Presocratic philosophy

By Sedley, David

The Presocratics were the first Western philosophers. The most celebrated are Thales, Anaximander, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Zeno of Elea, Empedocles, Anaxagoras and Democritus. Active in Greece throughout the ...

Parmenides (early to mid 5th century BC)

By Sedley, David

Parmenides of Elea, a revolutionary and enigmatic Greek philosophical poet, was the earliest defender of Eleatic metaphysics. He argued for the essential homogeneity and changelessness of being, rejecting ...

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 ...

Anaxagoras (500–428 BC)

By Schofield, Malcolm

Anaxagoras of Clazomenae was a major Greek philosopher of the Presocratic period, who worked in the Ionian tradition of inquiry into nature. While his cosmology largely recasts the ...

Melissus (mid or late 5th century BC)

By Sedley, David

Melissus was a Greek philosopher from the island of Samos. A second-generation representative of Eleatic metaphysics, he published one work, entitled On Nature or On That-Which-Is, which has ...

Empedocles (c.495–c.435 BC)

Empedocles, born in the Sicilian city of Acragas (modern Agrigento), was a major Greek philosopher of the Presocratic period. Numerous fragments survive from his two major works, poems ...

Empedocles (c.495–c.435 BC)

By Schofield, Malcolm

Empedocles, born in the Sicilian city of Acragas (modern Agrigento), was a major Greek philosopher of the Presocratic period. Numerous fragments survive from his two major works, poems ...

Atonement

By Gunton, Colin

As a theological concept, atonement articulates the acts by which relations between God and creatures, disrupted by human offence, can be restored. Although other cultures show an awareness ...

Environmental ethics

By Brennan, Andrew

Theories of ethics try to answer the question, ‘How ought we to live?’. An environmental ethic refers to our natural surroundings in giving the answer. It may claim ...

Anaximander (c.610–after 546 BC)

By McKirahan, Richard

The Greek philosopher Anaximander of Miletus followed Thales in his philosophical and scientific interests. He wrote a book, of which one fragment survives, and is the first Presocratic ...

Xenophanes (c.570–c.478 BC)

By Lesher, J.H.

Xenophanes was a philosophically minded poet who lived in various cities of ancient Greece. He is best remembered for an early comment on the limits of knowledge, a ...

Zeno of Elea (fl. c.450 BC)

By Makin, Stephen

The Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea was celebrated for his paradoxes. Aristotle called him the ‘founder of dialectic’. He wrote in order to defend the Eleatic metaphysics of ...

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 ...

Nemesius (fl. c.390–400 AD)

By Bussanich, John

Nemesius’ treatise De natura hominis (On the Nature of Man) is the first work by a Christian thinker dedicated to articulating a comprehensive philosophical anthropology. Like many of ...

Bruno, Giordano (1548–1600)

By Ashworth, E.J.

Giordano Bruno was an Italian philosopher of nature and proponent of artificial memory systems who abandoned the Dominican Order and, after a turbulent career in many parts of ...

Ethics and Literature

By Mulhall, Stephen

Moral philosophers typically assume that literary texts have no significance for ethical reflection beyond providing one possible source of examples of moral problems. This is in line with ...

Vlastos, Gregory (1907–91)

By Graham, Daniel W.

A leading figure in the study of ancient Greek philosophy, Vlastos was a pioneer in the application to ancient philosophers of the techniques of analytic philosophy. Concentrating on ...

Archē

By McKirahan, Richard

Archē, or ‘principle’, is an ancient Greek philosophical term. Building on earlier uses, Aristotle established it as a technical term with a number of related meanings, including ‘originating ...

Diogenes of Apollonia (5th century BC)

By Schofield, Malcolm

Diogenes was the last of the early Greek physicists. He claimed that interactions between things would be impossible unless all were forms of one basic substance. Adapting ideas ...

Epicharmus (c. early 5th century BC)

By Most, Glenn W.

One of the earliest Greek dramatists, Epicharmus wrote mostly comedies with mythological content in Sicily around 500 bc. A number of philosophical passages were attributed to him ...

Philolaus (c.470–380/9 BC)

By Schibli, Hermann S.

The Greek philosopher Philolaus of Croton, a contemporary of Democritus and Socrates, was a pre-eminent Pythagorean. His book counts as the first written treatise in the history of ...

Hippias (late 5th century BC)

By Kahn, Charles H.

The Greek Sophist Hippias of Elis is a familiar figure in Plato’s dialogues. He served his city as ambassador, and he earned a great deal of money from ...

Ontotheology

By Halteman, Matthew C.

‘Ontotheology’ has two main meanings, one arising from its usage by Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and a second from its usage by Martin Heidegger (1889-1976). Though Kant’s influence on ...

Socrates (469–399 BC)

By Cooper, John M.

Socrates, an Athenian Greek of the second half of the fifth century bc, wrote no philosophical works but was uniquely influential in the later history of philosophy. ...

Socrates (469–399 BC)

Socrates, an Athenian Greek of the second half of the fifth century bc, wrote no philosophical works but was uniquely influential in the later history of philosophy. ...