The Classical Theory of Concepts The classical theory of concepts is one of the five primary theories of concepts, the other four being prototype or exemplar theories, atomistic theories, theory-theories, and neoclassical theories. The classical theory implies that every complex concept has a classical analysis, where a classical analysis of a concept is a proposition giving metaphysically necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for being in

Nietzsche’s Ethics The ethical thought of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) can be divided into two main components. The first is critical: Nietzsche offers a wide-ranging critique of morality as it currently exists. The second is Nietzsche’s positive ethical philosophy, which focuses primarily on what constitutes health, vitality, and flourishing for certain individuals, the so-called “higher types”. In the critical project, Nietzsche attacks the morality

Giorgio Agamben (1942– ) Giorgio Agamben is one of the leading figures in Italian philosophy and radical political theory, and in recent years, his work has had a deep impact on contemporary scholarship in a number of disciplines in the Anglo-American intellectual world. Born in Rome in 1942, Agamben completed studies in Law and Philosophy with a doctoral thesis on the political thought of Simone

Proper Functionalism ‘Proper Functionalism’ refers to a family of epistemological views according to which whether a belief (or some other doxastic state) was formed by way of properly functioning cognitive faculties plays a crucial role in whether it has a certain kind of positive epistemic status (such as being an item of knowledge, or a justified belief). Alvin Plantinga’s proper functionalist theory of knowledge has

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) Widely hailed as a universal genius, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was one of the most important thinkers of the late 17th and early 18th centuries. A polymath and one of the founders of calculus, Leibniz is best known philosophically for his metaphysical idealism; his theory that reality is composed of spiritual, non-interacting “monads,” and his oft-ridiculed thesis that we live in the