bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Vives, Juan Luis (1493–1540)
Authors: Guerlac Rita
Published: September 2018

Vives, Spanish humanist and educational reformer, was an eclectic but independent thinker, blending Aristotelianism and Stoicism with Christianity. He wrote on philosophy and psychology, religion and social concerns, and a wide range of subjects related to education. He was known by his contemporaries both for his lively attack on scholastic logic and for his practical judgment, or common sense. Familiar with classical, Christian and contemporary literature, he believed, with the Stoics, that learning should be applied for the common good. His original contributions are associated with an empirical approach to the sciences and the observation of nature, and his interest in the practical arts and inventions.

His social concerns included international politics (in which he is always a pacifist), and the relief of the poor in cities. His most scholarly work was an edition, with commentaries, of Augustine’s De civitate Dei (The City of God) (1522), but he is best known for his pioneer work on psychology and educational reform. De anima et vita (On the Soul and Life) (1538) offers the first empirical study of the emotions and their relations with the body, based on Galen’s theory of humours, and enriched with insights from Vives’ lifelong observation of human nature and conduct. De disciplinis (On Instruction) (1531), the outstanding work on education in the sixteenth century, is nothing less than a programme for education from infancy to old age, with due emphasis on moral training and, in the case of the study of nature, reverence for its creator.
Zabarella, Jacopo (1533–89)
Authors: Kessler Eckhard
Published: September 2018

Jacopo Zabarella was a professor of philosophy at the University of Padua. His work shows conclusively not only that it was possible to philosophize creatively within the limits of the Aristotelian tradition but also that this was still being done towards the end of the Renaissance period. Zabarella’s aim was not to overthrow Aristotle’s doctrines, but to expound them as clearly as possible. He produced an extensive body of work on the nature of logic, arguing that it was neither an art nor a science, but rather an instrumental intellectual discipline which arose from the philosopher’s practice of philosophizing or forming secondary notions. He also worked extensively on scientific method. He gives an account of order as disposing what we come to know through method, and he divides method into the method of composition, which moves from cause to effect, and the method of resolution, which moves from effect to cause. He also discussed regressus (a method for uniting composition and resolution) and thought that it would enable the scientist to discover new causal relations at the same time as proving conclusions with absolute necessity. Zabarella’s work was instrumental in a renewal of natural philosophy, methodology and the theory of knowledge; and it had a major impact on seventeenth-century philosophy textbooks, especially in the Protestant countries of northern Europe.
More, Thomas (1477–1535)
Authors: Murphy Clare M.
Published: September 2018

Thomas More was a classical, biblical and patristic scholar, an author in many genres, a lawyer who became Lord Chancellor, a humanist ‘born for friendship’ according to Erasmus, a widowed husband who remarried and could not decide which wife he loved more, a father who established a ‘school’ with the best of tutors in his home so that his daughters could have the same formal education (denied to women) as his son, and a martyr who refused to recognize Henry VIII as head of the church in England and was therefore beheaded by the king he had vindicated against Martin Luther. With his Utopia he coined a word and inspired subsequent writers to imagine both ideal and non-ideal societies.
Arnauld, Antoine (1612–94)
Authors: Nadler Steven
Published: September 2018

Antoine Arnauld, a leading theologian and Cartesian philosopher, was one of the most important and interesting figures of the seventeenth century. As the most prominent spokesperson and defender of the Jansenist community based at Port-Royal, almost all Arnauld’s efforts were devoted to theological matters. But early on, with his largely constructive objections to Descartes’ Meditations in 1641, he established a reputation as an analytically rigorous and insightful philosophical thinker. He went on to become perhaps Descartes’ most faithful and vociferous defender. He found Cartesian metaphysics, particularly mind-body dualism, to be of great value for the Christian religion. In a celebrated debate with Nicolas Malebranche, Arnauld advanced something like a direct realist account of perceptual acquaintance by arguing that the representative ideas that mediate human knowledge and perception are not immaterial objects distinct from the mind’s perceptions, but are just those perceptions themselves. His criticisms of Leibniz gave rise to another important debate. He also co-authored the so-called ‘Port-Royal Logic’, the most famous and successful logic of the early modern period. The underlying motives in all Arnauld’s philosophical writings were, however, theological, and his greatest concern was to safeguard God’s omnipotence and to defend what he took to be the proper Catholic view on questions of grace and divine providence
Arnauld, Antoine (1612–94)
Authors: Nadler Steven
Published: September 2018

