert witness in court. She testified in the Colorado bench trial for Romer v. Evans, arguing against the claim that the history of philosophy provides the state with a "compelling interest" in favor of a law denying gays and lesbians the right to seek passage of local non-discrimination laws. A portion of this testimony, dealing with the potential meanings of the term tolmêma in Plato's work, was the subject of controversy, and was called misleading and even perjurious by critics.[10][11] She responded to these charges in a lengthy article, "Platonic Love and Colorado Law".[12] Nussbaum used multiple references from Plato's "Symposium" and his interactions with Socrates as evidence for her argument. The debate continued with a reply by one of her sternest critics, Robert P. George.[13] Nussbaum has criticized Noam Chomsky as being among the "leftist intellectuals" who hold the belief that "one should not criticize one’s friends, that solidarity is more important than ethical correctness". She suggests that one can "trace this line to an old Marxist contempt for bourgeois ethics, but it is loathsome whatever its provenance".[14] Among the people whose books she has reviewed critically are Allan Bloom,[15] Harvey Mansfield,[16] and Judith Butler.[17] Her more serious and academic debates have been with figures such as John Rawls, Richard Posner, and Susan Moller Okin.[18][19][20][21][22]
Nussbaum is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (elected 1988) and the American Philosophical Society. In 2008 she was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. She is a Founding President and Past President of the Human Development and Capability Association and a Past President of the American Philosophical Association, Central Division.
Major works[link]
[edit] The Fragility of Goodness
The Fragility of Goodness[23] confronts the ethical dilemma that individuals strongly committed to justice are nevertheless vulnerable to external factors that may deeply compromise or even negate their human flourishing. Discussing literary as well as philosophical texts, Nussbaum seeks to determine the extent to which reason may enable self-sufficiency. She eventually rejects the Platonic notion that human goodness can fully protect against peril, siding with the tragic playwrights and Aristotle in treating the acknowledgment of vulnerability as a key to realizing the human good.
Her interpretation of Plato's Symposium in particular drew considerable attention. Under Nussbaum's consciousness of vulnerability, the re-entrance of Alcibiades at the end of the dialogue undermines Diotima's account of the ladder of love in its ascent to the non-physical realm of the forms. Alcibiades's presence deflects attention back to physical beauty, sexual passions, and bodily limitations, hence highlighting human fragility.
Fragility made Nussbaum famous throughout the humanities. It garnered wide praise in academic reviews,[24][25] and even drew acclaim in the popular media.[26] Camille Paglia credited Fragility with matching "the highest academic standards" of the twentieth century,[27] and The Times Higher Education called it "a supremely scholarly work".[28] Nussbaum's fame extended her influence beyond print and into television programs like PBS's Bill Moyers.[29]
[edit] Cultivating Humanity
Cultivating Humanity[30] appeals to classical Greek texts as a basis for defense and reform of the liberal education. Noting the Greek cynic philosopher Diogenes' aspiration to transcend "local origins and group memberships" in favor of becoming "a citizen of the world", Nussbaum traces the development of this idea through the Stoics, Cicero, and eventually modern liberalism of Adam Smith and Immanuel Kant. Nussbaum champions multiculturalism in the context of ethical universalism (utilitarianism), defends scholarly inquiry into race, gender, and human sexuality, and further develops the role of literature as narrative imagination into ethical questions.
At the same time, Nussbaum also censured certain scholarly trends. She excoriated deconstructionist Jacques Derrida as "simply not worth studying" and labels his analysis of Chinese culture "pernicious" and without "evidence of serious study". More broadly, Nussbaum criticized Michel Foucault for his "historical incompleteness and lack of conceptual clarity", but nevertheless singled him out for providing "the only truly important work to have entered philosophy under the banner of "postmodernism"."[31] Nussbaum is even more critical of figures like Allan Bloom, Roger Kimball, and George Will for what she considers their "shaky" knowledge of non-Western cultures and inaccurate caricatures of today's humanities departments.
The New York Times praised Cultivating Humanity as "a passionate, closely argued defense of multiculturalism" and hailed it as "a formidable, perhaps definitive defense of diversity on American campuses"[32] Nussbaum was the 2002 recipient of the University of Louisville Grawmeyer Award in Education.
In 2010, Nussbaum published Not For Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities, which extends the analysis of Cultivating Humanity to schools and universities in many different countries, arguing that liberal arts education, currently under threat all over the world, supplies skills without which democracies are unlikely to remain stable.
