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Samos
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It is also a separate regional unit of the North Aegean region, and the only municipality of the regional unit. In ancient times Samos was a rich and powerful city-state, particularly known for its vineyards. It is home to Pythagoreion and the Heraion of Samos, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that includes the Eupalinian aqueduct, Samian wine was well known in antiquity, and is still produced on the island. The island was governed by the semi-autonomous Principality of Samos under Ottoman suzerainty from 1835 until it joined Greece in 1912, the area of the island is 477.395 km2, and it is 43 km long and 13 km wide. It is separated from Anatolia by the approximately 1-mile-wide Mycale Strait, while largely mountainous, Samos has several relatively large and fertile plains. A great portion of the island is covered with vineyards, from which wine is made. The most important plains except the capital, Vathy, in the northeast, are that of Karlovasi, in the northwest, Pythagoreio, in the southeast, the islands population is 33,814, which is the 9th most populous of the Greek islands. The Samian climate is typically Mediterranean, with rainy winters. Samos relief is dominated by two mountains, Ampelos and Kerkis. The Ampelos massif is the larger of the two and occupies the center of the island, rising to 1,095 metres. Mt. Kerkis, though smaller in area is the taller of the two and its summit is the islands highest point, at 1,434 metres, the mountains are a continuation of the Mycale range on the Anatolian mainland. According to Strabo, the name Samos is from Phoenician meaning rise by the shore, Samos is home to many surprising species including the golden jackal, stone marten, wild boar, flamingos and monk seal. Samos is one of the sunniest places in Europe with almost 3300 hours of sunshine annually or 74% of the time and its climate is mild and wet in winter and dry in summer. In classical antiquity the island was a center of Ionian culture and luxury, renowned for its Samian wines and its most famous building was the Ionic order archaic Temple of goddess Hera—the Heraion. Concerning the earliest history of Samos, literary tradition is singularly defective, at the time of the great migrations it received an Ionian population which traced its origin to Epidaurus in Argolis, Samos became one of the twelve members of the Ionian League. By the 7th century BC it had one of the leading commercial centers of Greece. They helped to open up trade with the population lived around the Black Sea as well as with Egypt, Cyrene, Corinth. This caused them to become rivals with Miletus
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Classical Athens
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Athenian democracy was established in 508 BC under Cleisthenes following the tyranny of Isagoras. This system remained remarkably stable, and with a few brief interruptions remained in place for 180 years, the peak of Athenian hegemony was achieved in the 440s to 430s BC, known as the Age of Pericles. The radical politician of aristocratic background, Cleisthenes, then took charge, the reforms of Cleisthenes replaced the traditional four Ionic tribes with ten new ones, named after legendary heroes of Greece and having no class basis, which acted as electorates. Each tribe was in divided into three trittyes, while each trittys had one or more demes —depending on their population—which became the basis of local government. The tribes each selected fifty members by lot for the Boule, the public opinion of voters could be influenced by the political satires written by the comic poets and performed in the city theaters. Most offices were filled by lot, although the ten strategoi were elected, prior to the rise of Athens, Sparta, a city-state with a militaristic culture, considered itself the leader of the Greeks, and enforced a hegemony. In 499 BC Athens sent troops to aid the Ionian Greeks of Asia Minor and this provoked two Persian invasions of Greece, both of which were repelled under the leadership of the soldier-statesmen Miltiades and Themistocles. In 490 the Athenians, led by Miltiades, prevented the first invasion of the Persians, guided by king Darius I, in 480 the Persians returned under a new ruler, Xerxes I. Simultaneously the Athenians led a naval battle off Artemisium. However, this action was not enough to discourage the Persian advance which soon marched through Boeotia, setting up Thebes as their base of operations. This forced the Athenians to evacuate Athens, which was taken by the Persians, subsequently the Athenians and their allies, led by Themistocles, defeated the Persian navy at sea in the Battle of Salamis. It is interesting to note that Xerxes had built himself a throne on the coast in order to see the Greeks defeated, spartas hegemony was passing to Athens, and it was Athens that took the war to Asia Minor. These victories enabled it to bring most of the Aegean and many parts of Greece together in the Delian League. He fostered arts and literature and gave to Athens a splendor which would never return throughout its history and he executed a large number of public works projects and improved the life of the citizens. Hence, he gave his name to the Athenian Golden Age, silver mined in Laurium in southeastern Attica contributed greatly to the prosperity of this Golden Age of Athens. During the time of the ascendancy of Ephialtes as leader of the democratic faction, the conflict marked the end of Athenian command of the sea. The war between Athens and the city-state Sparta ended with an Athenian defeat after Sparta started its own navy, Athenian democracy was briefly overthrown by the coup of 411, brought about because of its poor handling of the war, but it was quickly restored. The war ended with the defeat of Athens in 404
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Ancient philosophy
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This page lists some links to ancient philosophy. Genuinely philosophical thought, depending upon original individual insights, arose in many cultures roughly contemporaneously, karl Jaspers termed the intense period of philosophical development beginning around the 7th century and concluding around the 3rd century BCE an Axial Age in human thought. Chinese philosophy is the dominant philosophical thought in China and other countries within the East Asian cultural sphere share a common language, including Japan, Korea. The Hundred Schools of Thought were philosophers and schools that flourished from the 6th century to 221 BCE, the thoughts and ideas discussed and refined during this period have profoundly influenced lifestyles and social consciousness up to the present day in East Asian countries. The intellectual society of this era was characterized by itinerant scholars, who were employed by various state rulers as advisers on the methods of government, war. This period ended with the rise of the Qin Dynasty and the subsequent purge of dissent, a main idea of Confucianism is the cultivation of virtue and the development of moral perfection. Confucianism holds that one should give up ones life, if necessary, either passively or actively, for the sake of upholding the cardinal moral values of ren, the Legalists exalted the state above all, seeking its prosperity and martial prowess over the welfare of the common people. Harmony with the Universe, or the source thereof, is the result of many Taoist rules and practices. Mohism, which advocated the idea of love, Mozi believed that everyone is equal before heaven. Mozi advocated frugality, condemning the Confucian emphasis on ritual and music, naturalism, the School of Naturalists or the Yin-yang school, which synthesized the concepts of yin-yang and the Five Elements, Zou Yan is considered the founder of this school. Agrarianism, or the School of Agrarianism, which advocated peasant utopian communalism and egalitarianism, the Logicians or the School of Names, which focused on definition and logic. It is said to have parallels with that of the Ancient Greek sophists or dialecticians, the most notable Logician was Gongsun Longzi. Scholars from this school were good orators, debaters and tacticians, the Miscellaneous School, which integrated teachings from different schools, for instance, Lü Buwei found scholars from different schools to write a book called Lüshi Chunqiu cooperatively. This school tried to integrate the merits of various schools and avoid their perceived flaws, the School of Minor-talks, which was not a unique school of thought, but a philosophy constructed of all the thoughts which were discussed by and originated from normal people on the street. Another group is the School of the Military that studied strategy, however, this school was not one of the Ten Schools defined by Hanshu. The founder of the Qin Dynasty, who implemented Legalism as the official philosophy, Legalism remained influential until the emperors of the Han Dynasty adopted Daoism and later Confucianism as official doctrine. These latter two became the forces of Chinese thought until the introduction of Buddhism. In contrast, there was an Old Text school that advocated the use of Confucian works written in ancient language that were so much more reliable
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Western philosophy
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Western philosophy is the philosophical thought and work of the Western world. The word philosophy itself originated from the Hellenic, philosophia, literally, the scope of philosophy in the ancient understanding, and the writings of the ancient philosophers, were all intellectual endeavors. Western Philosophy is generally said to begin in the Greek cities of western Asia Minor with Thales of Miletus and his most noted students were respectively Anaximander and Anaximenes of Miletus. Pythagoras, from the island of Samos off the coast of Ionia, pythagoreans hold that all is number, giving formal accounts in contrast to the previous material of the Ionians. They also believe in metempsychosis, the transmigration of souls, or reincarnation, Socrates The key figure in Greek philosophy is Socrates. Socrates studied under several Sophists but transformed Greek philosophy into a unified, Socrates used a critical approach called the elenchus or Socratic method to examine peoples views. He aimed to study human things, the life, justice, beauty. Although Socrates wrote nothing himself, some of his many disciples wrote down his conversations and he was tried for corrupting the youth and impiety by the Greek democracy. He was found guilty and sentenced to death, although his friends offered to help him escape from prison, he chose to remain in Athens and abide by his principles. His execution consisting in drinking the poison hemlock and he died in 399 B. C, Plato Socrates most important student was Plato. Plato founded the Academy of Athens and wrote a number of dialogues, some central ideas of Platos dialogues are the immortality of the soul, the benefits of being just, that evil is ignorance, and the Theory of Forms. Forms are universal properties that constitute reality and contrast with the changeable material things he called becoming. Aristotle Platos most outstanding student was Aristotle, Aristotle was perhaps the first truly systematic philosopher and scientist. He wrote books on physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, aesthetics, poetry, theater, music, rhetoric, politics, Aristotelian logic was the first type of logic to attempt to categorize every valid syllogism. Aristotelian philosophy exercised considerable influence on almost all western philosophers, including Greek, Roman, Christian, Jewish, the Neoplatonic and Christian philosophers of Late Antiquity. Early medieval philosophy was influenced by the likes of Stoicism, neo-Platonism, but, above all, the prominent figure of this period was St. Augustinianism was the preferred starting point for most philosophers up until the 13th century. The foundations of many northern European universities were built in the Middle Ages by waves of Irish, Scottish & English monks from the Celtic Church begun by Columba, see Celtic Christianity. Erigena is said to have been stabbed to death by his students with their pens and his theology would today be called pantheistic, in keeping with Celtic resolutions of pagan and Christian philosophy
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Epicureanism