Antoine Arnauld, a combative theologian and Cartesian philosopher, was one of the most important and interesting figures of the seventeenth century. As the most prominent spokesperson and defender of the Jansenist community based at Port-Royal, almost all Arnauld’s efforts were devoted to theological matters. But early on, with his largely constructive objections to Descartes’ Meditations in 1641, he established a reputation as an analytically rigorous and insightful philosophical thinker. He went on to become perhaps Descartes’ most faithful and vociferous defender. He found Cartesian metaphysics, particularly mind-body dualism, to be of great value for the Christian religion. In a celebrated debate with Nicolas Malebranche, Arnauld advanced something like a direct realist account of perceptual acquaintance by arguing that the representative ideas that mediate human knowledge and perception are not immaterial objects distinct from the mind’s perceptions, but are just those perceptions themselves. His criticisms of Leibniz gave rise to another important debate. He also co-authored the so-called ‘Port-Royal Logic’, the most famous and successful logic of the early modern period. The underlying motives in all Arnauld’s philosophical writings were, however, theological, and his greatest concern was to safeguard God’s omnipotence and to defend what he took to be the proper Catholic view on questions of grace and divine providence.
Cambridge Platonism
Authors: Beiser Frederick
Published: September 2018

Cambridge Platonism was an intellectual movement broadly inspired by the Platonic tradition, centred in Cambridge from the 1630s to the 1680s. Its hallmark was a devotion to reason in metaphysics, religion and ethics. The Cambridge Platonists made reason rather than tradition and inspiration their ultimate criterion of knowledge. Their central aim was to reconcile the realms of reason and faith, the new natural philosophy and Christian revelation. Although loyal to the methods and naturalism of the new sciences, they opposed its mechanical model of explanation because it seemed to leave no room for spirit, God and life.

In epistemology the Cambridge Platonists were critics of empiricism and stressed the role of reason in knowledge; they also criticized conventionalism and held that there are essential or natural distinctions between things. In metaphysics they attempted to establish the existence of spirit, God and life in a manner consistent with the naturalism and method of the new sciences. And in ethics the Cambridge Platonists defended moral realism and freedom of the will against the voluntarism and determinism of Hobbes and Calvin. Cambridge Platonism was profoundly influential in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was the inspiration behind latitudinarianism and ethical rationalism, and many of its ideas were developed by Samuel Clarke, Isaac Newton and the Third Earl of Shaftesbury.
Cockburn, Catharine (1679–1749)
Authors: Hutton Sarah
Published: September 2018

Catharine Cockburn (Catharine Trotter) was a British moral philosopher who turned to philosophy after a successful career as one of the first woman playwrights. She wrote no substantial systematic treatise of her own, but intervened ably and anonymously in philosophical and theological debates of her day, in particular the debate on ethical rationalism triggered by Samuel Clarke’s 1704–5 Boyle lectures. Her adversaries included Thomas Rutherforth, William Warburton, Isaac Watts, Francis Hutcheson and Lord Shaftesbury. Her most famous contribution to the philosophy of her time was her able 1702 defence of Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Her letters, published posthumously, discuss a range of philosophical topics.
Collins, Anthony (1676–1729)
Authors: Winkler Kenneth P.
Published: September 2018

Anthony Collins was an English freethinker, best-known to philosophers for his reconciliation of liberty and necessity, and his criticisms of Samuel Clarke’s arguments for the immateriality and immortality of the soul. ‘I was early convinced’, Collins wrote, ‘that it was my duty to enquire into, and judge for my self about matters of Religion’(1727: 4). This is a fair summary of Collins’ lifelong project: to judge the claims of religion as an impartial scientist would judge the claims of a theory, not by ‘the Way of Authority’, but by reason or ‘the Way of private Judgment’(1727: 107). Collins took on almost the whole of religion as affirmed and practised in the eighteenth-century Church of England: its philosophical foundations, its theological doctrines, its methods of scriptural interpretation and its views on the politics of church and state. He found most of it wanting. His conclusions were at least deistic and perhaps atheistic (though he remained a practising member of the established church): the irony of his writing and the reactive character of virtually everything he published make it difficult to know for sure.
Cordemoy, Géraud de (1626–84)
Authors: Nadler Steven
Published: September 2018

Géraud de Cordemoy was, by profession, first a lawyer, then a tutor to the Grand Dauphin, first son of Louis XIV. But he was also one of the more important Cartesian philosophers in seventeenth-century France. In Le discernement du corps et de l’ame, Cordemoy defended a strict dualist and mechanist philosophy. But his Cartesianism was unorthodox, since he introduced indivisible atoms into his natural philosophy and was one of the first to argue for occasionalism, the doctrine that God alone is a true causal agent. He also wrote an important work on the nature and origins of speech and language, Le discours physique de la parole.
Cumberland, Richard (1632–1718)
Authors: Haakonssen Knud
Published: September 2018

Richard Cumberland developed his ideas in response to Hobbes’ Leviathan. He introduced concepts of aggregate goodness (later used in utilitarianism), of benevolence (used in moral-sense theory), of moral self-obligation, of empirical proofs of providence and of the moral importance of tradition à la Burke. The philosophical basis for Cumberland’s views was a theory of natural law which was strongly anti-voluntarist and committed to objective moral values, but recognizing institutions such as governments of state and church as conventional or traditional. Cumberland was often seen as the third co-founder, with Pufendorf and Grotius, of modern natural law.
Desgabets, Robert (1610–78)
Authors: Easton Patricia A.
Published: September 2018

