Timeline Philosophers
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c600-500 BCE Epimenides, Cretan philosopher, is said to have originated the Liar paradox, by proclaiming that “All Cretans are liars."
(Econ, 10/4/03, p.77)
551BCE Confucius (d.479BCE), K'ung Fu-tzu [K'ung Fu-tse], Chinese philosopher, was born in Chufu, China. His followers transcribed his conversations in 20 books called the "Analects" following his death. He was an accountant and later taught the importance of centralized authority and filial piety. Like Aristotle, he believed the state to be a natural institution. He was the 11th child of a 70-year-old soldier. "All eminence should be based entirely on merit." "The way of a superior man is three-fold; virtuous, he is free from anxieties; wise, he is free from perplexities; bold, he is free from fear." "To see the right and not do it is cowardice." "Shall I teach you what knowledge is? When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you don't know a thing, to allow that you don't know it. This is knowledge."
(SFC, 8/10/96, p.E4)(http://eawc.evansville.edu, p.9)(SFC, 3/28/98, p.D3)(AP, 6/17/98)(SFEC, 2/27/00, Z1 p.2)(SFEC, 7/9/00, Z1 p.2)(SFC, 1/2/04, p.D8)
467BCE A meteorite crashed to earth and convinced Greek philosopher Anaxagoras that heavenly bodies were not divine beings. He became the world's earliest figure to be indicted for atheism.
(WSJ, 11/21/03, p.W4)
427BCE May 21, Plato, Greek philosopher, was born. His work included the "Republic," and the dialogues "Critias" and "Timaeus" in which he mentioned the island empire of Atlantis. He claimed that an Egyptian priest confided information about Atlantis to Solon, the Athenian legislator, whose memoirs Plato claimed to have read. In 1998 e books on Atlantis were published: "Atlantis Destroyed" by Rodney Castleden and "Imagining Atlantis" by Richard Ellis.
(HN, 5/21/98)(WSJ, 6/26/98, p.W9)
399BC Feb 15, Socrates was condemned to death on charges of corrupting the youth and introducing new gods into Greek thought. A tribunal of 501 citizens found Socrates guilty of the charge of impiety and corruption of youth. Socrates b.(469BC) had been the teacher of two leaders who were held responsible for the Greek‘s loss to Sparta in the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC). Plato‘s Apology, Crito, and Phaedo describe Socrates‘ trial, imprisonment and death.
(eawc, p.11)(HNQ, 3/21/00)
399BC May 7, Socrates (b.469BC), Greek philosopher, committed suicide. He had been indicted for rejecting the Gods acknowledged by the State, of bringing in strange deities, and of corrupting the youth. In 2007 Emily Wilson authored “The Death of Socrates."
(www.crystalinks.com/socrates.html)(WSJ, 11/24/07, p.W8)
393BC Phaedrus (b.~444), an Athenian aristocrat associated with the inner-circle of the philosopher Socrates, died. He was indicted in the profanation of the Eleusinian mysteries in 415 during the Peloponnesian War, causing him to flee Athens.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaedrus_(Athenian))
380BC Georgias, a Socratic dialogue, was written by Plato about this time. It examines the politics of manipulation and the skills of persuasion and lying.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgias_(dialogue))(Econ., 1/30/21, p.15)
372BC-289BC In China the Confucianist Meng-Tzu (Mencius) lived about this time. He departed from the ideas of Confucius by positing a theory of just rebellion against immoral rulers. "The great man is he who does not lose his child's heart."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mencius)(AP, 11/19/98)
360BC Greek philosopher Plato, in his "dialogues" from about this time, said an island he called Atlantis "in a single day and night... disappeared into the depths of the sea." He described Atlantis as "an island situated in front of the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Hercules." In 2011 a US-led research team, using a satellite photo of a suspected submerged city, suggested a site just north of Cadiz, Spain, as the site of Atlantis.
(Reuters, 3/12/11)
c350BC The new philosophy of the Cynics emerged led by Greek philosopher Diogenes (404-323). He argued against conventional life and that people should live naturally and strive for self-sufficiency.