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Epicureanism is a system of philosophy based upon the teachings of the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus, founded around 307 BC. Epicurus was an atomic materialist, following in the steps of Democritus and his materialism led him to a general attack on superstition and divine intervention. This would lead one to attain a state of tranquility and freedom from fear as well as an absence of bodily pain, the combination of these two states constitutes happiness in its highest form. Epicureanism was originally a challenge to Platonism, though later it became the main opponent of Stoicism, Epicurus and his followers shunned politics. After the death of Epicurus, his school was headed by Hermarchus, later many Epicurean societies flourished in the Late Hellenistic era and its best-known Roman proponent was the poet Lucretius. Some writings by Epicurus have survived, some scholars consider the epic poem On the Nature of Things by Lucretius to present in one unified work the core arguments and theories of Epicureanism. Many of the papyrus scrolls unearthed at the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum are Epicurean texts, at least some are thought to have belonged to the Epicurean Philodemus. The school of Epicurus, called The Garden, was based in Epicurus home and it had a small but devoted following in his lifetime. Its members included Hermarchus, Idomeneus, Colotes, Polyaenus, Epicurus emphasized friendship as an important ingredient of happiness, and the school seems to have been a moderately ascetic community which rejected the political limelight of Athenian philosophy. They were fairly cosmopolitan by Athenian standards, including women and slaves, some members were also vegetarians as Epicurus did not eat meat, although no prohibition against eating meat was made. The schools popularity grew and it became, along with Stoicism and Skepticism, another ancient source is Diogenes of Oenoanda, who composed a large inscription at Oenoanda in Lycia. A library in the Villa of the Papyri, in Herculaneum, was owned by Julius Caesars father-in-law. The scrolls which the library consisted of were preserved albeit in carbonized form by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, the task of unrolling and deciphering the over 1800 charred papyrus scrolls continues today. With the dominance of the Neo-Platonism and Peripatetic School philosophy, Epicureanism declined, by the late third century AD, there was very little trace of its existence. The early Christian writer Lactantius criticizes Epicurus at several points throughout his Divine Institutes, in Dantes Divine Comedy, the Epicureans are depicted as heretics suffering in the sixth circle of hell. In fact, Epicurus appears to represent the ultimate heresy, the word for a heretic in the Talmudic literature is Apiqoros. By the 16th century, the works of Diogenes Laertius were being printed in Europe, in the 17th century the French Franciscan priest, scientist and philosopher Pierre Gassendi wrote two books forcefully reviving Epicureanism. Shortly thereafter, and clearly influenced by Gassendi, Walter Charleton published several works on Epicureanism in English, attacks by Christians continued, most forcefully by the Cambridge Platonists
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Materialism
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Materialism is closely related to physicalism, the view that all that exists is ultimately physical. Thus the term physicalism is preferred over materialism by some, while others use the terms as if they are synonymous, philosophies contradictory to materialism or physicalism include idealism, pluralism, dualism, and other forms of monism. Materialism belongs to the class of monist ontology, as such, it is different from ontological theories based on dualism or pluralism. For singular explanations of the reality, materialism would be in contrast to idealism, neutral monism. To idealists, spirit or mind or the objects of mind are primary, to materialists, matter is primary, and mind or spirit or ideas are secondary, the product of matter acting upon matter. The materialist view is perhaps best understood in its opposition to the doctrines of immaterial substance applied to the mind historically, famously by René Descartes, however, by itself materialism says nothing about how material substance should be characterized. In practice, it is assimilated to one variety of physicalism or another. Jerry Fodor influentially argues this view, according to which empirical laws, a lot of vigorous literature has grown up around the relation between these views. Modern philosophical materialists extend the definition of other scientifically observable entities such as energy, forces, however philosophers such as Mary Midgley suggest that the concept of matter is elusive and poorly defined. Materialism typically contrasts with dualism, phenomenalism, idealism, vitalism and its materiality can, in some ways, be linked to the concept of determinism, as espoused by Enlightenment thinkers. Later Marxists, such as Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky developed the notion of dialectical materialism which characterized later Marxist philosophy, Materialism developed, possibly independently, in several geographically separated regions of Eurasia during what Karl Jaspers termed the Axial Age. In Ancient Indian philosophy, materialism developed around 600 BC with the works of Ajita Kesakambali, Payasi, Kanada, Kanada became one of the early proponents of atomism. The Nyaya–Vaisesika school developed one of the earliest forms of atomism, though their proofs of God, buddhist atomism and the Jaina school continued the atomic tradition. Xunzi developed a Confucian doctrine centered on realism and materialism in Ancient China, Ancient Greek philosophers like Thales, Anaxagoras, Epicurus and Democritus prefigure later materialists. The Latin poem De Rerum Natura by Lucretius reflects the philosophy of Democritus and Epicurus. According to this view, all that exists is matter and void, De Rerum Natura provides mechanistic explanations for phenomena such as erosion, evaporation, wind, and sound. Famous principles like nothing can touch body but body first appeared in the works of Lucretius, chinese thinkers of the early common era said to be materialists include Yang Xiong and Wang Chong. Later Indian materialist Jayaraashi Bhatta in his work Tattvopaplavasimha refuted the Nyaya Sutra epistemology, the materialistic Cārvāka philosophy appears to have died out some time after 1400
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Hedonism
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Hedonism is a school of thought that argues that pleasure and happiness are the primary or most important intrinsic goods and the proper aim of human life. A hedonist strives to maximize net pleasure, but when finally gained of that pleasure, either through intrinsic or extrinsic goods, ethical hedonism is the idea that all people have the right to do everything in their power to achieve the greatest amount of pleasure possible to them. It is also the idea that every persons pleasure should far surpass their amount of pain, ethical hedonism is said to have been started by Aristippus of Cyrene, a student of Socrates. He held the idea that pleasure is the highest good, Hedonism is a sub philosophy of utilitarianism, which says to act in a way that maximizes utility. Hedonists equate pleasure with utility and believe that pleasure is the master of all humankind, the name derives from the Greek word for delight. An extremely strong aversion to hedonism is hedonophobia, in the original Old Babylonian version of the Epic of Gilgamesh, which was written soon after the invention of writing, Siduri gave the following advice Fill your belly. Dance and make music day and night These things alone are the concern of men, the following is a song attributed to the reign of one of the Pharoahs around the time of the 12th dynasty, and the text was used in the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties. The school was so called after Cyrene, the birthplace of Aristippus and it was one of the earliest Socratic schools. The Cyrenaics taught that the only good is pleasure, which meant not just the absence of pain. Of these, momentary pleasures, especially physical ones, are stronger than those of anticipation or memory and they did, however, recognize the value of social obligation, and that pleasure could be gained from altruism. Theodorus the Atheist was an exponent of hedonism who was a disciple of younger Aristippus. The school died out within a century, and was replaced by Epicureanism, the Cyrenaics were known for their skeptical theory of knowledge. They reduced logic to a doctrine concerning the criterion of truth. They thought that we can know with certainty our immediate sense-experiences and they also denied that we can have knowledge of what the experiences of other people are like. These sensations are motions which are subjective, and are painful, indifferent or pleasant, according as they are violent. Further they are individual, and can in no way be described as constituting absolute objective knowledge. Feeling, therefore, is the only criterion of knowledge. Our ways of being affected are alone knowable, thus the sole aim for everyone should be pleasure
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Physics
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Physics is the natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion and behavior through space and time, along with related concepts such as energy and force. One of the most fundamental disciplines, the main goal of physics is to understand how the universe behaves. Physics is one of the oldest academic disciplines, perhaps the oldest through its inclusion of astronomy, Physics intersects with many interdisciplinary areas of research, such as biophysics and quantum chemistry, and the boundaries of physics are not rigidly defined. New ideas in physics often explain the mechanisms of other sciences while opening new avenues of research in areas such as mathematics. Physics also makes significant contributions through advances in new technologies that arise from theoretical breakthroughs, the United Nations named 2005 the World Year of Physics. Astronomy is the oldest of the natural sciences, the stars and planets were often a target of worship, believed to represent their gods. While the explanations for these phenomena were often unscientific and lacking in evidence, according to Asger Aaboe, the origins of Western astronomy can be found in Mesopotamia, and all Western efforts in the exact sciences are descended from late Babylonian astronomy. The most notable innovations were in the field of optics and vision, which came from the works of many scientists like Ibn Sahl, Al-Kindi, Ibn al-Haytham, Al-Farisi and Avicenna. The most notable work was The Book of Optics, written by Ibn Al-Haitham, in which he was not only the first to disprove the ancient Greek idea about vision, but also came up with a new theory. In the book, he was also the first to study the phenomenon of the pinhole camera, many later European scholars and fellow polymaths, from Robert Grosseteste and Leonardo da Vinci to René Descartes, Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton, were in his debt. Indeed, the influence of Ibn al-Haythams Optics ranks alongside that of Newtons work of the same title, the translation of The Book of Optics had a huge impact on Europe. From it, later European scholars were able to build the devices as what Ibn al-Haytham did. From this, such important things as eyeglasses, magnifying glasses, telescopes, Physics became a separate science when early modern Europeans used experimental and quantitative methods to discover what are now considered to be the laws of physics. Newton also developed calculus, the study of change, which provided new mathematical methods for solving physical problems. The discovery of new laws in thermodynamics, chemistry, and electromagnetics resulted from greater research efforts during the Industrial Revolution as energy needs increased, however, inaccuracies in classical mechanics for very small objects and very high velocities led to the development of modern physics in the 20th century. Modern physics began in the early 20th century with the work of Max Planck in quantum theory, both of these theories came about due to inaccuracies in classical mechanics in certain situations. Quantum mechanics would come to be pioneered by Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, from this early work, and work in related fields, the Standard Model of particle physics was derived. Areas of mathematics in general are important to this field, such as the study of probabilities, in many ways, physics stems from ancient Greek philosophy
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Ethics
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Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong conduct. The term ethics derives from the Ancient Greek word ἠθικός ethikos, the branch of philosophy axiology comprises the sub-branches of ethics and aesthetics, each concerned with values. As a branch of philosophy, ethics investigates the questions What is the best way for people to live, and What actions are right or wrong in particular circumstances. In practice, ethics seeks to resolve questions of morality by defining concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice. As a field of enquiry, moral philosophy also is related to the fields of moral psychology, descriptive ethics. Richard William Paul and Linda Elder define ethics as a set of concepts, the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy states that the word ethics is commonly used interchangeably with morality. And sometimes it is used narrowly to mean the moral principles of a particular tradition. Paul and Elder state that most people confuse ethics with behaving in accordance with social conventions, religious beliefs, the word ethics in English refers to several things. It can refer to philosophical ethics or moral philosophy—a project that attempts to use reason in order to various kinds of ethical questions. As bioethicist Larry Churchill has written, Ethics, understood as the capacity to think critically about moral values, Ethics can also be used to describe a particular persons own idiosyncratic principles or habits. For example, Joe has strange ethics, the English word ethics is derived from an Ancient Greek word êthikos, which means relating to ones character. The Ancient Greek adjective êthikos is itself derived from another Greek word, meta-ethics asks how we understand, know about, and what we mean when we talk about what is right and what is wrong. An ethical question fixed on some particular practical question—such as, Should I eat this particular piece of chocolate cake. —cannot be a meta-ethical question, a meta-ethical question is abstract and relates to a wide range of more specific practical questions. For example, Is it ever possible to have knowledge of what is right. Meta-ethics has always accompanied philosophical ethics, meta-ethics is also important in G. E. In it he first wrote about what he called the naturalistic fallacy, moore was seen to reject naturalism in ethics, in his Open Question Argument. This made thinkers look again at second order questions about ethics, earlier, the Scottish philosopher David Hume had put forward a similar view on the difference between facts and values. Studies of how we know in ethics divide into cognitivism and non-cognitivism, non-cognitivism is the claim that when we judge something as right or wrong, this is neither true nor false
