Aesthetics Aesthetics may be defined narrowly as the theory of beauty, or more broadly as that together with the philosophy of art. The traditional interest in beauty itself broadened, in the eighteenth century, to include the sublime, and since 1950 or so the number of pure aesthetic concepts discussed in the literature has expanded even more. Tradizionalmente, the philosophy of art concentrated on its definition,

Giovanni Calvino (1509-1564) Difficilmente si può immaginare una figura con una reputazione di disapprovazione della filosofia maggiore di quella di Giovanni Calvino. L’espatriato francese scrisse alcune delle diatribe più al vetriolo mai scritte contro la filosofia e il suo ruolo nella teologia scolastica. Così, in un modo, questa reputazione è piuttosto ben meritata, e un articolo su Calvino in un'enciclopedia filosofica può essere piuttosto breve. Tuttavia, In

Socialism Socialism is both an economic system and an ideology (in the non-pejorative sense of that term). A socialist economy features social rather than private ownership of the means of production. It also typically organizes economic activity through planning rather than market forces, and gears production towards needs satisfaction rather than profit accumulation. Socialist ideology asserts the moral and economic superiority of an economy with

Paradigm Case Arguments From time to time philosophers and scientists have made sensational, provocative claims that certain things do not exist or never happen that, in everyday life, we unquestioningly take for granted as existing or happening. These claims have included denying the existence of matter, spazio, Ore, il sé, free will, and other sturdy and basic elements of our common-sense or naïve world-view. Around

Aristotele: Logic Aristotelian logic, after a great and early triumph, consolidated its position of influence to rule over the philosophical world throughout the Middle Ages up until the 19th Century. All that changed in a hurry when modern logicians embraced a new kind of mathematical logic and pushed out what they regarded as the antiquated and clunky method of syllogisms. Although Aristotle’s very rich and

Libertarianism What it means to be a “libertarian” in a political sense is a contentious issue, especially among libertarians themselves. There is no single theory that can be safely identified as the libertarian theory, and probably no single principle or set of principles on which all libertarians can agree. Tuttavia, there is a certain family resemblance among libertarian theories that can serve as a framework