Epicurus (341—271 B.C.E.) Epicurus is one of the major philosophers in the Hellenistic period, the three centuries following the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C.E. (and of Aristotle in 322 B.C.E.). Epicurus developed an unsparingly materialistic metaphysics, empiricist epistemology, and hedonistic ethics. Epicurus taught that the basic constituents of the world are atoms, uncuttable bits of matter, flying through empty space, and he

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

Fede: Historical Perspectives Traditionally, faith and reason have each been considered to be sources of justification for religious belief. Because both can purportedly serve this same epistemic function, it has been a matter of much interest to philosophers and theologians how the two are related and thus how the rational agent should treat claims derived from either source. Some have held that there can be

Aristotele (384 B.C.E.—322 B.C.E.) Aristotle is a towering figure in ancient Greek philosophy, who made important contributions to logic, criticism, retorica, fisica, biologia, psicologia, mathematics, metafisica, etica, and politics. He was a student of Plato for twenty years but is famous for rejecting Plato’s theory of forms. He was more empirically minded than both Plato and Plato’s teacher, Socrate. A prolific writer, lecturer, and polymath, Aristotle radically

Russian Philosophy This article provides a historical survey of Russian philosophers and thinkers. It emphasizes Russian epistemological concerns rather than ontological and ethical concerns, hopefully without neglecting or disparaging them. Dopotutto, much work in ethics, at least during the Soviet period, strictly supported the state, such that what is taken to be good is often that which helps secure the goals of Soviet society.

Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) Jacques Derrida è stato uno dei filosofi più noti del Novecento. Fu anche uno dei più prolifici. Prendendo le distanze dai vari movimenti e tradizioni filosofiche che lo hanno preceduto sulla scena intellettuale francese (fenomenologia, esistenzialismo, e strutturalismo), a metà degli anni ’60 sviluppò una strategia chiamata “decostruzione”.. Anche se non puramente negativo, la decostruzione riguarda principalmente qualcosa di equivalente