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Epistemology
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Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with the theory of knowledge. Epistemology studies the nature of knowledge, justification, and the rationality of belief, the term Epistemology was first used by Scottish philosopher James Frederick Ferrier in 1854. However, according to Brett Warren, King James VI of Scotland had previously personified this philosophical concept as the character Epistemon in 1591 and this philosophical approach signified a Philomath seeking to obtain greater knowledge through epistemology with the use of theology. The dialogue was used by King James to educate society on various concepts including the history, the word epistemology is derived from the ancient Greek epistēmē meaning knowledge and the suffix -logy, meaning a logical discourse to. J. F. Ferrier coined epistemology on the model of ontology, to designate that branch of philosophy which aims to discover the meaning of knowledge, and called it the true beginning of philosophy. The word is equivalent to the concept Wissenschaftslehre, which was used by German philosophers Johann Fichte, French philosophers then gave the term épistémologie a narrower meaning as theory of knowledge. Émile Meyerson opened his Identity and Reality, written in 1908, in mathematics, it is known that 2 +2 =4, but there is also knowing how to add two numbers, and knowing a person, place, thing, or activity. Some philosophers think there is an important distinction between knowing that, knowing how, and acquaintance-knowledge, with epistemology being primarily concerned with the first of these, while these distinctions are not explicit in English, they are defined explicitly in other languages. In French, Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch to know is translated using connaître, conhecer, conocer, modern Greek has the verbs γνωρίζω and ξέρω. Italian has the verbs conoscere and sapere and the nouns for knowledge are conoscenza and sapienza, German has the verbs wissen and kennen. The verb itself implies a process, you have to go from one state to another and this verb seems to be the most appropriate in terms of describing the episteme in one of the modern European languages, hence the German name Erkenntnistheorie. The theoretical interpretation and significance of linguistic issues remains controversial. In his paper On Denoting and his later book Problems of Philosophy Bertrand Russell stressed the distinction between knowledge by description and knowledge by acquaintance, gilbert Ryle is also credited with stressing the distinction between knowing how and knowing that in The Concept of Mind. This position is essentially Ryles, who argued that a failure to acknowledge the distinction between knowledge that and knowledge how leads to infinite regress and this includes the truth, and everything else we accept as true for ourselves from a cognitive point of view. Whether someones belief is true is not a prerequisite for belief, on the other hand, if something is actually known, then it categorically cannot be false. It would not be accurate to say that he knew that the bridge was safe, because plainly it was not. By contrast, if the bridge actually supported his weight, then he might say that he had believed that the bridge was safe, whereas now, after proving it to himself, epistemologists argue over whether belief is the proper truth-bearer. Some would rather describe knowledge as a system of justified true propositions, plato, in his Gorgias, argues that belief is the most commonly invoked truth-bearer
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Democritus
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Democritus was an influential Ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosopher primarily remembered today for his formulation of an atomic theory of the universe. Democritus was born in Abdera, Thrace, around 460 BC, although and his exact contributions are difficult to disentangle from those of his mentor Leucippus, as they are often mentioned together in texts. Largely ignored in ancient Athens, Democritus is said to have been disliked so much by Plato that the latter wished all of his books burned and he was nevertheless well known to his fellow northern-born philosopher Aristotle. Many consider Democritus to be the father of modern science, none of his writings have survived, only fragments are known from his vast body of work. Democritus was said to be born in the city of Abdera in Thrace and he was born in the 80th Olympiad according to Apollodorus of Athens, and although Thrasyllus placed his birth in 470 BC, the later date is probably more likely. John Burnet has argued that the date of 460 is too early since, according to Diogenes Laërtius ix.41 and it was said that Democrituss father was from a noble family and so wealthy that he received Xerxes on his march through Abdera. Democritus spent the inheritance which his father left him on travels into distant countries and he traveled to Asia, and was even said to have reached India and Ethiopia. It is known that he wrote on Babylon and Meroe, he visited Egypt and he himself declared that among his contemporaries none had made greater journeys, seen more countries, and met more scholars than himself. He particularly mentions the Egyptian mathematicians, whose knowledge he praises, theophrastus, too, spoke of him as a man who had seen many countries. During his travels, according to Diogenes Laërtius, he acquainted with the Chaldean magi. Ostanes, one of the magi accompanying Xerxes, was said to have taught him. After returning to his land he occupied himself with natural philosophy. He traveled throughout Greece to acquire a knowledge of its cultures. He mentions many Greek philosophers in his writings, and his wealth enabled him to purchase their writings, Leucippus, the founder of atomism, was the greatest influence upon him. Diogenes Laertius says that he was friends with Hippocrates and he may have been acquainted with Socrates, but Plato does not mention him and Democritus himself is quoted as saying, I came to Athens and no one knew me. Aristotle placed him among the natural philosophers. The many anecdotes about Democritus, especially in Diogenes Laërtius, attest to his disinterest, modesty, and simplicity, one story has him deliberately blinding himself in order to be less disturbed in his pursuits, it may well be true that he lost his sight in old age. He was cheerful, and was ready to see the comical side of life
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Pyrrho
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Pyrrho, was a Greek philosopher of Classical Antiquity and is credited as being the first Greek skeptic philosopher. Pyrrho was from Elis, on the Ionian Sea, Diogenes Laertius, quoting from Apollodorus of Athens, says that Pyrrho was at first a painter, and that pictures by him were exhibited in the gymnasium at Elis. Later he was diverted to philosophy by the works of Democritus and his doctrines were recorded in the writings of his pupil Timon of Phlius. Unfortunately these works are mostly lost, today Pyrrhos ideas are known mainly through the book Outlines of Pyrrhonism written by the Greek physician Sextus Empiricus. Pyrrho is renowned for creating the first formal approach to skepticism in Western Philosophy, Pyrrho summarized his philosophy as follows, Whoever wants to live well must consider these three questions, First, how are pragmata by nature. Secondly, what attitude should we adopt towards them, thirdly, what will be the outcome for those who have this attitude. Pyrrhos answer is that As for pragmata they are all adiaphora, astathmēta, therefore, neither our sense-perceptions nor our doxai tell us the truth or lie, so we certainly should not rely on them. Rather, we should be adoxastous, aklineis, and akradantous, pyrrhonians can be subdivided into those who are ephectic, zetetic, or aporetic. Callisthenes Greco-Buddhism Nausiphanes This article incorporates text from a now in the public domain, Chisholm, Hugh. Algra, K. Barnes, J. Mansfeld, J. and Schofield, the Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,1999. Annas, Julia and Barnes, Jonathan, The Modes of Scepticism, Ancient Texts and Modern Interpretations, Pyrrhos Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia, Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford,2015. Bett, Richard, Aristocles on Timon on Pyrrho, The Text, Its Logic and its Credibility Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 12, bett, Richard, What did Pyrrho Think about the Nature of the Divine and the Good. Bett, Richard, Pyrrho, His Antecedents, and His Legacy, burnyeat, Myles, The Skeptical Tradition, Berkeley, University of California Press,1983. Burnyeat, Myles and Frede, Michael, The Original Sceptics, A Controversy, Indianapolis, doomen, Jasper, The Problems of Scepticism Logical Analysis and History of Philosophy 10, 36-52. Halkias, Georgios, The Self-immolation of Kalanos and other Luminous Encounters among Greeks, journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, Vol. VIII,2015, 163-186. Kuzminski, Adrian, Pyrrhonism, How the Ancient Greeks Reinvented Buddhism, Lanham, Hellenistic Philosophy, Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics, University of California Press,1986. Long, A. A. and Sedley, David, The Hellenistic Philosophers, Striker, Gisela, On the difference between the Pyrrhonists and the Academics in G. Striker, Essays on Hellenistic Epistemology and Ethics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,1996, 135-149. Striker, Gisela, Sceptical strategies in G. Striker, Essays on Hellenistic Epistemology and Ethics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,1996, 92-115
13.
Seneca the Younger
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Seneca the Younger, fully Lucius Annaeus Seneca and also known simply as Seneca, was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and—in one work—humorist of the Silver Age of Latin literature. As a tragedian, he is best-known for his Medea and Thyestes and he was a tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero. He was forced to take his own life for alleged complicity in the Pisonian conspiracy to assassinate Nero, however, some sources state that he may have been innocent. His father was Seneca the Elder, his brother was Lucius Junius Gallio Annaeanus. Seneca was born in Cordoba in Hispania, and raised in Rome, griffin also infers from the ancient sources that Seneca was born in either 8,4, or 1 BC. She thinks he was born between 4 and 1 BC and was a resident in Rome by AD5, Seneca says that he was carried to Rome in the arms of his mothers stepsister. Griffin says that, allowing for rhetorical exaggeration, means it is fair to conclude that Seneca was in Rome as a small boy. Be that as it may, it is clear that he was in Rome at an early stage in his life. Caligula and Fabius were critics of his works, and Columella, Pliny, Tacitus, from AD54 to 62, Seneca acted as Neros advisor, together with the praetorian prefect Sextus Afranius Burrus. One byproduct of his influence was that Seneca was appointed consul in 56. Senecas influence was said to have especially strong in the first year. Tacitus and Dio suggest that Neros early rule, during which time he listened to Seneca, however, the ancient sources suggest, over time, Seneca and Burrus lost their influence over the emperor. In 59 they had agreed to Agrippinas murder, and afterward. This may have contributed as well to his own downfall, following Burrus death in 62, Seneca became the subject of criticism by what Tacitus describes as Neros more disreputable advisers. Charges included allegations of excessive wealth, the grandeur of his property, Seneca requested an audience with Nero in which he sought permission to retire from public duties, pleading age and infirmity. The two then parted on apparently warm terms, Seneca subsequently adopted a quiet lifestyle on his country estates, concentrating on his studies and seldom visiting Rome. In AD65, Seneca was caught up in the aftermath of the Pisonian conspiracy, although it is unlikely that Seneca conspired, Nero ordered him to kill himself. Seneca followed tradition by severing several veins in order to bleed to death, a generation after the Julio-Claudian emperors, Tacitus wrote an account of the suicide, which in view of his Republican sympathies is perhaps somewhat romanticized
14.
