Art and Emotion It is widely thought that the capacity of artworks to arouse emotions in audiences is a perfectly natural and unproblemmatic fact. It just seems obvious that we can feel sadness or pity for fictional characters, fear at the view of threatening monsters on the movie screen, and joy upon listening to upbeat, happy songs. This may be why so many of us

Alfred Schutz (1899—1959) Alfred Schutz philosophized about social science in a broad signification of the word. He was deeply respectful of actual scientific practice, and produced a classification of the sciences; explicated methodological postulates for empirical science in general and the social sciences specifically; and clarified basic concepts for interpretative sociology in particular. His work shows how philosophy of the cultural sciences can be done

Agnès Arnauld (1593—1671) An abbess of the Jansenist convent of Port-Royal, Mère Agnès Arnauld developed an Augustinian philosophy shaped by the mystical currents of the French Counter-Reformation. Her philosophy of God depicts a deity who is radically other than his creatures. Only a negative theology, a theology of what God is not, can explore the divine attributes. In her ethical theory, Mère Agnès contextualizes moral

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775—1854) F. W. J. von Schelling is one of the great German philosophers of the late 18th and early 19th Century. Some historians and scholars of philosophy have classified him as a German Idealist, along with J. G. Fichte and G. W. F. Hegel. Such classifications obscure rather than illuminate the importance and singularity of Schelling’s place in the history

Political Philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre This article focuses on Alasdair MacIntyre’s contribution to political philosophy since 1981, although MacIntyre has also written influential works on theology, Marxism, rationality, metaphysics, ethics, and the history of philosophy. He has made a personal intellectual journey from Marxism to Catholicism and from Aristotle to Aquinas, and he is one of the preeminent Thomist political philosophers. The most consistent and

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815—1902) Elizabeth Cady Stanton was one of the most influential public figures in nineteenth-century America. She was one of the nation’s first feminist theorists and certainly one of its most productive activists. She was in the tradition of Abigail Adams, who implored her husband John to “remember the ladies” as he helped form the new American nation. Along with Susan B. Anthony,