[edit] Sex & Social Justice
Sex and Social Justice sets out to demonstrate that sex and sexuality are morally irrelevant distinctions that have been artificially enforced as sources of social hierarchy; thus feminism and social justice have common concerns. Rebutting anti-universalist objections, Nussbaum proposes functional freedoms, or central human capabilities, as a rubric of social justice.[33]
Nussbaum discusses at length the feminist critiques of liberalism itself, including the charge advanced by Alison Jaggar that liberalism demands "ethical egoism". Nussbaum notes that liberalism emphasizes respect for others as individuals, and further argues that Jaggar has elided the distinction between individualism and self-sufficiency. Nussbaum accepts Catharine MacKinnon's critique of abstract liberalism, assimilating the salience of history and context of group hierarchy and subordination, but concludes that this appeal is rooted in liberalism rather than a critique of it.[34]
Nussbaum condemns the practice of female genital mutilation, citing deprivation of normative human functioning in its risks to health, impact on sexual functioning, violations of dignity, and conditions of non-autonomy. Emphasizing that female genital mutilation is carried out by brute force, its irreversibility, its non-consensual nature, and its links to customs of male domination, Nussbaum urges feminists to confront female genital mutilation as an issue of injustice.[35]
Nussbaum also refines the concept of "objectification" as originally advanced by Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin. Nussbaum defines the idea of treating as an object with seven qualities: instrumentality, denial of autonomy, inertness, fungibility, violability, ownership, and denial of subjectivity. Her characterization of pornography as a tool of objectification puts Nussbaum at odds with sex-positive feminism. At the same time, Nussbaum argues in support of the legalization of prostitution, a position she reiterated in a 2008 essay following the Spitzer scandal, writing "the idea that we ought to penalize women with few choices by removing one of the ones they do have is grotesque".[36]
Sex and Social Justice was lauded by critics in the press. Salon declared, "She shows brilliantly how sex is used to deny some people – i.e., women and gay men – social justice".[37] The New York Times praised the work as "elegantly written and closely argued".[38] Kathryn Trevenen praised Nussbaum's effort to shift feminist concerns toward interconnected transnational efforts, and for explicating a set of universal guidelines to structure an agenda of social justice.[39] Patrick Hopkins singled out for praise Nussbaum's "masterful" chapter on sexual objectification.[40] Radical feminist Andrea Dworkin faulted Nussbaum for "consistent over-intellectualisation of emotion, which has the inevitable consequence of mistaking suffering for cruelty".[41]
[edit] Hiding from Humanity
Hiding from Humanity[42] extends Nussbaum's work in moral psychology to probe the arguments for including two emotions — shame and disgust — as legitimate bases for legal judgments. Nussbaum argues that individuals tend to repudiate their bodily imperfection or animality through the projection of fears about contamination. This cognitive response is in itself irrational, because we cannot transcend the animality of our bodies. Noting how projective disgust has wrongly justified group subordination (mainly of women, Jews, and homosexuals), Nussbaum ultimately discards disgust as a reliable basis of judgment.
Turning to shame, Nussbaum argues that shame takes too broad a target, attempting to inculcate humiliation on a scope that is too intrusive and limiting on human freedom. Nussbaum sides with John Stuart Mill in narrowing legal concern to acts that cause a distinct and assignable harm.
In an interview with Reason magazine, Nussbaum elaborated, "Disgust and shame are inherently hierarchical; they set up ranks and orders of human beings. They are also inherently connected with restrictions on liberty in areas of non-harmful conduct. For both of these reasons, I believe, anyone who cherishes the key democratic values of equality and liberty should be deeply suspicious of the appeal to those emotions in the context of law and public policy".[43]
Nussbaum's work was received with wide praise. The Boston Globe called her argument "characteristically lucid" and hailed her as "America's most prominent philosopher of public life".[44] Her reviews in national newspapers and magazines garnered unanimous praise.[45] In academic circles, Stefanie A. Lindquist of Vanderbilt University lauded Nussbaum's analysis as a "remarkably wide ranging and nuanced treatise on the interplay between emotions and law".[46]
A prominent exception was Roger Kimball's review published in the New Criterion,[47] in which he accused Nussbaum of "fabricating" the renewed prevalence of shame and disgust in public discussions and says she intends to "undermine the inherited moral wisdom of millennia". He rebukes her for "contempt for the opinions of ordinary people" and ultimately accuses Nussbaum herself of "hiding from humanity".
Nussbaum has recently drawn on and extended her work on disgust to produce a new analysis of the legal issues regarding sexual orientation and same-sex conduct. Her book From Disgust to Humanity: Sexual Orientation and the Constitution was published by Oxford University Press in 2009, as part of their "Inalienable Rights" series, edited by Geoffrey Stone.[48]
[edit] From Disgust to Humanity: Sexual Orientation & Constitutional Law
In the 2010 book From Disgust to Humanity: Sexual Orientation & Constitutional Law Martha Nussbaum analyzes the role that disgust plays in law and public debate in the United States.[49] The book primarily analyzes constitutional legal issues facing gay and lesbian Americans but also analyzes issues such as anti-miscegenation statutes, segregation, antisemitism and the caste system in India as part of its broader thesis regarding the "politics of disgust".
Nussbaum posits that the fundamental motivations of those advocating legal restrictions against gay and lesbian Americans is a "politics of disgust". These legal restrictions include blocking sexual orientation being protected under anti-discrimination laws (See: Romer v. Evans), sodomy laws against consenting adults (See: Lawrence v. Texas) and constitutional bans against same-sex marriage (See: California Proposition 8 (2008)).
She identifies the "politics of disgust" closely with Lord Devlin and his famous opposition to the Wolfenden report that recommended decriminalizing private consensual homosexual acts on the basis that those things would "disgust the average man". To Devlin, the mere fact some people or act may produce popular emotional reactions of disgust provides an appropriate guide for legislating. She also identifies the 'wisdom of repugnance' as advocated by Leon Kass as another "politics of disgust" school of thought as it claims that disgust "in crucial cases...repugnance is the emotional expression of deep wisdom, beyond reason's power fully to articulate it".
