Translators

By Brams, Jozef

Translators played a crucial role in the history of medieval philosophy. Since multilingualism was generally restricted to places in which a direct contact between different languages was possible, ...

Translation, radical

see Radical translation and radical interpretation (§§7–10).

Interpretation and translation

see Radical translation and radical interpretation.

Indeterminacy of meaning and translation

see Radical translation and radical interpretation.

Radical translation and radical interpretation

By Gibson, Roger F.

Radical translation is the setting of a thought experiment conceived by W.V. Quine in the late 1950s. In that setting a linguist undertakes to translate into English some ...

Buddhist philosophy, Korean

By Cho, Sungtaek

Buddhism was transmitted to the Korean peninsula from China in the middle of the fourth century ad. Korea at this time was divided into three kingdoms: Kokuryô, ...

Indian and Tibetan philosophy

By Hayes, Richard P.

The people of South Asia have been grappling with philosophical issues, and writing down their thoughts, for at least as long as the Europeans and the Chinese. When ...

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 ...

Ibn Sina, Abu ‘Ali al-Husayn (980–1037)

By Kemal, Salim

Ibn Sina (Avicenna) is one of the foremost philosophers in the Medieval Hellenistic Islamic tradition that also includes al-Farabi and Ibn Rushd. His philosophical theory is a comprehensive, ...

Aristotelianism, medieval

By Jordan, Mark D.

Although there are many possible definitions, ‘medieval Aristotelianism’ is here taken to mean explicit receptions of Aristotle’s texts or teachings by Latin-speaking writers from about ad 500 ...

Rationality and cultural relativism

By Simon, Lawrence H.

Under what conditions may we judge the practices or beliefs of another culture to be rationally deficient? Is it possible that cultures can differ so radically as to ...

Quine, Willard Van Orman (1908–2000)

By Orenstein, Alex

Quine is the foremost representative of naturalism in the second half of the twentieth century. His naturalism consists of an insistence upon a close connection or alliance between ...

Islamic philosophy: transmission into Western Europe

By Burnett, Charles

The Arabs took on the mantle of late antique philosophy and passed it on to both Latin scholars and Jewish scholars in Western Europe in the Middle Ages. ...

Gerard of Cremona (1114–87)

By Jordan, Mark D.

Gerard of Cremona was the most important translator of philosophical works from Arabic to Latin in the twelfth century. During a career of about forty years, he translated ...

Greek philosophy: impact on Islamic philosophy

By Fakhry, Majid

During the Hellenistic period (323–43 bc), classical Greek philosophy underwent a radical transformation. From being an essentially Greek product, it developed into a cosmopolitan and eclectic cultural ...

Cioran, Emil (1911–95)

By Partenie, Catalin D.

Emil Cioran published during his lifetime sixteen books, the first six in his native Romanian, the other ten in French. He was awarded many literary prizes (including Rivarol, ...

Poincaré, Jules Henri (1854–1912)

By Stump, David J.

Although primarily a mathematician, Henri Poincaré wrote and lectured extensively on astronomy, theoretical physics, philosophy of science and philosophy of mathematics at the turn of the century. In ...

Xin (heart-and-mind)

By Hall, David L.; Ames, Roger T.

In the West, questions of the distinguishability of mind and matter and of rationality and emotion or sentiment are central issues within the philosophy of mind. Neither of ...

Humanism, Renaissance

By Monfasani, John

The early nineteenth-century German educator, F.J. Niethammer, coined the word ‘humanism’, meaning an education based on the Greek and Latin classics. The Renaissance (for our purposes, Europe from ...

Encyclopedists, medieval

By Barnish, Samuel

The modern encyclopedic genre was unknown in the classical world. In the grammar-based culture of late antiquity, learned compendia, by both pagan and Christian writers, were organized around ...

Eriugena, Johannes Scottus (c.800–c.877)

By Moran, Dermot

Johannes Scottus Eriugena is the most important philosopher writing in Latin between Boethius and Anselm. A Christian Neoplatonist, he developed a unique synthesis between the Neoplatonic traditions of ...

Ontological commitment

By Jubien, Michael

A person may believe in the existence of God, or numbers or ghosts. Such beliefs may be asserted, perhaps in a theory. Assertions of the existence of specific ...

Logic, Renaissance

By Ashworth, E.J.

Renaissance logic is often identified with humanist logic, which is in some ways closer to rhetoric than to the study of formal argumentation. This is a mistake, for ...

Logic, medieval

By Ashworth, E.J.

Medieval logic is crucial to the understanding of medieval philosophy, for every educated person was trained in logic, as well as in grammar, and these disciplines provided techniques ...

al-Kindi, Abu Yusuf Ya‘qub ibn Ishaq (d. c.866–73)

By Kennedy-Day, Kiki

Practically unknown in the Western world, al-Kindi has an honoured place in the Islamic world as the ‘philosopher of the Arabs’. Today he might be viewed as a ...