(eawc, p.13)(SFC, 10/29/08, p.G2)
322BCE Mar 7, Aristotle (d.322 BCE) died. His writings included treatises on logic, metaphysics, ethics, politics, rhetoric and natural sciences. He first described language in terms of subject and predicate as well as parts of speech. Aristotelian logic is based on a small number of unambiguous constructs, such as, "if A, then B": the truth of one implies the truth of another. This celebrated rule gives Aristotelian reasoning the power to establish facts through inference. The constructs also included A=A, representing that every entity is equal to itself. He defined politics as the science of the sciences that looks after well-being. His writings included "De Generatione Animalum." His "Historia Animalium" was later translated by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson." "Hope is a waking dream." The opening of his "Metaphysics" began: "All men by nature desire to know."
(V.D.-H.K.p.44,45)(I&I, Penzias, p.73)(Hem., 1/96, p.11)(LSA, Spg/97, p.6)(EEE, p.12)(AP, 8/9/98)(WSJ, 9/30/98, p.A16)(NH, 12/98, p.10)(SFC, 8/13/02, p.A13)
130 Roman Emperor Hadrian made Arrian, a 2nd-century disciple of the Greek philosopher Epictetus, the governor of Cappadocia. Some years earlier Arrian had compiled the Enchiridion or Handbook of Epictetusis, a short manual of Stoic ethical advice.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrian)
150-250 Acharya Nagarjuna, Indian philosopher, lived about this time. He founded the Madhyamaka school of Mahayana Buddhism.
(Econ, 1/8/11, p.43)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagarjuna)
480 Boethius (d.524) was born in Rome about this time. He acquired an important post under the Ostrogoth King Theodoric, but later fell into disfavor and was imprisoned. In prison he wrote his famous "The Consolation of Philosophy."
(V.D.-H.K p.113)
524 Anicius Manlius Severinus Boëthius, commonly called Boethius (b.~477), Roman senator, consul, magister officiorum, and philosopher of the early 6th century, died in Pavia.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boethius)
1037 Jun 21, Avicenna (b.980), a Persian polymath, died in Iran. Of the 450 works he is known to have written, around 240 have survived, including 150 on philosophy and 40 on medicine. He attributed illness to an imbalance in bodily fluids.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avicenna)(Econ, 4/18/20, p.36)
1165 Jul 28, Ibn al-'Arabi, Muslim mystic, philosopher, was born.
(SC, 7/28/02)
1274 Mar 7, Thomas Aquinas (48), Italian theologian, saint, died.
(MC, 3/7/02)
1290 William of Ockham (d.1349), English Franciscan scholastic philosopher, was born. He became known for the maxim called Occam’s Razor (Ockham’s razor): "Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem." (Entries should not be multiplied unnecessarily). A modern version of this principle of logic might be: "The simpler, the better." [see 1349]
(V.D.-H.K.p.123)(WUD, 1994 p.996)(AP, 2/4/99)
1349 William of Ockham (b.1290), English Franciscan scholastic philosopher, died. He proclaimed that the only real things are singular entities like an apple or man, and that universals have no existence whatever; they are mere names. The divine and nature each has its own validity, but the one is vastly more important that the other, with the one determining salvation, and the other the mere comfort of the body during its life. [see 1290]
(V.D.-H.K.p.123)(WUD, 1994 p.996)(AP, 2/4/99)
1509 Erasmus (1466-1536), a Dutch philosopher and Christian scholar, lectured at Cambridge and dedicated his "In Praise of Folly," a witty satire on church corruption and scholastic philosophy, to Thomas More. The essay was first printed in June, 1511.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Praise_of_Folly)
1536 Jul 12, Desiderius Erasmus (b.1469 in Rotterdam) died, humanist, priest (Novum instrumentum omne), died. His most famous works included "In Praise of Folly" and a Greek text of the New Testament. In 1999 Prof. Charles Trinkaus published "Collected Works of Erasmus: Controversies," an examination of the religious conflict between humanism and the Reformation.