Although he is now little known, Desgabets was an important seventeenth-century French philosopher, theologian, scientist and mathematician. An early defender of Cartesian philosophy, his physical explication of transubstantiation created such an uproar that he complied with a public order and renounced his views. He defended the essential union and interaction of soul and body, and the free creation of the eternal truths. The latter view led him to an empiricist epistemology: all ideas have a sensory basis and are essentially related to existing objects. Despite his originality, he is best known for his polemic with Foucher.
Moralistes
Authors: MacLean Ian
Published: September 2018

The moralistes constitute a tradition of secular French writing about human nature and political and social behaviour principally in the context of the court and the salon. Their non-systematic observations about mankind are couched in literary forms, such as the maxim and the pen-portrait, appropriate to the social context from which they emerged. The four principal moralistes of the ancien régime were La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère, Vauvenargues and Chamfort. La Rochefoucauld’s Maximes (1665) constitute a sharp attack on the neo-Stoic moral optimism of the first half of the seventeenth century, and determine self-love to be the mainspring of all human behaviour. La Bruyère’s Caractères (1688) is a more diverse work in both form and content: it contains a satire of the follies and vices of his age, as well as vivid pen-portraits. There are implicit contradictions in the moral norms governing this often indignant denunciation of men and society. Vauvenargues, writing some fifty years later, expresses more confidence in human nature, rehabilitating the passions and arguing for the moral value of self-love of a certain kind. This optimism is not shared by Chamfort, whose Maximes et pensées (1795) reverts to the cynical tone of his seventeenth-century predecessors in the genre. These writers do not attempt to systematize their thoughts, and they choose to express themselves in urbane and witty ways rather than in sober prose, but they carry out the Cartesian programme of employing ‘common sense’ and native intellectual powers to the end of uncovering aspects of human nature and behaviour accessible to observant people free from moral or religious preconceptions.
Huet, Pierre-Daniel (1630–1721)
Authors: Floridi Luciano
Published: September 2018

Huet was a French Catholic bishop who wrote important works in theology, philology and literary criticism. In philosophy, he defended an apologetic interpretation of scepticism and opposed Cartesianism, which he thought to be a fanatical form of rationalism. For Huet, faith must guide reason since only the former, received from God, can provide absolute certainty, whereas human knowledge is inevitably fallible. A moderate scepticism is therefore the most appropriate attitude for a philosopher, since it tempers the ambitious claims of reason and extricates the mind from prejudices and false certainties, thus preparing it to receive the divine gift of faith.
Libertins
Authors: MacLean Ian
Published: September 2018

The term ‘libertin’ was first used in France in the late sixteenth century as a term of abuse directed against alleged free-thinkers and atheists who were linked with radical Italian philosophers of the previous century. It subsequently came to be associated with a sceptical literary tradition and a group of scholars, philosophers and antiquarians who discreetly ensured the circulation of such doctrines as Epicureanism, Pyrrhonian scepticism, mechanical philosophy, Baconian empiricism and the ‘new’ astronomy. After the disappearance of this group in the middle years of the century, the term came to connote only debauchery and irreverence.
Mersenne, Marin (1588–1648)
Authors: Dear Peter
Published: September 2018

Marin Mersenne represents a new seventeenth-century perspective on natural knowledge. This perspective elevated the classical mathematical sciences over natural philosophy as the appropriate models of what can be known, of how it can be known and of the cognitive status of that knowledge. His early publications had the apologetic aim not only of combating various forms of heresy, but also of opposing philosophical scepticism, which was widely regarded in Catholic France of the early seventeenth century as undermining the certainty of religious dogma. To that end, Mersenne stressed the certainty of demonstrations in sciences such as optics, astronomy and mechanics, all of which stood as ‘mathematical’ sciences in the classifications of the sciences stemming from Aristotle. Mersenne’s stress on the mathematical sciences contrasted them with natural philosophy in so far as the former concerned only the measurable external properties of things whereas the latter purported to discuss their inner natures, or essences. In accepting the considerable degree of uncertainty attending knowledge of essences, and juxtaposing it to the relative certainty of knowledge of appearances, Mersenne adopted a position (since called ‘mitigated scepticism’) that combated scepticism by lowering the stakes: in accepting that the essences of things cannot be known, he agreed with the sceptics; but in asserting that knowledge of appearances can, by contrast, be had with certainty, he rejected the apparent intellectual paralysis advocated by the sceptics. In furthering this programme, Mersenne embarked on a publication effort relating to the mathematical sciences, combined with a massive lifelong correspondence on largely philosophical as well as religious topics with a wide network of people throughout Europe.
Molyneux problem
Authors: Lievers Menno
Published: September 2018

The origin of what is known as the Molyneux problem lies in the following question posed by William Molyneux to John Locke: if a man born blind, and able to distinguish by touch between a cube and a globe, were made to see, could he now tell by sight which was the cube and which the globe, before he touched them? The problem raises fundamental issues in epistemology and the philosophy of mind, and was widely discussed after Locke included it in the second edition of his Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Port-Royal
Authors: McKenna Antony
Published: September 2018