Martha Nussbaum goes on to explicitly oppose the concept of a disgust-based morality as an appropriate guide for legislating. Nussbaum notes that popular disgust has been used throughout history as a justification for persecution. Drawing upon her earlier work on the relationship between disgust & shame, Nussbaum notes that at various times racism, antisemitism, sexism, have all been driven by popular revulsion.[50]
In place of this "politics of disgust", Nussbaum argues for the Harm principle from John Stuart Mill as the proper basis for limiting individual liberties. Nussbaum argues the harm principle, which supports the legal ideas of consent, the age of majority and privacy, protects citizens while the "politics of disgust" is merely an unreliable emotional reaction with no inherent wisdom. Furthermore Nussbaum argues this "politics of disgust" has denied and continues to deny citizens humanity and equality before the law on no rational grounds and causes palpable social harms to the groups affected.
From Disgust to Humanity earned acclaim in major U.S. publications,[51][52][53][54] and prompted interviews in the New York Times and other magazines.[55][56] One conservative magazine, The American Spectator, offered a dissenting view, writing, "[H]er account of the "politics of disgust" lacks coherence, and "the politics of humanity" betrays itself by not treating more sympathetically those opposed to the gay rights movement. The article also argues that book is marred by factual errors and inconsistencies.[57]
The Capability approach[link]
Main article: Capability approach
During the 1980s Nussbaum collaborated with economist Amartya Sen on issues of development and ethics which culminated in The Quality of Life, published in 1993 by Oxford University Press. Together with Sen and a group of younger scholars, Nussbaum founded the Human Development and Capability Association in 2003. With Sen, she promoted the "capabilities approach" to development, which views capabilities ("substantial freedoms", such as the ability to live to old age, engage in economic transactions, or participate in political activities) as the constitutive parts of development, and poverty as capability-deprivation. This contrasts with traditional utilitarian views that see development purely in terms of economic growth, and poverty purely as income-deprivation. It is also universalist, and therefore contrasts with relativist approaches to development. Much of the work is presented from an Aristotelian perspective.
Nussbaum furthered the capabilities approach in Frontiers of Justice (2006), to expand upon social contractarian explanations of justice, as developed most extensively by John Rawls' in his Theory of Justice, Political Liberalism, The Law of Peoples, and related works. Nussbaum argues that standard social contractarianism, while far better than utilitarianism in providing a satisfactory framework for justice, relies on the belief and assumption that cooperation is pursued for the purpose of securing mutual advantage. Views deriving from the classical tradition of the social contract, she argues, have great difficulty dealing with issues of basic justice and substantial freedom in situations where there are great asymmetries of power between the parties. As such, Nussbaum argues that the procedural justice-based approach of contractarianism therefore fails to address areas in which symmetrical advantage does not exist, namely, in the context of justice for the disabled, transnational justice, and justice for non-human animals ("the three frontiers").
Noting that Rawls himself acknowledged the failure of his theory of justice to comprehensively address these three frontiers, Nussbaum claims that Rawls's attempt to expand his theory to address one of these areas — transnational justice — is "ultimately unsatisfying" because he fails to follow through with the essential elements developed in A Theory of Justice, namely, by relaxing some of the key assumptions about the parties to the original contract. Nussbaum argues that the contractarian approach cannot explain justice in the absence of free, equal and independent parties in an original position in which "all have something with which to bargain and none have too much" (with reference to Rousseau and Hume), concluding that the procedural perspective alone cannot provide an adequate theory of justice.
To address this perceived problem, Nussbaum introduces the capabilities approach, an outcome-oriented view that seeks to determine what basic principles, and adequate measure thereof, would fulfill a life of human dignity. She frames these basic principles in terms of ten capabilities, i.e. real opportunities based on personal and social circumstance. Nussbaum posits that justice demands the pursuit, for all citizens, of a minimum threshold of these ten capabilities. She further developed the idea of the threshold, with reference to constitutional law, in her Foreword to the 2007 Supreme Court issue of the Harvard Law Review, "Constitutions and Capabilities: 'Perception' Against Lofty Formalism", which would ultimately appear in revised form as the book Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach (2011). Creating Capabilities presents the approach in a brief and accessible form for a general audience. Her book, Liberty of Conscience: In Defense of America's Tradition of Religious Equality (Basic Books 2008) explores the constitutional requirements of justice in the area of religious liberty. Nussbaum's major current work-in-progress, projected in the final chapter of Frontiers of Justice, is a book on the moral psychology of the capabilities approach, which will bring together her work on the emotions with the analysis of social justice. This book is under contract to Harvard University Press. The book entitled The Cosmopolitan Tradition is also under contract to Harvard University Press.
Bibliography[link]
- Aristotle's De Motu Animalium (1978)
- The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (1986), ISBN 0-521-25768-9; Second edition (2001), ISBN 0-521-79126-X.
- Love's Knowledge (1990)
- Nussbaum, Martha, and Amelie Oksenberg Rorty. Essays on Aristotle's De Anima (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992)
- Nussbaum, Martha, and Amartya Sen. The Quality of Life. (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1993)
- The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (1994); Second edition with a new introduction by the author (2009), ISBN 978-0-691-14131-2.
