Tu Weiming (1940—) Tu Weiming (pinyin: Du Weiming) is one of the most famous Chinese Confucian thinkers of the 20th and 21st centuries. As a prominent member of the third generation of “New Confucians,” Tu stressed the significance of religiosity within Confucianism. Inspired by his teacher Mou Zongsan as well as his decades of study and teaching at Princeton University, the University of California, and

Abu Ya’qub al-Sijistani (fl. 971) Abu Ya‘qub al-Sijistani was first and foremost a member of the Ismaili underground mission — the da‘wa, as it is known in Arabic — that operated in the Iranian province of Khurasan and Sijistan during the tenth century. In the later part of his life, al-Sijistani was or had become a supporter of the Fatimids imams, then ruling from their

Novalis (Georg Philipp Friedrich von Hardenberg) (1772-1801) “Novalis” was the pseudonym of Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg, an early German Romantic philosopher, poet, and novelist. Born into a Pietistic family of minor, slightly cash-strapped, Saxon nobility in 1772, he died of tuberculosis in 1801 at the age of 28. Novalis is sometimes seen as the paradigmatic figure of German Romanticism: His early death, the

St. Louis Hegelians The common name given to a group of amateur philosophers founded and led by William Torrey Harris (1835-1909) and Henry Conrad Brokmeyer (1828-1906). Harris, a New Englander born in Connecticut and educated at Yale, first became acquainted with idealism through the Transcendentalists, mainly from his attendance in 1857 at the Orphic Seer’s Conversations of Amos Bronson Alcott (1799-1888). The experience inspired Harris

Alfred Schutz (1899—1959) Alfred Schutz philosophized about social science in a broad signification of the word. He was deeply respectful of actual scientific practice, and produced a classification of the sciences; explicated methodological postulates for empirical science in general and the social sciences specifically; and clarified basic concepts for interpretative sociology in particular. His work shows how philosophy of the cultural sciences can be done

Plotinus (204—270 C.E.) Plotinus is considered to be the founder of Neoplatonism. Taking his lead from his reading of Plato, Plotinus developed a complex spiritual cosmology involving three foundational elements: the One, the Intelligence, and the Soul. It is from the productive unity of these three Beings that all existence emanates, according to Plotinus. The principal of emanation is not simply causal, but also contemplative.