The reform of the abbey of Port-Royal-des-Champs in 1608 coincided with the vast movement of monastic reform which characterized the Counter-Reformation. In 1624 a second abbey was created, Port-Royal-de-Paris and, after some rivalry among spiritual leaders of the day, this was directed by Jean Duvergier de Hauranne, abbot of Saint-Cyran and one of the leaders of the parti dévot hostile to Richelieu. In 1640 the abbot’s friend Jansenius published the Augustinus, a résumé of Augustine’s doctrine, of which five propositions on divine grace were condemned by the Vatican. Ecclesiastics in France were obliged to accept this condemnation, and the resistance of the nuns of Port-Royal brought about persecution, imprisonment and finally the destruction of the abbey in 1710. The intellectual history of the abbey extends far beyond theological quibblings, however. In 1626, Saint-Cyran defended Charron against the Jesuit Garasse and formed a firm alliance between the Pyrrhonism of Montaigne and the philosophy of Augustine. In the 1640s, Antoine Arnauld played an important role in the diffusion of Cartesianism, confirmed by the publication of the Logique de Port-Royal (1662). The 1670 publication of Pascal’s Pensées can be interpreted as a symptom of the rivalry between Descartes and Gassendi in contemporary apologetics and, in the following years, the polemics between Arnauld and Malebranche played an important role in the definition of Christian rationalism.
Masham, Damaris (1658–1708)
Authors: Hutton Sarah
Published: September 2018

Damaris Cudworth, who became Lady Masham on her marriage to Sir Francis Masham in 1685, was an English moral philosopher who published two short treatises on moral philosophy. These show that she became a disciple of John Locke, although her philosophical background was in Cambridge Platonism. She applied Lockean arguments to defend the education of women; her anti-idealism led her to oppose Malebranche and his English followers, John Norris and Mary Astell; and she also corresponded with Leibniz.
Imagination, in modern philosophy
Authors: Cottrell Jonathan
Published: September 2018

In the modern philosophical period, the imagination (sometimes called the ‘fancy’) is standardly seen as a faculty for having mental images, and for making non-rational, associative transitions among such images. This standard view forms a common core of many modern philosophers’ theories of the imagination. Different philosophers elaborate upon it in different ways: for example, some add that there is a close connection between the imagination and the brain; some, that the imagination interacts with the passions in important ways; and some, that the imagination plays a crucial role in explaining how we create artworks and how we appreciate the aesthetic properties of things.

The modern period saw several important controversies among philosophers who share the standard view of the imagination. Perhaps most importantly, Descartes, Arnauld and Nicole, Spinoza, and Leibniz argue that in addition to the faculty of the imagination, we have a faculty of pure intellect or pure understanding, while Hobbes, Gassendi, and Hume deny this. Other important controversies concern the relationship between imagination and reasoning, and the role of the imagination – if any – as a source of modal knowledge, that is, knowledge of what is possible rather than merely actual.

Late in the eighteenth century, Reid and Kant criticized the standard view. Reid claims to disagree with his predecessors about the association of ideas and about the nature of mental images. (However, it is unclear whether he interprets his predecessors correctly; some of his objections may miss their mark.) For his part, Kant agrees with the standard view that the imagination is a faculty for having and associating mental images. But he argues that these reproductive functions of the imagination take place in the human mind thanks to different, productive functions of the imagination that earlier philosophers did not recognize. His account of these productive functions of the imagination plays a central role in his epistemology and aesthetics.
Aberdeen Philosophical Society
Authors: Wood Paul
Published: September 2018

The Aberdeen Philosophical Society (1758–73) played a formative role in the genesis of Scottish common sense philosophy. Its founder members included the philosopher Thomas Reid and the theologian George Campbell. Its discussions favoured the natural and human sciences, particularly the science of the mind, and one of its central concerns was the refutation of the work of David Hume.
Buffier, Claude (1661–1737)
Authors: Manns James W.
Published: September 2018

A French Jesuit who flourished in the early eighteenth century, Buffier developed an outlook that he referred to as common-sense philosophy. While deeply influenced by the philosophies of Descartes and Locke, he saw their reliance on the testimony of inner experience to be conducive to scepticism concerning the external world. In reaction to this, he sought to establish the irrevocable claims of various ‘first truths’, which pointed towards external reality and qualified it in various respects. His work anticipates certain themes that surfaced later in the common-sense philosophy of Thomas Reid.
Cabanis, Pierre-Jean (1757–1808)
Authors: Moore F.C.T.
Published: September 2018

Cabanis believed in the possibility of a ‘science of man’, having its basis in medicine. He tried to show how a materialist conception of the human organism can throw light on our mental and moral life. The properties of living matter were derived from physical laws, but had their own peculiarities. In particular, the property of sensibility (being able to have sensations) and the property of motility (involving the experience of effort and of resistance to it) were the keys to understanding human nature.