- Poetic Justice (1996)
- For Love of Country (1996)
- Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education (1997)
- Sex and Social Justice (1998)
- Plato's Republic: The Good Society and The Deformation of Desire (1998)
- Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach (2000)
- Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (2001)
- Hiding From Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law (2004) (Trad. esp.: El ocultamiento de lo humano. Repugnancia, vergüenza y ley, Buenos Aires/Madrid, Katz editores S.A, 2006, ISBN 978-84-609-8354-5).
- Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions (edited with Cass Sunstein) (2004)
- Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership (2006)
- The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India's Future, (2007) ISBN 0-674-02482-6.
- Reviewed in Pankaj Mishra, "Impasse in India" The New York Review of Books 54/11 (28 June 2007) : 48-51
- Liberty of Conscience: In Defense of America's Tradition of Religious Equality (2008)
- From Disgust to Humanity: Sexual Orientation and Constitutional Law (2010).
- Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities, Princeton University Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-691-14064-3 (Trad. esp.: Sin fines de lucro. Por qué la democracia necesita de las humanidades, Buenos Aires/Madrid, Katz editores S.A, 2010, ISBN 978-84-92946-17-4).
- Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach, Harvard University Press, 2011.
- "Philosophical Interventions: Book Reviews 1986-2011", Oxford University Press, 2012.
- "The New Religious Intolerance: Overcoming the Politics of Fear in an Anxious Age," Harvard University Press, 2012.
Awards and honors[link]
Honorary degrees[link]
She has 40 honorary degrees from colleges and universities in North America, Europe, and Asia, including from:[58]
- Mount Holyoke College,
- Wabash College,
- Emory University,
- Grinnell College,
- Williams College,
- Colgate University,
- The College of William and Mary,
- The University of St Andrews (Scotland),
- The University of Edinburgh (Scotland),
- The Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium),
- The University of Toronto (Canada),
- The Ecole Normale Supérieure (Paris, France),
- The New School University (New York City),
- The University of Haifa (Israel),
- Ohio State University,
- The University of North Carolina at Asheville,
- Bielefeld University (Germany),
- and Georgetown University (Washington, D.C.).
- The Institute of Social Studies (ISS) awarded its honorary doctorate to her in 2006.
Awards[link]
- 1990: Brandeis Creative Arts Award in Non-Fiction
- 1991: PEN Spielvogel-Diamondstein Award for the best collection of essays
- 1998: Ness Book Award of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (Cultivating Humanity)
- 2000: Book award of the North American Society for Social Philosophy (Sex and Social Justice)
- 2002: Grawemeyer Award in Education (Cultivating Humanity)
- 2003: Barnard College Medal of Distinction
- 2004: Association of American University Publishers Professional and Scholarly Book Award for Law (Hiding From Humanity)
- 2005: listed among the world's Top 100 intellectuals by Foreign Policy (as well as in 2008 and 2010)[59] and Prospect magazines.[60]
- 2007: Radcliffe Alumnae Recognition Award
- 2009: American Philosophical Society's Henry M. Phillips Prize in Jurisprudence.[61]
- 2012: Prince of Asturias Award for Social Sciences
See also[link]
References[link]
- ^ McLemee, Scott. The Chronicle of Higher Education. "What Makes Martha Nussbaum Run?"
- ^ a b Boynton, Robert S. The New York Times Magazine. Who Needs Philosophy? A Profile of Martha Nussbaum
- ^ Evergreen State Faculty Directory "N" as "Nussbaum Wichert, Rachael"
- ^ "The Mourner's Hope: Grief and the Foundations of Justice", The Boston Review, November/December 2008., 18-20.
- ^ Conversation with Martha C. Nussbaum
- ^ Nussbaum, Martha C. Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1997. pp. 6-7.
- ^ Nussbaum, Martha. Women and Human Development. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
- ^ Nussbaum, Martha C. Poetic Justice: Literary Imagination and Public Life. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995.
- ^ Nussbaum, Martha C. Hiding from Humanity: Shame, Disgust, and the Law. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004.
- ^ The Stand by Daniel Mendelsohn, from Lingua Franca September, 1996.
- ^ Who Needs Philosophy?: A profile of Martha Nussbaum by Robert Boynton from The New York Times Magazine, November 21, 1999
- ^ Martha C. Nussbaum. "Platonic Love and Colorado Law: The Relevance of Ancient Greek Norms to Modern Sexual Controversies", Virginia Law Review, Vol. 80, No. 7 (Oct., 1994), pp. 1515-1651.
- ^ George, Robert P. '"Shameless Acts" Revisited: Some Questions for Martha Nussbaum', Academic Questions 9 (Winter 1995-96), 24-42.
- ^ "Violence on the Left"
- ^ Martha C. Nussbaum, Undemocratic Vistas, New York Review of Books, Volume 34, Number 17; November 5, 1987.
- ^ Martha C. Nussbaum, Man Overboard, New Republic, June 22nd, 2006.
- ^ Martha Nussbaum, The Professor of Parody, The New Republic, 1999-02-22| Copy
- ^ What Makes Martha Nussbaum Run? (2001, Includes a timeline of her career, books and related controversies to that time.)
