Ge Hong (Ko Hung, 283-343 d.C.) Ge Hong was an eclectic philosopher who dedicated his life to searching for physical immortality, which he thought was attainable through alchemy. He lived during China’s tumultuous Period of Disunity (220-589 C.E.), a time in which alien conqueror regimes ruled northern China, the cradle of Chinese civilization, while a series of weak, transplanted Chinese states occupied recently colonized southern

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469—1527) Machiavelli was a 16th century Florentine philosopher known primarily for his political ideas. His two most famous philosophical books, The Prince and the Discourses on Livy, were published after his death. His philosophical legacy remains enigmatic, but that result should not be surprising for a thinker who understood the necessity to work sometimes from the shadows. There is still no settled scholarly

Latin American Philosophy This article outlines the history of Latin American philosophy: the thinking of its indigenous peoples, the debates over conquest and colonization, the arguments for national independence in the eighteenth century, the challenges of nation-building and modernization in the nineteenth century, the concerns over various forms of development in the twentieth century, and the diverse interests in Latin American philosophy during the opening

David Lewis (1941–2001) David Lewis was an American philosopher and one of the last generalists, in the sense that he was one of the last philosophers who contributed to the great majority of sub-fields of the discipline. He made central contributions in metaphysics, the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of mind. He also made important contributions in probabilistic and practical reasoning, epistemologia, the philosophy

Renato Cartesio: Metodo scientifico L'opera principale di René Descartes sul metodo scientifico fu il Discorso pubblicato nel 1637 (più pienamente: Discorso sul metodo per orientare rettamente la ragione e ricercare la verità nelle scienze). Ha pubblicato altre opere che trattano problemi di metodo, ma questo rimane centrale in qualsiasi comprensione del metodo cartesiano della scienza. L'immagine comune di Cartesio è come uno

The Aim of Belief It is often said that belief has an aim. This aim has been traditionally identified with truth and, since the late 1990s, with knowledge. With this claim, philosophers designate a feature of belief according to which believing a proposition carries with it some sort of commitment or teleological directedness toward the truth (or knowledge) of that proposition. This feature is taken