Portal:Philosophy

The Philosophy Portal

A portal for Wikipedia's philosophy resources • 18,084 articles in English

Left to right: Plato, Kant, Nietzsche, Buddha, Confucius, Averroes

Philosophy (from Ancient Greek philosophía, lit. 'love of wisdom') is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, knowledge, mind, reason, language, and value. It is a rational and critical inquiry that reflects on its methods and assumptions.

Historically, many of the individual sciences, such as physics and psychology, formed part of philosophy. However, they are considered separate academic disciplines in the modern sense of the term. Influential traditions in the history of philosophy include Western, Arabic–Persian, Indian, and Chinese philosophy. Western philosophy originated in Ancient Greece and covers a wide area of philosophical subfields. A central topic in Arabic–Persian philosophy is the relation between reason and revelation. Indian philosophy combines the spiritual problem of how to reach enlightenment with the exploration of the nature of reality and the ways of arriving at knowledge. Chinese philosophy focuses principally on practical issues about right social conduct, government, and self-cultivation.

Major branches of philosophy are epistemology, ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Epistemology studies what knowledge is and how to acquire it. Ethics investigates moral principles and what constitutes right conduct. Logic is the study of correct reasoning and explores how good arguments can be distinguished from bad ones. Metaphysics examines the most general features of reality, existence, objects, and properties. Other subfields are aesthetics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, philosophy of history, and political philosophy. Within each branch, there are competing schools of philosophy that promote different principles, theories, or methods.

Philosophers use a great variety of methods to arrive at philosophical knowledge. They include conceptual analysis, reliance on common sense and intuitions, use of thought experiments, analysis of ordinary language, description of experience, and critical questioning. Many scientific academic disciplines have associated philosophical subfields, like philosophy of physics and philosophy of biology, examining their fundamental concepts, methods, assumptions and implications. Philosophy is related to and informs many other fields, such as law, business, and journalism, providing an interdisciplinary perspective and addressing their ethical questions. (Full article...)

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Featured articles are displayed here, which represent some of the best content on English Wikipedia.

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The tree of life as depicted by Ernst Haeckel in The Evolution of Man (1879) illustrates the 19th-century view of evolution as a progressive process leading towards man.

Evolutionary thought, the recognition that species change over time and the perceived understanding of how such processes work, has roots in antiquity. With the beginnings of modern biological taxonomy in the late 17th century, two opposed ideas influenced Western biological thinking: essentialism, the belief that every species has essential characteristics that are unalterable, a concept which had developed from medieval Aristotelian metaphysics, and that fit well with natural theology; and the development of the new anti-Aristotelian approach to science. Naturalists began to focus on the variability of species; the emergence of palaeontology with the concept of extinction further undermined static views of nature. In the early 19th century prior to Darwinism, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck proposed his theory of the transmutation of species, the first fully formed theory of evolution.

In 1858 Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace published a new evolutionary theory, explained in detail in Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859). Darwin's theory, originally called descent with modification, is known contemporarily as Darwinism or Darwinian theory. Unlike Lamarck, Darwin proposed common descent and a branching tree of life, meaning that two very different species could share a common ancestor. Darwin based his theory on the idea of natural selection: it synthesized a broad range of evidence from animal husbandry, biogeography, geology, morphology, and embryology. Debate over Darwin's work led to the rapid acceptance of the general concept of evolution, but the specific mechanism he proposed, natural selection, was not widely accepted until it was revived by developments in biology that occurred during the 1920s through the 1940s. Before that time most biologists regarded other factors as responsible for evolution. Alternatives to natural selection suggested during "the eclipse of Darwinism" (c. 1880 to 1920) included inheritance of acquired characteristics (neo-Lamarckism), an innate drive for change (orthogenesis), and sudden large mutations (saltationism). Mendelian genetics, a series of 19th-century experiments with pea plant variations rediscovered in 1900, was integrated with natural selection by Ronald Fisher, J. B. S. Haldane, and Sewall Wright during the 1910s to 1930s, and resulted in the founding of the new discipline of population genetics. During the 1930s and 1940s population genetics became integrated with other biological fields, resulting in a widely applicable theory of evolution that encompassed much of biology—the modern synthesis. (Full article...)
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First edition cover

Why Marx Was Right is a 2011 non-fiction book by the British academic Terry Eagleton about the 19th-century philosopher Karl Marx and the schools of thought, collectively known as Marxism, that arose from his work. Written for laypeople, Why Marx Was Right outlines ten objections to Marxism that they may hold and aims to refute each one in turn. These include arguments that Marxism is irrelevant owing to changing social classes in the modern world, that it is deterministic and utopian, and that Marxists oppose all reforms and believe in an authoritarian state.

In his counterarguments, Eagleton explains how class struggle is central to Marxism, and that history is seen as a progression of modes of production, like feudalism and capitalism, involving the materials, technology and social relations required to produce goods and services within the society. Under a capitalist economy, the working class, known as the proletariat, are those lacking significant autonomy over their labour conditions, and have no control over the means of production. Eagleton describes how revolutions could lead to a new mode of production—socialism—in which the working class have control, and an eventual communist society could make the state obsolete. He explores the failures of the Soviet Union and other Marxist–Leninist countries. (Full article...)
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Hand in c. 1910

Billings Learned Hand (/ˈlɜːrnɪd/ LURN-id; January 27, 1872 – August 18, 1961) was an American jurist, lawyer, and judicial philosopher. He served as a federal trial judge on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York from 1909 to 1924 and as a federal appellate judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 1924 to 1961.

