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Hutcheson, Francis
from Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(2013-10-12 12:37)
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Francis Hutcheson (1694-1745) Francis Hutcheson was an eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher whose meticulous writings and activities influenced life in Scotland, Great Britain, Europe, and even the newly formed North American colonies. For historians and political scientists, the emphasis has been on his theories of liberalism and political rights; for philosophers and psychologists, Hutcheson’s importance comes from […]
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Boundary
from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(2013-10-11 13:18)
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[Revised entry by Achille Varzi on October 10, 2013.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography]
We think of a boundary whenever we think of an entity demarcated from its surroundings. There is a boundary (a line) separating Maryland and Pennsylvania. There is a boundary (a circle) isolating the interior of a disc from its exterior. There is a boundary (a surface) enclosing the bulk of this apple. Sometimes the exact location of a boundary is unclear or otherwise controversial (as when you try to trace out the...
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Pragmatism
from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(2013-10-8 11:03)
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[Revised entry by Christopher Hookway on October 7, 2013.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography]
Pragmatism was a philosophical tradition that originated in the United States around 1870. The most important of the 'classical pragmatists' were Charles Sanders Peirce (1839 - 1914), William James (1842 - 1910) and John Dewey (1859 - 1952). The influence of pragmatism declined during the first two thirds of the twentieth century, but it has undergone a revival since the 1970s with...
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Spinoza's Political Philosophy
from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(2013-10-8 11:02)
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[Revised entry by Justin Steinberg on October 7, 2013.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography]
At least in anglophone countries, Spinoza's reputation as a political thinker is eclipsed by his reputation as a rationalist metaphysician. Nevertheless, Spinoza was a penetrating political theorist whose writings have enduring significance. In his two political treatises, Spinoza advances a number of forceful and original arguments in defense of democratic governance, freedom of thought and expression, and the subordination of religion to the state. On the...
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Nicolas Malebranche
from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(2013-10-8 10:44)
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[Revised entry by Tad Schmaltz on October 7, 2013.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography]
The French Cartesian Nicolas Malebranche was hailed by his contemporary, Pierre Bayle, as "the premier philosopher of our age." Over the course of his philosophical career, Malebranche published major works on metaphysics, theology, and ethics, as well as studies of optics, the laws of motion and the nature of color. He is known principally for offering a highly original synthesis of the views...
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Emergence
from Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(2013-10-5 13:30)
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Emergence If we were pressed to give a definition of emergence, we could say that a property is emergent if it is a novel property of a system or an entity that arises when that system or entity has reached a certain level of complexity and that, even though it exists only insofar as the […]
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The Principle of Beneficence in Applied Ethics
from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(2013-10-4 8:50)
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[Revised entry by Tom Beauchamp on October 3, 2013.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography]
Beneficent actions and motives have traditionally occupied a central place in morality. Common examples today are found in social welfare programs, scholarships for needy and meritorious students, communal support of health-related research, policies to improve the welfare of animals, philanthropy, disaster relief, programs to benefit children and the incompetent, and preferential hiring and admission policies....
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Infinite
from Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(2013-10-4 8:04)
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The Infinite Working with the infinite is tricky business. Zeno’s paradoxes first alerted philosophers to this in 450 B.C.E. when he argued that a fast runner such as Achilles has an infinite number of places to reach during the pursuit of a slower runner. Since then, there has been a struggle to understand how to […]
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Greek Sources in Arabic and Islamic Philosophy
from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(2013-10-3 12:44)
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[Revised entry by Cristina D'Ancona on October 2, 2013.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography]
To some extent, scholars disagree about the role of the Greek sources in Arabic and Islamic philosophy (henceforth falsafa, the Arabic loan word for pilosopίa).[1] While acknowledging the existence of a Greek heritage, those who consider the Qur'an and the Islamic tradition as the main source...
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Perfect Goodness
from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(2013-10-2 8:51)
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[New Entry by Mark Murphy on October 1, 2013.]
Reflection on perfect goodness is most commonly carried out as part of the project of philosophical theology. One prominent methodological strand of philosophical theology is perfect being theology, in which the nature of God is made more explicit by identifying God as an absolutely perfect being and working out what features an absolutely perfect being must exhibit (Morris 1989c; Rogers...
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