Hermarchus
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Hermarchus or Hermarch, sometimes incorrectly written Hermachus, was an Epicurean philosopher. He was the disciple and successor of Epicurus as head of the school and he wrote works directed against Plato, Aristotle, and Empedocles. A fragment from his Against Empedocles, preserved by Porphyry, discusses the need for law in society and his views on the nature of the gods are quoted by Philodemus. He died in the house of Lysias at an advanced age, Cicero has preserved a letter of Epicurus addressed to him. But from an expression of Cicero, we may infer that his works were of a nature, and directed against the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. A long fragment from a work of Hermarchus has been preserved by Porphyry. This fragment is probably from his Against Empedocles, in this fragment, Hermarchus discusses the reasons for punishment for murder. He argues that early law-makers were guided by the principle that murder was not good for society and they then created punishments for those people who could not be educated. For everyone who understood that murder was not useful, laws would not be needed, for Hermarchus, this was an example of social progress and an increase in rationality. Philodemus in his On the Way of Life of the Gods, quotes the view of Hermarchus that the gods breathe, because the gods are living beings and all living things breathe
15.
Lucretius
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Titus Lucretius Carus was a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is the philosophical poem De rerum natura about the tenets and philosophy of Epicureanism. Lucretius has been credited with originating the concept of the system which was formalised from 1834 by C. J. Thomsen. Very little is known about Lucretiuss life, the certain fact is that he was either a friend or client of Gaius Memmius. De rerum natura was an influence on the Augustan poets, particularly Virgil. Virtually nothing is known about the life of Lucretius and he was probably a member of the aristocratic gens Lucretia, and his work shows an intimate knowledge of the luxurious lifestyle in Rome. In a letter by Cicero to his brother Quintus in February 54 BC, Cicero said, The poems of Lucretius are as you write, they exhibit many flashes of genius, and yet show great mastership. By this time, both Cicero and his brother had read De rerum natura, and so might have many other Romans, a literary evaluation of Lucretiuss work, however, reveals some repetition and a sudden end to Book 6 during a description of the plague at Athens. The poem appears to have been published without a final revision, if this is true, Lucretius must have been dead by 54 BC. A brief biographical note is found in Aelius Donatuss Life of Virgil, the two consuls of 70 BC, Pompey and Crassus, stood together as consuls again in 55, not 53. There is insufficient basis for a confident assertion of the date of Lucretiuss birth or death in other sources, another yet briefer note is found in the Chronicon of Donatuss pupil, Jerome. Writing four centuries after Lucretiuss death, he enters under the 171st Olympiad the following line, Titus Lucretius the poet is born. The claim that he was driven mad by a potion, although defended by such scholars as Reale and Catan, often is dismissed as the result of historical confusion. In some accounts the administration of the toxic aphrodisiac is attributed to his wife Lucilia, jeromes image of Lucretius as a lovesick, mad poet continued to have significant influence on modern scholarship until quite recently, although it now is accepted that such a report is inaccurate. Similarly, the statement that Cicero emended the work prior to publication is doubtful, the exact date of his birth varies by manuscript, in most it is recorded under 94 BC, but in others under 93 or 96. Lucretius and Jerome wrote for opposing purposes, and whether or not Jerome attempted to disparage Lucretiuss work as the work of a madman is an open question. If 55 BC is Lucretiuss most likely year of death, however and his poem De rerum natura transmits the ideas of Epicureanism, which includes Atomism, and psychology. Lucretius was the first writer to introduce Roman readers to Epicurean philosophy, the poem, written in some 7,400 dactylic hexameters, is divided into six untitled books, and explores Epicurean physics through richly poetic language and metaphors
16.
Thomas Hobbes
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Thomas Hobbes, in some older texts Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, was an English philosopher who is considered one of the founders of modern political philosophy. Hobbes is best known for his 1651 book Leviathan, which established the social theory that has served as the foundation for most later Western political philosophy. Thomas Hobbes was born at Westport, now part of Malmesbury in Wiltshire, England, born prematurely when his mother heard of the coming invasion of the Spanish Armada, Hobbes later reported that my mother gave birth to twins, myself and fear. His childhood is almost completely unknown, and his mothers name is unknown and his father, Thomas Sr. was the vicar of Charlton and Westport. Thomas Hobbes, the younger, had a brother Edmund, about two years older, and a sister, Thomas Sr. was involved in a fight with the local clergy outside his church, forcing him to leave London and abandon the family. The family was left in the care of Thomas Sr. s older brother, Francis, Hobbes was a good pupil, and around 1603 he went up to Magdalen Hall, the predecessor college to Hertford College, Oxford. The principal John Wilkinson was a Puritan, and he had influence on Hobbes. At university, Hobbes appears to have followed his own curriculum and he did not complete his B. A. Hobbes became a companion to the younger William and they both took part in a grand tour of Europe in 1610. Hobbes was exposed to European scientific and critical methods during the tour and it has been argued that three of the discourses in the 1620 publication known as Horea Subsecivae, Observations and Discourses, also represent the work of Hobbes from this period. Although he associated with figures like Ben Jonson and briefly worked as Francis Bacons amanuensis. His employer Cavendish, then the Earl of Devonshire, died of the plague in June 1628, the widowed countess dismissed Hobbes but he soon found work, again as a tutor, this time to Gervase Clifton, the son of Sir Gervase Clifton, 1st Baronet. This task, chiefly spent in Paris, ended in 1631 when he found work with the Cavendish family, tutoring William. Over the next seven years, as well as tutoring, he expanded his own knowledge of philosophy and he visited Florence in 1636 and was later a regular debater in philosophic groups in Paris, held together by Marin Mersenne. Hobbess first area of study was an interest in the doctrine of motion. Despite his interest in this phenomenon, he disdained experimental work as in physics and he went on to conceive the system of thought to the elaboration of which he would devote his life. He then singled out Man from the realm of Nature and plants, finally he considered, in his crowning treatise, how Men were moved to enter into society, and argued how this must be regulated if Men were not to fall back into brutishness and misery. Thus he proposed to unite the separate phenomena of Body, Man, Hobbes came home, in 1637, to a country riven with discontent which disrupted him from the orderly execution of his philosophic plan. However, by the end of the Short Parliament in 1640, he had written a treatise called The Elements of Law, Natural
17.
Immanuel Kant
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Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher who is considered a central figure in modern philosophy. Kant took himself to have effected a Copernican revolution in philosophy and his beliefs continue to have a major influence on contemporary philosophy, especially the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political theory, and aesthetics. Politically, Kant was one of the earliest exponents of the idea that peace could be secured through universal democracy. He believed that this will be the outcome of universal history. Kant wanted to put an end to an era of futile and speculative theories of human experience, Kant argued that our experiences are structured by necessary features of our minds. In his view, the shapes and structures experience so that, on an abstract level. Among other things, Kant believed that the concepts of space and time are integral to all human experience, as are our concepts of cause, Kant published other important works on ethics, religion, law, aesthetics, astronomy, and history. These included the Critique of Practical Reason, the Metaphysics of Morals, which dealt with ethics, and the Critique of Judgment, Immanuel Kant was born in 1724 in Königsberg, Prussia. His mother, Anna Regina Reuter, was born in Königsberg to a father from Nuremberg. His father, Johann Georg Kant, was a German harness maker from Memel, Immanuel Kant believed that his paternal grandfather Hans Kant was of Scottish origin. Kant was the fourth of nine children, baptized Emanuel, he changed his name to Immanuel after learning Hebrew. Young Kant was a solid, albeit unspectacular, student and he was brought up in a Pietist household that stressed religious devotion, humility, and a literal interpretation of the Bible. His education was strict, punitive and disciplinary, and focused on Latin and religious instruction over mathematics, despite his religious upbringing and maintaining a belief in God, Kant was skeptical of religion in later life, various commentators have labelled him agnostic. Common myths about Kants personal mannerisms are listed, explained, and refuted in Goldthwaits introduction to his translation of Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime. It is often held that Kant lived a strict and disciplined life. He never married, but seemed to have a social life — he was a popular teacher. He had a circle of friends whom he met, among them Joseph Green. A common myth is that Kant never traveled more than 16 kilometres from Königsberg his whole life, in fact, between 1750 and 1754 he worked as a tutor in Judtschen and in Groß-Arnsdorf
18.
Jeremy Bentham
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Jeremy Bentham was an English philosopher, jurist, and social reformer. He is regarded as the founder of modern utilitarianism, Bentham defined as the fundamental axiom of his philosophy the principle that it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong. He became a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law, and he advocated individual and economic freedom, the separation of church and state, freedom of expression, equal rights for women, the right to divorce, and the decriminalising of homosexual acts. He called for the abolition of slavery, the abolition of the penalty. He has also known in recent years as an early advocate of animal rights. Though strongly in favour of the extension of legal rights, he opposed the idea of natural law and natural rights. On his death in 1832, Bentham left instructions for his body to be first dissected, and then to be preserved as an auto-icon. This was done, and the auto-icon is now on display at University College London. Because of his arguments in favour of the availability of education. However, he played only a direct part in its foundation. Bentham was born in Houndsditch, London, to a family that supported the Tory party. He was reportedly a child prodigy, he was found as a sitting at his fathers desk reading a multi-volume history of England. He had one surviving sibling, Samuel Bentham, with whom he was close. He attended Westminster School and, in 1760, at age 12, was sent by his father to The Queens College, Oxford and he trained as a lawyer and, though he never practised, was called to the bar in 1769. He became deeply frustrated with the complexity of the English legal code, among his many proposals for legal and social reform was a design for a prison building he called the Panopticon. Although the prison was never built, the concept had an important influence on generations of thinkers. Twentieth-century French philosopher Michel Foucault argued that the Panopticon was paradigmatic of several 19th-century disciplinary institutions, Bentham became convinced that his plans for the Panopticon had been thwarted by the King and an aristocratic elite acting in their own interests. More successful was his cooperation with Patrick Colquhoun in tackling the corruption in the Pool of London and this resulted in the Thames Police Bill of 1798, which was passed in 1800
19.