Though the thrust of Cabanis’ thought is materialistic, his emphasis on medical science distinguishes him both from the mechanistic tradition as represented by La Mettrie, and from the intellectualist tradition represented by Condillac, in which sensations are taken as given mental items, from which the rest of our mental life is constructed by operations of reasoning or association.
Crusius, Christian August (1715–75)
Authors: Seidler Michael J.
Published: September 2018

Crusius was a pivotal figure in the middle period of the German Enlightenment, linking Pufendorf and Thomasius with Kant. Though sometimes wrongly characterized (for example, by Hegel) as a Wolffian, he was instead an important critic of that position. His system reflected a new alliance between Pietism and Lutheran orthodoxy, offering a comprehensive antirationalist, realist, and voluntarist alternative to the neoscholastic tradition as renovated by Leibniz. Crusius was important in Kant’s development and helps us understand the latter’s philosophical Protestantism.

Born a pastor’s son in Leuna bei Merseburg, in Saxony, Crusius was educated at Leipzig and much influenced there by the Thomasian professor A.F. Hoffmann (1703–41). Interested in both philosophy and theology throughout his career, he accepted a chair as extraordinary professor of philosophy at Leipzig in 1744. In 1750, however, he became ordinary professor of theology, also retaining his teaching post in philosophy until his death. His reputation as a philosopher peaked in Germany during the 1750s and 1760s, mainly on the basis of four scholastic manuals published in German during 1744–9. His greater theological reputation as founder of a ‘biblico-prophetic’ school emphasizing the inspirational unity of Scripture lasted well into the mid-nineteenth century.
Eberhard, Johann August (1739–1809)
Authors: Allison Henry E.
Published: September 2018

A German philosopher and theologian, Eberhard was trained in the rationalist tradition of Christian Wolff, but was also influenced by the more empirical ‘popular philosophy’ of the Enlightenment. Although a prolific author, who wrote on virtually every area of philosophy, he is best known today for his controversies with the two foremost German thinkers of his time, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Immanuel Kant.
Enthusiasm
Authors: Shaver Robert
Published: September 2018

For much of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, enthusiasm denotes a state of (claimed) divine inspiration. The claimed inspiration is almost always seen by those who employ the term as delusory, and enthusiasm is almost always seen as bad, akin to fanaticism, irrationality, and madness. The term is most commonly applied to Protestants outside the Church of England and, at times, to Catholics and pre-Christian mystics. Throughout the period, enthusiasm much less often denotes devotion and zeal or poetic inspiration. In the nineteenth century, concern with enthusiasm declines.
Human nature, science of, in the 18th century
Authors: Berry Christopher J.
Published: September 2018

Eighteenth-century speculation on human nature is distinguishable by its approach and underlying assumptions. Taking their cue from Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton, many philosophers of the Enlightenment endeavoured to extend the methods of natural science to the moral sciences. Perhaps the most explicit of such endeavours was David Hume’s ambition for a ‘science of man’, but he was not alone. There was a general convergence on the idea that human nature is constant and uniform in its operating principles – that is, its determining motives (passions), its source of knowledge (sense experience) and its mode of operation (association of ideas). By virtue of this constancy human nature was predictable, so that once it was scientifically understood, then social institutions could be designed to effect desired outcomes.
Bosanquet, Bernard (1848–1923)
Authors: Nicholson Peter P.
Published: September 2018

One of the most prominent and prolific of the British Idealists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Bosanquet ranged across most fields of philosophy, making his main contributions in epistemology, metaphysics, aesthetics and especially political philosophy. He was deeply influenced by Plato and by Hegel. Bosanquet and F.H. Bradley were close on many matters, and each regarded the other as a co-worker; however, Bosanquet was always more Hegelian, less rigorous in argument than Bradley and lacking his sceptical approach. Bosanquet treats knowledge and reality as a single whole, working out the implications in the concrete ‘modes of experience’ of philosophy, science, morality, art, religion, and social and political life. He is at his best in explaining and developing the thoughts of others, particularly of Hegel, Bradley, Rousseau and T.H. Green.
Cattaneo, Carlo (1801–69)
Authors: Frigessi Delia
Published: September 2018

The figurehead of the Italian democratic movement prior to the unification of Italy, Carlo Cattaneo developed a theory of federalism as a practice of self-government, envisaging a United States of Italy. He identified the bourgeoisie as the most dynamic force in contemporary history and regarded scientific culture as the engine of progress. Often dubbed the first Italian positivist, he perceived empirical philosophy as a kind of synthesis of all the sciences, but also stressed its anthropological and psychological dimensions and above all its character as a methodology of knowledge; his objective was to study human thought. The great themes of Cattaneo’s philosophy are nature, the individual and society; particularly the last.
Ferrier, James Frederick (1806–64)
Authors: Haldane John J.
Published: September 2018

Ferrier represents the transition within nineteenth-century Scottish philosophy from the tradition of common-sense realism begun by Thomas Reid, the last major exponent of which was Ferrier’s mentor, Sir William Hamilton, to versions of idealism influenced by German philosophers, especially Hegel. Although he is largely forgotten, Ferrier merits study for at least two reasons. First, he had a role in importing Hegelian ideas into British thought; and second there are parallels between his arguments and those advanced by antirealist philosophers in the analytical tradition.
Green, Thomas Hill (1836–82)
Authors: Bellamy Richard
Published: September 2018

