Logos

By Stead, Christopher

The noun logos derives from the Greek verb legein, meaning ‘to say’ something significant. Logos developed a wide variety of senses, including ‘description’, ‘theory’ (sometimes ...

Dissoi logoi

By Burnyeat, M.F.

Dissoi logoi (‘Twofold Arguments’) is the title scholars apply to a short anonymous collection of arguments for and against various theses. The work, in Greek, is (questionably) dated ...

Sokratikoi logoi

see Socratic dialogues.

Antisthenes (c.445–c.365 BC)

By Schofield, Malcolm

Antisthenes was one of the most devoted followers of Socrates. As a young man he was heavily influenced by the display speeches of Gorgias the rhetorician and the ...

Heraclitus (c.540–c.480 BC)

By Long, A.A.

No Greek philosopher born before Socrates was more creative and influential than Heraclitus of Ephesus. Around the beginning of the fifth century bc, in a prose that ...

Philo of Alexandria (c.15 BC–c. AD 50)

By Runia, David T.

Philo of Alexandria is the leading representative of Hellenistic-Jewish thought. Despite an unwavering loyalty to the religious and cultural traditions of his Jewish community, he was also strongly ...

Gorgias (late 5th century BC)

By Kahn, Charles H.

The most important of the fifth-century bc Greek Sophists after Protagoras, Gorgias was a famous rhetorician, a major influence on the development of artistic prose and a ...

Neo-Kantianism, Russian

By Nemeth, Thomas

A rather amorphous movement, Russian Neo-Kantianism, in the first decades of the twentieth century, found its most visible and enduring representatives in A. Vvedenskii and his student/disciple I. ...

Aristotle (384–322 BC)

By Irwin, T.H.

Aristotle of Stagira is one of the two most important philosophers of the ancient world, and one of the four or five most important of any time or ...

Celsus (late 2nd century AD)

By Dillon, John

The Greek philosopher Celsus of Alexandria was a Middle Platonist, known only for his anti-Christian work The True Account. The work is lost, but we have Origen’s reply ...

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772–1834)

By Milnes, Timothy

In addition to being one of the finest poets of the Romantic generation, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) was a philosopher, theologian, and literary theorist whose work exerted a ...

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772–1834)

By Perkins, Mary Anne

Although much of Coleridge’s life and his best critical and creative powers were devoted to the attempt to develop a philosophical system, he is less well known as ...

Plutarch of Chaeronea (c. AD 45–c.120)

By Dillon, John

The Greek biographer and philosopher Plutarch of Chaeronea is the greatest Greek literary figure of the first century ad. He is properly called Plutarch of Chaeronea, to ...

Patristic philosophy

By Kenney, John Peter

Early Christian writers used terminology and ideas drawn from Graeco-Roman philosophical literature in their theological writings, and some early Christians also engaged in more formal philosophical reflection. The ...

Pneuma

By Stead, Christopher

Pneuma, ‘spirit’, derives from the Greek verb pneo, which indicates blowing or breathing. Since breathing is necessary for life and consciousness, pneuma came to denote not ...

Post-structuralism

By Gutting, Gary

Post-structuralism is a late-twentieth-century development in philosophy and literary theory, particularly associated with the work of Jacques Derrida and his followers. It originated as a reaction against structuralism, ...

Proclus (c. AD 411–85)

By Siorvanes, Lucas

The Greek Neoplatonist Proclus aimed to find a logical and metaphysical structure in which unity embraces but does not stifle diversity. He assumed the underlying unity of reality ...

Socratic schools

By Tsouna, Voula

For approximately one and a half centuries after Socrates’ death in 399 bc, several Greek philosophical schools and sects each claimed to be the true intellectual heirs ...

Owen, Gwilym Ellis Lane (1922–82)

By Cooper, John M.

G.E.L. Owen led the reorientation in ancient philosophy that began in the 1950s in Britain and North America. He approached the texts with a profound knowledge of classical ...

Derrida, Jacques (1930–2004)

Jacques Derrida was born in El-Biar, Algeria in 1930, a Jewish citizen of France. He was nine years old when the Nazis marched into Paris. Algeria was never ...

Protagoras (c.490–c.420 BC)

By Kahn, Charles H.

Protagoras was the first and most eminent of the Greek Sophists. Active in Athens, he pioneered the role of professional educator, training ambitious young men for a public ...

Stoicism

By Sedley, David

Stoicism is the Greek philosophical system founded by Zeno of Citium c.300 bc and developed by him and his successors into the most influential philosophy of ...

Stoicism

Stoicism is the Greek philosophical system founded by Zeno of Citium c.300 bc and developed by him and his successors into the most influential philosophy of ...

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 ...

Eusebius (c. AD 264–c.339)

By Stead, Christopher

Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea in Palestine from c.314, was the foremost Christian scholar of his age and wrote extensively on history, geography, chronology, apologetics and philosophical and ...