John Stuart Mill
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John Stuart Mill was an English philosopher, political economist and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of liberalism, he contributed widely to social theory, political theory, Mill was a proponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by his predecessor Jeremy Bentham, and contributed significantly to the theory of the scientific method. A member of the Liberal Party, he was also the first Member of Parliament to call for womens suffrage. John Stuart Mill was born on Rodney Street in the Pentonville area of London, the eldest son of the Scottish philosopher, historian and economist James Mill, John Stuart was educated by his father, with the advice and assistance of Jeremy Bentham and Francis Place. He was given a rigorous upbringing, and was deliberately shielded from association with children his own age other than his siblings. Mill was a precocious child. He describes his education in his autobiography, at the age of three he was taught Greek. By the age of eight, he had read Aesops Fables, Xenophons Anabasis, and the whole of Herodotus and he had also read a great deal of history in English and had been taught arithmetic, physics and astronomy. At the age of eight, Mill began studying Latin, the works of Euclid, and algebra and his main reading was still history, but he went through all the commonly taught Latin and Greek authors and by the age of ten could read Plato and Demosthenes with ease. His father also thought that it was important for Mill to study, one of Mills earliest poetic compositions was a continuation of the Iliad. In his spare time he enjoyed reading about natural sciences and popular novels, such as Don Quixote. In the following year he was introduced to political economy and studied Adam Smith and David Ricardo with his father, Ricardo, who was a close friend of his father, used to invite the young Mill to his house for a walk in order to talk about political economy. At the age of fourteen, Mill stayed a year in France with the family of Sir Samuel Bentham, the mountain scenery he saw led to a lifelong taste for mountain landscapes. The lively and friendly way of life of the French also left an impression on him. In Montpellier, he attended the courses on chemistry, zoology, logic of the Faculté des Sciences. While coming and going from France, he stayed in Paris for a few days in the house of the renowned economist Jean-Baptiste Say, there he met many leaders of the Liberal party, as well as other notable Parisians, including Henri Saint-Simon. Mill went through months of sadness and pondered suicide at twenty years of age, according to the opening paragraphs of Chapter V of his autobiography, he had asked himself whether the creation of a just society, his lifes objective, would actually make him happy. His heart answered no, and unsurprisingly he lost the happiness of striving towards this objective, eventually, the poetry of William Wordsworth showed him that beauty generates compassion for others and stimulates joy
20.
Thomas Jefferson
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Thomas Jefferson was an American Founding Father who was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence and later served as the third President of the United States from 1801 to 1809. Previously, he was elected the second Vice President of the United States, Jefferson was primarily of English ancestry, born and educated in colonial Virginia. He graduated from the College of William & Mary and briefly practiced law and he became the United States Minister to France in May 1785, and subsequently the nations first Secretary of State in 1790–1793 under President George Washington. Jefferson and James Madison organized the Democratic-Republican Party to oppose the Federalist Party during the formation of the First Party System, as President, Jefferson pursued the nations shipping and trade interests against Barbary pirates and aggressive British trade policies. He also organized the Louisiana Purchase, almost doubling the countrys territory, as a result of peace negotiations with France, his administration reduced military forces. Jeffersons second term was beset with difficulties at home, including the trial of former Vice President Aaron Burr, American foreign trade was diminished when Jefferson implemented the Embargo Act of 1807, responding to British threats to U. S. shipping. In 1803, Jefferson began a process of Indian tribe removal to the newly organized Louisiana Territory. Jefferson mastered many disciplines, which ranged from surveying and mathematics to horticulture and he was a proven architect in the classical tradition. Jeffersons keen interest in religion and philosophy earned him the presidency of the American Philosophical Society and he shunned organized religion, but was influenced by both Christianity and deism. He was well versed in linguistics and spoke several languages and he founded the University of Virginia after retiring from public office. He was a letter writer and corresponded with many prominent and important people throughout his adult life. His only full-length book is Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson owned several plantations which were worked by hundreds of slaves. Most historians now believe that, after the death of his wife in 1782, he had a relationship with his slave Sally Hemings and fathered at least one of her children. Various modern scholars are more critical of Jeffersons private life, pointing out the discrepancy between his ownership of slaves and his political principles, for example. Presidential scholars, however, consistently rank Jefferson among the greatest presidents, Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13,1743, at the family home in Shadwell in the Colony of Virginia, the third of ten children. He was of English and possibly Welsh descent and was born a British subject and his father Peter Jefferson was a planter and surveyor who died when Jefferson was fourteen, his mother was Jane Randolph. Peter Jefferson moved his family to Tuckahoe Plantation in 1745 upon the death of a friend who had named him guardian of his children, the Jeffersons returned to Shadwell in 1752, where Peter died in 1757, his estate was divided between his sons Thomas and Randolph. Thomas inherited approximately 5,000 acres of land, including Monticello and he assumed full authority over his property at age 21
21.
Friedrich Nietzsche
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He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. He became the youngest ever to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869, Nietzsche resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life, and he completed much of his core writing in the following decade. In 1889, at age 44, he suffered a collapse and he lived his remaining years in the care of his mother, and then with his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, and died in 1900. Nietzsches body of work touched widely on art, philology, history, religion, tragedy, culture, and science, and drew inspiration from figures such as Schopenhauer, Wagner. His writing spans philosophical polemics, poetry, cultural criticism, and fiction while displaying a fondness for aphorism, born on 15 October 1844, Nietzsche grew up in the small town of Röcken, near Leipzig, in the Prussian Province of Saxony. He was named after King Frederick William IV of Prussia, who turned forty-nine on the day of Nietzsches birth, Nietzsches parents, Carl Ludwig Nietzsche, a Lutheran pastor and former teacher, and Franziska Oehler, married in 1843, the year before their sons birth. They had two children, a daughter, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, born in 1846, and a second son, Ludwig Joseph. Nietzsches father died from an ailment in 1849, Ludwig Joseph died six months later. The family then moved to Naumburg, where they lived with Nietzsches maternal grandmother, after the death of Nietzsches grandmother in 1856, the family moved into their own house, now Nietzsche-Haus, a museum and Nietzsche study centre. Nietzsche attended a school and then, later, a private school, where he became friends with Gustav Krug, Rudolf Wagner. In 1854, he began to attend Domgymnasium in Naumburg, because his father had worked for the state the now-fatherless Nietzsche was offered a scholarship to study at the internationally recognized Schulpforta. He transferred and studied there from 1858 to 1864, becoming friends with Paul Deussen and he also found time to work on poems and musical compositions. Nietzsche led Germania, a music and literature club, during his summers in Naumburg. His end-of-semester exams in March 1864 showed a 1 in Religion and German, a 2a in Greek and Latin, a 2b in French, History, and Physics, while at Pforta, Nietzsche had a penchant for pursuing subjects that were considered unbecoming. The teacher who corrected the essay gave it a mark but commented that Nietzsche should concern himself in the future with healthier, more lucid. After graduation in September 1864, Nietzsche commenced studies in theology, for a short time he and Deussen became members of the Burschenschaft Frankonia. After one semester, he stopped his studies and lost his faith. In June 1865, at the age of 20, Nietzsche wrote to his sister Elisabeth, who was deeply religious, a letter regarding his loss of faith
22.
Karl Marx
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Karl Marx was a Prussian-born philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. Born in Trier to a family, he later studied political economy. His work has influenced subsequent intellectual, economic, and political history. These economic critiques were set out in works such as the three volumes, published between 1867 and 1894, that comprise Das Kapital. According to Marx, states are run in the interests of the class but are nonetheless represented as being in favor of the common interest of all. He predicted that, like previous socioeconomic systems, capitalism produced internal tensions which would lead to its self-destruction and replacement by a new system, socialism. Marx actively fought for its implementation, arguing that the class should carry out organised revolutionary action to topple capitalism. Marx has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history and his work in economics laid the basis for much of the current understanding of labour and its relation to capital, and subsequent economic thought. Many intellectuals, labour unions, artists and political parties worldwide have been influenced by Marxs work, Marx is typically cited as one of the principal architects of modern sociology and social science. Karl Marx was born on 5 May 1818 to Heinrich Marx and he was born at Brückengasse 664 in Trier, a town then part of the Kingdom of Prussias Province of the Lower Rhine. Marx was ancestrally Jewish, his grandfather was a Dutch rabbi, while his paternal line had supplied Triers rabbis since 1723. Marx was also a cousin once removed of German Romantic poet Heinrich Heine, also born to a German Jewish family in the Rhineland. Largely non-religious, Heinrich was a man of the Enlightenment, interested in the ideas of the philosophers Immanuel Kant, a classical liberal, he took part in agitation for a constitution and reforms in Prussia, then governed by an absolute monarchy. In 1815 Heinrich Marx began work as an attorney, in 1819 moving his family to a property near the Porta Nigra. Her sister Sophie Pressburg, was Marxs aunt and was married to Lion Philips Marxs uncle through this marriage, Lion Philips was a wealthy Dutch tobacco manufacturer and industrialist, upon whom Karl and Jenny Marx would later often come to rely for loans while they were exiled in London. Little is known of Karl Marxs childhood, the third of nine children, he became the oldest son when his brother Moritz died in 1819. Young Karl was baptised into the Lutheran Church in August 1824 along with his siblings, Sophie, Hermann, Henriette, Louise, Emilie. Young Karl was privately educated, by Heinrich Marx, until 1830, by employing many liberal humanists as teachers, Wyttenbach incurred the anger of the local conservative government
23.