Born and raised in Albany, New York, Hand majored in philosophy at Harvard College and graduated with honors from Harvard Law School. After a relatively undistinguished career as a lawyer in Albany and New York City, he was appointed at the age of 37 as a Manhattan federal district judge in 1909. The profession suited his detached and open-minded temperament, and his decisions soon won him a reputation for craftsmanship and authority. Between 1909 and 1914, under the influence of Herbert Croly's social theories, Hand supported New Nationalism. He ran unsuccessfully as the Progressive Party's candidate for chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals in 1913, but withdrew from active politics shortly afterwards. In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge elevated Hand to the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which he went on to lead as the senior circuit judge (later retitled chief judge) from 1939 until his semi-retirement in 1951. Scholars have recognized the Second Circuit under Hand as one of the finest appeals courts in American history. Friends and admirers often lobbied for Hand's promotion to the Supreme Court, but circumstances and his political past conspired against his appointment. (Full article...)
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Portrait, c. 1550

John Calvin (/ˈkælvɪn/; Middle French: Jehan Cauvin; French: Jean Calvin [ʒɑ̃ kalvɛ̃]; 10 July 1509 – 27 May 1564) was a French theologian, pastor and reformer in Geneva during the Protestant Reformation. He was the principal figure in the development of the system of Christian theology later called Calvinism, including its doctrines of predestination and of God's absolute sovereignty in the salvation of the human soul from death and eternal damnation. Calvinist doctrines were influenced by and elaborated upon Augustinian and other Christian traditions. Various Reformed Church movements, including Continental Reformed, Congregationalism, Presbyterianism, Waldensians, Baptist Reformed, Calvinist Methodism, and Reformed Anglican Churches, which look to Calvin as the chief expositor of their beliefs, have spread throughout the world.

Calvin was a dedicated polemicist and apologetic writer who generated much controversy. He also exchanged cordial and supportive letters with many reformers, including Philipp Melanchthon and Heinrich Bullinger. In addition to his seminal Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin wrote commentaries on most books of the Bible, confessional documents, and various other theological treatises. (Full article...)
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Title page from the first English edition of Part I

The Age of Reason; Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology is a work by English and American political activist Thomas Paine, arguing for the philosophical position of deism. It follows in the tradition of 18th-century British deism, and challenges institutionalized religion and the legitimacy of the Bible. It was published in three parts in 1794, 1795, and 1807.

It was a best-seller in the United States, where it caused a deistic revival. British audiences, fearing increased political radicalism as a result of the French Revolution, received it with more hostility. The Age of Reason presents common deistic arguments; for example, it highlights what Paine saw as corruption of the Christian Church and criticizes its efforts to acquire political power. Paine advocates reason in the place of revelation, leading him to reject miracles and to view the Bible as an ordinary piece of literature, rather than a divinely-inspired text. In The Age of Reason, he promotes natural religion and argues for the existence of a creator god. (Full article...)
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Putnam in 2006

Hilary Whitehall Putnam (/ˈpʌtnəm/; July 31, 1926 – March 13, 2016) was an American philosopher, mathematician, computer scientist, and figure in analytic philosophy in the second half of the 20th century. He contributed to the studies of philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of science. Outside philosophy, Putnam contributed to mathematics and computer science. Together with Martin Davis he developed the Davis–Putnam algorithm for the Boolean satisfiability problem and he helped demonstrate the unsolvability of Hilbert's tenth problem.

Putnam applied equal scrutiny to his own philosophical positions as to those of others, subjecting each position to rigorous analysis until he exposed its flaws. As a result, he acquired a reputation for frequently changing his positions. In philosophy of mind, Putnam argued against the type-identity of mental and physical states based on his hypothesis of the multiple realizability of the mental, and for the concept of functionalism, an influential theory regarding the mind–body problem. Putnam also originated the computational theory of mind. In philosophy of language, along with Saul Kripke and others, he developed the causal theory of reference, and formulated an original theory of meaning, introducing the notion of semantic externalism based on a thought experiment called Twin Earth. (Full article...)
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Augustine of Hippo (AD 354–430) as painted by Sandro Botticelli (c. 1445–1510). Augustine is credited with developing the first form of the theodicy now named for him.

The Augustinian theodicy, named for the 4th- and 5th-century theologian and philosopher Augustine of Hippo, is a type of Christian theodicy that developed in response to the evidential problem of evil. As such, it attempts to explain the probability of an omnipotent (all-powerful) and omnibenevolent (all-loving) God amid evidence of evil in the world. A number of variations of this kind of theodicy have been proposed throughout history; their similarities were first described by the 20th-century philosopher John Hick, who classified them as "Augustinian". They typically assert that God is perfectly (ideally) good, that he created the world out of nothing, and that evil is the result of humanity's original sin. The entry of evil into the world is generally explained as consequence of original sin and its continued presence due to humans' misuse of free will and concupiscence. God's goodness and benevolence, according to the Augustinian theodicy, remain perfect and without responsibility for evil or suffering.

