Thomas Aquinas

Ideas – The existence of God is not self-evident to reason, but it is demonstrable. – In God, essence and existence are inseparable, indeed, identical: It belongs to ‘what’ God is ‘that’ God is. – The essence of finite things is separable from their existence. – The finite order receives its existence by ‘participation’

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Soren Aabye Kierkegaard

Ideas – As human beings, we are often in situations in which we must choose between incompatibloe alternatives. – God may place us religiously in paradoxical situations of anguished choice as a test of faith. – There are objective problems, but they cannot be answered objectively for the person, who must decide about his

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Socrates

Socrates, the celebrated Greek philosopher and moralist, was born at Athens in the year 469 B.C. His father, Sophroniskus, was a sculptor and he followed the same profession in the early part of his life. His family was respectable in descent, but humble in point of means. He had the usual education of the

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Simone Weil

Ideas – Thought is inextricably linked to action. – The person is a creation of natural and social forces and can ve ‘decreated’ by them. – Pure goodness for which the human aspires is found by God’s direct descent and through the mediation of natural and social structures. – The suffering of Christ is

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Simone de Beauvoir

Ideas – As human beings, we live in a tragically anbiguous condition, but we must assume responsibility for the direction of our lives. – Every person is originally free. – Woman is the ‘other’; she lives in a world in which men have compelled her to be the second sex. – Despite the historical

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Sigmund Freud

Ideas – Human behavior is the result of both heredity and environment. – By means of the techniques of free association and analysis of symbols, we may learn about the structure and functioning of self. – The model of self should be constructed in terms of the ;id; (which represents drives), the ‘ego’ (which

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Sextus Empiricus

Major Ideas – It is futile to attempt to determine external realities (the nonevident) by appeal to appearances (the evident). – We have access to only appearances and no reason to prefer one appearance to another. – Appearances vary according to the condition of the observer and the nature of what is judged. –

Saul Kripke

Saul Kripke is an American philosopher now emeritus from (Princeton) and professor of philosophy at CUNY Graduate Center. He is best known for his attack on the descriptivist (Fregean, Russellian) theory of reference with respect to proper names, according to which a name refers to an object by virtue of the name’s being associated

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Saint Teresa of Avila

Ideas – God dwells within the soul. – The soul travels within herself tou nite with God. – One image for the soul is an interior castle with many mansions. – By practicing mental prayer, the soul enters the interior castle. – The first three mansions correspond to the purgative way, where the beginner

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Saint John of the Cross

Ideas – Substantial union with God is that by which the soul exists. – The union of likeness, also called transforming or mystical union, is that by which the soul becomes like God. – God is darkness to the soul in that the divine is essentially other than the human. – Since the means

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Saint Bonaventure

Ideas – Traditional Christian doctrines are correct, and innovations are erroneous. – The wish to introduce new doctrines is the expression of a bad moral character, and so is curiosity (the wish to find things out independently of their relevance to salvation). – People need discipline not only of their conduct but also of

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Saint Bernard of Clairvaux

Ideas – There is a natural simplicity in the very substance of the soul; for the soul, it is the same to be as to live, but it is not the same thing to be as yo live well or to live happily; nevertheless the soul can ascend to this. – For God, to

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Daniel Bernoulli

Daniel Bernoulli was the son of Johann Bernoulli. He was born in Groningen while his father held the chair of mathematics there. His older brother was Nicolaus (II) Bernoulli and his uncle was Jacob Bernoulli so he was born into a family of leading mathematicians but also into a family where there was unfortunate

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David Ricardo

The brilliant British economist David Ricardo was one the most important figures in the development of economic theory. He articulated and rigorously formulated the ‘classical’ system of political economy. The legacy of Ricardo dominated economic thinking throughout the 19th Century. David Ricardo’s family was descended from Iberian Jews who had fled to Holland during

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Edmund Burke

Irish social and political philosopher and statesman. Although reared in the Enlightenment era, Burke was a severe critic of rationalist theories of natural law and social contract. Like David Hume, Edmund Burke believed that political and social organization evolved organically over history from a variety of political, cultural and social circumstances. In Burke’s view, current society is a

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Edward Chamberlin

Edward Chamberlin taught economics at Harvard (1937-1967) and made significant contributions to microeconomics, particularly on competition theory and consumer choice, and their connection to prices. One of the most influential economists of his time, Edward Chamberlin coined the term “product differentiation” to describe how a supplier may be able to charge a greater amount

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Eli F. Heckscher

Student of David Davidson at Uppsala and subsequently a docent under Cassel at Stockholm, Eli Heckscher nonetheless abandoned his mentors to blaze his own path in economic history and the history of economic thought. Incomparably prolific, Eli Heckscher’s bibliography boasts of over a thousand publications His most famous contribution to economics, his 1919 article

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Erik Lindahl (1891-1960)

Probably the most theoretically rigorous member of the Stockholm School, Erik Lindahl was the only member of that group who stayed wholly within academia. Although he obtained his degree at Lund and was highly influenced by Knut Wicksell, he was not Wicksell’s student. Lindahl’s contributions to economic theory extend beyond his Wicksellian roots to embrace

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Ernst Engel (1821-1896)

German statistician, the head of the Prussian Statistical Bureau (1860-1882), known for the “Engel curve,” or Engel’s law, which states that the proportion of expenditure on food will fall as income rises, i.e. food is a necessary good. Engel’s law applies to goods as a whole. Demand for food, clothing and shelter – and for

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Eugen Slutsky

Eugen Slutsky (a.k.a. Eugene Slutsky and Yevgeni Slutsky) intended to become a mathematician, but he was expelled from the University of Kiev for participating in student revolts and, after some wandering through engineering and Europe, he returned to Kiev and ended up getting a doctorate in law in the end and then heading to

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