Robert Nozick. Robert Nozick (/ˈnoʊzɪk/; November 16, 1938 – January 23, 2002) was an American philosopher[2] who was most prominent in the 1970s and 1980s. He was a professor at Harvard University. He is best known for his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), a libertarian answer to John Rawls' A Theory of Justice (1971). His other work involved decision theory and epistemology. Personal life[edit] Nozick was born in Brooklyn, the son of a Jewish entrepreneur from the Russian shtetl who had been born with the name of Cohen.[3] Nozick was married to the poet Gjertrud Schnackenberg.
Career and works[edit] Nozick was educated at Columbia (A.B. 1959, summa cum laude), where he studied with Sidney Morgenbesser, and later at Princeton (Ph.D. 1963), and Oxford as a Fulbright Scholar (1963–1964). Epistemology[edit] Nozick's Four Conditions for S's knowing that P were: P is trueS believes that PIf it were the case that (not-P), S would not believe that PIf it were the case that P, S would believe that P. Alasdair MacIntyre. Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre (born 1929) is a Scottish[1] philosopher primarily known for his contribution to moral and political philosophy but known also for his work in history of philosophy and theology.
He is Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Contemporary Aristotelian Studies in Ethics and Politics (CASEP) at London Metropolitan University, and an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. During his lengthy academic career, he also taught at Brandeis University, Duke University, Vanderbilt University, and Boston University. Biography[edit] Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre was born on 12 January 1929 in Glasgow, to John and Emily (Chalmers) MacIntyre.
He was educated at Queen Mary College, London, and has a Master of Arts from the University of Manchester and from the University of Oxford. He has also been a visiting professor at Princeton University, and is a former president of the American Philosophical Association. From 2000 he was the Rev. Alvin Ward Gouldner. Alvin Ward Gouldner (July 29, 1920 – December 15th, 1980) taught sociology at Antioch College (1952-1954) [1] and was professor of sociology at Washington University in St. Louis (1959–1967[citation needed]), at the University at Buffalo (1967–1972), President of the Society for the Study of Social Problems (1962), professor of sociology at the University of Amsterdam (1972–1976) and Max Weber Professor of Sociology at Washington University (from 1967). He was born in New York City. His early works such as Patterns in Industrial Bureaucracy can be seen as important as they worked within the existing fields of sociology but adopted the principles of a critical intellectual.
This can be seen more clearly in his 1964 work, Anti-Minotaur: The Myth of Value Free Sociology, where he claimed the sociology could not be objective and that Max Weber had never intended to make such a claim. He is probably most remembered for his 1970 work The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology. Major works[edit] Richard Rorty. Jacques Derrida. Jacques Derrida (/ʒɑːk ˈdɛrɨdə/; French: [ʒak dɛʁida]; born Jackie Élie Derrida;[1] July 15, 1930 – October 9, 2004) was a French philosopher, born in French Algeria.
Derrida is best known for developing a form of semiotic analysis known as deconstruction. He is one of the major figures associated with post-structuralism and postmodern philosophy.[3][4][5] During his career Derrida published more than 40 books, together with hundreds of essays and public presentations. He had a significant influence upon the humanities and social sciences, including—in addition to philosophy and literature—law[6][7][8] anthropology,[9] historiography,[10] linguistics,[11] sociolinguistics,[12] psychoanalysis, political theory, feminism, and queer studies.
Particularly in his later writings, he frequently addressed ethical and political themes present in his work. Life[edit] Derrida was the third of five children. Derrida traveled widely and held a series of visiting and permanent positions. John Rawls. John Bordley Rawls (/rɔːlz/;[1] February 21, 1921 – November 24, 2002) was an American philosopher and a leading figure in moral and political philosophy. He held the James Bryant Conant University Professorship at Harvard University and the Fulbright Fellowship at Christ Church, Oxford.
