Existentialism became popular among the younger generation of intellectuals in the 1950s – the Beat Generation. Existentialism focuses on the freedom to choose. If we realize that our choices are free, then we can act responsibly and with integrity. But if we fail to...
Philosophy
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The Second Sex
Women have been writing about philosophical issues since ancient times. However, until the late 20th-century philosophy was almost entirely dominated by men. Philosophers like Aristotle and Plato wrote about ethics and metaphysics. Female philosophers were not heard...
Linguistics and semiotics
Linguistics emerged as a science in the late 1800s when scholars began to apply scientific methods of observation and experimentation to the study of language and signs. Semantics and phonetics were the first two fields of linguistics. They focused on the relationship...
Structuralism
After the Second World War, many Europeans embraced Existentialism. However, the next generation of thinkers rejected all forms of existentialism, including Jean-Paul Sartre's Marxism and Heidegger's Nazism. These thinkers were inspired by structuralism, a theory that...
Deconstruction
Structuralists like Saussure, Barthes, and Foucaux argued that there were rules governing how we think, act and behave. Language is not just a means of expressing thoughts, they said, but also a tool to shape our minds. These theorists claimed that texts like laws,...
Philosophy in the United States
While retaining many American cultural traits, Americans also felt a growing sense of independence. This resulted in the emergence of a distinct American culture, which included not just literature but also politics and other areas of life. Transcendentalism played an...
Transcendentalism
In his essay "Nature", Ralph Waldo Emerson proposed a philosophy based on the essential goodness of both man and the Earth. He believed that each individual had a responsibility to respect the environment and care for all living beings. His ideal society was based on...
Pragmatism
Philosophical discussions of knowledge, reality, and truth can appear to fall into the trap of debating words instead of the world we live in, especially if the language is technical or mathematical. As an engineer and logician, Charles Sanders Peirce felt that...
Truth and usefulness
Peirce’s pragmatism was readily picked up by his friend and colleague from Harvard, William James. William James was a psychologist and philosopher who studied the impact of thinking and emotion on our behavior. He was interested in how we interact with each other and...
Philosophy vs psychology
William James was the first psychologist who helped establish experimental psychology as a scientific discipline. He studied medicine before his interest in philosophy and the combination of two subjects led him to become a leading figure in creating a new scientific...
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Avicenna and the flying man
If the heavens vanished would time continue to pass? If existence were distinct from essence, would that mean that existence itself must exist? Aristotelian philosophy and scientific method became widespread in the Islamic Golden Age. And while many intellectuals...
Averroes
Throughout the 11th and 12th centuries, Avicenna’s philosophy was the dominant ideology of Islam – characterized by a Neo-Platonist take on Aristotle’s teachings. However, like any other school of thought, it had its fair share of critics. Strict theologists such as...
Islamic influence on Western philosophy
The Arabic-Latin translation movements in the Middle Ages, which paralleled that from Greek into Latin, led to the transformation of almost all philosophical disciplines in the medieval Latin world. The impact of Arabic philosophers such as al-Fārābī, Avicenna, and...
Renaissance, reason and revolution
Renaissance was the era marked by a time when humanist ideologies dawned and religious authorities had to let go of their stronghold on European cultural and intellectual life. Prominent figures of the Renaissance included philosopher and statesman Niccolò...
Renaissance humanism
From its inception in the 14th century, the Renaissance was akin to medieval Greek and European culture being reborn after more than a thousand years of being controlled by the Church and Papal authorities. While some thinkers delved into understanding the universe...
Free Course in Semiology
A completely and truly free course on Semiology (Semiotics). Learn about the meaning of signs, how and why did the field emerged. What is the relationship between the street signs and the signs that we use every day - words.