- ^ Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism a 1994 essay
- ^ Radio interview on Philosophy Talk
- ^ The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India's Future, audio and video recording from the World Beyond the Headline Series
- ^ David Gordon, Cultivating Humanity, Martha Nussbaum and What Tower? What Babel?, Mises Review, Winter 1997
- ^ Nussbaum, Martha C. The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
- ^ Barnes, Hazel E. Comparative Literature, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Winter, 1988), pp. 76-77
- ^ Woodruff, Paul B. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 50, No. 1 (Sep., 1989), pp. 205-210
- ^ Knox, Bernard. "The Theater of Ethics". The New York Review of Books
- ^ Paglia, Camille. Sex, Art, & American Culture. NY: Vintage Books, 1991. pp. 206
- ^ Hodges, Lucy. And you may ask yourself...
- ^ NOW with Bill Moyers
- ^ Nussbaum, Martha C. Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
- ^ Nussbaum, Martha C. Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1997. p.40
- ^ Shapiro, James. Beyond the Culture Wars. The New York Times
- ^ Nussbaum, Martha C. Sex & Social Justice. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. pp. 29-47.
- ^ Nussbaum, Martha C. Sex & Social Justice. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. pp. 55-80.
- ^ Nussbaum, Martha C. Sex & Social Justice. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. pp. 118-130.
- ^ Martha Nussbaum, "Trading on America's puritanical streak", The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 14 March 2008
- ^ Rescuing the Feminist Book
- ^ "Cultural Perversions"
- ^ Trevenen, Kathryn. "Global Feminism and the 'Problem' of Culture". Theory & Event 5.1 (2001).
- ^ Hopkins, Patrick D. "Sex and Social Justice". Hypatia 17.2 (2002): 171-173.
- ^ Dworkin, Andrea R. "Rape is not just another word for suffering". Times Higher Education. August 4, 2000.
- ^ Nussbaum, Martha C. Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004.
- ^ Reason Magazine
- ^ Wilson, John. You Stink therefore I am.The Boston Globe
- ^ San Francisco Chronicle
- ^ Stefanie A. Lindquist's Review
- ^ Kimball, Roger. The New Criterion.Does Shame have a Future?
- ^ Oxford University Press
- ^ Nussbaum, Martha. Oxford University Press. "From Disgust to Humanity: Sexual Orientation and Constitutional Law" (2010)
- ^ Nussbaum, Martha C. (August 6, 2004). "Danger to Human Dignity: The Revival of Disgust and Shame in the Law". The Chronicle of Higher Education. Washington, DC. http://chronicle.com/free/v50/i48/48b00601.htm. Retrieved 2007-11-24.
- ^ San Francisco Book Review
- ^ "Why Has Divided America Taken Gay Rights Seriously?: A Philosopher Credits the Power of the Imagination"
- ^ "Let's Be Rational about Sex"
- ^ San Francisco Chronicle Book Review
- ^ "Gross National Politics"
- ^ Back Talk: Martha Nussbaum
- ^ "The Politics of Humanity"
- ^ University of Chicago Law School > Martha Nussbaum
- ^ Foreign Policy: The Top 100 Public Intellectuals
- ^ "The Prospect/FP Global public intellectuals poll — results". Prospect. Archived from the original on 2008-01-22. http://web.archive.org/web/20080122122228/http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/intellectuals/results.htm. Retrieved 2008-02-09.
- ^ Nussbaum Receives Prestigious Prize for Law and Philosophy
External links[link]
 |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Martha Nussbaum |
- "We need the Sting of Critical Reasoning" A Conversation with Martha Nussbaum
- University of Chicago biography
- Nussbaum bibliographies
- Works by or about Martha Nussbaum in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
- Q&A with Martha Nussbaum from The Guardian
- 'Creating capabilities' Nussbaum interviewed by Laurie Taylor on BBC Radio 4, July 2011
- In Depth interview with Nussbaum, June 6, 2010
- Radio interview on Philosophy Talk
- Nussbaum on Islamic liberalism under fire in India in the Boston Review'
- Profile at The International Institute of Social Studies
- Interview with Martha C. Nussbaum: “If citizens are not independent, then what we have is not democracy, but instead some sort of fascism or totalitarianism”", Barcelona Metropolis, 2011.
