Britannica Educational Publishing - Top 101 Philosophers

Published in 2014 by Britannica Educational Publishing (a trademark of Encyclopdia Britannica, Inc.) in association with The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc.

29 East 21st Street, New York, NY 10010

Copyright 2014 by Encyclopdia Britannica, Inc. Britannica, Encyclopdia Britannica, and the Thistle logo are registered trademarks of Encyclopdia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.

Rosen Publishing materials copyright 2014 The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved

Distributed exclusively by Rosen Publishing.

To see additional Britannica Educational Publishing titles, go to rosenpublishing.com

First Edition

Britannica Educational Publishing

J.E. Luebering: Director, Core Reference Group

Anthony L. Green: Editor, Comptons by Britannica

Rosen Publishing

Hope Lourie Killcoyne: Executive Editor

Jeanne Nagle: Editor

Nelson S: Art Director

Brian Garvey: Designer, cover design

Cindy Reiman: Photography Manager

Karen Huang: Photo Researcher

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Top 101 philosophers / [editor] Jeanne Nagle. First edition.

pages cm (People you should know)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-62275-133-4 (eBook)

1. PhilosophersBiographyJuvenile literature. I. Nagle, Jeanne. II. Title: Top one

hundred and one philosophers.

B104.T67 2014

109.2dc23

[B]

2013033327

On the cover: Pictured are (top, left to right) Plato Nick Paviakis/Shutterstock.com; Simone de Beauvoir Hulton Archive/Getty Images; Aristotle Panos Karas/Shutterstock.com; Noam Chomsky fotostory/Shutterstock.com; (bottom, left to right) Jean-Paul Sartre Keystone-France/Gamma/Keystone/Getty Images; Friedrich Nietzsche Nicku/Shutterstock.com; Bertrand Russell Keystone-France/Gamma/Keystone/Getty Images; and Confucius Philip Lange/Shutterstock.com.

Cover and interior pages (top) iStockphoto.com/Ren Mansi

CONTENTS

T hroughout its long history, philosophy has been defined in many different ways. Indeed, there has never been any general agreement about what philosophy is, even among philosophers. Some have thought of it as the search for wisdom, others as the attempt, through careful reasoning, to understand the universe as a whole. Still others have defined it as the investigation of what is good and right, as the contemplation of God or the divine, or as the rational examination of basic human values, such as truth, goodness, beauty, and justice.

Given this great diversity of approaches, is a single definition of philosophy even possible? Perhaps a good definition would be one that combined what is common to the various definitions that have been proposed. One common element, for example, is the important role of reason: philosophy is above all a rational activity, one that is guided by reason and evidence, and one that is committed to accepting whatever conclusions follow logically from the evidence available, whatever the values or opinions of the individual philosopher might be.

A second common feature is the fundamental importance of the questions that philosophy considers. Philosophy characteristically addresses issues that are (or should be) urgently important to human beings: What is real? What can I know? Is there life after death? Is there a God? What should I do, and how should I live?

Finally, there is a third general characteristic of philosophy that ought to be included in any good definition, though it is not a common element of the definitions that have been proposed. It is that philosophy is not limited to any particular subject: it can be applied to any field of study and any human activity or experience. Thus, in addition to the traditional branches of philosophyepistemology (the study of knowledge), ethics (the study of right and wrong, good and bad), logic (the study of correct reasoning), and metaphysics (the study of the nature of reality)there are many other fields, which are designated by the name of the subject they apply to: philosophy of art, philosophy of language, philosophy of law, philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, philosophy of science, and many others.

Putting all of these features together, one might define philosophy as the rational and deliberate consideration of profoundly important questions concerning all aspects of human life.

Although philosophers have always disagreed with each other, they have never succeeded in proving that their own views are absolutely right or that the views of other philosophers are absolutely wrong. Partly this is because philosophical questions, unlike scientific ones, cannot be settled simply by looking to see what the world is like. Answering them requires not just observation but also the logical examination of ideas and the use of intuition, imagination, and creativity, which different philosophers apply in different ways. What any philosophical theory provides, therefore, is not an absolutely true account of the world but a set of rational insights that presents the world in a new light. (It should be noted that some philosophers disagree with this view: they think that some philosophical theories are absolutely true and that some are absolutely false.)

But, one might ask, if no philosophical theory is absolutely correct, what is the point of doing philosophy? What, in other words, is the value of philosophy?

The 20th-century philosopher Bertrand Russell provided a memorable answer to this question. He wrote:

Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, ... but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination ... and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all because, through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind also is rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good.

(b. 1079d. 1142)

P eter Abelard was a French theologian and philosopher best known for his theory of universals and for his brilliance in logic. He attracted crowds of students with his question-and-answer method for teaching theology. He also aroused deep hostility, however, with his criticism of his colleagues and his questioning of traditional Christian teachings.

The outline of Abelards career is well known, largely because he described so much of it in his famous Historia calamitatum (History of My Troubles). The son of a knight, he was born in 1079 in Le Pallet, near Nantes, Brittany (now in France). He sacrificed his inheritance and the prospect of a military career to study philosophy, particularly logic. Soon he entered the debate over the problem of universals, which was a central theme of medieval philosophy. Some philosophers believed in universalsqualities shared by objects that exist as separate entities, distinct from the objects themselves. In contrast, Abelard taught that universals are mere words. His position was called nominalism.

In 1113 or 1114 Abelard went north to Laon to study theology under Anselm of Laon, the leading biblical scholar of the day, but he soon returned to Paris. There he taught openly but was also given as a private pupil the young Hlose, niece of one of the clergy of the cathedral of Paris. Abelard and Hlose fell in love and had a son whom they called Astrolabe. They married secretly, but their secret was discovered. Abelard was castrated, and the two were forced to part. In shame Abelard became a monk at the abbey of Saint-Denis near Paris.