The Frankfurt School and Critical Theory The Frankfurt School, known more appropriately as Critical Theory, is a philosophical and sociological movement spread across many universities around the world. It was originally located at the Institute for Social Research (Institut für Sozialforschung), an attached institute at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany. The Institute was founded in 1923 thanks to a donation by Felix Weil with

Edward Caird (1835—1908) A Scottish philosopher of the latter half of the nineteenth century, Edward Caird was one of the key figures of the idealist movement that dominated British philosophy from 1870 until the mid 1920s. Best known for his studies of Kant and Hegel, he argued that “Kantian philosophy is only a first stage, though of course a necessary stage, in the transition of philosophy

Wilfrid Sellars: Philosophy of Mind The twentieth century philosophy of mind of Wilfrid Sellars (1912 – 1989) retains much from the traditional, Cartesian perspective. It endorses a realm of inner, private episodes of which we may have direct knowledge. However, Sellars rejects Cartesian substance dualism and the thesis that mental states are fully knowable simply by introspection. As an alternative, Sellars conceives of mental states by

Religious Pluralism Religious pluralism, broadly construed, is a response to the diversity of religious beliefs, practices, and traditions that exist both in the contemporary world and throughout history. The terms “pluralism” and “pluralist” can, depending on context or intended use, signify anything from the mere fact of religious diversity to a particular kind of philosophical or theological approach to such diversity, one usually characterized by

Epistemic Circularity An epistemically circular argument defends the reliability of a source of belief by relying on premises that are themselves based on the source. It is a widely shared intuition that there is something wrong with epistemically circular arguments. William Alston, who first used the term in this sense, argues plausibly that there is no way to know or to be justified in believing

Huineng (Hui-neng) (638—713) Huineng (Hui-neng) a seminal figure in Buddhist history. He is the famous “Sixth Patriarch” of the Chan or meditation tradition, which is better known in Japanese as “Zen”). The focus of an immense body of lore that grew over the centuries, Huineng’s life mirrors the fortunes of Chan itself – a provincial Chinese version of Buddhism that rose to become a major