Rudolf Steiner

Rudolf Steiner was born in 1861 and died in 1925. In his autobiography, The Course of My Life, he makes quite clear that the problems dealt with in The Philosophy of Freedom played a leading part in his life. His childhood was spent in the Austrian countryside, where his father was a stationmaster. At

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Rudolph Hermann Lotze

Rudolf Hermann Lotze was born on May 21, 1817. He was a German philosopher and psychologist who studied medicine and philosophy in Leipzig. He attempted to reconcile the concepts of mechanistic science with the principles of romantic idealism. He started with the idea that all phenomena are determined by the interaction of substance. By analogy

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Saint Anselm of Canterbury

Ideas – God exists, for there is goodness in the world, and goodness an be good only through a supreme good that is good through itself, and only God is good through himself. – God exists, for since whatever exists does so only through something, there must be a supremely great being that exists

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Saint Augustine

Ideas – Faith and understanding go hand in hand: Understand that you may believe; believe that you may understand. – True happiness consists in knowledge of God. – Father, Son and Spirit coinhere in the Godhead as the faculties if memory, intellect and will coinhere in the human mind. – Individual beings in the

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Alexius von Meinong

Alexius von Meinong was born to a noble German family in Lemberg, which was part of Austria and later became part of Poland. Today it is called Lviv and is in Ukraine. He was an Austrian philosopher who worked at the University of Graz. He was a student of Franz Brentano and is most

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Zeno of Elea

Major Ideas – The Paradox of the Race Course argues that motion would require a process of infinite division. – The Paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise concludes that a swifter runner cannot overtake a slower. – The Paradox of the Arrow argues that an arrow cannot move in flight. – The Paradox of

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Zeno of Citium

Zeno of Citium (The Stoic) was a Hellenistic philosopher from Citium, Cyprus. Zeno was the son of a merchant and a student of Crates of Thebes. Zeno was, himself, a merchant until the age of 42, when he started a school. According to a Legend on one trip Zeno was shipwrecked and he somehow

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William James

Ideas – Human consciousness is selective; it concentrates on some things and ignores others. – Ideas and beliefs are essentially plans for organizing and structuring our experience and world. – One cannot prove finally whether human action is free or determined, but there are good reasons, especially moral ones, for believing that human action

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William Godwin

Ideas – Humankind is perfectible. – Reason tends to truth; truth leads to justice. – Government usurps private judgment and individual conscience; it is the greatest obstacle to human happiness. – Education and environment determine personality and character. – There are no rights, only duties; the fundamental moral duty is universal benevolence. – Nonviolent

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William Blake

Ideas – Imagination is the Divine Being in every person. – All division is contrary to the infinite imagination (the body is not distinct from the soul). – Divisions, which emanate from the Fall (master/servant, rich/poor, male/female) hold some people in bondage; thus, humankind’s fallen vision has produced the exploitation, oppression, and tyranny manifested

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Willard Van Orman Quine

Born in Akron, Ohio, Quine began his philosophical studies at Oberlin College in his native state. He later studied the foundations of mathematical logic with Alfred North Whitehead at Harvard University, where Quine himself became professor of philosophy in 1936. His contributions to the development of contemporary philosophy often involve subtle modification of the empiricist traditions

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Wilhelm Dilthey

German philosopher who made important contributions to a methodology of the humanities and other human sciences. He objected to the pervasive influence of the natural sciences and developed a philosophy of life emphasising historical contingency and changeability. His ‘Philosophy of Life’ pivoted on the notion of a living spirit which develops in historical forms,

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Werner Heisenberg

Ideas – Anomalous experimental results in microscopic physics can be explained through the use of matrices. – There is an unsurpassable limit to the accuracy with which certain properties (position and momentum) of subatomic particles can simultaneous be determined. – Every measurement of a subatomic entity necessarily involves the substantial interference of an observer,

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Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire

Ideas – All religions of the supernatural are based on ignorance and superstition. – The natural and human evils in the world cannot be reconciled with the view that this is the best of all possible worlds. – The order in the universe indicates that there is a Designer, but not necessarily a moral

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Thomas Samuel Kuhn

Thomas Samuel Kuhn was born on July 18, 1922, in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States. He received a Ph.D. in physics from Harvard University in 1949 and remained there as an assistant professor of general education and history of science. In 1956, Kuhn accepted a post at the University of California-Berkeley, where in 1961 he

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Thomas Reid

Thomas Reid, Scottish philosopher, and a contemporary of David Hume, was the founder of the Scottish School of Common Sense, and played an integral role in the Scottish Enlightenment. The early part of his life was spent in Aberdeen, where he created the “Wise Club” (a literary-philosophical association) and graduated from the University of Aberdeen.

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Thomas Paine

Ideas – The rights of humankind originate at birth. – Government should exist only for the security, happiness, and unity of humankind. – Republican government is based on reason and engenders freedom; government by hereditary succession is based on ignorance and reduces people to slavery. – Equality of natural property and the right of

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Thomas More

Ideas – A program of education grounded on ethics, the study Greek and LAtin, and the imitation of ancient pagan and Christian writers os the soundest plan for spiritual renewal and reform of the church and society. – Nature teaches that the best society is one whose aim is the temporal well-being or happiness

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Thomas Jefferson

 Ideas – All human beings are created equal and are endowed with certain inalienable rights. – Governments are established to protect the rights of citizens. – The right to work the land is a fundamental human right; consequently, a state that allows private ownership of land must provide employment to those who do not

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Thomas Henry Huxley

Thomas Henry Huxley, the distinguished zoologist and advocate of Darwinism, madeseveral incursions into philosophy. From his youth he had studied its problems unsystematically; he had a way of going straight to the point in any discussion; and, judged by a literary standard, he was a great master of expository and argumentative prose. Apart from

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