Mill, John Stuart (1806–73)

By Skorupski, John

John Stuart Mill, Britain’s major philosopher of the nineteenth century, gave formulations of his country’s empiricist and liberal traditions of comparable importance to those of John Locke. He ...

Mill, John Stuart (1806–73)

John Stuart Mill, Britain’s major philosopher of the nineteenth century, gave formulations of his country’s empiricist and liberal traditions of comparable importance to those of John Locke. His ...

Mill, John Stuart (1806–73)

John Stuart Mill, Britain’s major philosopher of the nineteenth century, gave formulations of his country’s empiricist and liberal traditions of comparable importance to those of John Locke. He ...

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 ...

Rashdall, Hastings (1858–1924)

By Yandell, Keith E.

Hastings Rashdall was a utilitarian in ethics, an idealist in metaphysics and a Christian monotheist in religion. His history of medieval universities became a classic. His revisions of ...

Grote, John (1813–66)

By Gibbins, John; Schultz, Bart

From 1855 Grote was Knightbridge Professor at Cambridge. His literary legacy was largely posthumous. Often seen as unsystematic, he was in fact a penetrating thinker who forcefully criticized ...

Hamilton, William (1788–1856)

By Mounce, H.O.

Sir William Hamilton was a leading exponent of the Scottish philosophy of ‘common sense’. This philosophy had its origin in the works of Thomas Reid, but it was ...

Nishi Amane (1829–97)

By Kiyoshi, Himi

Among the campaigners for Japanese enlightenment in the early Meiji era, Nishi Amane was prominent for his philosophical achievements. He introduced European philosophy into Japan, especially the positivism ...

Taylor, Harriet (1807–58)

By Vogler, Candace

Harriet Taylor was John Stuart Mill’s intellectual collaborator and great love. Married to John Taylor in 1826, Harriet met Mill in 1830 and they began a brazenly unconventional ...

Introspection, psychology of

Introspection is the process of directly examining one’s own conscious mental states and processes. Since the seventeenth century, there has been considerable disagreement on the scope, nature and ...

Pluralism

By Craig, Edward

‘Pluralism’ is a broad term, applicable to any doctrine which maintains that there are ultimately many things, or many kinds of thing; in both these senses it is ...

Okin, Susan Moller (1946–2004)

By Satz, Debra

Susan Moller Okin was a liberal theorist whose feminist perspective challenged contemporary liberal theory’s complacency about gender and the family. She insisted that liberalism, properly understood as a ...

Feyerabend, Paul Karl (1924–94)

By Williams, Michael

Feyerabend was an Austrian philosopher of science who spent most of his academic career in the USA. He was an early, persistent and influential critic of the positivist ...

Venn, John (1834–1923)

By Merrill, Daniel D.

John Venn was a British symbolic logician and methodologist of science. He is known for having invented the method of Venn diagrams for judging the validity of categorical ...

Ardigò, Roberto (1828–1920)

By Urbinati, Nadia

Roberto Ardigò was the most prominent Italian philosopher of the nineteenth century. A priest and an academic, he was subjected to an ecclesiastical trial for his naturalistic philosophy ...

Austin, John (1790–1859)

By Moles, Robert N.

Although written in the early nineteenth century, Austin’s is probably the most coherent and sustained account of the theory of legal positivism. The complex relationships between legal positivism ...

Carlyle, Thomas (1795–1881)

By Le quesne, A.L.

Although widely influential as a historian, moralist and social critic, Carlyle has no real claim to be considered a philosopher. He does have some importance as one of ...

Huxley, Thomas Henry (1825–95)

By Gregorio, Mario A. Di

Huxley, an English zoologist with strong philosophical interests, originally influenced by K.E. von Baer’s embryological typology, became an authority first in invertebrate zoology and then in vertebrate palaeontology. ...

Villari, Pasquale (1827–1917)

By Patriarca, Silvana

Pasquale Villari was the most famous Italian historian of the second half of the nineteenth century and the author of what is considered the first ‘manifesto’ of positivism ...

Murray, Andrew Howson (1905–97)

By Sweet, William

One of the leading South African philosophers of the twentieth century, Murray was best known as a public intellectual and for his work in political thought. He was ...

Unity of science

By Cat, Jordi

How should our scientific knowledge be organized? Is scientific knowledge unified and, if so, does it mirror a unity of the world as a whole? Or is it ...

Genetic modification

By Newson, Ainsley J.; Wrigley, Anthony

Genetic modification in humans, non-human animals, and plants gives rise to a range of philosophical and ethical issues. There are a range of techniques and applications for genetic ...