Authority

By Green, Leslie

The notion of authority has two main senses: expertise and the right to rule. To have authority in matters of belief (to be ’an authority’) is to have ...

Medieval philosophy

By MacDonald, Scott; Kretzmann, Norman

Medieval philosophy is the philosophy of Western Europe from about ad 400–1400, roughly the period between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance. Medieval philosophers are the ...

Buddhist philosophy, Japanese

By Maraldo, John C.

Buddhism transformed Japanese culture and in turn was transformed in Japan. Mahāyāna Buddhist thought entered Japan from the East Asian continent as part of a cultural complex that ...

Buddhist philosophy, Korean

By Cho, Sungtaek

Buddhism was transmitted to the Korean peninsula from China in the middle of the fourth century ad. Korea at this time was divided into three kingdoms: Kokuryô, ...

Religion, philosophy of

Philosophy of religion comprises philosophical reflection on a wide range of religious and religiously significant phenomena: religious belief, doctrine and practice in general; the phenomenology and cognitive significance ...

Political philosophy

By Miller, David

Political philosophy can be defined as philosophical reflection on how best to arrange our collective life - our political institutions and our social practices, such as our economic ...

Hindu philosophy

By Clear, Edeltraud Harzer

Hindu philosophy is the longest surviving philosophical tradition in India. We can recognize several historical stages. The earliest, from around 700 bc, was the proto-philosophical period, when ...

Japanese philosophy

By Kasulis, Thomas P.

The most distinctive characteristic of Japanese philosophy is how it has assimilated and adapted foreign philosophies to its native worldview. As an isolated island nation, Japan successfully resisted ...

Introduction to Philosophy

By Crane, Tim

REP can be approached at so many different levels: philosophers at any stage can lose themselves in the interconnected web of entries. ...

Legitimacy

By Beetham, David

Legitimacy refers to the rightfulness of a powerholder or system of rule. The term originated in controversies over property and succession, and was used to differentiate children born ...

Hermeneutics

By Inwood, Michael

Hermeneutics, the ‘art of interpretation’, was originally the theory and method of interpreting the Bible and other difficult texts. Wilhelm Dilthey extended it to the interpretation of all ...

Artist’s intention

By Taylor, Paul

W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley’s famous paper ‘The Intentional Fallacy’ (1946) began one of the central debates in aesthetics and literary theory of the last half-century. By ...

Legal positivism, inclusive versus exclusive

By Waluchow, Wilfrid

Modern legal positivism views law as a human creation; the existence and content of law are, fundamentally, matters of social fact. This is usually termed ‘the social thesis’. ...

Artistic style

Style in art is typically described as how one describes or depicts something, rather than what is described or depicted. Style is thus often identified with ...

Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich (1895–1975)

By Morson, Gary Saul

Bakhtin is generally regarded as the most influential twentieth-century Russian literary theorist. His writings on literature, language, ethics, authorship, carnival, time and the theory of culture have shaped ...

Chinese Classics

By Raphals, Lisa

The Chinese Classics are a group of texts of divination, history, philosophy, poetry, ritual and lexicography that have, to a significant extent, defined the orthodox Ruhist (Confucian) tradition ...

Language, medieval theories of

By Ebbesen, Sten

A great deal of theorizing about language took place in western Europe between 1100 and 1400. The usual social context of this theorizing was the teaching of grammar, ...

Ibn Tufayl, Abu Bakr Muhammad (before 1110–85)

By Inati, Shams C.

Ibn Tufayl’s thought can be captured in his only extant work, Hayy Ibn Yaqzan (The Living Son of the Vigilant), a philosophical treatise in a charming literary form. ...

Nicholas of Cusa (1401–64)

By Hopkins, Jasper

Also called Nicolaus Cusanus, this German cardinal takes his distinguishing name from the city of his birth, Kues (or Cusa, in Latin), on the Moselle river between Koblenz ...

Revelation

By Swinburne, Richard

All major theistic religions have claimed that God has revealed himself in some way, both by showing something of himself in events and also by providing some true, ...

Interpretation, Indian theories of

By Deshpande, Madhav M.

Need for interpretation of texts was felt already during the ancient period of Vedic texts in India. Vedic texts were orally transmitted for over a thousand years. During ...

Marsilius of Padua (1275/80–1342/3)

By McGrade, A.S.

Marsilius of Padua’s Defensor pacis (Defender of Peace), written in 1324, is the most revolutionary political treatise of the later Middle Ages. Discourse One of the Defensor pacis ...

Hooker, Richard (1554–1600)

By McGrade, A.S.

Hooker’s Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1593–1662) is the first major work of English prose in the fields of philosophy, theology and political theory. After setting out ...

Feminist epistemology

By Janack, Marianne

Feminist epistemology can take many forms: as a specialisation in the field of philosophy it addresses the question of how gender and the identity of knowers may be ...

Narrative

By Currie, Gregory

Narrative, in its broadest sense, is the means by which a story is told, whether fictional or not, and regardless of medium. Novels, plays, films, historical texts, diaries ...