Jean-François Lyotard Biography[edit] Early life, educational background, and family[edit] Jean François Lyotard was born on August 10, 1924 in Versailles, France to Jean-Pierre Lyotard, a sales representative, and Madeleine Cavalli. Political life[edit] In 1954, Lyotard became a member of Socialisme ou Barbarie, a French political organisation formed in 1948 around the inadequacy of the Trotskyist analysis to explain the new forms of domination in the Soviet Union. Academic career[edit] Lyotard taught in Lycée de Constantine in Algeria from 1950 to 1952. Theory[edit] Lyotard's work is characterised by a persistent opposition to universals, meta-narratives, and generality. In his writings of the early 1970s, he rejects what he regards as theological underpinnings of both Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud: "In Freud, it is judaical, critical sombre (forgetful of the political); in Marx it is catholic. The Postmodern Condition[edit] Lyotard is a skeptic for modern cultural thought. The Differend[edit] The sublime[edit]
Martin Heidegger Martin Heidegger (German: [ˈmaɐ̯tiːn ˈhaɪdɛɡɐ]; 26 September 1889 – 26 May 1976) was a German philosopher, widely seen as a seminal thinker in the Continental tradition, particularly within the fields of existential phenomenology and philosophical hermeneutics. From his beginnings as a Catholic academic, he developed a groundbreaking and widely influential philosophy. His relationship with Nazism has been a controversial and widely debated subject. For Heidegger, the things in lived experience always have more to them than what we can see; accordingly, the true nature of being is “withdrawal”. It has been suggested[by whom?] Biography[edit] Early years[edit] The Mesnerhaus in Meßkirch, where Heidegger grew up Studying theology at the University of Freiburg while supported by the church on the understanding that he would defend their doctrine, Heidegger broke with Catholicism, and switched to philosophy. Marburg[edit] Freiburg[edit] According to historian Richard J. Post-war[edit]
Baruch Spinoza Biography[edit] Family and community origins[edit] Spinoza's ancestors were of Sephardic Jewish descent, and were a part of the community of Portuguese Jews that had settled in the city of Amsterdam in the wake of the Alhambra Decree in Spain (1492) and the Portuguese Inquisition (1536), which had resulted in forced conversions and expulsions from the Iberian peninsula.[11] Attracted by the Decree of Toleration issued in 1579 by the Union of Utrecht, Portuguese "conversos" first sailed to Amsterdam in 1593 and promptly reconverted to Judaism.[12] In 1598 permission was granted to build a synagogue, and in 1615 an ordinance for the admission and government of the Jews was passed.[13] As a community of exiles, the Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam were highly proud of their identity.[13] Spinoza's father, Miguel (Michael), and his uncle, Manuel, then moved to Amsterdam where they resumed the practice of Judaism. 17th-century Holland[edit] Early life[edit] Expulsion from the Jewish community[edit]
Jean Baudrillard Jean Baudrillard (/ˌboʊdriːˈɑr/;[1] French: [ʒɑ̃ bodʁijaʁ]; 27 July 1929 – 6 March 2007) was a French sociologist, philosopher, cultural theorist, political commentator, and photographer. His work is frequently associated with postmodernism and specifically post-structuralism. Life[edit] Baudrillard was born in Reims, northeastern France, on 27 July 1929. His grandparents were peasants and his parents were civil servants. While teaching German, Baudrillard began to transfer to sociology, eventually completing his doctoral thesis Le Système des objets (The System of Objects) under the dissertation committee of Henri Lefebvre, Roland Barthes, and Pierre Bourdieu. In 1970, Baudrillard made the first of his many trips to the United States (Aspen, Colorado), and in 1973, the first of several trips to Kyoto, Japan. In 1986 he moved to IRIS (Institut de Recherche et d'Information Socio-Économique) at the Université de Paris-IX Dauphine, where he spent the latter part of his teaching career.
Ludwig Wittgenstein Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language.[4] From 1939–1947, Wittgenstein taught at the University of Cambridge.[5] During his lifetime he published just one slim book, the 75-page Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), one article, one book review and a children's dictionary.[6] His voluminous manuscripts were edited and published posthumously. Philosophical Investigations appeared as a book in 1953 and by the end of the century it was considered an important modern classic.[7] Philosopher Bertrand Russell described Wittgenstein as "the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived; passionate, profound, intense, and dominating".[8] Born in Vienna into one of Europe's richest families, he inherited a large fortune from his father in 1913. Background[edit] The Wittgensteins[edit]
Aristotle Aristotle's views on physical science profoundly shaped medieval scholarship. Their influence extended into the Renaissance and were not replaced systematically until the Enlightenment and theories such as classical mechanics. Some of Aristotle's zoological observations, such as on the hectocotyl (reproductive) arm of the octopus, were not confirmed or refuted until the 19th century. His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, which was incorporated in the late 19th century into modern formal logic. His ethics, though always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics. All aspects of Aristotle's philosophy continue to be the object of active academic study today. The sum of his work's influence often ranks him among the world's top personalities of all time with the greatest influence, along with his teacher Plato, and his pupil Alexander the Great.[9][10] Life Aristotle was appointed as the head of the royal academy of Macedon. Thought
Gorgias Gorgias (/ˈɡɔrdʒiəs/; Greek: Γοργίας, Ancient Greek: [ɡorɡías]; c. 485 – c. 380 BC),[1] called "the Nihilist," was a Greek sophist, Italiote, pre-Socratic philosopher and rhetorician who was a native of Leontini in Sicily. Along with Protagoras, he forms the first generation of Sophists. Several doxographers report that he was a pupil of Empedocles, although he would only have been a few years younger. "Like other Sophists he was an itinerant, practicing in various cities and giving public exhibitions of his skill at the great pan-Hellenic centers of Olympia and Delphi, and charged fees for his instruction and performances. A special feature of his displays was to invite miscellaneous questions from the audience and give impromptu replies His chief claim to recognition resides in the fact that he transplanted rhetoric from his native Sicily to Attica, and contributed to the diffusion of the Attic dialect as the language of literary prose. Life[edit] Gorgias: the Nihilist[edit]
Protagoras Background[edit] In Plato's Protagoras, before the company of Socrates, Prodicus, and Hippias, he states that he is old enough to be the father of any of them. This suggests a date of not later than 490 BC. Plutarch relates a story in which the two spend a whole day discussing an interesting point of legal responsibility, that probably involved a more philosophical question of causation:[5] "In an athletic contest a man had been accidentally hit and killed with a javelin. Philosophy[edit] Protagoras was also known as a teacher who addressed subjects connected to virtue and political life. He also seems to have had an interest in “orthoepeia” - the correct use of words, although this topic is more strongly associated with his fellow sophist Prodicus. The titles of his books such as The Technique of Eristics (Technē Eristikōn, literally "On wrestling", with wrestling here used as a metaphor for intellectual debate) prove that Protagoras was also a teacher of rhetoric and argumentation.
