Arthur Schopenhauer (1788—1860) Arthur Schopenhauer has been dubbed the artist’s philosopher on account of the inspiration his aesthetics has provided to artists of all stripes. He is also known as the philosopher of pessimism, as he articulated a worldview that challenges the value of existence. His elegant and muscular prose earns him a reputation as one of the greatest German stylists. Although he never achieved

Luck Winning a lottery, being hit by a stray bullet, or surviving a plane crash, all are instances of a mundane phenomenon: chance. Mundane as it is, the concept of luck nonetheless plays a pivotal role in central areas of philosophy, either because it is the key element of widespread philosophical theses or because it gives rise to challenging puzzles. Par exemple, a common claim

Leibniz: Modal Metaphysics Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) served as the natural end of the rationalist tradition on the European continent, which included Descartes, Spinoza, and Malebranche. His philosophy was one of the major influences on Kant. Although Leibniz had many philosophical and intellectual interests, he was arguably most concerned with reconciling the freedom required for moral responsibility and the determinism that seemed to be entailed

The Infinite Working with the infinite is tricky business. Zeno’s paradoxes first alerted Western philosophers to this in 450 B.C.E. when he argued that a fast runner such as Achilles has an infinite number of places to reach during the pursuit of a slower runner. Depuis lors, there has been a struggle to understand how to use the notion of infinity in a coherent manner.

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

Egoism In philosophy, egoism is the theory that one’s self is, ou devrait être, the motivation and the goal of one’s own action. Egoism has two variants, descriptive or normative. The descriptive (or positive) variant conceives egoism as a factual description of human affairs. C'est, people are motivated by their own interests and desires, and they cannot be described otherwise. The normative variant proposes