Legal Hermeneutics The question of how best to determine the meaning of a given text (legal or otherwise) has always been the chief concern of the general field of inquiry known as hermeneutics. Legal hermeneutics is rooted in philosophical hermeneutics and takes as its subject matter the nature of legal meaning. Legal hermeneutics asks the following sorts of questions: How do we come to decide

Classification One of the main topics of scientific research is classification. Classification is the operation of distributing objects into classes or groups—which are, in general, less numerous than them. It has a long history that has developed during four periods: (1) Antiquity, where its lineaments may be found in the writings of Plato and Aristotle; (2) The Classical Age, with natural scientists from Linnaeus to

Ancient Aesthetics It could be argued that ‘ancient aesthetics’ is an anachronistic term, since aesthetics as a discipline originated in 18th century Germany. Nevertheless, there is considerable evidence that ancient Greek and Roman philosophers discussed and theorised about the nature and value of aesthetic properties. They also undoubtedly contributed to the development of the later tradition because many classical theories were inspired by ancient thought;

Nyāya Nyāya (literally “rule or method of reasoning”) is a leading school of philosophy within the “Hindu umbrella”—those communities which saw themselves as the inheritors of the ancient Vedic civilization and allied cultural traditions. Epistemologically, Nyāya develops of a sophisticated precursor to contemporary reliabilism (particularly process reliabilism), centered on the notion of “knowledge-sources” (pramāṇa), and a conception of epistemic responsibility which allows for default, unreflective

Moral Relativism Moral relativism is the view that moral judgments are true or false only relative to some particular standpoint (for instance, that of a culture or a historical period) and that no standpoint is uniquely privileged over all others.  It has often been associated with other claims about morality: notably, the thesis that different cultures often exhibit radically different moral values; the denial that