Green was a prominent Oxford idealist philosopher, who criticized both the epistemological and ethical implications of the dominant empiricist and utilitarian theories of the time. He contended that experience could not be explained merely as the product of sensations acting on the human mind. Like Kant, Green argued that knowledge presupposes certain a priori categories, such as substance, causation, space and time, which enable us to structure our understanding of empirical reality. Physical objects and even the most simple feelings are only intelligible as relations of ideas constituted by human consciousness. However, unlike Kant, he did not draw the conclusion that things in themselves are consequently unknowable. Rather, he argued that reality itself is ultimately spiritual, the product of an eternal consciousness operating within both the world and human reason. Green adopted a similarly anti-naturalist and holistic position in ethics, in which desires are seen as orientated towards the realization of the good – both within the individual and in society at large. In politics, this led him to criticize the laissez-faire individualist liberalism of Herbert Spencer and, to a lesser extent, of J.S. Mill, and to advocate a more collectivist liberalism in which the state seeks to promote the positive liberty of its members.
Grote, John (1813–66)
Authors: Gibbins John , Schultz Bart
Published: September 2018

From 1855 Grote was Knightbridge Professor at Cambridge. His literary legacy was largely posthumous. Often seen as unsystematic, he was in fact a penetrating thinker who forcefully criticized utilitarianism and positivism and ably argued that ‘all that we call existence is for us a thought of ours’; his was a seminal British idealism, stressing both the gulf between philosophical inquiry and the sciences and the difficulty of distinguishing the necessary from the contingent.
Labriola, Antonio (1843–1904)
Authors: Hunt Geoffrey
Published: September 2018

Antonio Labriola was the founder of Italian theoretical Marxism. Generally situated in the Marxism of the Second International, he was more questioning than others in that movement. He profoundly influenced the development of Italian thought, constantly challenging the influential idealism of Benedetto Croce and Giovanni Gentile. His attempt to maintain a place for human creativity within a deterministic Marxist view of history influenced Antonio Gramsci and helped give Italian Eurocommunism its distinctive flexibility. His concepts of ‘genetic method’, ‘social morphology’, ‘philosophy of praxis’ and ‘social pedagogy’ are indications of this attempt.
Lange, Friedrich Albert (1828–75)
Authors: Stack George J.
Published: September 2018

A German philosopher, social scientist and political activist, Lange was best known for his study of the history of materialism. He was a leading proponent of Neo-Kantianism, a critic of speculative metaphysics, and a defender of the view that philosophy should incorporate the findings of the exact sciences. As a social scientist, Lange described the emergence of a social Darwinian ‘struggle for existence’ in modern times due to the rapid advancement of industrialization and a growing conflict of interest among social classes.

Cognizant of the scientific trends of his time, Lange anticipated some of the central ideas of pragmatism and adopted a form of conventionalism in regard to scientific principles and concepts. Although sympathetic to materialism, Lange also saw the inevitability of an idealist element in interpretations of natural phenomena and insisted on the importance of projecting ethical, social and aesthetic ideals.
Mach, Ernst (1838–1916)
Authors: Hamilton Andy
Published: September 2018

Mach was an Austrian physicist and philosopher. Though not one of the great philosophers, he was tremendously influential in the development of ‘scientific philosophy’ in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A vigorous opponent of ‘metaphysics’, he was celebrated as a progenitor of logical positivism. His work is regarded as a limiting case of pure empiricism; he stands between the empiricism of Hume and J.S. Mill, and that of the Vienna Circle.

Mach’s positivist conception of science saw its aims as descriptive and predictive; explanation is downgraded. Scientific laws and theories are economical means of describing phenomena. Theories that refer to unobservable entities – including atomic theory – may impede inquiry. They should be eliminated where possible in favour of theories involving ‘direct descriptions’ of phenomena. Mach claimed to be a scientist, not a philosopher, but the ‘Machian philosophy’ was ‘neutral monism’. Close to phenomenalism, it saw the world as functionally related complexes of sensations, and aspired to anti-metaphysical neutrality.
Ravaisson-Mollien, Jean-Gaspard Félix Lacher (1813–1900)
Authors: Bonet Pierrette
Published: September 2018

