Jurisprudence is the philosophy and theory of law. It is concerned primarily with both what law is and what it ought to be. That includes questions of how persons and social relations are understood in legal terms, and of the values in and of law. Work that is counted as jurisprudence is mostly philosophical, but it includes work that also belongs to other disciplines, such as sociology, history, politics and economics.
Philosophy of law is a branch of philosophy that examines the nature of law and law's relationship to other systems of norms, especially ethics and political philosophy. It asks questions like "What is law?", "What are the criteria for legal validity?", and "What is the relationship between law and morality?" Philosophy of law and jurisprudence are often used interchangeably, though jurisprudence sometimes encompasses forms of reasoning that fit into economics or sociology.
Virtue ethics is an approach that treats virtue and character as the primary subjects of ethics, in contrast to other ethical systems that put consequences of voluntary acts, principles or rules of conduct, or obedience to divine authority in the primary role.
Lewis White Beck was an American philosopher and scholar of German philosophy. Beck was Burbank Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy at the University of Rochester and served as the Philosophy Department chair there from 1949 to 1966. He translated several of Immanuel Kant's works, such as the Critique of Practical Reason, and was the author of Studies in the Philosophy of Kant (1965).
Stanley Louis Cavell was an American philosopher. He was the Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University. He worked in the fields of ethics, aesthetics, and ordinary language philosophy. As an interpreter, he produced influential works on Wittgenstein, Austin, Emerson, Thoreau, and Heidegger. His work is characterized by its conversational tone and frequent literary references.
Robert Paul Wolff is an American political philosopher and professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Alfred Cyril EwingFBA, was an English philosopher who spent most of his career at the University of Cambridge. He was a prolific writer who made contributions to Kant scholarship, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and the philosophy of religion.
Mary Beatrice Midgley was a British philosopher. A senior lecturer in philosophy at Newcastle University, she was known for her work on science, ethics and animal rights. She wrote her first book, Beast and Man (1978), when she was in her late fifties, and went on to write over 15 more, including Animals and Why They Matter (1983), Wickedness (1984), The Ethical Primate (1994), Evolution as a Religion (1985), and Science as Salvation (1992). She was awarded honorary doctorates by Durham and Newcastle universities. Her autobiography, The Owl of Minerva, was published in 2005.
Sidney Morgenbesser was an American philosopher and professor at Columbia University. He wrote little but is remembered by many for his philosophical witticisms.
Jerome Borges Schneewind was an American scholar of the history of philosophy. Latterly he was a Professor of Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University.
Robert Merrihew Adams was an American analytic philosopher, who specialized in metaphysics, philosophy of religion, ethics, and the history of early modern philosophy.
The philosophy of war is the area of philosophy devoted to examining issues such as the causes of war, the relationship between war and human nature, and the ethics of war. Certain aspects of the philosophy of war overlap with the philosophy of history, political philosophy, international relations and the philosophy of law.
Thomas Michael "Tim" Scanlon, usually cited as T. M. Scanlon, is an American philosopher. At the time of his retirement in 2016, he was the Alford Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity in Harvard University's Department of Philosophy, where he had taught since 1984. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2018.
Kantian ethics refers to a deontological ethical theory developed by German philosopher Immanuel Kant that is based on the notion that "I ought never to act except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law.” It is also associated with the idea that “[i]t is impossible to think of anything at all in the world, or indeed even beyond it, that could be considered good without limitation except a good will." The theory was developed in the context of Enlightenment rationalism. It states that an action can only be moral if it is motivated by a sense of duty, and its maxim may be rationally willed a universal, objective law.
William Klaas Frankena was an American moral philosopher. He was a member of the University of Michigan's department of philosophy for 41 years (1937–1978), and chair of the department for 14 years (1947–1961).
This list of publications by John Dewey complements the partial list contained in the John Dewey article.
Pragmatic ethics is a theory of normative philosophical ethics and meta-ethics. Ethical pragmatists such as John Dewey believe that some societies have progressed morally in much the way they have attained progress in science. Scientists can pursue inquiry into the truth of a hypothesis and accept the hypothesis, in the sense that they act as though the hypothesis were true; nonetheless, they think that future generations can advance science, and thus future generations can refine or replace their accepted hypotheses. Similarly, ethical pragmatists think that norms, principles, and moral criteria are likely to be improved as a result of inquiry.
Barbara Herman is the Griffin Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Law at the University of California, Los Angeles Department of Philosophy. A well-known interpreter of Kant's ethics, Herman works on moral philosophy, the history of ethics, and social and political philosophy. Among her many honors and awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship (1985-1986) and election to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (1995).
William Thomas Blackstone, Jr. was an American academic and philosopher.
Robert Paul Churchill is an American philosopher, ethicist, logician, educator, author, and academic. Churchill's career at George Washington University spanned forty two years from 1975 to 2017. He served as Elton Professor of Philosophy at GWU from 2014 to 2017, and as chair of the department of philosophy twice, and as director of the peace studies program from 1997 to 2001. Churchill was the president of Concerned Philosophers for Peace and the American Society for Value Inquiry, and the founder of the Society for Philosophy in the Contemporary World and its director for eight years.
Photograph of Professor Robert L. Holmes at the University of Rochester on 