(V.D.-H.K.p.159-160)(SFC, 9/27/99, p.A26)(WSJ, 1/31/03, p.W13)(MC, 7/12/02)
1552 Aug 14, Fra Paolo Sarpi, [Paulus Venetus], expert, philosopher, was born in Venice.
(MC, 8/14/02)
1568 Sep 5, Tommasso Campanella, Italian philosopher and poet, who wrote “City of the Sun," was born.
(HN, 9/5/98)
1572 Michel de Montaigne, French philosopher, observed that “there are men on whom the mere sight of medicine is operative."
(Econ, 11/1/08, p.92)
1588 Apr 5, Thomas Hobbes (d.1679), English philosopher (Leviathan), was born. "The reputation of power IS power."
(HN, 5/5/97)(AP, 5/31/99)
1592 Sep 13, Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (b.1533), French philosopher (L'Amiti), died of quinsy, a recognized complication of tonsillitis, at the Château de Montaigne.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_de_Montaigne)
1596 Mar 31, Rene Descartes (d.1650), French philosopher, was born in La Haye, France. He proposed a numerical index that represented fundamental notions. He made consciousness the defining feature of the self. Descartes died in Sweden. In 1997 Paul Strathern published: "Descartes in 90 Minutes," and Keith Devlin published "Goodbye Descartes: The End of Logic and the Search for a New Cosmology of the Mind." In 1998 the French biography by Genevieve Rodis-Lewis was translated to English: "Descartes: His Life and Thought."
(V.D.-H.K.p.203)(Wired, 8/96, p.86)(WSJ, 3/18/97, p.A20)(AP, 3/30/97) (WSJ, 7/23/98, p.A14)(WSJ, 8/21/98, p.W13)
1623 Jun 19, Blaise Pascal (d.1662), French mathematician, physicist, religious writer, was born. He affirmed that the heart has its reasons, which reason does not comprehend. The French mathematician invented the roulette wheel in an effort to create a perpetual motion machine. He formulated the first laws of atmospheric pressure, equilibrium of liquids and probability." All the troubles of man come from his not knowing how to sit still."
(V.D.-H.K.p.123)(SFEC, 3/23/97, z1 p.7)(AP, 6/19/98)(AP, 5/28/99)(HN, 6/19/99)
1632 Nov 24, Baruch (Benedict) de Spinoza (d.1677), Dutch rationalist philosopher, was born in Amsterdam. "Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear."
(AP, 9/24/99)(MC, 11/24/01)
1650 Feb 11, Rene Descartes (b.1596), French mathematician and philosopher: "I think therefore I am", died in Stockholm. In 1666 his bones were exhumed for transfer to France. In 2008 Russell Shorto authored “Descartes’ Bones: A Skeletal History of the conflict Between Faith and Reason."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Descartes)(SFC, 11/5/08, p.E3)
1651 Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), English philosopher, authored “Leviathan." In it he tried to deduce from 1st principles the shape that society should take.
(SSFC, 6/27/04, p.M3)
1669 Jul 21, John Locke's Constitution of English colony Carolina was approved.
(MC, 7/21/02)
1670 Spinoza (1632-1677), Dutch philosopher, authored "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus" an enlightened assessment of the Old Testament and a plea for religious toleration. Spinoza, revived Erasmian tradition and put the notion of skepticism at the heart of his treatise.
(WSJ, 12/15/05, p.D8)(Econ., 12/19/20, p.64)
1676 Jul 21, Anthony Collins, English philosopher (A discourse on free-thinking), was born.
(MC, 7/21/02)
1677 Feb 21, [Benedictus] Baruch Spinoza (b.1632), Dutch philosopher, died. In 2003 Antonio Damasio authored "Looking for Spinoza," a look at contemporary neurological research in contrast with the opposing philosophical views of Spinoza and Descartes.
(WUD, 1994 p.1371)(MC, 2/21/02)(SSFC, 2/2/03, p.M4)
1679 Dec 4, Thomas Hobbes (b.1588), English philosopher, died. "The reputation of power IS power." Hobbes sought to separate politics from religion. In his book “Leviathan" he argues that the only way to secure civil society is through universal submission to the absolute authority of a sovereign.
