Wuxing (Wu-hsing) The Chinese term wuxing (wu-hsing, “five processes” or “five phases”) refers to a fivefold conceptual scheme that is found throughout traditional Chinese thought. These five phases are wood (dans), feu (huo), Terre (tu), métal (Jin), and water (shui); they are regarded as dynamic, interdependent modes or aspects of the universe’s ongoing existence and development. Although this fivefold scheme resembles ancient Greek discourse about

Existentialism Existentialism is a catch-all term for those philosophers who consider the nature of the human condition as a key philosophical problem and who share the view that this problem is best addressed through ontology. This very broad definition will be clarified by discussing seven key themes that existentialist thinkers address. Those philosophers considered existentialists are mostly from the continent of Europe, and date from

The Aim of Belief It is often said that belief has an aim. This aim has been traditionally identified with truth and, since the late 1990s, with knowledge. With this claim, philosophers designate a feature of belief according to which believing a proposition carries with it some sort of commitment or teleological directedness toward the truth (or knowledge) of that proposition. This feature is taken

Jean Bodin (c. 1529—1596) The humanist philosopher and jurist Jean Bodin was one of the most prominent political thinkers of the sixteenth century. His reputation is largely based on his account of sovereignty which he formulated in the Six Books of the Commonwealth. Bodin lived at a time of great upheaval, when France was ravaged by the wars of religion between the Catholics and the

Hans Reichenbach (1891—1953) Hans Reichenbach was a leading philosopher of science, a founder of the Berlin circle, and a proponent of logical positivism (also known as neopositivism or logical empiricism). He is known for his philosophical investigations of Einstein’s theory of relativity, mécanique quantique, la théorie des probabilités, the nature of space and time, the character of physical laws, and conventionalism in physical science. Il était