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Thomas V. Morris (born 1952), is an American philosopher. He is a former professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. He is a founder of the Morris Institute for Human Values, and author of several books. He is also a business and motivational speaker, applying philosophical themes and concepts to business and professional life.
Morris's work explores the 20th century's focus on technical efforts in analytic philosophy as having given philosophy the image of an arcane or irrelevant endeavor. His work often as the aim of making philosophy widely accessible, rediscovering the practical side of philosophy, and introducing people to the themes and philosophers. [1]
Morris was born and grew up in North Carolina. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was a Morehead Scholar, and holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy and Religious Studies from Yale University. UNC has honored him with the "Distinguished Young Alumnus Award". [2]
For fifteen years Morris served as a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame.
Morris has made many academic contributions to the philosophy of religion and theology. One of his earliest publications in philosophical theology was The Logic of God Incarnate (1986). [3] Other academic publications include Anselmian Explorations: Essays in Philosophical Theology (1987), Divine and Human Action: Essays in the Metaphysics of Theism (1988), Philosophy and the Christian Faith (1988), Our Idea of God (1991), and God and the Philosophers: The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason. [4]
Morris' books include Francis Schaeffer's Apologetics: A Critique, Understanding Identity Statements, The Logic of God Incarnate, Anselmian Explorations, The Concept of God, Our Idea of God, The Bluffer's Guide to Philosophy, Philosophy and the Christian Faith, Divine and Human Action, Our Idea of God, Making Sense of It All, God and the Philosophers, Philosophy for Dummies, True Success, The Art of Achievement, If Aristotle Ran General Motors , The Stoic Art of Living, Superheroes and Philosophy, and his latest text, If Harry Potter Ran General Electric.
Morris seeks to make philosophy interesting, intelligible, and practical to the ordinary person. Early in his academic career, he authored a privately circulated project, The Bluffer's Guide to Philosophy and the popular Making Sense of It All: Pascal and the Meaning of Life.
In Making Sense of It All (1992), Morris examins Christian philosopher Blaise Pascal. In this book, Morris highlights Pascal's observation that diversion is one of the greatest spiritual dangers of our age. Morris argues that diversion can only keep the "big questions" about the meaning of life at bay for so long. He points out that people are hungry to engage in intelligent dialogue about the purpose and meaning of life. He draws from Pascal's view in the Pensées that people need to understand the larger context of their lives in order to determine how to live. As people confront ethical dilemmas in everyday life, they begin to ask more probing questions that eventually lead to ultimate questions about life, death, morality, value, meaning, and purpose.
Morris continued to popularize philosophy and foster reflections on life and its meaning in his works: Philosophy for Dummies, True Success, If Aristotle Ran General Motors (1998), The Art of Achievement, and The Stoic Art of Living, in which he applies the ideas of Epictetus, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius to contemporary life.
Castellano et al. describe If Aristotle Ran General Motors as "compelling" and "persuasive" in arguing that in addition to codes of conduct and ethical guidelines, the creation of an ethical workplace climate requires "socially harmonious relationships" to be embedded in practice. [5]
In 2006, Morris published If Harry Potter Ran General Electric. In this work, he explores the philosophical implications and themes from the popular children's classics by J.K. Rowling and applied them to lessons in leadership and ethics. Morris also edited a volume of new essays from world philosophers and some of the top pop culture superhero comic book writers, entitled Superheroes and Philosophy, with his son Matt Morris.
In addition to his writing and lectures, Morris has appeared on television in a segment on ethics for The Learning Channel, and as the philosophic face of Winnie the Pooh for Disney Home Video. He has also made guest appearances on such network shows as NBC's Today Show and Regis Philbin's morning show.
Morris is the founder and chairman of the Morris Institute for Human Values, based in Wilmington, North Carolina. [6]
The teleological argument is an argument for the existence of God or, more generally, that complex functionality in the natural world which looks designed is evidence of an intelligent creator.
Reason is the capacity of applying logic consciously by drawing conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, language, mathematics, and art, and is normally considered to be a distinguishing ability possessed by humans. Reason is sometimes referred to as rationality.
