Empedocles (c. 492—432 B.C.E.) Empedocles (of Acagras in Sicily) was a philosopher and poet: one of the most important of the philosophers working before Socrates (the Presocratics), and a poet of outstanding ability and of great influence upon later poets such as Lucretius. His works On Nature and Purifications (whether they are two poems or only one – see below) exist in more than 150

William Mitchell (1861–1962) Sir William Mitchell war der erste große Philosoph, der in Südaustralien lebte. Von 1895 bis 1940 arbeitete er an der Adelaide University hauptsächlich auf dem Gebiet der heutigen Kognitionswissenschaft. Sein Hauptwerk: Struktur und Wachstum des Geistes ist eine Abhandlung über philosophische Psychologie. Mitchell kam den Behauptungen von Nagel zuvor, McGinn, und Chalmers und ihre Betonung auf

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) For Bonhoeffer, the foundation of ethical behaviour lay in how the reality of the world and the reality of God were reconciled in the reality of Christ. Both in his thinking and in his life, ethics were centered on the demand for action by responsible men and women in the face of evil. He was sharply critical of ethical theory and of

Donald Davidson: Anomalous Monism Anomalous Monism is a type of property dualism in the philosophy of mind. Property dualism combines the thesis that mental phenomena are strictly irreducible to physical phenomena with the denial that mind and body are discrete substances. For the anomalous monist, the plausibility of property dualism derives from the fact that although mental states, events and processes have genuine causal powers, the causal

Dai Zhen (Tai Chen, 1724—1777) Dai Zhen, also known as Dai Dongyuan (Tai Tung-yuan), was a philosopher and intellectual polymath believed by many to be the most important Confucian scholar of the Qing (Ch’ing) dynasty (1644-1911). He was also the foremost figure among the sophisticated new class of career academics who rose to prominence in the mid-Qing. A prominent critic of the Confucian orthodoxy of

Angélique de Saint Jean Arnauld d’Andilly (1624–1684) Angélique de Saint-Jean Arnauld d’Andilly, an abbess of the convent of Port-Royal, was a leader of the intransigent party in the Jansenist movement. A prolific author, Mère Angélique de Saint-Jean translated her determined opposition to civil and ecclesiastical authorities in the Jansenist controversy into a militant version of the neo-Augustinian philosophy she shared with other Jansenists. Often citing