Félix Ravaisson was a French philosopher, born in Namur. Apart from his three main works – Rapport sur la philosophie en France au dix-neuvième siècle (Report on Philosophy in France in the Nineteenth Century) (1863), Métaphysique d’Aristote (Metaphysics of Aristotle) (1837, 1846) and De l’habitude (On Habit) (1838) – his ideas can mainly be found in articles, fragments and short passages, such as those collected in Testament philosophique (Philosophical Testament) (1901) or others that are still unpublished. None the less, Henri-Louis Bergson, who succeeded him at the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, according to custom gave a synthetic account of Ravaisson’s work, in his Notice sur la vie et les oeuvres de M. Félix Ravaisson-Mollien (Account of the Life and Works of Mr Félix Ravaisson-Mollien) (1934). Bergson insisted on the importance of artistic research in Ravaisson’s thought, and one can indeed explain his philosophy as beginning from a meditation on works of art and on beauty. The importance of this starting point can be seen in the privileged role he gives to synthesis in all explanation, for in an artistic masterpiece, it is the whole that allows for comprehension of the parts. Ravaisson gave this idea a metaphysical dimension.
Royce, Josiah (1855–1916)
Authors: Burch Robert W.
Published: September 2018

Josiah Royce rose from a humble background in the California of the Gold Rush period to become Professor of the History of Philosophy at Harvard University and one of the most influential American philosophers of the so-called ‘period of classical American philosophy’ from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. He was also (along with F.H. Bradley) one of the two most important English-speaking philosophers of the period who defended philosophical idealism: the doctrine that in some sense or other all things either are minds or else are the contents of minds. Royce remained loyal to his own idealist commitments throughout his life, despite the fact that his friend and Harvard colleague William James was extremely hostile to idealism, and that his intellectual environment was increasingly dominated by the ‘pragmatism’ of which James was an outspoken champion. In later years, however, under the influence of another pragmatist, Charles S. Peirce, Royce gave the themes of his idealist thought a naturalistic social foundation rather than the abstract metaphysical foundation of his earliest writings. Royce’s entire corpus is perhaps best seen as representing a bridge from the German world of Neo-Kantianism and various varieties of philosophical idealism to the American world of pragmatism and of philosophical naturalism.
Schiller, Ferdinand Canning Scott (1864–1937)
Authors: Abel Reuben
Published: September 2018

F.C.S. Schiller was the outstanding exponent of pragmatism in Britain. His views, which he referred to at various times as humanism, voluntarism and personalism, as well as pragmatism, were strongly influenced by William James, to whom he paid great tribute, although he claimed to have arrived at his opinions independently. Schiller pursued the subjective and personal aspects of James’s psychology, whereas Dewey built on its objective and social elements. In taking the process of knowing as central to reality, Schiller was also influenced by Hegel. Schiller’s philosophy may be best approached in terms of his opposition to the absolute idealism of the then-dominant British Hegelians (particularly F.H. Bradley, his bête noire); Schiller thought their monism, rationalism, authoritarianism and intellectualism denied the basic insight of Protagoras that it is man who is the measure of all things.
Sorel, Georges (1847–1922)
Authors: Jennings Jeremy
Published: September 2018

The French social theorist Georges Sorel is best known for his controversial work Réflexions sur la violence (Reflections on Violence), first published in 1908. He here argued that the world could be saved from ‘barbarism’ through acts of proletarian violence, most notably the general strike. This, he believed, would not only establish an ethic of the producers but would also serve to secure the economic foundations of socialism. Moreover the inspiration for these heroic deeds would be derived from a series of ‘myths’ that encapsulated the highest aspirations of the working class. More broadly Sorel should be seen as an innovator in Marxist theory and the methodology of the social sciences.
Spencer, Herbert (1820–1903)
Authors: Gray Tim S.
Published: September 2018

Herbert Spencer is chiefly remembered for his classical liberalism and his evolutionary theory. His fame was considerable during the mid- to late-nineteenth century, especially in the USA, which he visited in 1882 to be lionized by New York society as the prophetic philosopher of capitalism. In Britain, however, Spencer’s reputation suffered two fatal blows towards the end of his life. First, collectivist legislation was introduced to protect citizens from the ravages of the industrial revolution, and Spencer’s spirited defence of economic laissez-faire became discredited. Second, his evolutionary theory, which was based largely on the Lamarckian principle of the inheritance of organic modifications produced by use and disuse, was superseded by Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Nearly a century after his death, however, there is renewed interest in his ideas, partly because the world has become more sympathetic to market philosophies, and partly because the application of evolutionary principles to human society has become fashionable once more.
Strauss, David Friedrich (1808–74)
Authors: Harris Horton
Published: September 2018

The Christian faith rests upon two major beliefs: the existence of a God who created the universe, and the claim that in the historical person of Jesus of Nazareth this God in a unique way entered into world history. Like the two foci of an ellipse, these beliefs, which may be designated the metaphysical and the historical, constitute the fundamental foundation of the Christian faith. Strauss was the first major theological figure to openly challenge this foundation. The revolutionary Das Leben Jesu (Life of Jesus), which appeared in 1835, was Strauss’ attempt to disprove these two fundamental beliefs from a point of view which no longer accepted the old orthodox dogmas. As an alternative explanation to a divine Christ, Strauss posited a mythological Jesus; in his lifelong search to find a substitute for theism, Strauss moved through a philosophy of nature to Hegelianism, atheism and finally Darwinism.
Taylor, Harriet (1807–58)
Authors: Vogler Candace
Published: September 2018