Charles Darwin
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Charles Robert Darwin, FRS FRGS FLS FZS was an English naturalist, geologist and biologist, best known for his contributions to the science of evolution. Darwin published his theory of evolution with compelling evidence in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, by the 1870s, the scientific community and much of the general public had accepted evolution as a fact. In modified form, Darwins scientific discovery is the theory of the life sciences. Darwins early interest in nature led him to neglect his education at the University of Edinburgh, instead. Studies at the University of Cambridge encouraged his passion for natural science, puzzled by the geographical distribution of wildlife and fossils he collected on the voyage, Darwin began detailed investigations and in 1838 conceived his theory of natural selection. Although he discussed his ideas with several naturalists, he needed time for extensive research and he was writing up his theory in 1858 when Alfred Russel Wallace sent him an essay that described the same idea, prompting immediate joint publication of both of their theories. Darwins work established evolutionary descent with modification as the dominant scientific explanation of diversification in nature, in 1871 he examined human evolution and sexual selection in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, followed by The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. His research on plants was published in a series of books, Darwin has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history, and he was honoured by burial in Westminster Abbey. Charles Robert Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, on 12 February 1809, at his familys home and he was the fifth of six children of wealthy society doctor and financier Robert Darwin and Susannah Darwin. He was the grandson of two prominent abolitionists, Erasmus Darwin on his fathers side, and Josiah Wedgwood on his mothers side, both families were largely Unitarian, though the Wedgwoods were adopting Anglicanism. The eight-year-old Charles already had a taste for history and collecting when he joined the day school run by its preacher in 1817. From September 1818, he joined his older brother Erasmus attending the nearby Anglican Shrewsbury School as a boarder and he found lectures dull and surgery distressing, so neglected his studies. He learned taxidermy in around 40 daily hour-long sessions from John Edmonstone, one day, Grant praised Lamarcks evolutionary ideas. Darwin was astonished by Grants audacity, but had recently read similar ideas in his grandfather Erasmus journals, Darwin was rather bored by Robert Jamesons natural-history course, which covered geology - including the debate between Neptunism and Plutonism. He learned the classification of plants, and assisted with work on the collections of the University Museum, as Darwin was unqualified for the Tripos, he joined the ordinary degree course in January 1828. He preferred riding and shooting to studying, when his own exams drew near, Darwin focused on his studies and was delighted by the language and logic of William Paleys Evidences of Christianity. In his final examination in January 1831 Darwin did well, coming out of 178 candidates for the ordinary degree. Darwin had to stay at Cambridge until June 1831, inspired with a burning zeal to contribute, Darwin planned to visit Tenerife with some classmates after graduation to study natural history in the tropics
24.
Sigmund Freud
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Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst. Freud was born to Galician Jewish parents in the Moravian town of Freiberg and he qualified as a doctor of medicine in 1881 at the University of Vienna. Upon completing his habilitation in 1885, he was appointed a docent in neuropathology, Freud lived and worked in Vienna, having set up his clinical practice there in 1886. In 1938 Freud left Austria to escape the Nazis and he died in exile in the United Kingdom in 1939. In creating psychoanalysis, Freud developed therapeutic techniques such as the use of free association and discovered transference, Freuds redefinition of sexuality to include its infantile forms led him to formulate the Oedipus complex as the central tenet of psychoanalytical theory. His analysis of dreams as wish-fulfillments provided him with models for the analysis of symptom formation. On this basis Freud elaborated his theory of the unconscious and went on to develop a model of psychic structure comprising id, in his later work Freud developed a wide-ranging interpretation and critique of religion and culture. Though in overall decline as a diagnostic and clinical practice, psychoanalysis remains influential within psychology, psychiatry, and psychotherapy, nonetheless, Freuds work has suffused contemporary Western thought and popular culture. In the words of W. H. Audens 1940 poetic tribute, by the time of Freuds death, Freud was born to Jewish parents in the Moravian town of Freiberg, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the first of eight children. Both of his parents were from Galicia, in modern-day Ukraine and his father, Jakob Freud, a wool merchant, had two sons, Emanuel and Philipp, by his first marriage. Jakobs family were Hasidic Jews, and although Jakob himself had moved away from the tradition and he and Freuds mother, Amalia Nathansohn, who was 20 years younger and his third wife, were married by Rabbi Isaac Noah Mannheimer on 29 July 1855. They were struggling financially and living in a room, in a locksmiths house at Schlossergasse 117 when their son Sigmund was born. He was born with a caul, which his mother saw as an omen for the boys future. In 1859, the Freud family left Freiberg, Freuds half brothers emigrated to Manchester, England, parting him from the inseparable playmate of his early childhood, Emanuels son, John. Jakob Freud took his wife and two children firstly to Leipzig and then in 1860 to Vienna where four sisters and a brother were born, Rosa, Marie, Adolfine, Paula, in 1865, the nine-year-old Freud entered the Leopoldstädter Kommunal-Realgymnasium, a prominent high school. He proved an outstanding pupil and graduated from the Matura in 1873 with honors and he loved literature and was proficient in German, French, Italian, Spanish, English, Hebrew, Latin and Greek. Freud entered the University of Vienna at age 17, in 1876, Freud spent four weeks at Clauss zoological research station in Trieste, dissecting hundreds of eels in an inconclusive search for their male reproductive organs. He graduated with an MD in 1881, in 1882, Freud began his medical career at the Vienna General Hospital
25.
Michel Onfray
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Michel Onfray is a contemporary French writer and philosopher who promotes hedonism, atheism, and anarchism. He is a prolific author on philosophy, having written more than 100 books. His philosophy is influenced by such thinkers as Nietzsche, Epicurus, the cynic and cyrenaic schools, French materialism. Born to a family of Norman farmers, Onfray was abandoned by his parents to a Catholic boarding from age 10 to 14, overcoming these early hardships, Onfray graduated with a PhD in philosophy. Onfrays Traité dAthéologie became the number one best-selling nonfiction book in France for months when it was published in the Spring of 2005 and this book repeated its popular French success in Italy, where it was published in September 2005 and quickly soared to number one on Italys bestseller lists. In the 2002 election, Onfray endorsed the French Revolutionary Communist League and its candidate for the French presidency, Onfray himself attributes the birth of philosophic communities such as the université populaire to the results of the French presidential election,2002. His book Le crépuscule dune idole, Laffabulation freudienne, published in 2010, has been the subject of controversy in France because of its criticism of Freud. He recognizes Freud as a philosopher, but he brings attention to the considerable cost of Freuds treatments and casts doubts on the effectiveness of his methods and he is an atheist and author of Atheist Manifesto. In 2015, he published Cosmos, the first book of a trilogy, Onfray considers ironically that it constitutes his very first book. Onfray writes that there is no philosophy without self-psychoanalysis and he describes himself as an atheist and considers theist religion to be indefensible. Onfray has published 9 books under a project of history of philosophy called Counter-history of Philosophy, in each of these books Onfray deals with a particular historical period in western philosophy. The series of books are composed by the titles I. Les Sagesses Antiques, Les Ultras des Lumières, V. LEudémonisme social, VI. Les Radicalités existentielles and VII. La construction du surhomme, Jean-Marie Guyau, Friedrich Nietzsche. In an interview he establishes his view on the history of philosophy, from that point on, anything that crosses this partial – in both senses of the word – view of things finds itself dismissed. Philosophy that comes down from the heavens is the kind that – from Plato to Levinas by way of Kant and Christianity – needs a world behind the scenes to understand, explain and justify this world. The other line of force rises from the earth because it is satisfied with the given world and his mission is to rehabilitate materialist and sensualist thinking and use it to re-examine our relationship to the world. He defines hedonism as an attitude to life based on taking pleasure yourself and pleasuring others. Onfrays works have explored the philosophical resonances and components of science, painting, gastronomy, sex and sensuality, bioethics, wine and his most ambitious project is his projected six-volume Counter-history of Philosophy, of which three have been published. His philosophy aims for micro-revolutions, or revolutions of the individual and small groups of like-minded people who live by his hedonistic, recently Michel Onfray has embraced the term postanarchism to describe his approach to politics and ethics
26.
Hadrian
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Hadrian was Roman emperor from 117 to 138. He is known for building Hadrians Wall, which marked the limit of Britannia. He also rebuilt the Pantheon and constructed the Temple of Venus, philhellene in most of his tastes, he is considered by some to have been a humanist, and he is regarded as the third of the Five Good Emperors. Hadrian was born Publius Aelius Hadrianus into a Hispano-Roman family, although Italica near Santiponce is often considered his birthplace, his actual place of birth remains uncertain. It is generally accepted that he came from a family with roots in Hispania. His predecessor, Trajan, was a cousin of Hadrians father. Trajan did not designate an heir officially, but according to his wife Pompeia Plotina, Trajans wife and his friend Licinius Sura were well disposed towards Hadrian, and he may well have owed his succession to them. During his reign, Hadrian travelled to every province of the Empire. An ardent admirer of Greece, he sought to make Athens the cultural capital of the Empire and he used his relationship with his Greek lover Antinous to underline his philhellenism, and this led to the establishment of one of the most popular cults of ancient times. Hadrian spent a deal of time with the military, he usually wore military attire and even dined. He ordered rigorous military training and drilling and made use of reports of attacks to keep the army on alert. On his accession to the throne, Hadrian withdrew from Trajans conquests in Mesopotamia, Assyria and Armenia, late in his reign he suppressed the Bar Kokhba revolt in Judaea, renaming the province Syria Palaestina. In 138 Hadrian adopted Antoninus Pius on the condition that he adopt Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus as his own heirs and they would eventually succeed Antoninus as co-emperors. Hadrian died the year at Baiae. In Hadrians time, there was already an established convention that one could not write a contemporary Roman imperial history for fear of competing with the emperors themselves. Information on the history of Hadrians reign comes mostly from later. A general account of his reign is Book 69 of the early 3rd century Roman History by Cassius Dio and his original Greek text of this book is lost, what survives is a brief, much later, Byzantine-era abridgment by the 11th century monk Xiphilinius. He selected from Dios account of Hadrians reign based on his religious interests
27.
Metrodorus of Lampsacus (the younger)
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Metrodorus of Lampsacus was a Greek philosopher of the Epicurean school. Although one of the four major proponents of Epicureanism, only fragments of his works remain, Metrodorus was a native of Lampsacus on the Hellespont. His fathers name was Athenaeus or Timocrates, his mothers Sande, together with his brother Timocrates of Lampsacus he joined the school Epicurus had set up in their home town. Timocrates, however, soon out with both his brother and Epicurus and devoted the rest of his life to spreading malicious slander about them. He died in 278/7 BC, in the 53rd year of his age, seven years before Epicurus, in a letter also which he wrote upon his death-bed, Epicurus commended the children to the care of Idomeneus, who had married Batis, the sister of Metrodorus. The 20th of each month was kept by the disciples of Epicurus as a day in honour of their master. Leontion is spoken of as the wife or mistress of Metrodorus, the philosophy of Metrodorus appears to have been of a more sensual kind than that of Epicurus. Perfect happiness, according to Ciceros account, he made to consist in having a well-constituted body and he found fault with his brother for not admitting that the belly was the test and measure of every thing that pertained to a happy life. According to Seneca, Epicurus placed Metrodorus among those who acquire assistance in working their way towards truth, small fragments of his work On Wealth, were found among the charred remains at the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum. Philodemus made use of work in his own works On Wealth. Philodemus cites Metrodorus as the author of the view that Cynic poverty was to be rejected in favour of an affluent way of life. The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy, attribution, This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, Smith, William, ed. article name needed. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology
28.