Augustine of Hippo was the first to develop the theodicy. He rejected the idea that evil exists in itself, instead regarding it as a corruption of goodness, caused by humanity's abuse of free will. Augustine believed in the existence of a physical Hell as a punishment for sin, but argued that those who choose to accept the salvation of Jesus Christ will go to Heaven. In the 13th century, Thomas Aquinas – influenced by Augustine – proposed a similar theodicy based on the view that God is goodness and that there can be no evil in him. He believed that the existence of goodness allows evil to exist, through the fault of humans. Augustine also influenced John Calvin, who supported Augustine's view that evil is the result of free will and argued that sin corrupts humans, requiring God's grace to give moral guidance. (Full article...)
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Priestley, painted by James Sharples, c. 1797

Joseph Priestley (1733–1804) was a British natural philosopher, Dissenting clergyman, political theorist, theologian, and educator. He is best known for his discovery, simultaneously with Antoine Lavoisier, of oxygen gas.

A member of marginalized religious groups throughout his life and a proponent of what was called "rational Dissent," Priestley advocated religious toleration and equal rights for Dissenters. He argued for extensive civil rights in works such as the important Essay on the First Principles of Government, believing that individuals could bring about progress and eventually the Millennium; he was the foremost British expounder of providentialism. Priestley also made significant contributions to education, publishing, among other things, The Rudiments of English Grammar, a seminal work on English grammar. In his most lasting contributions to education, he argued for the benefits of a liberal arts education and of the value of the study of modern history. In his metaphysical works, Priestley "attempt[ed] to combine theism, materialism, and determinism," a project that has been called "audacious and original." (Full article...)
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The problem of religious language considers whether it is possible to talk about God meaningfully if the traditional conceptions of God as being incorporeal, infinite, and timeless, are accepted. Because these traditional conceptions of God make it difficult to describe God, religious language has the potential to be meaningless. Theories of religious language either attempt to demonstrate that such language is meaningless, or attempt to show how religious language can still be meaningful.

Often, religious language has been explained as via negativa, analogy, symbolism, or myth, each of which describes a way of talking about God in human terms. The via negativa is a way of referring to God according to what God is not; analogy uses human qualities as standards against which to compare divine qualities; symbolism is used non-literally to describe otherwise ineffable experiences; and a mythological interpretation of religion attempts to reveal fundamental truths behind religious stories. Alternative explanations of religious language cast it as having political, performative, or imperative functions. (Full article...)
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1897 illustration of La Peau de chagrin, drawn by Adrien Moreau and published by George Barrie & Son

La Peau de chagrin (French pronunciation: [la po də ʃaɡʁɛ̃], The Skin of Shagreen), known in English as The Magic Skin and The Wild Ass's Skin, is an 1831 novel by French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850). Set in early 19th-century Paris, it tells the story of a young man who finds a magic piece of shagreen (untanned skin from a wild ass) that fulfills his every desire. For each wish granted, however, the skin shrinks and consumes a portion of his physical energy. La Peau de chagrin belongs to the Études philosophiques group of Balzac's sequence of novels, La Comédie humaine.

Before the book was completed, Balzac created excitement about it by publishing a series of articles and story fragments in several Parisian journals. Although he was five months late in delivering the manuscript, he succeeded in generating sufficient interest that the novel sold out instantly upon its publication. A second edition, which included a series of twelve other "philosophical tales", was released one month later. (Full article...)
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Cover of the first edition

The Fountainhead is a 1943 novel by Russian-born American author Ayn Rand, her first major literary success. The novel's protagonist, Howard Roark, is an intransigent young architect who battles against conventional standards and refuses to compromise with an architectural establishment unwilling to accept innovation. Roark embodies what Rand believed to be the ideal man, and his struggle reflects Rand's belief that individualism is superior to collectivism.

Roark is opposed by what he calls "second-handers", who value conformity over independence and integrity. These include Roark's former classmate, Peter Keating, who succeeds by following popular styles, but turns to Roark for help with design problems. Ellsworth Toohey, a socialist architecture critic who uses his influence to promote his political and social agenda, tries to destroy Roark's career. Tabloid newspaper publisher Gail Wynand seeks to shape popular opinion; he befriends Roark, then betrays him when public opinion turns in a direction he cannot control. The novel's most controversial character is Roark's lover, Dominique Francon. She believes that non-conformity has no chance of winning, so she alternates between helping Roark and working to undermine him. (Full article...)
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Portrait, c. 1910, after 1620 original

Johannes Kepler (27 December 1571 – 15 November 1630) was a German polymath who was an astronomer, mathematician, astrologer, natural philosopher and music theorist. He is a key figure in the 17th-century Scientific Revolution, best known for his laws of planetary motion, and his books Astronomia nova, Harmonice Mundi, and Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae. The variety and impact of his work made Kepler one of the founders and fathers of modern astronomy, the scientific method, natural science, and modern science. He has been described as the "father of science fiction" for his novel Somnium.

Kepler was a mathematics teacher at a seminary school in Graz, where he became an associate of Prince Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg. Later he became an assistant to the astronomer Tycho Brahe in Prague, and eventually the imperial mathematician to Emperor Rudolf II and his two successors Matthias and Ferdinand II. He also taught mathematics in Linz, and was an adviser to General Wallenstein. (Full article...)
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Title page, 1798

Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman is Mary Wollstonecraft's unfinished novelistic sequel to her revolutionary political treatise A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). The Wrongs of Woman was published posthumously in 1798 by her husband, William Godwin, and is often considered her most radical feminist work.

