Solomon Maimon (1753—1800) The enigmatic philosopher, Solomon Maimon, is an important figure in the development of the movement referred to today as German Idealism. Immanuel Kant recognized Maimon as the critic who perhaps best understood his Critique of Pure Reason, and Fichte praises Maimon, wondering if later generations will look down on his own generation for having dismissed Maimon. Although Maimon is important in the

Theories of Emotion There are different theories of emotion to explain what emotions are and how they operate. This is challenging, since emotions can be analyzed from many different perspectives. In one sense, emotions are sophisticated and subtle, the epitome of what make us human. In another sense, however, human emotions seem to be very similar to (if not the same as) the responses that

Juan Donoso Cortés (1809—1853) Juan Donoso Cortés, parliamentary statesman, diplomat, government minister, royal counselor, theologian, and political theorist, may not be well known among modern political philosophers. However, his ideas had an enormous influence in the spheres of politics and religion in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Donoso’s theories were uniquely influential in shaping the ideological trajectory that began with the reaction against the Enlightenment

The Problem of the Criterion The Problem of the Criterion is considered by many to be a fundamental problem of epistemology.  In fact, Chisholm (1973, 1) claims that the Problem of the Criterion is “one of the most important and one of the most difficult of all the problems of philosophy.” A popular form of the Problem of the Criterion can be raised by asking

Emergence If we were pressed to give a definition of emergence, we could say that a property is emergent if it is a novel property of a system or an entity that arises when that system or entity has reached a certain level of complexity and that, even though it exists only insofar as the system or entity exists, it is distinct from the properties