David Hume
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David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, who is best known today for his highly influential system of radical philosophical empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism. Humes empiricist approach to philosophy places him with John Locke, Francis Bacon, beginning with his A Treatise of Human Nature, Hume strove to create a total naturalistic science of man that examined the psychological basis of human nature. Humes compatibilist theory of free will takes causal determinism as fully compatible with human freedom, Kant himself credited Hume as the spur to his philosophical thought who had awakened him from his dogmatic slumbers. Arthur Schopenhauer once declared there is more to be learned from each page of David Hume than from the collected philosophical works of Hegel, Herbart. Hume is thus regarded as a pivotal figure in the history of philosophical thought. David Hume was the second of two born to Joseph Home of Ninewells, an advocate, and his wife The Hon. Katherine. He was born on 26 April 1711 in a tenement on the side of the Lawnmarket in Edinburgh. Humes father died when Hume was a child, just after his birthday, and he was raised by his mother. He changed the spelling of his name in 1734, because of the fact that his surname Home, throughout his life Hume, who never married, spent time occasionally at his family home at Ninewells in Berwickshire, which had belonged to his family since the sixteenth century. His finances as a man were very slender. His family was not rich and, as a younger son and he was therefore forced to make a living somehow. Hume attended the University of Edinburgh at the early age of twelve at a time when fourteen was normal. He had little respect for the professors of his time, telling a friend in 1735 that there is nothing to be learnt from a Professor, which is not to be met with in Books. Aged around 18, he made a discovery that opened up to him a new Scene of Thought. He did not recount what this scene was, and commentators have offered a variety of speculations, due to this inspiration, Hume set out to spend a minimum of ten years reading and writing. He soon came to the verge of a breakdown, suffering from what a doctor diagnosed as the Disease of the Learned. Hume wrote that it started with a coldness, which he attributed to a Laziness of Temper, later, some scurvy spots broke out on his fingers. This was what persuaded Humes physician to make his diagnosis, Hume wrote that he went under a Course of Bitters and Anti-Hysteric Pills, taken along with a pint of claret every day
29.
Michel Foucault
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Michel Foucault was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, social theorist, philologist and literary critic. His theories addressed the relationship between power and knowledge, and how they are used as a form of control through societal institutions. Though often cited as a post-structuralist and postmodernist, Foucault rejected these labels and his thought has been highly influential both for academic and for activist groups, especially those working within contemporary sociology, cultural studies, and critical theory. After several years as a cultural diplomat abroad, he returned to France and published his first major book and these first three histories exemplified a historiographical technique Foucault was developing called archaeology. In 1970 he was admitted to the Collège de France, membership of which he retained until his death and he also became active in a number of left-wing groups involved in anti-racist campaigns, anti-human rights abuses movements, and the struggle for penal reform. He went on to publish The Archaeology of Knowledge, Discipline and Punish, in these books he developed archaeological and genealogical methods which emphasized the role which power plays in the evolution of discourse in society. Paul-Michel Foucault was born on 15 October 1926 in the city of Poitiers, west-central France and he had been named after his father, Dr. His father was a local surgeon, having been born in Fontainebleau before moving to Poitiers. She was the daughter of prosperous surgeon Dr. Prosper Malapert, Paul Foucault eventually took over his father-in-laws medical practice, while his wife took charge of their large mid-19th-century house, Le Piroir, in the village of Vendeuvre-du-Poitou. Together the couple had three children, a girl named Francine and two boys, Paul-Michel and Denys, all of whom shared the same hair and bright blue eyes. The children were raised to be nominal Roman Catholics, attending mass at the Church of Saint-Porchair, in later life, Foucault would reveal very little about his childhood. Describing himself as a delinquent, he claimed his father was a bully who would sternly punish him. In 1930, Foucault began his two years early at the local Lycée Henry-IV. Here he undertook two years of education before entering the main lycée, where he stayed until 1936. He then undertook his first four years of education at the same establishment, excelling in French, Greek, Latin and history but doing poorly at arithmetic. In 1939, the Second World War broke out and France was occupied by Nazi Germany until 1945, his parents opposed the occupation and the Vichy regime, in 1940, Foucaults mother enrolled him in the Collège Saint-Stanislas, a strict Roman Catholic institution run by the Jesuits. Lonely, he described his years there as the ordeal, but excelled academically, particularly in philosophy, history, in 1942, he entered his final year, the terminale, where he focused on the study of philosophy, earning his baccalauréat in 1943. Returning to the local Lycée Henry-IV, he studied history and philosophy for a year, aided by a personal tutor and these ideas influenced Foucault, who adopted Hyppolites conviction that philosophy must be developed through a study of history
30.
Pierre Gassendi
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Pierre Gassendi was a French philosopher, priest, astronomer, and mathematician. While he held a position in south-east France, he also spent much time in Paris. He was also an active observational scientist, publishing the first data on the transit of Mercury in 1631, the lunar crater Gassendi is named after him. He wrote numerous works, and some of the positions he worked out are considered significant. Richard Popkin indicates that Gassendi was one of the first thinkers to formulate the scientific outlook. He clashed with his contemporary Descartes on the possibility of certain knowledge and his best known intellectual project attempted to reconcile Epicurean atomism with Christianity. Gassendi was born at Champtercier, near Digne, in France to Antoine Gassend, a youthful prodigy, at a very early age he showed academic potential and attended the college at Digne, where he displayed a particular aptitude for languages and mathematics. Soon afterwards he entered the University of Aix-en-Provence, to study philosophy under Philibert Fesaye, in 1612 the college of Digne called him to lecture on theology. Four years later he received the degree of Doctor of Theology at Avignon, in the same year he answered a call to the chair of philosophy at Aix-en-Provence University, and seems gradually to have withdrawn from theology. He lectured principally on the Aristotelian philosophy, conforming as far as possible to the traditional methods while he followed with interest the discoveries of Galileo. He came into contact with the astronomer Joseph Gaultier de la Vallette, in 1623 the Society of Jesus took over the University of Aix. They filled all positions with Jesuits, so Gassendi was required to find another institution and he left, returning to Digne, and then travelled for the chapter to Grenoble. In 1624 he printed the first part of his Exercitationes paradoxicae adversus Aristoteleos and he spent some time with his patron Nicolas Peiresc. After 1628 Gassendi travelled in Flanders and in Holland where he encountered Isaac Beeckman and he returned to France in 1631, and two years later became provost of Digne Cathedral. During this time he wrote some works, at the insistence of Marin Mersenne and they included his examination of the mystical philosophy of Robert Fludd, an essay on parhelia, and some observations on the transit of Mercury. Gassendi then spent some years travelling through Provence with the duke of Angoulême, during this period he wrote only the one literary work, his Life of Peiresc, whose death in 1637 seemed to afflict him deeply, it received frequent reprintings and an English translation. He returned to Paris in 1641, where he met Thomas Hobbes, in 1642 Mersenne engaged him in controversy with René Descartes. His objections to the propositions of Descartes appeared in print in 1642
31.
Han Ryner
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Jacques Élie Henri Ambroise Ner, also known by the pseudonym Han Ryner, was a French individualist anarchist philosopher and activist and a novelist. He wrote for such as LArt social, LHumanité nouvelle, LEnnemi du Peuple, LIdée Libre de Lorulot. His thought is influenced by stoicism and epicureanism. He was born in Nemours, Department of Orán, French Algeria in a modest religious family, after the death of his mother, he abandoned Catholicism, associated himself with Freemasons and started having an interest in social ideas. He published 2 novels in 1894–1895 and later started working as a journalist, after that he took a teaching position but struggled at having to fit into such a disciplined environment. He becomes a literary writer. In 1896, he adopted the pseudonym Han Ryner and started writing for magazines as LArt social, LHumanité nouvelle of Augustin Hamon, LEnnemi du Peuple of Emile Janvion. From here he started collaborating in the important individualist anarchist magazine LEnDehors, by the 1920s his thought starts having an important influence in Spain within individualist anarchist circles especially through the translations of his work by Juan Elizalde. Han Ryner started writing in Spanish individualist journals such as Ética, the Brazilian individualist anarchist Maria Lacerda de Moura took the task of making his philosophy and writing become known in the Portuguese-speaking world. With the First World War approaching, Han Ryner embraces pacifist and anti-war positions and promotes conscience objection. In his anti-war activism he collaborates with Émile Armand, a radical anticlerical, he adhered to the World Committee against War and Fascism. He also opposed World War I on pacifist anti militaristic grounds and he was a rare case of an anarchist participating in the Félibrige. He died in Paris on February 6,1938, the mature thought of Han Ryner is influenced by stoicism and epicureanism. From this first position he shows a tendency to fatalism towards the pains of life and he wrote in Mini-manual of individualism, The Stoic Epictetus courageously bore poverty and slavery. He was perfectly happy in the situations most painful to ordinary men and he then emphasized subjective will as a power which individuals can resort to. He defined individualism as the doctrine which, relying on no dogma, no tradition, no external determination. As models of individualists he names Socrates, Epicurus, Jesus and Epictetus, for example, he admires from Epicurus his temperance and that he showed that very little was needed to satisfy hunger and thirst, to defend oneself against heat and the cold. And he liberated himself from all other needs, that is, almost all the desires, from Jesus how He lived free and a wanderer, foreign to any social ties
32.
