Phenomenological movement

By Embree, Lester

The phenomenological movement is a century-old international movement in philosophy that has penetrated most of the cultural disciplines, especially psychiatry and sociology. It began in Germany with the ...

Gadamer, Hans-Georg (1900–2002)

By Wright, Kathleen

Hans-Georg Gadamer is best known for his philosophical hermeneutics. Gadamer studied with Martin Heidegger during his preparation of Being and Time (1927). Like Heidegger, Gadamer rejects the idea ...

French philosophy of science

By Gutting, Gary

A distinctively French tradition in the philosophy of science began with Descartes, continued through the Enlightenment in works such as D’Alembert’s Discours préliminaire and the Encyclopédie, and flowered ...

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1908–61)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–61) was a key figure in twentieth-century French philosophy and one of the principal proponents of existential phenomenology. Through his subtle and wide-ranging descriptions of lived ...

Beauvoir, Simone de (1908–86)

By Lundgren-Gothlin, Eva

Simone de Beauvoir, a French novelist and philosopher belonging to the existentialist-phenomenological tradition, elaborated an anthropology and ethics inspired by Kierkegaard, Husserl, Heidegger and Sartre in Pyrrhus et ...

Phenomenology, epistemic issues in

By Howarth, Jane

Phenomenology is not a unified doctrine. Its main proponents – Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty – interpret it differently. However, it is possible to present a broad characterization ...

Phenomenology of religion

By Westphal, Merold

The phenomenology of religion is a descriptive approach to the philosophy of religion. Instead of debating whether certain religious beliefs are true, it asks the question ‘What is ...

Phenomenology of religion

By Westphal, Merold

The phenomenology of religion is a descriptive approach to the philosophy of religion. Instead of debating whether certain religious beliefs are true, it asks the question ‘What is ...

Phenomenology in Latin America

By Bertelloni, Maria Teresa

The Latin American struggle against the positivism of the nineteenth century was the primordial endeavour of the founders of Latin American thought, such as José Enrique Rodó (1872–1917), ...

Nineteenth-century philosophy

By Stern, Robert

In the first part of the nineteenth century, the reigning philosophical outlook was idealist in one form or another, as the attempt was made to complete the intellectual ...

Foucault, Michel (1926–84)

By Gutting, Gary

Michel Foucault was a French philosopher and historian of thought. Although his earliest writings developed within the frameworks of Marxism and existential phenomenology, he soon moved beyond these ...

Confucian philosophy, Chinese

By Cua, A.S.

Chinese Confucian philosophy is primarily a set of ethical ideas oriented toward practice. Characteristically, it stresses the traditional boundaries of ethical responsibility and dao, or the ideal ...

Architecture, aesthetics of

By Haldane, John J.

The philosophy of architecture is a branch of philosophical aesthetics concerned with various issues arising from the theory and practice of building design. The oldest writings on architecture ...

Education, philosophy of

By Curren, Randall R.

The philosophy of education is primarily concerned with the nature, aims and means of education, and also with the character and structure of educational theory, and its own ...

Existentialism

By Guignon, Charles B.

The term ‘existentialism’ is sometimes reserved for the works of Jean-Paul Sartre, who used it to refer to his own philosophy in the 1940s. But it is more ...

Existentialism

The term ‘existentialism’ is sometimes reserved for the works of Jean-Paul Sartre, who used it to refer to his own philosophy in the 1940s. But it is more ...

Jewish philosophy, contemporary

By Levinson, Henry S.; Malino, Jonathan W.

Jewish philosophy is pursued by committed Jews seeking to understand Judaism and the world in one another’s light. In this broad sense, contemporary Jewish philosophy maintains the central ...

Sartre, Jean-Paul (1905–80)

By Howells, Christina

Sartre was a philosopher of paradox: an existentialist who attempted a reconciliation with Marxism, a theorist of freedom who explored the notion of predestination. From the mid-1930s to ...

Kuki Shūzō (1888–1941)

By Nagatomo, Shigenori

Kuki’s philosophical project was focused on the issues arising from dualistic thinking. He incorporated into his work a cross-cultural, historical perspective, while applying Heidegger’s hermeneutical ontology and exhibiting ...

Deleuze, Gilles (1925–95)

By Olkowski, Dorothea E.

Although grounded in the history of philosophy, Gilles Deleuze’s work does not begin with first principles but grasps the philosophical terrain ‘in the middle’. This method overthrows subject–object ...

Postmodernism, French critics of

By Lilly, Reginald

French anti-postmodernism emerged with the generation of philosophers that came of age in the late 1970s and early 1980s and counts among its ranks some of the most ...

Hegelianism

By Stern, Robert; Walker, Nicholas

As an intellectual tradition, the history of Hegelianism is the history of the reception and influence of the thought of G.W.F. Hegel. This tradition is notoriously complex and ...

Hegelianism

As an intellectual tradition, the history of Hegelianism is the history of the reception and influence of the thought of G.W.F. Hegel. This tradition is notoriously complex and ...

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1908–61)

By Baldwin, Thomas

Merleau-Ponty belongs to the group of French philosophers who transformed French philosophy in the early post-war period by introducing the phenomenological methods of the German philosophers Husserl and ...

Deleuze, Gilles (1925–95)

Although grounded in the history of philosophy, Gilles Deleuze’s work does not begin with first principles but grasps the philosophical terrain in the middle. This method overthrows subject–object ...