Harriet Taylor was John Stuart Mill’s intellectual collaborator and great love. Married to John Taylor in 1826, Harriet met Mill in 1830 and they began a brazenly unconventional intimacy which lasted throughout her life. Her thoughts on poetry, equality, liberty and individuality shaped Mill’s work on these topics.
Benjamin, Walter (1892–1940)
Authors: Roberts Julian
Published: September 2018

Walter Benjamin was one of the most influential twentieth-century philosophers of culture. His work combines formal analysis of art works with social theory to generate an approach which is historical, but is far more subtle than either materialism or conventional Geistesgeschichte (cultural and stylistic chronology). The ambiguous alignment of his work between Marxism and theology has made him a challenging and often controversial figure.
Naturphilosophie
Authors: Heidelberger Michael
Published: September 2018

Naturphilosophie refers to the philosophy of nature prevalent especially in German philosophy, science and literary movements from around 1790 to about 1830. It pleaded for an organic and dynamic worldview as an alternative to the atomist and mechanist outlook of modern science. Against the Cartesian dualism of matter and mind which had given way to the mechanist materialism of the French Encyclopedists, Spinoza’s dual aspect theory of mind and matter as two modes of a single substance was favoured. The sources of this heterogeneous movement lie in the philosophy of German idealism as well as in late classicism and Romanticism. The leading figure, Schelling, assimilated and stimulated the major trends and ideas through his work.

After the death of Hegel (1831) and of Goethe (1832), Naturphilosophie quickly disappeared from the mainstream. Yet it survived in various different forms, especially as an undercurrent of German culture and science, until the twentieth century.
Romanticism, German
Authors: Beiser Frederick
Published: September 2018

Because Romanticism has many meanings which vary according to time and place, it is best to examine the movement in a specific culture and period. Of all the phases of Romanticism, early German Romanticism is of special importance in the history of Western philosophy. The early German Romantics – Friedrich Schlegel, Friedrich von Hardenberg, Schleiermacher and Schelling – developed influential ideas in the fields of metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics and politics. The aim of their movement was essentially social and political: to overcome the alienation and disenchantment created by modernity, and to restore unity with oneself, others and nature. In accord with this aim, the Romantics advocated an ethics of love and self-realization, in opposition to hedonism and the Kantian ethic of duty. They championed an ideal of community against the competitive egoism of modern society; and, finally, they developed an organic concept of nature against the mechanistic worldview of Cartesian physics. Romantic ethics, politics and aesthetics should all be seen in the light of their essential cultural goal: to cure humanity of homesickness and to make people feel at home in the world again.
Lebensphilosophie
Authors: Gaiger Jason
Published: September 2018

In its most general sense Lebensphilosophie denotes a philosophy which asks after the meaning, value and purpose of life, turning away from purely theoretical knowledge towards the undistorted fullness of lived experience. In the second half of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century the concept of ‘life’ assumed a central role in German philosophy. Lebensphilosophie typically opposes rigid abstractions with a philosophy based on feeling and intuition, and seeks to establish the priority of ‘life’ as an all-encompassing whole. The central claim underlying its various manifestations is that life can only be understood from within.
Ardigò, Roberto (1828–1920)
Authors: Urbinati Nadia
Published: September 2018

Roberto Ardigò was the most prominent Italian philosopher of the nineteenth century. A priest and an academic, he was subjected to an ecclesiastical trial for his naturalistic philosophy and dismissed from the priesthood. Ardigò symbolized secularism and the conflict between the liberal state and the Roman Church, which marked Italian politics and culture from the Risorgimento to the end of the century. A positivist philosopher, he advocated an empirical and materialistic explanation of all phenomena and revived Renaissance humanism and naturalism.
Boltzmann, Ludwig Eduard (1844–1906)
Authors: Blackmore John
Published: September 2018

Boltzmann is famous in both physics and philosophy for interpreting thermodynamics in terms of molecular movement as if the second or ‘entropy’ law were merely statistically valid. This approach became a central aspect of statistical mechanics and helped influence Planck’s development of quantum mechanics and Einstein’s work on Brownian motion. The result helped place the reality of atoms, which had long been favoured by most scientists but opposed by many philosophers, beyond reasonable challenge. Toward the end of Boltzmann’s long struggle against the technical objections of physicists and mathematicians and the epistemological criticisms of philosophers the understanding of atoms by those scientists who accepted their reality began changing from indivisible particles to divisible ‘corpuscles’, which included electrons.
Maistre, Joseph de (1753–1821)
Authors: Lebrun Richard A.
Published: September 2018

Count Joseph de Maistre was a major theorist of the Counter-Enlightenment, whose writings inspired generations of French Catholic royalists and stimulated thinkers diverse as Saint- Simon, Auguste Comte and Charles Maurras. He is known especially for his providential interpretation of the French Revolution, his support for a Bourbon Restoration in France, his opposition to all contractual theories of government, his arguments in favour of papal infallibility, his philosophical speculations on violence and bloodshed, his critique of John Locke’s epistemology and his attack on Francis Bacon’s ‘scientism’.