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. His first book, A Theory of Justice [TJ] (1971), revitalized the social-contract tradition, using it to articulate and defend

Defeaters in Epistemology The concept of epistemic defeat or defeasibility has come to occupy an important place in contemporary epistemology, especially in relation to the closely allied concepts of justified belief, warrant, and knowledge. These allied concepts signify positive epistemic appraisal or positive epistemic status. As a first approximation, defeasibility refers to a belief’s liability to lose some positive epistemic status, or to having this

Philosophy of Architecture photo of SFMOMA by David Ohmer The relation between philosophy and architecture is interrogative and propositional. It is about asking questions concerning the meaning of human habitation—what it means to live in built environs—and about evaluating plans and design projects where human flourishing and social progress can best occur—in what kinds of buildings, interior spaces and urban precincts. The following sets of

Charles Sanders Peirce: Pragmatism Pragmatism is a principle of inquiry and an account of meaning first proposed by C. S. Peirce in the 1870s. The crux of Peirce’s pragmatism is that for any statement to be meaningful, it must have practical bearings. Peirce saw the pragmatic account of meaning as a method for clearing up metaphysics and aiding scientific inquiry. This has led many to

Lucio Annaeo Seneca (c. 4 a.E.V.—65 E.V.) L'antico filosofo romano Seneca era uno stoico che adottò e argomentò in gran parte all'interno della struttura ereditata dai suoi predecessori stoici. Le sue Lettere a Lucilio sono state a lungo testi stoici ampiamente letti. I testi di Seneca hanno molti scopi: scrive per esortare i lettori alla filosofia, per incoraggiarli a continuare gli studi, per articolare la sua posizione filosofica, A