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| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Nussbaum, Martha |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | American philosopher |
| Date of birth | 6 May 1947 |
| Place of birth | New York City |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
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| Will Durant | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1885-11-05)November 5, 1885 North Adams, Massachusetts |
| Died | November 7, 1981(1981-11-07) (aged 96) Los Angeles, California |
| Occupation | Historian, writer, philosopher, teacher |
| Nationality | American |
| Subjects | History, philosophy, religion |
| Spouse(s) | Ariel Durant |
| Children | Ethel Durant |
William James Durant (November 5, 1885 – November 7, 1981) was a prolific American writer, historian, and philosopher. He is best known for The Story of Civilization, 11 volumes written in collaboration with his wife Ariel Durant and published between 1935 and 1975. He was earlier noted for The Story of Philosophy, written in 1926, which one observer described as "a groundbreaking work that helped to popularize philosophy."[1]
He conceived of philosophy as total perspective, or, seeing things "sub specie totius," a phrase inspired by Spinoza's "sub specie aeternitatis."[2] He sought to unify and humanize the great body of historical knowledge, which had grown too voluminous and become fragmented into esoteric specialties, and to vitalize it for contemporary application.[3] Durant was a gifted prose stylist and storyteller who won a large readership in great part because of the nature and excellence of his writing, which, in contrast to formal academic language, is lively, witty, charismatic, colourful, ornate, epigrammatic, in short, "humanized." Max Schuster, co-founder of the publisher Simon & Schuster (which also published Durant's works), and himself an admirer of Durant's writings for their beauty, remarked that Durant's prose "begs to be read aloud."[4] John Little, who founded and heads the Will Durant foundation and has devoted much effort towards popularizing Durant's works in the 21st century, echoes Schuster's admiration for Durant's works in words which Durant himself sometimes used to describe a few of the finest works of Classical Antiquity: "prose so beautiful it rivals poetry."[5]
Will and Ariel Durant were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1968 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977.
Contents |
Early life[link]
Durant was born in North Adams, Massachusetts of French-Canadian parents Joseph Durant and Mary Allard, who had been part of the Quebec emigration to the United States.
In 1900, Durant was educated by the Jesuits in St. Peter's Preparatory School and, later, Saint Peter's College in Jersey City, New Jersey. Historian Joan Rubin writes of this period, "Despite some adolescent flirtations, he began preparing for the vocation that promised to realize his mother's fondest hopes for him: the priesthood. In that way, one might argue, he embarked on a course that, while distant from Yale's or Columbia's apprenticeships in gentility, offered equivalent cultural authority within his own milieu."[6]
In 1905, he began experimenting with socialist philosophy but, after World War I, began recognizing that a "lust for power" underlay all forms of political behavior.[6] However, even before the war, "other aspects of his sensibility had competed with his radical leanings," notes Rubin. She adds that "the most concrete of those was a persistent penchant for philosophy. With his energy invested in Spinoza, he made little room for Bakunin. From then on, writes Rubin, "his retention of a model of selfhood predicated on discipline made him unsympathetic to anarchist injunctions to 'be yourself'. . . To be one's 'deliberate self,' he explained, meant to 'rise above' the impulse to 'become the slaves of our passions' and instead to act with 'courageous devotion' to a moral cause."[6]
He graduated in 1907. He worked as a reporter for Arthur Brisbane's New York Evening Journal for ten dollars a week. At the Evening Journal, he wrote several articles on sexual criminals. In 1907, he began teaching Latin, French, English and geometry at Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey. Durant was also made librarian at the college.
Teaching career[link]
In 1911 he left the seminary. He became the principal of Ferrer Modern School, an advanced school intended to educate the working-classes; he also taught there. Alden Freeman, a supporter of the Ferrer Modern School, sponsored him for a tour of Europe. At the Modern School, he fell in love with and married a pupil, 13 years his junior, Chaya (Ida) Kaufman, whom he later nicknamed "Ariel". The Durants had one daughter, Ethel, and adopted a son, Louis.
By 1914 he began to reject "intimations of human evil," notes Rubin, and to "retreat from radical social change." She summarizes these changes in his overall philosophy:
- "Instead of tying human progress to the rise of the proletariat, he made it the inevitable outcome of the laughter of young children or the endurance of his parents' marriage. As Ariel Durant later summarized it, he had concocted, by his mid-thirties, 'that sentimental, idealizing blend of love, philosophy, Christianity, and socialism which dominated his spiritual chemistry' the rest of his life.
- "Those attributes ultimately propelled him away from radicalism as a substitute faith and from teaching young anarchists as an alternative vocation. Instead, late in 1913 he embarked on a different pursuit: the dissemination of culture."[6]
In 1913, he resigned his post as teacher. To support themselves, he began lecturing in a Presbyterian church for five- and ten-dollar fees; the material for these lectures became the starting point for The Story of Civilization.
Author[link]
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This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability. |
In 1917, while working on a doctorate in philosophy at Columbia University, Will Durant wrote his first book, Philosophy and the Social Problem. He discussed the idea that philosophy had not grown because it avoided the actual problems of society. He received his doctorate that same year from Columbia.[7] He was also an instructor at the university.
[edit] The Story of Philosophy
The Story of Philosophy originated as a series of Little Blue Books (educational pamphlets aimed at workers) and was so popular it was republished in 1926 by Simon & Schuster as a hardcover book[8] and became a bestseller, giving the Durants the financial independence that would allow them to travel the world several times and spend four decades writing The Story of Civilization. He left teaching and began work on the eleven volume Story of Civilization. Will drafted a civil rights "Declaration of Interdependence" in the early 1940s, nearly a full decade before the Brown decision (see Brown v. Board of Education) ignited the Civil Rights Movement. This Declaration was introduced into the Congressional Record on October 1, 1945.[citation needed]
[edit] The Story of Civilization
The Durants strove throughout The Story of Civilization to create what they called "integral history". They opposed this to the "specialization" of history, an anticipatory rejection of what some have called the "cult of the expert." Their goal was to write a "biography" of a civilization, in this case, the West, including not just the usual wars, politics and biography of greatness and villainy, but also the culture, art, philosophy, religion, and the rise of mass communication. Much of The Story considers the living conditions of everyday people throughout the twenty-five hundred years their "story" of the West covers. They also bring an unabashedly moral framework to their accounts, constantly stressing the repetition of the "dominance of strong over the weak, the clever over the simple." The Story of Civilization is the most successful historiographical series in history. It has been said that the series "put Simon and Schuster on the map" as a publishing house.