(WSJ, 7/30/03, p.A12)(WSJ, 9/15/07, p.W10)(www.thefreedictionary.com/Hobbesian)
1711 Apr 26, David Hume (d.1776), Scottish historian and philosopher, was born. His work included the “Treatise of Human Nature" and the 6-volume “History of England." Use of the new calendar puts his birthday on May 7.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hume)
1711 May 7, David Hume (d.1776), Scottish historian and philosopher, was born. His work included the “Treatise of Human Nature" and the 6-volume “History of England." The old style calendar puts his birthday on April 26.
(http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/hume/index.html)
1724 Apr 22, Immanuel Kant (d.1804), German philosopher (Critique of Pure Reason), was born in Konigsberg (Kaliningrad). He held that space is just a "form of sensibility" that our minds impose on experience to give it structure. His work included the essay "Perpetual Peace."
(V.D.-H.K.p.40)(HN, 4/22/98)(WSJ, 8/21/98, p.W13)(WSJ, 1/7/98, p.A10)
1729 Sep 6, Mozes Mendelssohn, German enlightened philosopher (Haksalah), was born. [see Sep 26]
(MC, 9/6/01)
1743 Benjamin Franklin and John Bartram founded the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia as an American counterpart to the British Royal Society.
(WSJ, 4/25/09, p.W3)(www.amphilsoc.org/library/exhibits/nature/stork.htm)
1744 Aug 25, Johann G. von Herder, German philosopher, theologist, poet, was born.
(MC, 8/25/02)
1753 Mar 25, Voltaire left the court of Frederik II of Prussia.
(MC, 3/25/02)
1758 Mar 22, Jonathan Edwards (54), theologian, philosopher (Original Sin), died.
(MC, 3/22/02)
1762 May 19, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, German philosopher, was born. He developed ethical idealism out of Immanuel Kant's work.
(HN, 5/19/99)
1770 Aug 27, The German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) was born in Stuttgart. He wrote "The Science of Logic." Hegel greatly influenced Karl Marx. His method was to metaphysicize everything, that is, to discern in concrete reality the working of some Idea or Universal Mind. Hegel proposed that all change, all progress, is brought about by the conflict of vast forces. A world-historical figure or nation or event lays down a challenge. This thesis, as he called it, is opposed by an antithesis. The conflict between them is resolved, inevitably, by a synthesis of the two forces on a higher plane of being.
(V.D.-H.K.p.258)(AP, 8/27/97)(HN, 8/27/98)
1773 Apr 6, James Mill (d.1836), English philosopher, historian (Hist of British India) and economist, was born in Scotland.
(V.D.-H.K.p.253)(WUD, 1994 p.909)(MC, 4/6/02)
1778 Jul 3, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, writer and philosopher, died. He was considered part of the French Enlightenment along with Voltaire and Diderot.
(WSJ, 2/18/97, p.A18)(WSJ, 6/7/00, p.A24)(MC, 7/3/02)
1781 Immanuel Kant published his "Critique of Pure Reason." The questions of whether the universe has a beginning and whether it is limited in space are described as antinomies (that is, contradictions). This is because he saw compelling arguments for and against. [see 1790]
(BHT, Hawking, p.8)
1784 Jul 30, Denis Diderot (b.1713), French philosopher, critic, and encyclopedist, died. "Let us strangle the last king with the entrails of the last priest."
(WSJ, 6/15/99, p.A16)(MC, 7/30/02)
1784 German philosopher Emmanuel Kant wrote his essay “What is enlightenment?" Here he crystallized the essence of the metaphysics movement in the motto Sapere aude (Dare to know).
(WSJ, 9/1/04, p.AD10)(Econ, 9/3/16, p.72)
1790 Emmanuel Kant published his "Critique of Judgement." His analysis of the nature of art and aesthetic experience proved to be a major influence on modern ideas. These ideas were later revisited by Murdoch in her 1998 work "Existentialists and Mystics." [see 1781]
(WSJ, 2/17/98, p.A20)
1790 The opera "The Philosopher’s Stone" was composed and first performed. A 1997 score showed that a number of composers wrote various sections. Mozart’s name was associated with the 2nd act finale and a duet. It was a singspiel based on fairytales with a libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. Other composers included Johann Baptist Henneberg, Benedikt Schack, Franz Haver Gerl and Emanuel Schikaneder.