Wollstonecraft's philosophical and gothic novel revolves around the story of a woman imprisoned in an insane asylum by her husband. It focuses on the societal rather than the individual "wrongs of woman" and criticizes what Wollstonecraft viewed as the patriarchal institution of marriage in eighteenth-century Britain and the legal system that protected it. However, the heroine's inability to relinquish her romantic fantasies also reveals women's collusion in their oppression through false and damaging sentimentalism. The novel pioneered the celebration of female sexuality and cross-class identification between women. Such themes, coupled with the publication of Godwin's scandalous Memoirs of Wollstonecraft's life, made the novel unpopular at the time it was published. (Full article...)
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Portrait c. 1772

Samuel Johnson (18 September [O.S. 7 September] 1709 – 13 December 1784), often called Dr. Johnson, was an English writer and polymath who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, literary critic, sermonist, biographer, editor, and lexicographer (creator of dictionaries). The work for which he is best known is his 42,733-entry Dictionary of the English Language (1755). For this and other contributions in and to the English language, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography has called him "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history".

Born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, he attended Pembroke College, Oxford, until lack of funds forced him to leave. After working as a teacher, he moved to London and began writing for The Gentleman's Magazine. Early works include the poem London (1738), the biography Life of Mr Richard Savage (1744), the poem The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and the play Irene (1749). After nine years' effort, Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language (1755) appeared and was acclaimed as "one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship". Later works included The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759) and The Plays of William Shakespeare (1765). In 1763, he befriended James Boswell, with whom he travelled to Scotland; Johnson described his travels in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775). Near the end of his life, he authored the voluminous and highly influential Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets (1779–1781), a series of biographies and critical appraisals of 52 poets of the 17th and 18th centuries. (Full article...)
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Anekāntavāda (Sanskrit: अनेकान्तवाद, "many-sidedness") is the Jain doctrine about metaphysical truths that emerged in ancient India. It states that the ultimate truth and reality is complex and has multiple aspects and viewpoints.

According to Jainism, no single, specific statement can describe the nature of existence and the absolute truth. This knowledge (Kevala Jnana), it adds, is comprehended only by the Arihants. Other beings and their statements about absolute truth are incomplete, and at best a partial truth. All knowledge claims, according to the anekāntavāda doctrine must be qualified in many ways, including being affirmed and denied. Anekāntavāda is a fundamental doctrine of Jainism. (Full article...)

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... that artist Tove Jansson based the children's book character Snufkin on a political philosopher whom she had dated?
... that physics, chemistry, and biology were all part of philosophy before they became separate disciplines?
... that although the philosophical study of well-being dates back millennia, empirical research has intensified since the second half of the 20th century?
... that Stellar Blade's Eve was described as "a woman born from South Korea's culture and philosophy" by The Washington Post?
... that the barracks at the Xifeng concentration camp were named for Confucian tenets such as righteousness and filial piety?
... that E. Graham Howe "introduced Eastern philosophy to psychotherapy in England"?
... that mathematician Grete Hermann wrote political philosophy articles for Der Funke and Sozialistische Warte under various pseudonyms during the German resistance to Nazism?
... that according to some metaphysicians, there are no relations?

Selected philosopher of the week

Roger Bacon (c.1214 – 1294), also known as Doctor Mirabilis (Latin: "astounding teacher"), was one of the most famous Franciscan friars of his, or, indeed, any time. He was an English philosopher who placed considerable emphasis on empiricism, and has been presented as one of the earliest advocates of the modern scientific method in the West; though later studies have emphasized his reliance on occult and alchemical traditions. He was intimately acquainted with the philosophical and scientific collections of the Arab world which, having conquered the ancient centers of knowledge of Syria and Egypt, controlled access to many works of antiquity.

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Selected article of the week

The dictatorship of the proletariat is a term employed by Karl Marx in his 1875 Critique of the Gotha Program that refers to a transition period between capitalist and communist society "in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat". The term refers to a concentration of power in which rule by the proletariat (working class) would supplant the current political situation controlled by the bourgeoisie (propertied class). It does not refer to the repressive situation associated with the contemporary meaning of the term "dictatorship."

Before 1875, Marx said little about what in practice would characterize a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” believing that planning in advance the details of a future socialist system constituted the fallacy of "utopian socialism." Thus, Marx used the term very infrequently.

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These are Good articles, which meet a core set of high editorial standards.

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A Jewish woman chased by men and youth during the pogrom

The Lviv pogroms were the consecutive pogroms and massacres of Jews in June and July 1941 in the city of Lwów in German-occupied Eastern Poland/Western Ukraine (now Lviv, Ukraine). The massacres were perpetrated by Ukrainian nationalists (specifically, the OUN), German death squads (Einsatzgruppen), and urban population from 30 June to 2 July, and from 25 to 29 July, during the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Thousands of Jews were killed both in the pogroms and in the Einsatzgruppen killings.

Ukrainian militia as well as Ukrainian residents and to a lower degree Poles targeted Jews in the first pogrom, which was triggered by the discovery of thousands of bodies in three Lviv prisons of victims of the Soviet NKVD prisoner massacres, which were widely blamed on "Jewish Bolsheviks". The subsequent massacres were directed by the Germans in the context of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. The pogroms have been widely debated in the historiography, including the extent to which Ukrainian nationalists played a central or complicit role. (Full article...)
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Werner Erhard: The Transformation of a Man, The Founding of est is a biography of Werner Erhard by philosophy professor William Warren Bartley, III. The book was published in 1978 by Clarkson Potter. Bartley was a graduate of Erhard Seminars Training and served on its advisory board. Erhard wrote a foreword to the book. The book's structure describes Erhard's education, transformation, reconnection with his family, and the theories of the est training.

