Portrait of the Zoroastrian prophet Zarathustra

Zoroaster

Who is Zoroaster? Zoroaster also known as Zarathustra (Zarathushtra Spitama or Ashu Zarathushtra, زرتشت‎) was an ancient Iranian spiritual leader who founded what is now known as Zoroastrianism. His teachings challenged the existing traditions of the Indo-Iranian religion and inaugurated a movement that eventually became the dominant religion in Ancient Persia. He was...

Sir Francis Bacon, "Knowledge is Power"

Francis Bacon

Who Is Francis Bacon? Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban, PCQC (22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626) was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and as Lord Chancellor of England. His works are credited with developing the scientific method and remained influential through the scientific revolution. Bacon has been called the father of empiricism. His...

The philosopher Pyrrho of Elis, in an anecdote taken from Sextus Empiricus' Outlines of Pyrrhonism

Ancient Greek Philosophy

What Is Ancient Greek Philosophy? Ancient Greek philosophy arose in the 6th century BC and continued throughout the Hellenistic period and the period in which Greece and most Greek-inhabited lands were part of the Roman Empire. Philosophy was used to make sense out of the world in a non-religious way....

Mencius

Mencius

Who Is Mencius? Mencius or Mengzi (372–289 BC or 385–303 or 302BC) was a Chinese Confucian philosopher who has often been described as the “second Sage“, that is after only Confucius himself. Living during the Warring States period, he is said to have spent much of his life travelling around China offering...

Al-Tafsir al-Kabir li Imam al-Fakhr al-Razi

Fakhr al-Din al-Razi

Who Is Fakhr al-Din al-Razi? Fakhr al-Din al-Razi or Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī or Fakhruddin Razi (فخر الدين رازي‎) was an Iranian Sunni Muslim theologian and philosopher He was born in 1149 in Rey (in modern-day Iran), and died in 1209 in Herat (in modern-day Afghanistan). He also wrote on medicine, physics,...

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Peace Plans of Rousseau, Bentham, and Kant

Peace Plans of Rousseau, Bentham, and Kant This article covers The Peace Plans of Rousseau, Bentham, and Kant Conscience is the voice of the soul. Jean-Jacques Rousseau Firmly convinced as I am that nothing on this earth is worth purchase at the price of human blood, and that there is...

An early Pascaline on display at the Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris

Blaise Pascal

Who Is Blaise Pascal? Blaise Pascal (19 June 1623 – 19 August 1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Catholic theologian. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a tax collector in Rouen. Pascal’s earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where...

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Pragmatism

What Is Pragmatism? Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that began in the United States around 1870. Its origins are often attributed to the philosophers Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. Peirce later described it in his pragmatic maxim: “Consider the practical effects of the objects of your conception....

Empiricism

Empiricism

What Is Empiricism? In philosophy, empiricism is a theory that states that Empiricism comes only or primarily from sensory experience. It is one of several views of epistemology, the study of human knowledge, along with empiricism, knowledge, epistemology, the study of human knowledge, rationalism, skepticism, empiricists, philosophy of science, empirical evidence, philosophy,...

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Instrumentalism

What Is Instrumentalism? In philosophy of science and in epistemology, instrumentalism is a methodological view that ideas are useful instruments, and that the worth of an idea is based on how effective it is in explaining and predicting phenomena. Instrumentalism is a pragmatic philosophy of John Dewey that thought is an...

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Medieval Philosophy

What Is Medieval Philosophy? Medieval philosophy is the philosophy that existed through the Middle Ages, the period roughly extending from the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century to the Renaissance in the 15th century. Medieval philosophy, understood as a project of independent philosophical inquiry, began in Baghdad, in the middle of the 8th century, and...

The School of Athens (1509–1511), Raphael

Renaissance Philosophy

What Is Renaissance Philosophy? The designation “Renaissance philosophy” is used by scholars of intellectual history to refer to the thought of the period running in Europe roughly between 1355 and 1650 (the dates shift forward for central and northern Europe and for areas such as Spanish America, India, Japan, and China under...

Flying Over Istanbul and the Galata Tower on the Magic Carpet from the 1001 Nights, Turkish miniature, 19th C. Photo by Rex

Early Islamic Philosophy

What Is Early Islamic Philosophy? Early Islamic philosophy or classical Islamic philosophy is a period of intense philosophical development beginning in the 2nd century AH of the Islamic calendar (early 9th century CE) and lasting until the 6th century AH (late 12th century CE). The period is known as the Islamic Golden Age,...

Albert Camus

Albert Camus

Who Is Albert Camus? Albert Camus (7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French philosopher, author, and journalist. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44 in 1957, the second youngest recipient in history. His works include The Stranger, The Plague, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Fall, and The Rebel. Camus...

From the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

Omar Khayyam

Who Is Omar Khayyam? Omar Khayyam (عمر خیّام‎, 18 May 1048 – 4 December 1131) was a Persian polymath, mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, and poet. He was born in Nishapur, in northeastern Iran, and spent most of his life near the court of the Karakhanid and Seljuq rulers in the period which witnessed the First Crusade....

Bertrand Arthur William Russell

Bertrand Russell

Who Is Bertrand Russell? Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, essayist, social critic, political activist, and Nobel laureate. At various points in his life, Russell considered himself a liberal, a socialist and a pacifist, although he also confessed...

Shahab al-Din Yahya ibn Habash Suhrawardi

Shahab al-Din Yahya ibn Habash Suhrawardi

Shahab al-Din Yahya ibn Habash Suhrawardi “Shahāb ad-Dīn” Yahya ibn Habash Suhrawardī (شهاب‌الدین سهروردی‎, also known as Sohrevardi) (1154-1191) was a Persian philosopher and founder of the Iranian school of Illuminationism, an important school in Islamic philosophy that drew upon Zoroastrian and Platonic ideas. The “light” in his “Philosophy of Illumination” is a divine and metaphysical...

Seville, where Ibn Arabi spent most of his life and education

Ibn Arabi

Who Is Ibn Arabi? Ibn ʿArabi (26 July 1165 – 16 November 1240) was an Andalusian Muslim scholar, mystic, poet, and philosopher, whose works have grown to be very influential beyond the Muslim world. Of the over 800 works which are attributed to him, 100 survive in the original manuscript....

Life Suicide Leaving Reaching Careless Risk

Leap Of Faith

What Is Leap Of Faith? A leap of faith, in its most commonly used meaning, is the act of believing in or accepting something outside the boundaries of reason. Overview Jumping to conclusions (officially the jumping conclusion bias, often abbreviated as JTC, and also referred to as the inference-observation confusion) is a psychological term referring...

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German Idealism

What Is German Idealism? German idealism was a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with Romanticism and the revolutionary politics of the Enlightenment. The best-known thinkers in the...