(SFC, 6/13/97, p.C11)(WSJ, 11/4/98, p.A20)
1791 Jul 13, The bones of the greatest French satirist, philosopher, and writer, Voltaire (Jean-Marie Arouet) were enshrined in the Pantheon in Paris.
(MC, 7/13/02)
1794 Mar 29, Marie-Joseph de Condorcet (50), mathematician (Theory of Comets) and philosopher, died as a fugitive from French Revolution Terrorists.
(MC, 3/29/02)
1794 Jun 8, Maximilian Robespierre, French Revolutionary leader, worried about the influence of French atheists and philosophers, staged the "Festival of the Supreme Being" in Paris.
(MC, 6/8/02)
1795 Oct 7, Johann Georg Zimmermann (b.1728), Swiss philosophical writer, naturalist, and physician, died in Hanover, Germany. His books included "Solitude Considered with Respect to Its Dangerous Influence Upon the Mind and Heart" (1791).
{Switzerland, Philosophy, Writer}
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Georg_Ritter_von_Zimmermann)(Econ., 5/2/20, p.71)
1797 Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), the third president of the United States (1801-1809), began serving as US Vice President. He was also elected president of the American Philosophical Society this year and continued to 1815. A philosopher-statesman of the Enlightenment, Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, was George Washington’s first Secretary of State and vice-president under John Adams.
(www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/private-banks-quotation)
1797 Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), German philosopher, authored "The Metaphysics of Morals," in which he wrote “If justice perishes, then it is no longer worthwhile for men to live upon the earth".
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Metaphysics_of_Morals)
1798-1857 Auguste Comte, the French founder of the philosophical system of Positivism.
(WUD, 1994, p.303)(WSJ, 6/22/99, p.A22)
1806 May 20, John Stuart Mill (d.1873), British philosopher and economist, was born. He promoted utilitarianism and is known as the last great economist of the classical school. He authored "Principles of Political Economy" wherein in theorized that production was the real basis for economic law. He felt that the market was capable of allocating resources but not of distributing income. "If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
(V.D.-H.K.p.253)(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R20)(AP, 1/13/00)(HN, 5/20/01)
1813 May 5, Soren Kierkegaard (d.1855), Danish philosopher and theologian, was born. He founded Existentialism and believed that man's relation to God must be an agonizing experience. "Truth is not introduced into the individual from without, but was within him all the time." His books included the philosophical novel "Diary of a Seducer."
(WUD, 1994, p.786)(AP, 10/23/97)(SFC, 9/4/98, p.C5)(HN, 5/5/99)
1762 May 19, Johann Gottlieb Fichte (d.1814), German philosopher, was born. He developed ethical idealism out of Immanuel Kant's work.
(HN, 5/19/99)
1814 Jan 27, Johann Gottlieb Fichte (b.1762), German philosopher, died.
(MC, 1/27/02)
1818 May 5, Karl Marx, German philosopher, was born in Prussia. He argued that history was marked by various stages of class struggle and capitalism which had overcome feudalism would in turn be overcome by socialism and the elimination of private property. He and Friedrich Engels founded Communism. Together they wrote "The Communist Manifesto" and "Das Capital."
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R20)(AP, 5/5/97)(HN, 5/5/99)
1826 The Faculties of Philosophy and Law were reestablished at the Univ. of Innsbruck.
(StuAus, April '95, p.97)
1828 Apr 21, Hippolyte Taine, French philosopher, historian (Voyage in Italy), was born.
(MC, 4/21/02)
1833 Aug 11, Robert G. Ingersoll (d.1899), advocate of scientific realism and humanistic philosophy, was born in Dresden, NY. "Heresy is what the minority believe; it is the name given by the powerful to the doctrines of the weak." "The history of the world shows that when a mean thing was done, man did it; when a good thing was done, man did it." "Courage without conscience is a wild beast."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_G._Ingersoll)(AP, 6/28/97)(AP, 6/7/98)(AP, 7/20/98)
1854 Apr 29, Henri Poincare (1912), French mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, was born. He investigated the idea of space and led to the notion that space is too complex for mathematics. Rather space is an assumption, and it can be described and controlled only so far as we assume it. In other words there is no such thing as space. Instead, there are as many spaces as there are people... for every person can assume an indefinite number of different spaces.
