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,

John Rawls (1921—2002) John Rawls was arguably the most important political philosopher of the twentieth century. He wrote a series of highly influential articles in the 1950s and ’60s that helped refocus Anglo-American moral and political philosophy on substantive problems about what we ought to do. Son premier livre, Une théorie de la justice [TJ] (1971), revitalized the social-contract tradition, using it to articulate and defend

Logical Consequence Logical consequence is arguably the central concept of logic. The primary aim of logic is to tell us what follows logically from what. In order to simplify matters we take the logical consequence relation to hold for sentences rather than for abstract propositions, facts, state of affairs, etc.. Correspondingly, logical consequence is a relation between a given class of sentences and the sentences

Continental Rationalism Continental rationalism is a retrospective category used to group together certain philosophers working in continental Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, en particulier, Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz, especially as they can be regarded in contrast with representatives of “British empiricism,” most notably, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Whereas the British empiricists held that all knowledge has its origin in, and is limited by,

Middle Knowledge Luis de Molina If Aristotle had not been a student of Plato, then would Aristotle have chosen to start his school at Lyceum? If you believe God knows the answer to this question, you probably believe God has middle knowledge. Middle knowledge is a form of knowledge first attributed to God by the sixteenth century Jesuit theologian Luis de Molina (pictured to the

Plotin: Virtue Ethics This article focuses on the virtue ethics of Plotinus (204-270 de notre ère) and its implications for later accounts of virtue ethics, particularly in Porphyry and Iamblichus. Plotinus’ ethical theory is discussed in relation to the aim of the virtuous person to become godlike, the role of disposition in the soul’s intellectualization, the four cardinal virtues, well-being, human freedom, and self-determination. Plotinus’ virtue ethics