Voluntarism

By Leftow, Brian

Voluntarism is a theory of action. It traces our actions less to our intellects and natural inclinations than to simple will or free choice. Applied to thinking about ...

Voluntarism, Jewish

By Lazaroff, Allan

Voluntarism with respect to humanity and divinity became a powerful current in medieval Jewish philosophy, partly in response to the Neoplatonic doctrine of eternal and necessary emanation, which ...

Paternalism

By Arneson, Richard

Restriction of people’s liberty of action is paternalistic when it is imposed for the good of those whose liberty is restricted and against their will. The argument in ...

Obligation, political

By Simmons, A. John

The problem of political obligation has been one of the central concerns of political philosophy throughout the history of the subject. Political obligations are the moral obligations of ...

Moral luck

By Statman, Daniel

The term ‘moral luck’ was introduced by Bernard Williams in 1976 to convey the idea that moral status is, to a large extent, a matter of luck. For ...

Obligation, political

The problem of political obligation has been one of the central concerns of political philosophy throughout the history of the subject. Political obligations are the moral obligations of ...

Syntax

By Neale, Stephen

Syntax (more loosely, ‘grammar’) is the study of the properties of expressions that distinguish them as members of different linguistic categories, and ‘well-formedness’, that is, the ways in ...

Luther, Martin (1483–1546)

By Higton, M.A.

Martin Luther was an Augustinian monk who found the theology and penitential practices of his times inadequate for overcoming fears about his salvation. He turned first to a ...

Reid, Thomas (1710–1796)

By Rysiew, Patrick

Thomas Reid (1710–96) was a contemporary of both Hume and Kant. He was born in Strachan, near Aberdeen, and was a founder and central figure in the Scottish ...

Biel, Gabriel (before 1425–95)

By Farthing, John L.

Biel was the last great systematizer of scholastic theology and philosophy. Not noted for originality, he sought to produce a synthesis of the work of his predecessors. His ...

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. ...

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 ...

Hartley, David (1705–1757)

By Allen, Richard C.

David Hartley’s Observations on Man, His Frame, His Duty, and His Expectations (1749) offers an inclusive study of human beings, one that brings together neuro-physiology, cognitive and ...

Law, philosophy of

By Brown, Beverley; MacCormick, Neil

Law has been a significant topic for philosophical discussion since its beginnings. Attempts to discover the principles of cosmic order, and to discover or secure the principles of ...

Theological virtues

By Mann, William E.

The three theological virtues of faith, hope and love, referred to frequently by the apostle Paul in his letters, play an indispensable role in Christian theorizing about a ...

Family, ethics and the

By Ferracioli, Luara

What is the family? Why is it valuable? And how does the institution of the family bear on the requirements of both social and global justice? These questions ...

Henry of Ghent (early 13th century–1293)

By Marrone, Steven P.

Perhaps the most influential theologian between Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure in the third quarter of the thirteenth century and John Duns Scotus at the beginning of the fourteenth ...

Cudworth, Ralph (1617–88)

By Hutton, Sarah

Ralph Cudworth was the leading philosopher of the group known as the Cambridge Platonists. In his lifetime he published only one work of philosophy, his True Intellectual System ...

Israeli, Isaac ben Solomon (c.855–955)

By Lasker, Daniel J.

A pioneering Jewish philosopher and a physician, Isaac Israeli was among the very first medieval Jewish writers to formulate a philosophy employing Greek sources. He based his metaphysics ...

Justification, religious

By Allen, Diogenes

Justification is about the restoration of human beings after Adam’s Fall, by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and the beginning of a new life that anticipates ...

Price, Richard (1723–91)

By Darwall, Stephen

Richard Price was a Welsh dissenting minister who contributed widely to philosophy and public life in latter-eighteenth-century Britain. The leading British ethical rationalist of the period, Price did ...

Barrow, Isaac (1630–77)

By Callergård, Robert

Isaac Barrow was a mathematician and theologian who spent most of his successful academic lifetime in Cambridge. He was a professor of Greek and of geometry, and the ...

Structuralism in social science

By Schatzki, Theodore R.

Any school of thought in the social sciences that stresses the priority of order over action is ‘structural’. In the twentieth century, however, ‘structuralism’ has been used to ...

Culverwell, Nathaniel (c.1618–c.1651)

By Beiser, Frederick

Nathaniel Culverwell (or Culverwel) was one of the first natural law theorists in seventeenth-century England, and one of the first moral philosophers to stress the primacy of reason. ...