The book went through five editions in its first year. Reviewers generally commented that the book was favorable to Erhard, and a number of critics felt that it was unduly so, or lacked objectivity, citing Bartley's close relationship to Erhard. Responses to the writing were mixed; while some reviewers found it well written and entertaining, others felt the tone was too slick, promotional, or hagiographic. (Full article...)
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Hortensius (Latin: [hɔrˈtẽːsi.ʊs]) or On Philosophy is a lost dialogue written by Marcus Tullius Cicero in the year 45 BC. The dialogue—which is named after Cicero's friendly rival and associate, the speaker and politician Quintus Hortensius Hortalus—took the form of a protreptic. In the work, Cicero, Hortensius, Quintus Lutatius Catulus, and Lucius Licinius Lucullus discuss the best use of one's leisure time. At the conclusion of the work, Cicero argues that the pursuit of philosophy is the most important endeavor.

While the dialogue was extremely popular in Classical Antiquity, the dialogue only survived into the sixth century AD before it was lost. Today, it is extant in the fragments preserved by the prose writer Martianus Capella, the grammarians Maurus Servius Honoratus and Nonius Marcellus, the early Christian author Lactantius, and the Church Father Augustine of Hippo (the latter of whom explicitly credits the Hortensius with encouraging him to study the tenets of philosophy). (Full article...)
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The Bhikshuka Upanishad describes Hindu mendicants who seek spiritual liberation through the practise of yoga

The Bhikshuka Upanishad (Sanskrit: भिक्षुक उपनिषत्, IAST: Bhikṣuka Upaniṣad), also known as Bhikshukopanishad, is one of the minor Upanishads of Hinduism and is written in Sanskrit.

The Upanishad describes four kinds of sannyasins (Hindu monks), their eating habits and lifestyle. Yoga is the path of spiritual liberation for all four. Of these, the Paramahamsa monks are discussed in this text at greater length, and described as loners who are patient with everyone, free from dualism in their thoughts, and who meditate on their soul and the Brahman. (Full article...)
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Title page of the first collection of The Federalist (1788). This specific volume was a gift from Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, Alexander Hamilton's wife, to her sister Angelica

The Federalist is a collection of 85 articles and essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay under the collective pseudonym Publius to promote the ratification of the Constitution of the United States. The papers themselves came to be known collectively as the Federalist Papers beginning in the nineteenth century.

The first seventy-seven of these essays were published serially in the Independent Journal, the New York Packet, and the Daily Advertiser between October 1787 and April 1788. A compilation of these 77 essays and eight others were published in two volumes as The Federalist: A Collection of Essays, Written in Favour of the New Constitution, as Agreed upon by the Federal Convention, September 17, 1787, by publishing firm J. & A. McLean in March and May 1788. The last eight papers (Nos. 78–85) were republished in the New York newspapers between June 14 and August 16, 1788. (Full article...)
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Dreamtime: Concerning the Boundary between Wilderness and Civilization is an anthropological and philosophical study of the altered states of consciousness found in shamanism and European witchcraft written by German anthropologist Hans Peter Duerr. First published in 1978 by Syndikat Autoren-und Verlagsgesellschaft under the German title of Traumzeit: Über die Grenze zwischen Wildnis und Zivilisation, it was translated into English by the Hungarian-American anthropologist Felicitas Goodman and published by Basil Blackwell in 1985.

Dreamtime opens with the premise that many of those accused of witchcraft in early modern Christendom had been undergoing visionary journeys with the aid of a hallucinogenic salve which was suppressed by the Christian authorities. Duerr argues that this salve had been a part of the nocturnal visionary traditions associated with the goddess Diana, and he attempts to trace their origins back to the ancient world, before looking at goddesses associated with the wilderness and arguing that in various goddess-centred cultures, the cave represented a symbolic vagina and was used for birth rituals. (Full article...)
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Historia animalium et al., Constantinople, 12th century (Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, pluteo 87.4)

History of Animals (Ancient Greek: Τῶν περὶ τὰ ζῷα ἱστοριῶν, Ton peri ta zoia historion, "Inquiries on Animals"; Latin: Historia Animalium, "History of Animals") is one of the major texts on biology by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. It was written in sometime between the mid-fourth century BC and Aristotle's death in 322 BC.

Generally seen as a pioneering work of zoology, Aristotle frames his text by explaining that he is investigating the what (the existing facts about animals) prior to establishing the why (the causes of these characteristics). The book is thus an attempt to apply philosophy to part of the natural world. Throughout the work, Aristotle seeks to identify differences, both between individuals and between groups. A group is established when it is seen that all members have the same set of distinguishing features; for example, that all birds have feathers, wings, and beaks. This relationship between the birds and their features is recognized as a universal. (Full article...)
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The Iranian Enlightenment (Persian: روشنگری ایرانی), sometimes called the first generation of intellectual movements in Iran (Persian: نسل اول جنبش های روشنفکری در ایران), brought new ideas into traditional Iranian society from the mid-19th to the early 20th centuries. During the Qajar era, and especially after Iran's defeat in the last Russo-Persian War (1826–1828), cultural exchanges led to the formation of new ideas among the educated class of Iran. The establishment of Dar al-Fonun, the first modern university in Iran and the arrival of foreign professors, caused the thoughts of European thinkers to enter Iran, followed by the first signs of enlightenment and intellectual movements in Iran.

