Interview with Heinz von Foerster, 1995.
This Interview was conducted by Stefano Franchi, Güven Güzeldere, and Eric Minch, representing Stanford Humanities Review. stanford humanities review: The primary goal of this special issue of SHR is to...
Category: Philosophers
Michel Foucault
Foucault (1926 – 1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, social theorist, and literary critic. He theorized the relationship between power and knowledge, and examined the forms of social control...
Cicero: A Remarkable Life (106 – 43 BC)
The following description of Cicero’s life is mainly quoted from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. There is also a short description of his life in the context of ancient political...
Friedrich Schelling: System of Transcendental Philosophy. 1800
About Schelling “Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775–1854) is, along with Fichte and Hegel, one of the three most influential thinkers in the tradition of ‘German Idealism’. Since he changed...
Martin Heidegger (1889–1976)
Martin Heidegger was an important German philosopher in the 20th century, who is famous for his theories on existentialism and phenomenology. He was associated with existentialism, despite his efforts to...
Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995)
Emmanuel Levinas is one of the most interesting European thinkers in the 20th Century. He is Jewish and grew up in Russia, studies philosophy with Husserl and Heidegger in Freiburg,...
Descartes: Selections from Meditations. 1641
Descartes’ Life René Descartes (1596 – 1650) was born near Tours, in France, and was educated for nine years at a Jesuit college. After graduating with a law degree from...
David Bohm (1917-1992)
David Joseph Bohm lived from 20 December 1917 to 27 October 1992. He was an American theoretical physicist who contributed innovative and unorthodox ideas to quantum theory, philosophy of mind,...
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862) was an American philosopher and political theorist. He is also knows as an abolitionist, a naturalist, a critic of development, and he resisted paying...
John Stuart MILL: UTILITARIANISM (1863)
A brief overview of the reading: Jeremy Bentham’s (1748-1832) principle of utility is open to the objection that it may well sacrifice the rights of the minority for the sake of...
Roger Bacon: On Experimental Science, 1268
Roger Bacon (not Francis, who is another philosopher) is an early philosopher and scientist. He reflects on the scientific method, and struggles with the balance between science and religion. Biography...
Charles Peirce: How to Make our Ideas Clear. 1878
Source: How to make our Ideas Clear (1878), from: Writings of Charles S Peirce, Volume 3, Indiana University Press. I am quoting sections 2,3, and 4. II The principles set...
Edmund Husserl: The Crisis of European Sciences. 1937
LET US GO BACK to the times in which modern man and the modern philosopher still believed in themselves and in a philosophy, when, in the context of the transcendental motivation, they struggled for a new philosophy with the responsible seriousness of an inner, absolute calling that one senses in every word of the genuine philosopher, Even after the so-called collapse of the Hegelian philosophy, in which the line of development determined by Kant culminated, this seriousness remained intact for a time in the philosophies reacting against Hegel
Maurice Merleau-Ponty: The Structure of Behavior. 1942
Source: The Structure of Behavior, published by Beacon Press, 1967. I am quoting some passages from the introduction and the conclusion. Introduction: The problem of the relations of consciousness and...
Moritz Schlick: Epistemology & Modern Physics. 1925
Source: The Emergence of Logical Empiricism (1996). There is no longer any doubt nowadays, that theoretical philosophy has standing only in close connection with the sciences, whether it seeks in...
John Dewey: The Ego as Cause. 1894
This short article by Dewey was first published in Philosophical Review, 3, 337-341. Pretty much all libertarians nowadays insist that their doctrine of freedom of will is quite distinct from...