Parmenides Parmenides of Elea (/pɑrˈmɛnɨdiːz əv ˈɛliə/; Ancient Greek: Παρμενίδης ὁ Ἐλεάτης; fl. 5th century BCE) was an ancient Greek philosopher born in Elea, a Greek city on the southern coast of Magna Graecia. He was the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy. The single known work of Parmenides is a poem, On Nature, which has survived only in fragmentary form. Life[edit] On Nature[edit] Parmenides is one of the most significant of the pre-Socratic philosophers.[12] His only known work, conventionally titled On Nature, is a poem which has only survived in fragmentary form. A proem (Greek: προοίμιον), which introduced the entire work,A section known as "The Way of Truth" (aletheia, ἀλήθεια), andA section known as "The Way of Appearance/Opinion" (doxa, δόξα). Proem[edit] The Way of Truth[edit] The section known as "the way of truth" discusses that which is real and contrasts with the argument in the section called "the way of opinion," which discusses that which is illusory. Perception vs.
Paul Feyerabend Paul Karl Feyerabend (German: [ˈfaɪɐˌaːbɛnt]; January 13, 1924 – February 11, 1994) was an Austrian-born philosopher of science best known for his work as a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked for three decades (1958–1989). He lived at various times in England, the United States, New Zealand, Italy, Germany, and finally Switzerland. His major works include Against Method (published in 1975), Science in a Free Society (published in 1978) and Farewell to Reason (a collection of papers published in 1987). Feyerabend became famous for his purportedly anarchistic view of science and his rejection of the existence of universal methodological rules.[1] He is an influential figure in the philosophy of science, and also in the sociology of scientific knowledge. Biography[edit] Early life[edit] Post–WWII and university[edit] When the war was over, Feyerabend first got a temporary job in Apolda where he wrote pieces for the theatre. Academia[edit]
Plato Plato (/ˈpleɪtoʊ/; Greek: Πλάτων Plátōn "broad"pronounced [plá.tɔːn] in Classical Attic; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BCE) was a philosopher, as well as mathematician, in Classical Greece. He is considered an essential figure in the development of philosophy, especially the Western tradition, and he founded the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his teacher Socrates and his most famous student, Aristotle, Plato laid the foundations of Western philosophy and science.[2] Alfred North Whitehead once noted: "the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato." Plato's dialogues have been used to teach a range of subjects, including philosophy, logic, ethics, rhetoric, religion and mathematics. Biography Early life Little can be known about Plato's early life and education, due to very few accounts. Birth and family Name Education Plato and Pythagoras Later life
Sophist Etymology[edit] From the word σοφός (sophos) is derived the verb σοφίζω (sophizo), which means "to instruct or make learned," but which in the passive voice means "to become or be wise," or "to be clever or skilled in a thing." In turn, from this verb is derived the noun σοφιστής (sophistes), which originally meant "a master of one's craft" but later came to mean "a prudent man" or "wise man The word "sophist" could also be combined with other Greek words to form compounds. Sophists of the 5th century BC[edit] Many sophists taught their skills for a price. In comparison, Socrates accepted no fee, instead professed a self-effacing posture, which he exemplified by Socratic questioning (i.e. the Socratic method, although Diogenes Laertius wrote that Protagoras — a sophist — invented the "Socratic" method[5][6]). Some scholars, such as Ugo Zilioli[9] argue that the sophists held a relativistic view on cognition and knowledge. Sophists and democracy[edit] Sophists and education[edit] Notes[edit]
Socrates Socrates (/ˈsɒkrətiːz/;[2] Greek: Σωκράτης [sɔːkrátɛːs], Sōkrátēs; 470/469 – 399 BC)[1] was a classical Greek (Athenian) philosopher credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy. He is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon and the plays of his contemporary Aristophanes. Plato's dialogues are among the most comprehensive accounts of Socrates to survive from antiquity, though it is unclear the degree to which Socrates himself is "hidden behind his 'best disciple', Plato".[3] Through his portrayal in Plato's dialogues, Socrates has become renowned for his contribution to the field of ethics, and it is this Platonic Socrates who lends his name to the concepts of Socratic irony and the Socratic method, or elenchus. Socratic problem Nothing written by Socrates remains extant. Socrates as a figure Socrates as a philosopher Biography Early life Military service Arrest of Leon Trial and death Notes