Rawls received both the Schock Prize for Logic and Philosophy and the National Humanities Medal in 1999, the latter presented by President Bill Clinton, in recognition of how Rawls' work "helped a whole generation of learned Americans revive their faith in democracy itself. "[2] Biography[edit] Early life[edit] John Rawls was born in Baltimore, Maryland to William Lee Rawls, "one of the most prominent attorneys in Baltimore,"[3] and Anna Abell Stump Rawls.[6] The second of five sons, tragedy struck Rawls at a young age. Rawls attended school in Baltimore for a short time before transferring to Kent School, an Episcopalian preparatory school in Connecticut. Career[edit] Later life[edit] Jürgen Habermas. Biography[edit] Habermas was born in Düsseldorf, Rhine Province, in 1929. He was born with a cleft palate and had corrective surgery twice during childhood.[4] Habermas argues that his speech disability made him think differently about the importance of communication and prefer writing over the spoken word as a medium.[5] From 1956 on, he studied philosophy and sociology under the critical theorists Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno at the Goethe University Frankfurt's Institute for Social Research, but because of a rift between the two over his dissertation—Horkheimer had made unacceptable demands for revision—as well as his own belief that the Frankfurt School had become paralyzed with political skepticism and disdain for modern culture[6]—he finished his habilitation in political science at the University of Marburg under the Marxist Wolfgang Abendroth.
Habermas then returned to his chair at Frankfurt and the directorship of the Institute for Social Research. Teacher and mentor[edit] Willard Van Orman Quine. Willard Van Orman Quine (June 25, 1908 – December 25, 2000) (known to intimates as "Van")[1] was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition. From 1930 until his death 70 years later, Quine was continually affiliated with Harvard University in one way or another, first as a student, then as a professor of philosophy and a teacher of logic and set theory, and finally as a professor emeritus who published or revised several books in retirement. He filled the Edgar Pierce Chair of Philosophy at Harvard from 1956 to 1978. A recent poll conducted among analytic philosophers named Quine as the fifth most important philosopher of the past two centuries.[2] He won the first Schock Prize in Logic and Philosophy in 1993, for "his systematical and penetrating discussions of how learning of language and communication are based on socially available evidence and of the consequences of this for theories on knowledge and linguistic meaning.
Biography[edit] Political beliefs[edit] . Thomas Kuhn. Thomas Samuel Kuhn (/ˈkuːn/; July 18, 1922 – June 17, 1996) was an American physicist, historian, and philosopher of science whose controversial 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was deeply influential in both academic and popular circles, introducing the term "paradigm shift", which has since become an English-language staple. Life[edit] Kuhn was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Samuel L. Kuhn, an industrial engineer, and Minette Stroock Kuhn. He graduated from The Taft School in Watertown, CT, in 1940, where he became aware of his serious interest in mathematics and physics.
He obtained his B.S. degree in physics from Harvard University in 1943, where he also obtained M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in physics in 1946 and 1949, respectively. Thomas Kuhn was married twice, first to Kathryn Muhs with whom he had three children, then to Jehane Barton Burns (Jehane R. Kuhn was an agnostic.[4] His family was Jewish on both sides. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions[edit] Honors[edit]
Karl Popper. Karl Raimund Popper CH FBA FRS[4] (28 July 1902 – 17 September 1994) was an Austrian-British[5] philosopher and professor at the London School of Economics.[6] He is generally regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20th century.[7][8] Popper is known for his rejection of the classical inductivist views on the scientific method, in favour of empirical falsification: A theory in the empirical sciences can never be proven, but it can be falsified, meaning that it can and should be scrutinized by decisive experiments.
If the outcome of an experiment contradicts the theory, one should refrain from ad hoc manoeuvres that evade the contradiction merely by making it less falsifiable. Personal life[edit] Family and training[edit] Karl Popper was born in Vienna (then in Austria-Hungary) in 1902, to upper middle-class parents. He worked in street construction for a short amount of time, but was unable to cope with the heavy labour. Academic life[edit] Honours and awards[edit] Friedrich Hayek.