During this period, intellectual groups were formed in secret societies and secret associations. These secret societies included Mirza Malkam Khan's Faramosh Khaneh (based on Masonic lodges), Anjoman-e Okhovat, Society of Humanity and Mokhadarat Vatan Association. These groups spread their ideas by distributing leaflets and newspapers. These secret societies stressed the need to reform the land and administrative system and reduce the role of the clergy in society, as well as to limit the rulers within the framework of the law. (Full article...)
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The Royal Commission on Animal Magnetism involved two entirely separate and independent French Royal Commissions, each appointed by Louis XVI in 1784, that were conducted simultaneously by a committee composed of four physicians from the Paris Faculty of Medicine (Faculté de médecine de Paris) and five scientists from the Royal Academy of Sciences (Académie des sciences) (the "Franklin Commission", named for Benjamin Franklin), and a second committee composed of five physicians from the Royal Society of Medicine (Société Royale de Médecine) (the "Society Commission").

Each Commission took five months to complete its investigations. The "Franklin" Report was presented to the King on 11 August 1784 – and was immediately published and very widely circulated throughout France and neighbouring countries – and the "Society" Report was presented to the King five days later on 16 August 1784. (Full article...)
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Einstein in 1947

Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist best known for developing the theory of relativity. Einstein also made important contributions to quantum theory. His mass–energy equivalence formula $E = mc 2$ , which arises from special relativity, has been called "the world's most famous equation". He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for "his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect".

Born as a subject to the Kingdom of Württemberg, part of the German Empire, Einstein moved to Switzerland in 1895, forsaking his citizenship the following year. In 1896, at the age of seventeen, he enrolled in the mathematics and physics teaching diploma program at the Swiss federal polytechnic school in Zurich, graduating in 1900. He acquired Swiss citizenship a year later, which he kept for the rest of his life, and afterwards secured a permanent position at the Swiss Patent Office in Bern. In 1905, he submitted a successful PhD dissertation to the University of Zurich. In 1914, he moved to Berlin to join the Prussian Academy of Sciences and the Humboldt University of Berlin, becoming director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics in 1917; he also became a Prussian and consequently also German citizen again. In 1933, while Einstein was visiting the United States, Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. Horrified by the Nazi persecution of his fellow Jews, he decided to remain in the US, and was granted American citizenship in 1940. On the eve of World War II, he endorsed a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt alerting him to the potential German nuclear weapons program and recommending that the US begin similar research, later carried out as the Manhattan Project. (Full article...)
Image 11

Mahadevi or Durga

The Devi Upanishad (Sanskrit:देवी उपनिषत्), is one of the minor Upanishads of Hinduism and a text composed in Sanskrit. It is one of the 19 Upanishads attached to the Atharvaveda, and is classified as one of the eight Shakta Upanishads. It is, as an Upanishad, a part of the corpus of Vedanta literature collection that present the philosophical concepts of Hinduism.

The text was likely composed between 9th- to 14th-centuries CE. It refers to Mahadevi as representing all goddesses. The Devi Upanishad is part of the five Atharvashiras Upanishads important to Tantra and Shakta philosophy traditions. (Full article...)
Image 12

Stuckism (/ˈstʌkɪzəm/) is an international art movement founded in 1999 by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson to promote figurative painting as opposed to conceptual art. By May 2017, the initial group of 13 British artists had expanded to 236 groups in 52 countries.

Childish and Thomson have issued several manifestos. The first one was The Stuckists, consisting of 20 points starting with "Stuckism is a quest for authenticity". Remodernism, the other well-known manifesto of the movement, opposes the deconstruction and irony of postmodernism in favor of what Stuckists refer to as the "spirituality" of the artist. In another manifesto they define themselves as anti-anti-art which is against anti-art and for what they consider conventional art. (Full article...)
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The Kingdom of This World (Spanish: El reino de este mundo) is a novel by Cuban author Alejo Carpentier, published in 1949 in his native Spanish and first translated into English in 1957. A work of historical fiction, it tells the story of Haiti before, during, and after the Haitian Revolution led by Toussaint Louverture, as seen by its central character, Ti Noel, who serves as the novel's connecting thread. Carpentier's work has been influenced by his multi-cultural experience and his passion for the arts, as well as by authors such as Miguel de Cervantes. The novel stems from the author's desire to retrace the roots and history of the New World, and is embedded with what Carpentier calls "lo real maravilloso" or "the marvelous real"—a concept he introduced to the world of literature (not to be confused with magical realism).

Throughout the novel, varying perceptions of reality that arise due to cultural differences between its characters are emphasized and contrasted. Carpentier explores hybridization, nature, voodoo, ethnicity, history and destiny, confusion, violence, and sexuality in a style that blends history with fiction and uses repetition to emphasize the cyclical nature of events. The novel was largely well-received with much attention paid to Carpentier's inclusion of magic realism and The Kingdom of This World has been described as an important work in the development of this genre in Caribbean and Latin American literature. However, some technical aspects of his style have been ignored by the academic community, and the novel's narrative organization has been criticized. (Full article...)
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Portrait in the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella, c. 1366

Ibn Rushd (14 April 1126 – 11 December 1198), Latinized as Averroes, was an Andalusian polymath and jurist who was proficient in a variety of intellectual fields, including philosophy, theology, medicine, astronomy, physics, psychology, mathematics, neurology, Islamic jurisprudence and law, and linguistics. The author of more than 100 books and treatises, his philosophical works include numerous commentaries on Aristotle, for which he was known in the Western world as "The Commentator" and "Father of Rationalism".