(V.D.-H.K.p.272)(MC, 4/29/02)
1855 Nov 11, Soren A. Kierkegaard (b.1813), Danish philosopher and theologian, died. In 2005 Joakim Garff authored “Søren A. Kierkegaard: A Biography."
(www.connect.net/ron/kierkegaard.html)(WSJ, 2/3/05, p.D8)
1860 Sep 21, Arthur Schopenhauer (b.1788), German philosopher known for his pessimism and philosophical clarity, died. At age 25 he published his doctoral dissertation," On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason," which examined the four separate manifestations of reason in the phenomenal world.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Schopenhauer)
1861 Feb 15, Alfred North Whitehead (d.1947), English philosopher (Adv of Ideas) and mathematician, was born. "We think in generalities, but we live in detail." "I have always noticed that deeply and truly religious persons are fond of a joke, and I am suspicious of those who aren’t." "It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true."
(AP, 4/11/97)(AP, 10/5/97)(AP, 9/8/98)(MC, 2/15/02)
1865 Jan 19, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (b.1809), French economist and a socialist, died. “Property is theft." He was the founder of Mutualist philosophy and was the first person to declare himself an anarchist.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Joseph_Proudhon)
1867 Oct, Karl Marx (1818-1883), London-based German philosopher, sociologist, economic historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist, published Volume 1 of “Das Kapital, Kritik der politischen Okonomie" (Capital: Critique of Political Economy). The first English edition was published in 1887. It is a critical analysis of capitalism as political economy, meant to reveal the economic laws of the capitalist mode of production, and how it was the precursor of the socialist mode of production. Volumes II and III remained mere manuscripts upon which Marx continued to work for the rest of his life and were published posthumously by Engels.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx)
1868 Mar 22, Wilhelm Storasta-Vydunas, Lithuanian philosopher and writer, was born in Jonaiciai. He died Feb 2, 1920, in Germany.
(LHC, 3/22/03)
1872 May 18, Bertrand Russell (d.1970), English mathematician, philosopher and social reformer, was born.
(WSJ, 9/27/96, p.A16)(AP, 1/7/99)(HN, 5/18/99)
1874 Jul 28, Ernst Cassirer, German philosopher, educator (Essay on Man), was born.
(SC, 7/28/02)
1881 May 1, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (d.1955), French Jesuit philosopher, paleontologist, was born. He authored the "Phenomenon of Man" wherein he proposed the idea of the noosphere, i.e. sphere of mind, in which all the minds of all the humans on earth could be conceived of as both separate and as combined in one great, single intelligence.
(V.D.-H.K.p.388)(MC, 5/1/02)
1882 Friedrich Nietzsche authored “Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft" (The Gay Science), in which he pronounced the death of God.
(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/nietzsch.htm)
1882 Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), English philosopher, culminated his visit to the US with a dinner a Delmonico’s in NYC, at which mostly Republican men of science, religion, business and government participated. In 2008 Barry Werth authored “Banquet at Delmonico’s: Great Minds, the Gilded Age, and the Triumph of Evolution in America."
(WSJ, 1/9/09, p.A11)
1883 May 9, Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset was born in Madrid.
(AP, 5/9/08)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Ortega_y_Gasset)
1884 Jul 7, Lion Feuchtwanger, German philosopher, writer (Jud Suss), was born.
(MC, 7/7/02)
1884 Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), English philosopher, authored his libertarian bible: “The Man versus the State."
(Econ, 3/12/11, SR p.18)
1888 Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), German philosopher, authored “Twilight of the Idols." It included the phrase: "What does not destroy me makes me stronger," which unwittingly inspired 21st century musicians.
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche)(http://tinyurl.com/64vslba)
1889 Apr 26, Ludwig Wittgenstein (d.1951), philosopher (Tractatus), was born in Vienna, Austria. He pondered the nature of knowledge and the limits of language. He argued that the criteria for the correct use of any language must be social. "The human body is the best picture of the human soul."
