Immortality in ancient philosophy

By Brennan, Tad

In Greco-Roman philosophy immortality is discussed in two contexts: as an uncontroversial attribute of the gods and as a highly controversial attribute of human souls. Subdividing this latter ...

Byzantine philosophy

By Benakis, Phil Linos

In Byzantium from the ninth century through to the fifteenth century, philosophy as a discipline remained the science of fundamental truths concerning human beings and the world. Philosophy, ...

Pythagoreanism

By Schibli, Hermann S.

Pythagoreanism refers to a Greek religious-philosophical movement that originated with Pythagoras in the sixth century bc. Although Pythagoreanism in its historical development embraced a wide range of ...

Soul in Islamic philosophy

By Inati, Shams C.

The discussion of the human soul, its existence, nature, ultimate objective and eternity, occupies a highly important position in Islamic philosophy and forms its main focus. For the ...

Ancient philosophy

By Sedley, David

The philosophy of the Greco-Roman world from the sixth century bc to the sixth century ad laid the foundations for all subsequent Western philosophy. Its greatest ...

Strato (d. c.269 BC)

By Sharples, R.W.

The third head of Aristotle’s school, from c.287 to c.269 bc, Strato has been regarded as substituting materialism for Aristotelian metaphysics, mechanism for teleology, atheism ...

Alcmaeon (c. early to mid 5th century BC)

By Schofield, Malcolm

Alcmaeon of Croton was a Greek thinker with philosophical and medical interests. His work focused on the nature of man. Health was the outcome of ‘equal rights’ between, ...

Platonism, medieval

By Moran, Dermot

Medieval Platonism includes the medieval biographical tradition, the transmission of the dialogues, a general outlook spanning commitment to extramental ideas, intellectualism in cognition, emphasis on self-knowledge as the ...

Aristotelianism, Renaissance

By Mahoney, Edward P.; South, James B.

By the Renaissance here is meant the period of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries during which there was a deliberate attempt, especially in Italy, to pattern cultural activities ...

Ficino, Marsilio (1433–99)

By Hankins, James

With Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Marsilio Ficino was the most important philosopher working under the patronage of Lorenzo de’Medici, ‘Il Magnifico’, in the Florence of the High Renaissance. ...

Forms, Platonic

By Brennan, Tad

Plato thought that in addition to the changeable, extended bodies we perceive around us, there are also unchangeable, extensionless entities, not perceptible by the senses, that structure the ...

Platonism, Renaissance

By Hankins, James

Though it never successfully challenged the dominance of Aristotelian school philosophy, the revival of Plato and Platonism was an important phenomenon in the philosophical life of the Renaissance ...

Renaissance philosophy

By Ashworth, E.J.

The term ‘Renaissance’ means rebirth, and was originally used to designate a rebirth of the arts and literature that began in mid-fourteenth century Italy (see Humanism, Renaissance). Here ...

Epicureanism

By Sedley, David

Epicureanism is one of the three dominant philosophies of the Hellenistic age. The school was founded by Epicurus (341–271 bc) (see Prolēpsis). Only small samples and indirect ...

Epicureanism

Epicureanism is one of the three dominant philosophies of the Hellenistic age. The school was founded by Epicurus (341–271 bc) (see Prolēpsis). Only small samples and indirect ...

Soul, nature and immortality of the

By Swinburne, Richard

For the Greeks, the soul is what gives life to the body. Plato thought of it as a thing separate from the body. A human living on earth ...

Gersonides (1288–1344)

By Feldman, Seymour

Living all his life in southern France, Levi ben Gershom, known as Gersonides in Latin texts, was an accomplished astronomer and mathematician as well as a philosopher. A ...

Pomponazzi, Pietro (1462–1525)

By Pine, Martin L.

Pietro Pomponazzi was the leading Aristotelian philosopher in the first quarter of the sixteenth century. His treatise De immortalitate animae (On the Immortality of the Soul) (1516) argues ...

Cajetan (Thomas de Vio) (1468–1534)

By Mahoney, Edward P.

Thomas de Vio, better known as Cajetan, has long been considered to be the outstanding commentator on the philosophical thought of Thomas Aquinas. He has had a great ...

Denys the Carthusian (1402/3–71)

By Emery, Kent

Denys de Leeuwis was born in the village of Rijkel, in modern Belgium. In 1421 he matriculated at the University of Cologne, where he received the Master of ...

Plato (427–347 BC)

By Schofield, Malcolm

Plato was an Athenian Greek of aristocratic family, active as a philosopher in the first half of the fourth century bc. He was a devoted follower of ...

Plato (427–347 BC)

Plato was an Athenian Greek of aristocratic family, active as a philosopher in the first half of the fourth century bc. He was a devoted follower of ...