Greek language
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Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the longest documented history of any living language, spanning 34 centuries of written records and its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the major part of its history, other systems, such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, were used previously. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic and many other writing systems. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world, during antiquity, Greek was a widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world and many places beyond. It would eventually become the official parlance of the Byzantine Empire, the language is spoken by at least 13.2 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey, and the Greek diaspora. Greek roots are used to coin new words for other languages, Greek. Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, the earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the worlds oldest recorded living language. Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now extinct Anatolian languages, the Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods, Proto-Greek, the unrecorded but assumed last ancestor of all known varieties of Greek. The unity of Proto-Greek would have ended as Hellenic migrants entered the Greek peninsula sometime in the Neolithic era or the Bronze Age, Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Mycenaean civilisation. It is recorded in the Linear B script on tablets dating from the 15th century BC onwards, Ancient Greek, in its various dialects, the language of the Archaic and Classical periods of the ancient Greek civilisation. It was widely known throughout the Roman Empire, after the Roman conquest of Greece, an unofficial bilingualism of Greek and Latin was established in the city of Rome and Koine Greek became a first or second language in the Roman Empire. The origin of Christianity can also be traced through Koine Greek, Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek, the continuation of Koine Greek in Byzantine Greece, up to the demise of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century. Much of the written Greek that was used as the language of the Byzantine Empire was an eclectic middle-ground variety based on the tradition of written Koine. Modern Greek, Stemming from Medieval Greek, Modern Greek usages can be traced in the Byzantine period and it is the language used by the modern Greeks, and, apart from Standard Modern Greek, there are several dialects of it. In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia, the historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of the Greek language is often emphasised. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than a foreign language and it is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, Homeric Greek is probably closer to demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English, Greek is spoken by about 13 million people, mainly in Greece, Albania and Cyprus, but also worldwide by the large Greek diaspora. Greek is the language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population
33.
Greek philosophy
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Ancient Greek philosophy arose in the 6th century BC and continued throughout the Hellenistic period and the period in which Ancient Greece was part of the Roman Empire. Philosophy was used to sense out of the world in a non-religious way. It dealt with a variety of subjects, including political philosophy, ethics, metaphysics, ontology, logic, biology, rhetoric. Many philosophers around the world agree that Greek philosophy has influenced much of Western culture since its inception, alfred North Whitehead once noted, The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. Clear, unbroken lines of lead from ancient Greek and Hellenistic philosophers to Early Islamic philosophy, the European Renaissance. Some claim that Greek philosophy, in turn, was influenced by the wisdom literature. But they taught themselves to reason, Philosophy as we understand it is a Greek creation. Subsequent philosophic tradition was so influenced by Socrates as presented by Plato that it is conventional to refer to philosophy developed prior to Socrates as pre-Socratic philosophy. The periods following this, up to and after the wars of Alexander the Great, are those of classical Greek, the pre-Socratics were primarily concerned with cosmology, ontology and mathematics. They were distinguished from non-philosophers insofar as they rejected mythological explanations in favor of reasoned discourse, Thales of Miletus, regarded by Aristotle as the first philosopher, held that all things arise from water. It is not because he gave a cosmogony that John Burnet calls him the first man of science, according to tradition, Thales was able to predict an eclipse and taught the Egyptians how to measure the height of the pyramids. He began from the observation that the world seems to consist of opposites, therefore, they cannot truly be opposites but rather must both be manifestations of some underlying unity that is neither. This underlying unity could not be any of the classical elements, for example, water is wet, the opposite of dry, while fire is dry, the opposite of wet. Anaximenes in turn held that the arche was air, although John Burnet argues that by this he meant that it was a transparent mist, the aether. Xenophanes was born in Ionia, where the Milesian school was at its most powerful, Burnet says that Xenophanes was not, however, a scientific man, with many of his naturalistic explanations having no further support than that they render the Homeric gods superfluous or foolish. He has been claimed as an influence on Eleatic philosophy, although that is disputed, and a precursor to Epicurus, a representative of a total break between science and religion. Pythagoras lived at roughly the time that Xenophanes did and, in contrast to the latter. Parmenides of Elea cast his philosophy against those who held it is and is not the same, and all travel in opposite directions, —presumably referring to Heraclitus
34.
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
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Julien Offray de La Mettrie was a French physician and philosopher, and one of the earliest of the French materialists of the Enlightenment. He is best known for his work Lhomme machine, La Mettrie was born at Saint-Malo in Brittany on November 23,1709, and was the son of a prosperous textile merchant. His initial schooling took place in the colleges of Coutances and Caen, in 1725, La Mettrie entered the College dHarcourt to study philosophy and natural science, probably graduating around 1728. At this time, DHarcourt was pioneering the teaching of Cartesianism in France, in 1734, he went on to study under Hermann Boerhaave, a renowned physician who, similarly, had originally intended on becoming a clergyman. It was under Boerhaave that La Mettrie was influenced to try to bring changes to education in France. After his studies at DHarcourt, La Mettrie decided to take up the profession of medicine, a friend of the La Mettrie family, François-Joseph Hunauld, who was about to take the chair of anatomy at the Jardin du Roi, seems to have influenced him in this decision. For five years, La Mettrie studied at faculty of medicine in Paris, in 1733, however, he departed for Leiden to study under the famous Herman Boerhaave. His stay in Holland proved to be short but influential and he married in 1739 but the marriage, which produced two children, proved an unhappy one. This experience would instill in him an aversion to violence which is evident in his philosophical writings. Much of his time, however, was spent in Paris, and it is likely that during this time he made the acquaintance of Maupertuis and this conclusion he worked out in his earliest philosophical work, the Histoire naturelle de lâme. So great was the caused by its publication that La Mettrie was forced to quit his position with the French Guards. There he developed his doctrines still more boldly and completely in LHomme machine, La Mettries materialism was in many ways the product of his medical concerns, drawing on the work of 17th-century predecessors such as the Epicurean physician Guillaume Lamy. The ethical implications of these principles would later be worked out in his Discours sur le bonheur, here he developed his theory of remorse, i. e. his view about the inauspicious effects of the feelings of guilt acquired at early age during the process of enculturation. Julien de La Mettrie is considered one of the most influential determinists of the eighteenth century, along with aiding the furthering of determinism he considered himself a mechanistic materialist. He believed that mental processes were caused by the body and he expressed these thoughts in his most important work Man a Machine. There he also expressed his belief that humans worked like a machine and this theory can be considered to build off the work of Descartes and his approach to the human body working as a machine. La Mettrie believed that man, body and mind, worked like a machine, interestingly, although he helped further Descartes view of mechanization in explaining human bodily behavior, he argued against Descartes dualistic view on the mind. His opinions were so strong that he stated that Descartes was actually a materialist in regards to the mind, prior to Man a Machine he published The Natural History of the Soul in 1745
35.
Aristippus
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Aristippus of Cyrene was the founder of the Cyrenaic school of Philosophy. Among his pupils was his daughter Arete, there are indications that he was conflated with his grandson, Aristippus the Younger. Aristippus, the son of Aritades, was born at Cyrene, Ancient Libya, c.435 BCE. Diodorus dates him to 366 BCE. which agrees well with the facts known about him, and with the statement, that Lais. Though a disciple of Socrates, he wandered very far both in principle and practice from the teaching and example of his great master and he lived luxuriously, was happy to seek sensual gratification and the company of the notorious Lais. He appears, however, at last to have returned to Cyrene, with that he made for the city of Rhodes, and went straight to the gymnasium. Thus when reproached for his love of bodily indulgences, he answered, that it is not abstinence from pleasures that is best, but mastery over them without ever being worsted. When Dionysius, provoked at some of his remarks, ordered him to take the lowest place at table, he said, wise people, even though all laws were abolished, would still lead the same life is the single most popular quotation of his on the Internet. Aristotle, too, calls him a sophist, and notices a story of Plato speaking to him, with rather undue vehemence, and of his replying with calmness. He imparted his doctrine to his daughter Arete who, in turn, imparted it to her son, Aristippus the Younger, some letters attributed to him are forgeries. One work attributed to Aristippus in ancient times was a work entitled On Ancient Luxury. This work, judging by the quotations preserved by Diogenes Laërtius, was filled with anecdotes about philosophers and their supposed taste for boy-lovers. That this work cannot have been written by Aristippus of Cyrene has long been realised, but the name may have been adopted by the writer to suggest a connection with the hedonistic philosopher. Socrates, with predecessors and followers, Aristippus, attribution, This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, Smith, William, ed. Aristippus. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, voula Tsouna, The Epistemology of the Cyrenaic School, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Ugo Zilioli, The Cyrenaics, New York, Acumen / Routledge,2012, Cyrenaics Resource Handbook of Cyrenaic resources, primary and secondary, includes Aristippus Aristippus of Cyrene on Ancient History Encyclopedia
36.
David Pearce (philosopher)
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David Pearce is co-founder of Humanity+, formerly the World Transhumanist Association, and a prominent figure within the transhumanism movement. Pearce calls this the abolitionist project, a vegan, Pearce argues that humans have a responsibility not only to avoid cruelty to animals within human society but also to redesign the global ecosystem so that animals do not suffer in the wild. In 1995 Pearce set up BLTC Research, a network of websites publishing texts about transhumanism and related topics in pharmacology and he defends a version of negative utilitarianism, Ethical negative-utilitarianism. Attaches value in a moral sense of the term only to actions which tend to minimise or eliminate suffering. It stems from a sense of compassion at the sheer scale. No amount of happiness or fun enjoyed by some organisms can notionally justify the horrors of Auschwitz. Nor can it outweigh the sporadic frightfulness of pain and despair that occurs every second of every day, mental suffering will be a relic of the past, just as physical suffering during surgery was eliminated by anaesthesia. The function of pain will be provided by some other signal, using paradise engineering, human beings will be animated by gradients of genetically preprogrammed bliss orders of magnitude richer than anything physiologically accessible today. The increasing number of vegans and vegetarians in the movement has been attributed in part to Pearces influence. Fertility regulation could maintain herbivore populations at sustainable levels, a more civilised and compassionate policy option than famine, predation and disease. In 1998 Pearce co-founded the World Transhumanist Association, known from 2008 as Humanity+, with Nick Bostrom, Humanity+ is an international nonprofit membership organization that advocates the ethical use of technology to expand human capacities. Pearce is a member of the board of advisors, Pearce is also a fellow of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, and sits on the futurist advisory board of the Lifeboat Foundation. Until 2013 he was on the advisory board of Medical Hypotheses. He has been interviewed by Vanity Fair and on BBC Radio 4s The Moral Maze, among others
Laërtius, Diogenes (1925). "Epicurus". Lives of the Eminent Philosophers. 2:10. Translated by Hicks, Robert Drew (Two volume ed.). Loeb Classical Library.