(SFEC, 10/27/96, BR p.4)(SFC, 1/31/98, p.E1)(WSJ, 8/21/98, p.W13)(AP, 1/3/01)(MC, 4/26/02)
1891 May 18, Rudolf Carnap, philosopher (German Logical Positivist), was born.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1893 Mar 5, Hippolyte Taine (64), French philosopher, historian, died.
(MC, 3/5/02)
1895 Jul 12, R. Buckminster Fuller (d.1983), architect and engineer, was born. "The more we learn the more we realize how little we know."
(AP, 7/1/97)(HN, 7/12/01)
1897-1955 Bernard De Voto, American author, journalist and critic: "History abhors determinism, but cannot tolerate chance." Determinism refers to the notion that a cause precedes every event.
(AP, 8/20/97)(SSFC, 4/6/03, p.M5)
1898 Jul 25, Eric Hoffer (d.1983), American longshoreman, philosopher and author of “In Our Time," was born: “Our present addiction to pollsters and forecasters is a symptom of our chronic uncertainty about the future. ... We watch our experts read the entrails of statistical tables and graphs the way the ancients watched their soothsayers read the entrails of a chicken." “It almost seems that nobody can hate America as much as native Americans. America needs new immigrants to love and cherish it." “We do not usually look for allies when we love. Indeed, we often look on those who love with us as rivals and trespassers. But we always look for allies when we hate."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Believer)(AP, /21/97)(AP, 10/28/97)(AP, 5/23/98)
1900 Aug 25, Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (55) died in Weimar, Germany. In 1999 Ronald Taylor translated into English the book "Nietzsche and Wagner" by Joachim Köhler. In 2002 Taylor translated Joachim Kohler’s "Zarathustra’s Secret: The Interior Life of Friedrich Nietzsche." In 2004 Georges Liebert authored "Nietzsche and Music."
(WSJ, 2/4/99, p.A20)(AP, 8/25/00)(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.M5)(WSJ, 1/28/04, p.D6)
1903 Dec 8, Herbert Spencer (b.1820), English philosopher, died. He was later considered to be the father of Social Darwinism. He is best known for coining the phrase "survival of the fittest," which he did in “Principles of Biology" (1864).
(WSJ, 1/9/09, p.A11)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Spencer)
1905 Jun 21, Jean-Paul Sartre (d.1980), French philosopher and existentialist, was born. He won the Nobel Prize in 1964 but declined it. His works include “The Road to Freedom."
(HN, 6/21/98)(AP, 2/15/00)
1908 Jan 9, French philosopher and feminist Simone de Beauvoir was born in Paris.
(AP, 1/9/08)
1908 Jan 27, Antanas Maceina (d. Jan 27, 1987), philosopher and representative of modern Lithuanian Catholicism, was born.
(LHC, 1/27/03)
1910 Aug 26, William James (b.1842), American psychologist and philosopher, died. His work included “the Principles of Psychology" (1890) and “The Varieties of Religious Experience" (1902). William James was the older brother of novelist Henry James. In 2006 Robert D. Richardson authored the biography: “William James."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James)
1912 Jun 28, Karl F. von Weisacker, German physicist, philosopher, was born.
(MC, 6/28/02)
1912 Sep 5, John Cage (d.1992), inventive composer, writer, philosopher, and artist, was born. [2nd source says Sep 15] “The highest purpose is to have no purpose at all."
(HN, 9/5/98)(SFC, 12/27/99, p.E3)(AP, 6/20/00)
1912 The Anthroposophical Society was founded based on the teaching of Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), Austrian philosopher, author, social reformer, architect and esotericist. He preached that diseases strengthen children’s physical and mental development.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Steiner)(Econ, 3/26/15, p.67)
1912 German philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) introduced phenomenology, the philosophical study of the structures of experience and consciousness.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Husserl)(Econ, 3/26/15, p.94)
1914 Apr 19, Charles Sanders Peirce (b.1839), American polymath, philosopher and scientist, died in Milford, Pa. In 1883 he used randomization in a psychological experiment at Johns Hopkins Univ.
(www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Charles_Peirce)(Econ, 5/5/12, p.17)
c1914-1919 Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), Viennese-born philosopher, wrote his "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" while serving in the Austrian army during WW I. He had "set out to chart the logical limits of language and ended with poetic gestures toward what words could not capture." In 1996 Marjorie Perloff wrote "Wittgenstein’s Ladder: Poetic Language and the Strangeness of the Ordinary."