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Early Islamic philosophy or classical Islamic philosophy is a period of intense philosophical development beginning in the 2nd century AH of the Islamic calendar and lasting until the 6th century AH. The period is known as the Islamic Golden Age, and the achievements of this period had a crucial influence in the development of modern philosophy and science. For Renaissance Europe, "Muslim maritime, agricultural, and technological innovations, as well as much East Asian technology via the Muslim world, made their way to western Europe in one of the largest technology transfers in world history.” This period starts with al-Kindi in the 9th century and ends with Averroes at the end of 12th century. The death of Averroes effectively marks the end of a particular discipline of Islamic philosophy usually called the Peripatetic Arabic School, and philosophical activity declined significantly in Western Islamic countries, namely in Islamic Spain and North Africa, though it persisted for much longer in the Eastern countries, in particular Persia and India where several schools of philosophy continued to flourish: Avicennism, Illuminationist philosophy, Mystical philosophy, and Transcendent theosophy.
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Christian philosophy includes all philosophy carried out by Christians, or in relation to the religion of Christianity. Christian philosophy emerged with the aim of reconciling science and faith, starting from natural rational explanations with the help of Christian revelation. Several thinkers such as Origen of Alexandria and Augustine believed that there was a harmonious relationship between science and faith, others such as Tertullian claimed that there was contradiction and others tried to differentiate them.
Richard Granville Swinburne is an English philosopher. He is an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford. Over the last 50 years, Swinburne has been a proponent of philosophical arguments for the existence of God. His philosophical contributions are primarily in the philosophy of religion and philosophy of science. He aroused much discussion with his early work in the philosophy of religion, a trilogy of books consisting of The Coherence of Theism, The Existence of God, and Faith and Reason.
Virtue ethics is an approach to ethics that treats virtue as central.
Logos is a term used in Western philosophy, psychology and rhetoric; it connotes an appeal to rational discourse that relies on inductive and deductive reasoning. Aristotle first systemised the usage of the word, making it one of the three principles of rhetoric. This specific use identifies the word closely to the structure and content of text itself. This specific usage has then been developed through the history of western philosophy and rhetoric.
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Summum bonum is a Latin expression meaning the highest or ultimate good, which was introduced by the Roman philosopher Cicero to denote the fundamental principle on which some system of ethics is based — that is, the aim of actions, which, if consistently pursued, will lead to the best possible life. Since Cicero, the expression has acquired a secondary meaning as the essence or ultimate metaphysical principle of Goodness itself, or what Plato called the Form of the Good. These two meanings do not necessarily coincide. For example, Epicurean and Cyrenaic philosophers claimed that the 'good life' consistently aimed for pleasure, without suggesting that pleasure constituted the meaning or essence of Goodness outside the ethical sphere. In De finibus, Cicero explains and compares the ethical systems of several schools of Greek philosophy, including Stoicism, Epicureanism, Aristotelianism and Platonism, based on how each defines the ethical summum bonum differently.
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This glossary of philosophy is a list of definitions of terms and concepts relevant to philosophy and related disciplines, including logic, ethics, and theology.
Western philosophy encompasses the philosophical thought and work of the Western world. Historically, the term refers to the philosophical thinking of Western culture, beginning with the ancient Greek philosophy of the pre-Socratics. The word philosophy itself originated from the Ancient Greek philosophía (φιλοσοφία), literally, "the love of wisdom" Ancient Greek: φιλεῖν phileîn, "to love" and σοφία sophía, "wisdom").
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Leslie Armour was a Canadian-born philosopher and writer on social economics. He is the father of the cellist and impresario Julian Armour.
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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 until after the Renaissance in the 13th and 14th centuries. Medieval philosophy, understood as a project of independent philosophical inquiry, began in Baghdad, in the middle of the 8th century, and in France, in the itinerant court of Charlemagne, in the last quarter of the 8th century. It is defined partly by the process of rediscovering the ancient culture developed in Greece and Rome during the Classical period, and partly by the need to address theological problems and to integrate sacred doctrine with secular learning.
The philosophy of happiness is the philosophical concern with the existence, nature, and attainment of happiness. Some philosophers believe happiness can be understood as the moral goal of life or as an aspect of chance; indeed, in most European languages the term happiness is synonymous with luck. Thus, philosophers usually explicate on happiness as either a state of mind, or a life that goes well for the person leading it. Given the pragmatic concern for the attainment of happiness, research in psychology has guided many modern day philosophers in developing their theories.
This is a list of philosophical literature articles.