Modern Morality and Ancient Ethics It is commonly supposed that there is a vital difference between ancient ethics and modern morality. Zum Beispiel, there appears to be a vital difference between virtue ethics and the modern moralities of deontological ethics (Kantianismus) and consequentialism (Utilitarismus). Auf den zweiten Blick, Jedoch, one acknowledges that both ethical approaches have more in common than their stereotypes may suggest. Oversimplification, fallacious

Plato (427—347 B.C.E.) Plato is one of the world’s best known and most widely read and studied philosophers. He was the student of Socrates and the teacher of Aristotle, and he wrote in the middle of the fourth century B.C.E. in ancient Greece. Though influenced primarily by Socrates, to the extent that Socrates is usually the main character in many of Plato’s writings, he was

Philosophy of Language Those who use the term “philosophy of language” typically use it to refer to work within the field of Anglo-American analytical philosophy and its roots in German and Austrian philosophy of the early twentieth century. Many philosophers outside this tradition have views on the nature and use of language, and the border between “analytical” and “continental” philosophy is becoming more porous with time,

The Paradox of Fiction How is it that we can be moved by what we know does not exist, namely the situations of people in fictional stories? The so-called “paradox of emotional response to fiction” is an argument for the conclusion that our emotional response to fiction is irrational. The argument contains an inconsistent triad of premises, all of which seem initially plausible. These premises

James Frederick Ferrier (1808—1864) James Frederick Ferrier was a mid-nineteenth-century Scottish metaphysician who developed the first post-Hegelian system of idealism in Britain. Unlike the British Idealists in the latter half of the nineteenth century, he was neither a Kantian nor a Hegelian. Stattdessen, he largely develops his idealist metaphysics via his defense of Berkeley and through his rejection of Thomas Reid’s philosophy of common sense.