Averroes was a strong proponent of Aristotelianism; he attempted to restore what he considered the original teachings of Aristotle and opposed the Neoplatonist tendencies of earlier Muslim thinkers, such as al-Farabi and Avicenna. He also defended the pursuit of philosophy against criticism by Ash'ari theologians such as Al-Ghazali. Averroes argued that philosophy was permissible in Islam and even compulsory among certain elites. He also argued scriptural text should be interpreted allegorically if it appeared to contradict conclusions reached by reason and philosophy. In Islamic jurisprudence, he wrote the Bidāyat al-Mujtahid on the differences between Islamic schools of law and the principles that caused their differences. In medicine, he proposed a new theory of stroke, described the signs and symptoms of Parkinson's disease for the first time, and might have been the first to identify the retina as the part of the eye responsible for sensing light. His medical book Al-Kulliyat fi al-Tibb, translated into Latin and known as the Colliget, became a textbook in Europe for centuries. (Full article...)

More good articles

General images - load new batch

The following are images from various philosophy-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Fukuzawa Yukichi (1862) a key civil rights activist and liberal thinker (from Eastern philosophy)
Image 2Bronze statue of Giordano Bruno by Ettore Ferrari, Campo de' Fiori, Rome (from Western philosophy)
Image 3Sigmund Freud by Max Halberstadt, c. 1921 (from Western philosophy)
Image 4William James in 1906 (from Western philosophy)
Image 5Bertrand Russell (from Western philosophy)
Image 6Erasmus is Credited as the Prince of the Humanists (from Western philosophy)
Image 7Portrait of John Locke, by Sir Godfrey Kneller, 1697 (from Western philosophy)
Image 8The Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, embroidery, 1860–1880 (from Eastern philosophy)
Image 9Gottlob Frege, c. 1905 (from Western philosophy)
Image 10Adi Shankara (8th century CE) the main exponent of Advaita Vedānta (from Eastern philosophy)
Image 11Portrait of David Hume, by Allan Ramsay, 1754 (from Western philosophy)
Image 12Abbo of Fleury (from Medieval philosophy)
Image 13Map of Alexander the Great's empire and the route he and Pyrrho of Elis took to India (from Western philosophy)
Image 14Portrait of Immanuel Kant, c. 1790 (from Western philosophy)
Image 15Ferdinand de Saussure (from Western philosophy)
Image 16From left to right: Virchand Gandhi, Anagarika Dharmapala, Swami Vivekananda, G. Bonet Maury. Parliament of World Religions, 1893 (from Eastern philosophy)
Image 17Edmund Husserl, in the 1910s (from Western philosophy)
Image 18Pyrrho of Elis, marble head, Roman copy, Archaeological Museum of Corfu (from Western philosophy)
Image 19Friedrich Nietzsche, photograph by Friedrich Hartmann, c. 1875 (from Western philosophy)
Image 20Aristotle in The School of Athens, by Raphael (from Western philosophy)
Image 21Confucius (from Eastern philosophy)
Image 22Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, 1695 (from Western philosophy)
Image 23Avicenna (from Medieval philosophy)
Image 24Martin Heidegger (from Western philosophy)
Image 25Ionia, source of early Greek philosophy, in western Asia Minor (from Western philosophy)
Image 26Four Greek philosophers: Socrates, Antisthenes, Chrysippos, Epicurus; British Museum (from Ancient Greek philosophy)
Image 27Xiong Shili circa 1960 (from Eastern philosophy)
Image 28Portrait of René Descartes, after Frans Hals, second half of 17th century (from Western philosophy)
Image 29St. Anselm of Canterbury is credited as the founder of scholasticism. (from Western philosophy)
Image 30Søren Kierkegaard, sketch by Niels Christian Kierkegaard, c. 1840 (from Western philosophy)
Image 31Bust of Socrates, Roman copy after a Greek original from the 4th century BC (from Western philosophy)
Image 32The Buddhist Nalanda university and monastery was a major center of learning in India from the 5th century CE to c. 1200. (from Eastern philosophy)
Image 33Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, steel engraving, after 1828 (from Western philosophy)
Image 34Valluvar, the Tamil philosopher of the post-Sangam era (from Eastern philosophy)
Image 35Patricia Churchland, 2005 (from Western philosophy)
Image 36Hu Shih and DT Suzuki during his visit to China in 1934 (from Eastern philosophy)
Image 37Saint Augustine of Hippo (from Western philosophy)
Image 38The philosopher Pyrrho of Elis, in an anecdote taken from Sextus Empiricus' Outlines of Pyrrhonism
(upper)PIRRHO • HELIENSIS •
PLISTARCHI • FILIVS
translation (from Latin): Pyrrho • Greek • Son of Plistarchus

(middle)OPORTERE • SAPIENTEM
HANC ILLIVS IMITARI
SECVRITATEMtranslation (from Latin): It is right wisdom then that all imitate this security (Pyrrho pointing at a peaceful pig munching his food)

(lower)Whoever wants to apply the real wisdom, shall not mind trepidation and misery
(from Ancient Greek philosophy)
Image 39Portrait by Philippe de Champaigne, 17th century (from Medieval philosophy)

