Sustainability

By Holland, Alan

Sustainability is a property of any activity, practice, process or institution that has the capacity to be continued in more or less the same way indefinitely. The concept ...

Language, philosophy of

By Crimmins, Mark

Philosophical interest in language, while ancient and enduring (see Language, ancient philosophy of; Language, medieval theories of; Language, Renaissance philosophy of; Language, early modern philosophy of), has blossomed ...

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 ...

East Asian philosophy

By Ames, Roger T.

Sinitic civilization, which includes the Chinese-influenced cultures of Japan and Korea, established an early lead over the rest of the world in the development of its material culture ...

Global Justice

By Tan, Kok-Chor

For introductions to the current debate on global justice, the obvious entries to start with are Simon Caney’s Global Justice, recent work on and Charles Beitz’s International Relations, ...

Language, conventionality of

By Smith, Barry C.

When we say that smoke means fire or that those spots mean measles, we are noting how the presence of one thing indicates the presence of another. For ...

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1908–61)

By Baldwin, Thomas

Merleau-Ponty belongs to the group of French philosophers who transformed French philosophy in the early post-war period by introducing the phenomenological methods of the German philosophers Husserl and ...

Theory and practice

By Oneill, John

Questions concerning the relation of ‘theory’ to ‘practice’ include whether there is a role for theory in the practical realm of ethics and politics; if so, how it ...

God, Indian conceptions of

By Bhattacharyya, Sibajiban

In the Ṛg Veda, the oldest text in India, many gods and goddesses are mentioned by name; most of them appear to be deifications of natural powers, such ...

Green political philosophy

All the major political philosophies have been born of crisis. Green political philosophy is no exception to this general rule. It has emerged from that interconnected series of ...

Butler, Samuel (1835–1902)

By Baker, William

Butler, in common with so many of his contemporaries, is concerned with two fundamental issues: the problem of religion and that of evolution. Paradox and contradiction run through ...

Green political philosophy

By Ball, Terence

All the major political philosophies have been born of crisis. Green political philosophy is no exception to this general rule. It has emerged from that interconnected series of ...

Social relativism

By Musgrave, Alan

People in different societies have very different beliefs and systems of belief. To understand such diversity is a prime task of the student of society. The task is ...

Derrida, Jacques (1930–2004)

By Cutrofello, Andrew

Jacques Derrida is a prolific French philosopher born in Algeria. His work can be understood in terms of his argument that it is necessary to interrogate the Western ...

Creation and conservation, religious doctrine of

By Hasker, William

The doctrine of the creation of the universe by God is common to the monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam; reflection on creation has been most extensively ...

Life and death

By Harris, John

Problems concerning life and death are among the most dramatic and intractable in philosophy and they feature in all fundamental areas of philosophical inquiry, especially ethics. Most basic ...

Agricultural ethics

By Comstock, Gary L.

Agricultural ethics is the study of moral issues raised by farming. These include: human interference with the course of nature; the effects of certain agricultural practices on present ...

Art, abstract

Article Summary ...

Climate change justice

By Boran, Idil; Katz, Corey

Climate change justice is a branch of philosophical inquiry concerned with fair terms of cooperation for addressing global climate change. Global climate change refers to the adverse effects ...

Ducasse, Curt John (1881–1969)

By Madden, Edward H.

Ducasse was a highly systematic philosopher and scarcely any field or topic escaped his attention. He criticized Hume’s account of causality, advocated ‘soft determinism’ and developed an ‘adverbial’ ...

Historical redress

By Vernon, Richard

Historical redress comprises restitution (the return of unjustly appropriated items), compensation (transfers of resources made in acknowledgment of unjust appropriations), and apologies or memorial events; all with respect ...

Memory, epistemology of

By Conee, Earl

Memory appears to preserve knowledge, but there are epistemic questions about how this could be. Memory is fallible, and empirical research has identified various ways in which people ...

Mendelssohn, Moses (1729–86)

By Arkush, Allan

A Jewish disciple of Leibniz and Wolff, Mendelssohn strove throughout his life to uphold and strengthen their rationalist metaphysics while sustaining his ancestral religion. His most important philosophic ...

Family, ethics and the

By Ruddick, William

Do obligations to children take priority over filial and other family obligations? Do blood kin have stronger moral claims than relatives acquired through marriage? Whatever their origin, do ...

Foucault, Michel (1926–84)

By Gutting, Gary

Michel Foucault was a French philosopher and historian of thought. Although his earliest writings developed within the frameworks of Marxism and existential phenomenology, he soon moved beyond these ...