Al-Shahrastānī (d. 1153 C.E.) Al-Shahrastānī (d. A.H. 548 / C.E. 1153) was an influential historian of religions and a heresiographer. He was one of the pioneers in developing a scientific approach to the study of religions. Al-Shahrastānī’ distinguished himself by his desire to describe in the most objective way the universal religious history of humanity. He was wrongly recognized as an “Ash‘arite” theologian; this is why

Thales of Miletus (c. 620 B.C.E.—c. 546 B.C.E.) The ancient Greek philosopher Thales was born in Miletus in Greek Ionia. Aristote, the major source for Thales’s philosophy and science, identified Thales as the first person to investigate the basic principles, the question of the originating substances of matter and, donc, as the founder of the school of natural philosophy. Thales was interested in almost everything,

Benedict de Spinoza: Epistemology The theory of knowledge, or epistemology, offered by the 17th century Dutch philosopher Benedict de Spinoza may yet prove to be the most daring in the history of philosophy. Not only does Spinoza claim to be able to know all the ways one can know something, he also claims to be able to know what everything is. Few philosophers besides Spinoza

Filial Obligation The question of what one should do for one’s parents is often urgent; un parent a besoin de soins dans un avenir proche, et l'enfant adulte doit décider du type de soins à prodiguer, si et dans quelle mesure financer la prestation de soins, et dans quelle mesure l'enfant doit sacrifier son bonheur, bien-être, sécurité financière, chambre d'amis, et ainsi de suite

Johann Georg Hamann (1730—1788) Johann Georg Hamann was the philosophically most sophisticated thinker of the German Counter-enlightenment. Born in 1730 in Königsberg in eastern Prussia, Hamann was a contemporary and friendly acquaintance of the philosopher Immanuel Kant, and in many ways Hamann’s career can be seen in parallel to that of his great friend. Like Kant, Hamann attended the University of Königsberg, and in his

Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) Giordano Bruno était un philosophe italien de la fin de la Renaissance dont les écrits englobaient les traditions actuelles, intentions, et les réalisations de son époque et les a transmis au début de la modernité. Reprendre la pratique médiévale de l'art de la mémoire et de la logique formelle, il s'est concentré sur la créativité de l'esprit humain. Bruno criticized and transformed a traditional Aristotelian theory of nature and