Marie Le Jars de Gournay (1565—1645) A close friend and editor of Montaigne, Marie Le Jars de Gournay is best known for her proto-feminist essays defending equality between the sexes.  Her unusual lifestyle as a single woman attempting to earn her living through writing matched her theoretical argument on the right of equal access of women and men to education and public offices.  Gournay’s extensive

Slavoj Žižek (1949 —) Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian-born political philosopher and cultural critic. He was described by British literary theorist, Terry Eagleton, as the “most formidably brilliant” recent theorist to have emerged from Continental Europe. Žižek’s work is infamously idiosyncratic. It features striking dialectical reversals of received common sense; a ubiquitous sense of humor; a patented disrespect towards the modern distinction between high and

The Sophists (Ancient Greek) The sophists were itinerant professional teachers and intellectuals who frequented Athens and other Greek cities in the second half of the fifth century B.C.E. In return for a fee, the sophists offered young wealthy Greek men an education in aretē (virtue or excellence), thereby attaining wealth and fame while also arousing significant antipathy. Prior to the fifth century B.C.E., aretē was

Charles Hartshorne: Theistic and Anti-Theistic Arguments Charles Hartshorne is well known in philosophical circles for his rehabilitation of Anselm’s ontological argument. Indeed, he may have written more on that subject than any other philosopher. He considered it to be the argument that, more than any other, reveals the logical status of theism. Nevertheless, he always clearly and explicitly denied that the argument was his reason