The Story of Civilization is also noteworthy because of the excellence of its writing style, and contains numerous apothegms worthy of the Roman and Renaissance authors Durant admired. Discussing certain inconsistencies in the character of Botticelli in The Renaissance (page 137), he writes: "Doubtless like all of us he was many men, turned on one or another of his selves as occasion required, and kept his real self a frightened secret from the world."
For Rousseau and Revolution, (1967), the 10th volume of The Story of Civilization, they were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for literature; later followed one of the two highest awards granted by the United States government to civilians, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, by President Ford in 1977.
Other works[link]
Throughout his career, Durant had several brilliant speeches; among such was the "Persia in the History of Civilization" that was presented as an address before the Iran-America Society in Tehran on April 21, 1948, and its manuscript had been intended for inclusion in the Bulletin of the Asia Institute (formerly Bulletin of the American Institute for Persian, then Iranian, Art and Archaeology), Vol. VII, no. 2, which never saw publication.[9] They were followed by Rousseau and Revolution with a slender volume of observations called The Lessons of History, which was both synopsis of the series as well as analysis. Though they had intended to carry the work into the 20th century, they simply ran out of time and had expected the 10th volume to be their last. However, they went on to publish a final volume, their 11th, The Age of Napoleon in 1975. They also left behind notes for a twelfth volume, The Age of Darwin, and an outline for a thirteenth, The Age of Einstein, which would have taken The Story of Civilization through to 1945.
Two posthumous works by Durant have been published in recent years, The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time (2002) and Heroes of History: A Brief History of Civilization from Ancient Times to the Dawn of the Modern Age (2001).
- Final years
The Durants also shared a love story as remarkable as their scholarship;[citation needed] they detail this in Dual Autobiography. After Will went into the hospital, Ariel stopped eating. Will died after he heard that Ariel had died. They died within two weeks of each other in 1981 (she on October 25 and he on November 7). Though their daughter, Ethel, and grandchildren strove to keep the death of his Ariel from the ailing Will, he learned of it on the evening news, and he himself died at the age of 96. He was buried beside his wife in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.
Writing about Russia[link]
In 1933, he published Tragedy of Russia: Impressions from a Brief Visit and soon after, The Lesson of Russia. A few years after the books were published, social commentator Will Rogers had read them and described a symposium he had attended that included Will Durant as one of the contributors. He later wrote of Durant, "He is just about our best writer on Russia. He is the most fearless writer that has been there. He tells you just what it's like. He makes a mighty fine talk. One of the most interesting lecturers we have, and a fine fellow."[1]
Legacy[link]
Will Durant fought for equal wages, women's suffrage and fairer working conditions for the American labor force. Durant not only wrote on many topics but also put his ideas into effect. Durant, it has been said widely, attempted to bring philosophy to the common man. He authored The Story of Philosophy, The Mansions of Philosophy, and, with the help of his wife, Ariel, wrote The Story of Civilization. He also wrote magazine articles.
He was trying to improve understanding of viewpoints of human beings and to have others forgive foibles and human waywardness. He chided the comfortable insularity of what is now known as Eurocentrism, by pointing out in Our Oriental Heritage that Europe was only "a jagged promontory of Asia." He complained of "the provincialism of our traditional histories which began with Greece and summed up Asia in a line" and said they showed "a possibly fatal error of perspective and intelligence."
Philosophical writings[link]
On the decline and rebuilding of civilizations[link]
Much like Oswald Spengler, Will Durant saw the decline of a civilization as a culmination of strife between religion and secular intellectualism, thus toppling the precarious institutions of convention and morality:
"Hence a certain tension between religion and society marks the higher stages of every civilization. Religion begins by offering magical aid to harassed and bewildered men; it culminates by giving to a people that unity of morals and belief which seems so favorable to statesmanship and art; it ends by fighting suicidally in the lost cause of the past. For as knowledge grows or alters continually, it clashes with mythology and theology, which change with geological leisureliness. Priestly control of arts and letters is then felt as a galling shackle or hateful barrier, and intellectual history takes on the character of a "conflict between science and religion." Institutions which were at first in the hands of the clergy, like law and punishment, education and morals, marriage and divorce, tend to escape from ecclesiastical control, and become secular, perhaps profane. The intellectual classes abandon the ancient theology and—after some hesitation—the moral code allied with it; literature and philosophy become anticlerical. The movement of liberation rises to an exuberant worship of reason, and falls to a paralyzing disillusionment with every dogma and every idea. Conduct, deprived of its religious supports, deteriorates into epicurean chaos; and life itself, shorn of consoling faith, becomes a burden alike to conscious poverty and to weary wealth. In the end a society and its religion tend to fall together, like body and soul, in a harmonious death. Meanwhile among the oppressed another myth arises, gives new form to human hope, new courage to human effort, and after centuries of chaos builds another civilization."[10]
More than twenty years after his death, Durant's quote of "A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within"[11] appeared as the opening graphic of Mel Gibson's 2006 film Apocalypto.