Selected pictures

Image 1Niels Bohr (1885–1962) was a Danish physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. Bohr was also a philosopher and a promoter of scientific research.
Image 2The center third of Education (1890), a stained glass window by Louis Comfort Tiffany and Tiffany Studios, located in Linsly-Chittenden Hall at Yale University. It depicts Science (personified by Devotion, Labor, Truth, Research and Intuition) and Religion (personified by Purity, Faith, Hope, Reverence and Inspiration) in harmony, presided over by the central personification of "Light·Love·Life".
Image 3Lady Dorothy Browne and Sir Thomas Browne is an oil on panel painting attributed to the English artist Joan Carlile, and probably completed between 1641 and 1650. The painting depicts English physician Thomas Browne and his wife Dorothy.
Image 4Jane Addams (1860–1935) was an American settlement activist, reformer, social worker, sociologist, public administrator and author. She was a notable figure in the history of social work and women's suffrage in the United States and an advocate for world peace.
Image 5Adam Smith (baptised 16 June 1723 – died 17 July 1790 [OS: 5 June 1723 – 17 July 1790]) was a Scottish moral philosopher and a pioneer of political economics. One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. The latter, usually abbreviated as The Wealth of Nations, is considered his magnum opus and the first modern work of economics. Smith is widely cited as the father of modern economics.
Image 6Plato (left) and Aristotle (right), a detail of The School of Athens, a fresco by Raphael. Aristotle gestures to the earth, representing his belief in knowledge through empirical observation and experience, while holding a copy of his Nicomachean Ethics in his hand, whilst Plato gestures to the heavens, representing his belief in The Forms.
Image 7Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) was a German poet, philosopher, physician, historian and playwright.
Image 8Voltairine de Cleyre (1866–1912) was an American anarchist known for being a prolific writer and speaker who opposed state power, the capitalism she saw as interconnected with it, and marriage, and the domination of religion over sexuality and women's lives. She is often characterized as a major early feminist because of her views.
Image 9Philosophy, an 1896 mural by Robert Lewis Reid in the North Corridor on the Second Floor of the Library of Congress Thomas Jefferson Building, Washington, D.C.. The caption underneath reads: "HOW CHARMING IS DIVINE PHILOSOPHY."
Image 10A statue of peripatetic philosopher and botanist Theophrastus at the Palermo Botanical Gardens.
Image 11Painting of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz by Christoph Bernhard Francke, Braunschweig, Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, 1700.
Image 12Oscar Wilde reclining with Poems, by Napoleon Sarony, in New York in 1882. Wilde often liked to appear idle, though in fact he worked hard; by the late 1880s he was a father, an editor, and a writer.
Image 13Leo Tolstoy in 1897. Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time.
Image 14Carl von Linné, Alexander Roslin, 1775 (oil on canvas, Gripsholm Castle). Linnaeus was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming organisms. He is known as the "father of modern taxonomy".
Image 15The House Builders (Portraits of Sir W.E. & The Hon. Lady Welby-Gregory), an 1880 painting by Frank Dicksee
Image 16The statue of Immanuel Kant in front of the Immanuel Kant State University of Russia in Kaliningrad. The statue was made by notable sculptor Christian Daniel Rauch and unveiled in 1864. The statue was destroyed in 1945, but was remoulded in 1992 on the initiative of Marion Dönhoff.
Image 17Umberto Eco (1932–2016) was an Italian novelist, literary critic, philosopher, semiotician, and university professor. He is widely known for his 1980 novel Il nome della rosa (The Name of the Rose), a historical mystery combining semiotics in fiction with biblical analysis, medieval studies, and literary theory.

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Academic Branches of Philosophy

Philosophy ponders the most fundamental questions humankind has been able to ask. These are increasingly numerous and over time they have been arranged into the overlapping branches of the philosophy tree:

Aesthetics: What is art? What is beauty? Is there a standard of taste? Is art meaningful? If so, what does it mean? What is good art? Is art for the purpose of an end, or is "art for art's sake?" What connects us to art? How does art affect us? Is some art unethical? Can art corrupt or elevate societies?
Epistemology: What are the nature and limits of knowledge? What is more fundamental to human existence, knowing (epistemology) or being (ontology)? How do we come to know what we know? What are the limits and scope of knowledge? How can we know that there are other minds (if we can)? How can we know that there is an external world (if we can)? How can we prove our answers? What is a true statement?
Ethics: Is there a difference between ethically right and wrong actions (or values, or institutions)? If so, what is that difference? Which actions are right, and which wrong? Do divine commands make right acts right, or is their rightness based on something else? Are there standards of rightness that are absolute, or are all such standards relative to particular cultures? How should I live? What is happiness?
Logic: What makes a good argument? How can I think critically about complicated arguments? What makes for good thinking? When can I say that something just does not make sense? Where is the origin of logic?
Metaphysics: What sorts of things exist? What is the nature of those things? Do some things exist independently of our perception? What is the nature of space and time? What is the relationship of the mind to the body? What is it to be a person? What is it to be conscious? Do gods exist?
Political philosophy: Are political institutions and their exercise of power justified? What is justice? Is there a 'proper' role and scope of government? Is democracy the best form of governance? Is governance ethically justifiable? Should a state be allowed? Should a state be able to promote the norms and values of a certain moral or religious doctrine? Are states allowed to go to war? Do states have duties against inhabitants of other states?

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