Theosophy

By Wakoff, Michael B.

Etymologically, ‘theosophy’ means wisdom concerning God or divine things, from the Greek ‘theos’ (God) and ‘sophia’ (wisdom). Seventeenth-century philosophers and speculative mystics used ‘theosophy’ to refer to a ...

Steiner, Rudolf (1861–1925)

By Yandell, Keith E.

Rudolf Steiner held that humanity has passed through an astral and an etheric stage and has possessed intuitive and clairvoyant modes of consciousness. People, he held, once enjoyed ...

Karma and rebirth, Indian conceptions of

By Halbfass, Wilhelm

The combined beliefs in karma and rebirth, that is, the retributive power of actions and decisions and a beginningless, though not necessarily endless, succession of births and deaths ...

Shem Tov family

By Tirosh-Samuelson, Hava

The ibn Shem Tov family included four Jewish intellectuals of fifteenth century Spain whose philosophical, theological, homiletical and polemical works followed the persecution of 1391 and the ensuing ...

Islam, concept of philosophy in

By Leaman, Oliver

There is no generally accepted definition of what Islamic philosophy is, and the term will be used here to mean the sort of philosophy which arose within the ...

Solov’ëv, Vladimir Sergeevich (1853–1900)

By Walicki, Andrzej

It has been widely acknowledged that Vladimir Solov’ëv is the greatest Russian philosopher of the nineteenth century; his significance for Russian philosophy is often compared to the significance ...

Mystical philosophy in Islam

By Nasr, Seyyed Hossein

Mystical philosophy has an intimate connection with the mainstream of Islamic philosophy. It consists of several main strands, ranging from Isma‘ili thought to the metaphysics of al-Ghazali and ...

Boehme, Jakob (1575–1624)

By Seban, Jean-Loup

Boehme was a Lutheran mystic and pantheist. He held that God is the Abyss that is the ground of all things. The will of the Abyss to know ...

Nahmanides, Moses (1194–1270)

By Stern, Josef

One of the most influential medieval Jewish thinkers to engage with the philosophical tradition, Nahmanides was also a leading Talmudist, biblical exegete, and a founding figure of the ...

Hermetism

By Procope, John

A primarily religious amalgam of Greek philosophy with Egyptian and other Near Eastern elements, Hermetism takes its name from Hermes Trismegistus, ‘thrice greatest Hermes’, alias the Egyptian god ...

Religion, philosophy of

By Stump, Eleonore

Philosophy of religion is philosophical reflection on religion. It is as old as philosophy itself and has been a standard part of Western philosophy in every period (see ...

Jewish philosophy

By Goodman, L.E.

Jewish philosophy is philosophical inquiry informed by the texts, traditions and experiences of the Jewish people. Its concerns range from the farthest reaches of cosmological speculation to the ...

Lopatin, Lev Mikailovich (1855–1920)

By Poole, Randall A.

In 1911 the Moscow Psychological Society celebrated the accomplishments of Lev Lopatin, a major Russian idealist and personalist philosopher. Lopatin was lauded for his chairmanship of the Psychological ...

Fludd, Robert (1574–1637)

By Gaukroger, Stephen

Fludd is a marginal figure in the mainstream development of philosophy in seventeenth-century England, but of some importance in the development of an esoteric and mystical philosophy which ...

Hasidism

By Elior, Rachel

Its name literally meaning pietism, Hasidism is a mystical renewal movement that originated in eastern Europe in the mid-eighteenth century. It has become one of the most important ...

Clement of Alexandria (AD 150–215)

By Chadwick, Henry

Clement of Alexandria, a Christian Platonist, came to conversion through philosophy. In a series of allusive writings he presented a Hellenized Christianity along with the philosophical syncretism of ...

Kant, Immanuel (1724–1804)

By Guyer, Paul

Immanuel Kant was the paradigmatic philosopher of the European Enlightenment. He eradicated the last traces of the medieval worldview from modern philosophy, joined the key ideas of earlier ...

Kant, Immanuel (1724–1804)

Immanuel Kant was the paradigmatic philosopher of the European Enlightenment. He eradicated the last traces of the medieval worldview from modern philosophy, joined the key ideas of earlier ...

Herrera, Abraham Cohen de (c.1562–c.1635)

By Yosha, Nissim

Herrera was a philosophically oriented Kabbalist who combined Neoplatonism and Kabbalistic knowledge learned from Israel Sarug, a disciple of Isaac Luria. In his Spanish works Puerta del Cielo ...

Mir Damad, Muhammad Baqir (d. 1631)

By Dabashi, Hamid

Mir Damad is primarily a gnostic philosopher, arguing that the activity of the mind makes possible the experience of spiritual visions, while visionary experience gives rise to rational ...

Mulla Sadra (Sadr al-Din Muhammad al-Shirazi) (1571/2–1640)

By Cooper, John

Sadr al-Din al-Shirazi (Mulla Sadra) is perhaps the single most important and influential philosopher in the Muslim world in the last four hundred years. The author of over ...

Heschel, Abraham Joshua (1907–72)

By Novak, David

Born in Warsaw and educated there and in Berlin, Abraham Joshua Heschel moved to the USA in 1940, where he lived and taught for the rest of his ...

Rosmini-Serbati, Antonio (1797–1855)

By Verucci, Guido
Translated by Cox, Virginia

In the reactionary, anti-Enlightenment, spiritualistic climate of Italy and Europe in the first decades of the nineteenth century, the Italian philosopher Rosmini set out to elaborate a Christian, ...

German idealism

By Franks, Paul

From the late eighteenth century until the middle of the nineteenth, German philosophy was dominated by the movement known as German idealism, which began as an attempt to ...

Agrippa von Nettesheim, Henricus Cornelius (1486–1535)

By Keefer, Michael H.

Famous in the sixteenth century for writings in which he steps forward variously as magician, occultist, evangelical humanist and philosopher, Agrippa shared with other humanist writers a thoroughgoing ...