On religion and evolution[link]
In an article in 1927, he wrote his thoughts about reconciling religion and Darwinism. An excerpt from the article:
- "As to harmonizing the theory of evolution with the Biblical account of creation, I do not believe it can be done, and I do not see why it should be. The story of Genesis is beautiful, and profoundly significant as symbolism: there is no good reason to torture it into conformity with modern theory."[12]
Selected books[link]
See a full bibliography at Will Durant Online [1].
- Durant, Will (1917) Philosophy and the Social Problem. New York: Macmillan.
- Durant, Will (1926) The Story of Philosophy. New York: Simon and Schuster.
- Durant, Will (1927) Transition. New York: Simon and Schuster.
- Durant, Will (1929) The Mansions of Philosophy. New York: Simon and Schuster. Later with slight revisions re-published as The Pleasures of Philosophy
- Durant, Will (1930) The Case for India. New York: Simon and Schuster.
- Durant, Will (1931) Adventures in Genius. New York: Simon and Schuster.
- Durant, Will (1931) Great Men of Literature, taken from Adventures in Genius. New York: Garden City Publishing Co.
- Durant, Will (1953) The Pleasures of Philosophy. New York: Simon and Schuster.
- Durant, Will & Durant, Ariel (1968) The Lessons of History. New York: Simon and Schuster.
- Durant, Will & Durant, Ariel (1970) Interpretations of Life. New York: Simon and Schuster.
- Durant, Will & Durant, Ariel (1977) A Dual Autobiography. New York: Simon and Schuster.
- Durant, Will (2001) Heroes of History: A Brief History of Civilization from Ancient Times to the Dawn of the Modern Age. New York: Simon and Schuster. Actually copyrighted by John Little and the Estate of Will Durant.
- Durant, Will (2002) The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time. New York: Simon and Schuster.
- Durant, Will (2003) An Invitation to Philosophy: Essays and Talks on the Love of Wisdom. Promethean Press.
- Durant, Will (2008) Adventures in Philosophy. Promethean Press.
=== The Story of Civilization
- Durant, Will (1939) The Life of Greece. New York: Simon and Schuster.
- Durant, Will (1944) Caesar and Christ. New York: Simon and Schuster.
- Durant, Will (1950) The Age of Faith. New York: Simon and Schuster.
- Durant, Will (1953) The Renaissance. New York: Simon and Schuster.
- Durant, Will (1957) The Reformation. New York: Simon and Schuster.
- Durant, Will, & Durant, Ariel (1961) The Age of Reason Begins. New York: Simon and Schuster.
- Durant, Will, & Durant, Ariel (1963) The Age of Louis XIV. New York: Simon and Schuster.
- Durant, Will, & Durant, Ariel (1965) The Age of Voltaire. New York: Simon and Schuster.
- Durant, Will, & Durant, Ariel (1967) Rousseau and Revolution. New York: Simon and Schuster.
- Durant, Will, & Durant, Ariel (1975) The Age of Napoleon. New York: Simon and Schuster.
See also[link]
References[link]
- ^ a b Rogers, Will (1966). Steven K. Gragert. ed. The Papers of Will Rogers. University of Oklahoma Press. pp. 393.
- ^ Durant, Will. "What is Philosophy?". http://www.willdurant.com/philosophy.htm.
- ^ Durant, Will (1935). Our Oriental Heritage. Simon & Schuster. pp. vii.
- ^ "Adventures in Philosophy" by Will Durant (with Intro by John Little) pp.1
- ^ "The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time" by Will Durant (with Intro by John Little) [in Intro]
- ^ a b c d Rubin, Joan Shelley. The Making of Middlebrow Culture, Univ. of North Carolina Press (1992)
- ^ A Symphony of History:Will Durant’s The Story of Civilization, The Objective Standard. By Dan Norton. Spring 2011. Vol. 6, No. 1. Third paragraph. Retrieved 29 May 2012.
- ^ http://ktwu.wuacc.edu/journeys/scripts/412b.html
- ^ Durant, Will. "Persia in the History of Civilization". Addressing 'Iran-America Society. Mazda Publishers, Inc.. http://www.mazdapublisher.com/Documents/Persian%20Civilization.pdf.
- ^ The Story of Civilization, V.1., 71. See also this article's Discussion page.
- ^ The Story of Civilization (Vol 3 Caesar And Christ. Epilogue—Why Rome fell): A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within. The essential causes of Rome's decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars.
- ^ Durant, Will. Popular Science, Oct. 1927
External links[link]
 |
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Will Durant |
- Will Durant Foundation
- Will Durant's list of One Hundred Best Books for an Education
- Internet Archive
- The Pulitzer Prizes: 1968
- "Durant, Will and Durant, Ariel." Encyclopædia Britannica from Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service. (Accessed May 14, 2005)
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| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Durant, Will |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | |
| Date of birth | November 5, 1885 |
| Place of birth | North Adams, Massachusetts |
| Date of death | November 7, 1981 |
| Place of death | Los Angeles, California |
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