The Latin cogito, ergo sum, usually translated into English as "I think, therefore I am", is the "first principle" of René Descartes's philosophy. He originally published it in French as je pense, donc je suis in his 1637 Discourse on the Method, so as to reach a wider audience than Latin would have allowed. It later appeared in Latin in his Principles of Philosophy, and a similar phrase also featured prominently in his Meditations on First Philosophy. The dictum is also sometimes referred to as the cogito. As Descartes explained in a margin note, "we cannot doubt of our existence while we doubt." In the posthumously published The Search for Truth by Natural Light, he expressed this insight as dubito, ergo sum, vel, quod idem est, cogito, ergo sum. Antoine Léonard Thomas, in a 1765 essay in honor of Descartes presented it as dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum.
Jaime Luciano Balmes y Urpiá was a Spanish philosopher, theologian, Catholic apologist, sociologist and political writer. Familiar with the doctrine of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Balmes was an original philosopher who did not belong to any particular school or stream, and was called by Pius XII the Prince of Modern Apologetics.
Analytic philosophy is a branch and tradition of philosophy using analysis, popular in the Western world and particularly the Anglosphere, which began around the turn of the 20th century in the contemporary era in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Scandinavia, and continues today. Analytic philosophy is often contrasted with continental philosophy, coined as a catch-all term for other methods prominent in Europe.
An unobservable is an entity whose existence, nature, properties, qualities or relations are not directly observable by humans. In philosophy of science, typical examples of "unobservables" are the force of gravity, causation and beliefs or desires. The distinction between observable and unobservable plays a central role in Immanuel Kant's distinction between noumena and phenomena as well as in John Locke's distinction between primary and secondary qualities. The theory that unobservables posited by scientific theories exist is referred to as scientific realism. It contrasts with instrumentalism, which asserts that we should withhold ontological commitments to unobservables even though it is useful for scientific theories to refer to them. There is considerable disagreement about which objects should be classified as unobservable, for example, whether bacteria studied using microscopes or positrons studied using cloud chambers count as unobservable. Different notions of unobservability have been formulated corresponding to different types of obstacles to their observation.
Applied philosophy is a branch of philosophy that studies philosophical problems of practical concern. The topic covers a broad spectrum of issues in environment, medicine, science, engineering, policy, law, politics, economics and education. The term was popularised in 1982 by the founding of the Society for Applied Philosophy by Brenda Almond, and its subsequent journal publication Journal of Applied Philosophy edited by Elizabeth Brake. Methods of applied philosophy are similar to other philosophical methods including questioning, dialectic, critical discussion, rational argument, systematic presentation, thought experiments and logical argumentation.
Daemonologie—in full Daemonologie, In Forme of a Dialogue, Divided into three Books: By the High and Mighty Prince, James &c.—was first published in 1597 by King James VI of Scotland as a philosophical dissertation on contemporary necromancy and the historical relationships between the various methods of divination used from ancient black magic. It was reprinted again in 1603 when James took the throne of England. The widespread consensus is that King James wrote Daemonologie in response to sceptical publications such as Reginald Scot's The Discoverie of Witchcraft.
Contemporary philosophy is the present period in the history of Western philosophy beginning at the early 20th century with the increasing professionalization of the discipline and the rise of analytic and continental philosophy.
Philosophy and literature involves the literary treatment of philosophers and philosophical themes, and the philosophical treatment of issues raised by literature.
Simon Critchley is an English philosopher and the Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York, USA.
David Hugh Mellor was a British philosopher. He was a Professor of Philosophy and Pro-Vice-Chancellor, later Professor Emeritus, of Cambridge University.
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. It is distinguished from other ways of addressing fundamental questions by its critical, generally systematic and its reliance on rational argument. It involves logical analysis of language and clarification of the meaning of words and concepts.
French philosophy, here taken to mean philosophy in the French language, has been extremely diverse and has influenced Western philosophy as a whole for centuries, from the medieval scholasticism of Peter Abelard, through the founding of modern philosophy by René Descartes, to 20th century philosophy of science, existentialism, phenomenology, structuralism, and postmodernism.
The Monist: An International Quarterly Journal of General Philosophical Inquiry is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal in the field of philosophy. It was established in October 1890 by American publisher Edward C. Hegeler.
In analytic philosophy, philosophy of language investigates the nature of language and the relations between language, language users, and the world. Investigations may include inquiry into the nature of meaning, intentionality, reference, the constitution of sentences, concepts, learning, and thought.
Cartesianism is the philosophical and scientific system of René Descartes and its subsequent development by other seventeenth century thinkers, most notably François Poullain de la Barre, Nicolas Malebranche and Baruch Spinoza. Descartes is often regarded as the first thinker to emphasize the use of reason to develop the natural sciences. For him, philosophy was a thinking system that embodied all knowledge.
The Philosopher is a long running periodical, established in 1923 by the Philosophical Society of England. Originally in print format, following a split in the mid-2010s the publication now exists in two competing formats.
Philosophy is the scholarly journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy. It is designed to be intelligible to the non-specialist reader and has been in continuous publication since 1926. It is published by Cambridge University Press and is currently edited by Maria Alvarez and Bill Brewer.
The alphabetical index of philosophy is so large it had to be broken up into several pages. To look up a topic in philosophy, click on the first letter of its name. To find topics by core area, field, major philosophical tradition, or time periods, see the subheadings further below.
Christopher John Fardo Williams was a British philosopher. His areas of interest were philosophical logic, on which topic he did most of his original work, and ancient philosophy, as an editor and translator.
Eva Picardi was an Italian philosopher. Picardi's contributions have been in analytic philosophy and linguistics.
