Carlo Darwin (1809–1882) Charles Darwin is primarily known as the architect of the theory of evolution by natural selection. With the publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859, he advanced a view of the development of life on earth that profoundly shaped nearly all biological and much philosophical thought which followed. A number of prior authors had proposed that species were not static

Marsilio Ficino (1433—1499) Marsilio Ficino was a Florentine philosopher, translator, and commentator, largely responsible for the revival of Plato and Platonism in the Renaissance. He has been widely recognized by historians of philosophy for his defense of the immortality of the soul, as well as for his translations of Plato, Plotino, and the Hermetic corpus from Greek to Latin. Ficino is considered the most important

Eduard Hanslick (1825–1904) Eduard Hanslick was a Prague-born Austrian aesthetic theorist, music critic, and the first professor of aesthetics and history of music at the University of Vienna, who is commonly considered the founder of musical formalism in aesthetics. His seminal treatise Vom Musikalisch-Schönen (On the Musically Beautiful) of 1854 is one of the most significant contributions to musical aesthetics ever written, as is evident

American Philosophy The term “American Philosophy,” perhaps surprisingly, has been somewhat vague. While it has tended to primarily include philosophical work done by Americans within the geographical confines of the United States, this has not been exclusively the case. Per esempio, Alfred North Whitehead came to the United States relatively late in life. D'altra parte, George Santayana spent much of his life outside

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, fisica, logica, etica, 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. Invece,

Norman Malcolm (1911–1990) Norman Malcolm ebbe un ruolo determinante nell’elaborazione e nella difesa della filosofia di Wittgenstein, che considerava simile a una sorta di filosofia del “linguaggio ordinario”., in America. Ha anche difeso una nuova interpretazione della “filosofia del senso comune” di Moore come una versione della filosofia del linguaggio ordinario, sebbene lo stesso Moore non fosse d'accordo. Malcolm ha criticato la visione della mente di Cartesio elaborando le critiche di Wittgenstein a un linguaggio privato. He produced