Spinoza: Free Will and Freedom Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) was a Dutch Jewish rationalist philosopher who is most famous for his Ethics and Theological-Political Treatise. Although influenced by Stoicism, Maimonides, Machiavelli, Descartes, and Hobbes, among others, he developed distinct and innovative positions on a number of issues in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics, biblical hermeneutics, and theology. He is also known as a pivotal figure in the

Rights and Obligations of Parents Historically, philosophers have had relatively little to say about the family. This is somewhat surprising, given the pervasive presence and influence of the family upon both individuals and social life. Most philosophers who have addressed issues related to the parent-child relationship—Kant and Aristotle, for example—have done so in a fairly terse manner. At the end of the twentieth century, this changed.

Gottfried Leibniz: Philosophy of Mind Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) was a true polymath: he made substantial contributions to a host of different fields such as mathematics, law, physics, theology, and most subfields of philosophy. Within the philosophy of mind, his chief innovations include his rejection of the Cartesian doctrines that all mental states are conscious and that non-human animals lack souls as well as sensation.

Stoic Philosophy of Mind Stoicism was one of the most important and enduring philosophies to emerge from the Greek and Roman world. The Stoics are well known for their contributions to moral philosophy, and more recently they have also been recognized for their work in logic, grammar, philosophy of language, and epistemology. This article examines the Stoics’ contributions to philosophy of mind. The Stoics constructed

Hedonism The term “hedonism,” from the Greek word ἡδονή (hēdonē) for pleasure, refers to several related theories about what is good for us, how we should behave, and what motivates us to behave in the way that we do. All hedonistic theories identify pleasure and pain as the only important elements of whatever phenomena they are designed to describe. If hedonistic theories identified pleasure and

Confucius (551—479 B.C.E.) Better known in China as “Master Kong” (Chinese: Kongzi), Confucius was a fifth-century BCE Chinese thinker whose influence upon East Asian intellectual and social history is immeasurable. As a culturally symbolic figure, he has been alternately idealized, deified, dismissed, vilified, and rehabilitated over the millennia by both Asian and non-Asian thinkers and regimes. Given his extraordinary impact on Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and