Gottfried Leibniz: Metaphysics The German rationalist philosopher, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), is one of the great renaissance men of Western thought. He has made significant contributions in several fields spanning the intellectual landscape, including mathematics, physics, logique, éthique, and theology. Unlike many of his contemporaries of the modern period, Leibniz does not have a canonical work that stands as his single, comprehensive piece of philosophy. Plutôt,

Benoît de Spinoza: Épistémologie La théorie de la connaissance, ou épistémologie, proposé par le philosophe hollandais du XVIIe siècle Benoît de Spinoza pourrait encore s'avérer le plus audacieux de l'histoire de la philosophie. Non seulement Spinoza prétend être capable de connaître toutes les manières dont on peut connaître quelque chose,, il prétend aussi pouvoir savoir ce que tout est. Peu de philosophes à part Spinoza

Louis Wittgenstein (1889—1951) Ludwig Wittgenstein is one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century, and regarded by some as the most important since Immanuel Kant. His early work was influenced by that of Arthur Schopenhauer and, surtout, by his teacher Bertrand Russell and by Gottlob Frege, who became something of a friend. This work culminated in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, the only philosophy book

Jürgen Habermas (1929—) photo by Ziel Jürgen Habermas produced a large body of work over more than five decades. His early work was devoted to the public sphere, to modernization, and to critiques of trends in philosophy and politics. He then slowly began to articulate theories of rationality, signification, and truth. His two-volume Theory of Communicative Action in 1981 revised and systematized many of these

Punishment Punishment involves the deliberate infliction of suffering on a supposed or actual offender for an offense such as a moral or legal transgression. Since punishment involves inflicting a pain or deprivation similar to that which the perpetrator of a crime inflicts on his victim, it has generally been agreed that punishment requires moral as well as legal and political justification. While philosophers almost all

Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre (1929— ) Alasdair MacIntyre is a Scottish born, British educated, moral and political philosopher who has worked in the United States since 1970. His work in ethics and politics reaches across disciplines, drawing on sociology and philosophy of the social sciences as well as Greek and Latin classical literature. MacIntyre began his career as a Marxist, but in the late 1950s, il