(SFEC, 10/27/96, BR p.4)
1935 Aug 15, Humorist Will Rogers (55), American comedian and "cowboy philosopher," and aviation pioneer Wiley Post (36) were killed when their airplane crashed near Point Barrow, Alaska. Rogers once said: "Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there."
(AP, 8/15/97)(HN, 8/15/98)(MC, 8/15/02)
1938 Paul-Louis Landsberg (1901-1943), German philosopher, authored “The Experience of Death: and The Moral Problem of Suicide." Landsberg, a Jewish Catholic, died in a Nazi concentration camp.
(Econ, 7/12/08, p.92)(http://tinyurl.com/6bjhe7)
1943 Jean-Paul Sartre wrote his best play "The Flies." It was based on an ancient myth. “Being and Nothingness," his most famous philosophical treatise, was also published this year.
(WSJ, 8/12/98, p.A13)
1945 Indonesia’s future President Sukarno, facing the need to pull together the diverse archipelago, promulgated Pancasila as the philosophical foundation of the Indonesian state. Its five principals included: Belief in the one and only God; Just and civilized humanity; the unity of Indonesia; Democracy guided by the inner wisdom in the unanimity arising out of deliberations amongst representatives; and Social justice for all of the people of Indonesia. The doctrine protected Indonesia’s six officially recognized religions.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancasila_%28politics%29)(Econ, 1/28/17, p.35)
1949 German philosopher Karl Jaspers introduced the concept of the Axial Age in his book Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte (The Origin and Goal of History).
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_Age)
1950 Theodor Adorno (1903-1969), German philosopher, authored “The Authoritarian Personality," an inquiry into the fascist potential of American citizens.
(WSJ, 4/18/08, p.W5)
1950 Walter Paepcke, chairman of Container Corp. of America, founded the Aspen Institute in Colorado as a gathering place for business leaders, artists and philosophers to contemplate society’s underlying values: "a global forum for leveraging the power of leaders to improve the human condition;" "an educational institute that promotes leadership based on values."
(WSJ, 1/31/03, p.W13)
1951 Apr 29, Ludwig Wittgenstein (b.1889), Austrian-born philosopher, died in Cambridge, England. His “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicos" (1921) purported to address all of philosophy’s major problems. His posthumous work was edited by Elizabeth Uncombed (d.2001), and included his "Philosophical Investigations" (1953).
(SFC, 1/16/01, p.C4)(WSJ, 2/28/09, p.W10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein)
1951 Theodor Adorno (1903-1969), German philosopher, authored “Minima Moralia," Reflections From a Damaged Life," in which he called all traditional experience of the world into question.
(WSJ, 4/18/08, p.W5)
1951 Erich Hoffer (1898-1983), a self-educated longshoreman and moral and social philosopher, authored “The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Believer)(WSJ, 12/29/07, p.W8)
1952 Jun 2, Philosopher John Dewey died at age 92.
(MT, Fall. ‘97, p.19)
1954 Jan 3, Albert Einstein wrote a letter to the philosopher Eric Gutkind describing belief in God as "childish superstition" and saying Jews were not the chosen people. In 2008 the letter was put up for auction and sold for $404,000.
(AFP, 5/13/08)(AP, 5/16/08)
1959 Norman O. Brown (d.2002), philosopher, authored "Life Against Death." His 1966 book "Love’s Body" was a follow-up.
(SFC, 10/7/02, p.A19)
1962 "The Structure of Scientific Revolution" by Berkeley Prof. Thomas Samuel Kuhn (1923-1996), eminent historian of science, was published. Kuhn distinguished between ordinary science, which solves problems within a particular paradigm and revolutionary science, which introduces a new world view.
(V.D.-H.K.p.211)(SFC, 6/21/96, p.E2)
1962 British Philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) cut an album of his work, a greatest hits of the many inerviews he had given. His voice later endured on YouTube.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell)(Econ, 4/18/20, p.68)
1963 Donald Davidson (d.2003 at 86), Prof. of Philosophy at UC Berkeley, authored "Actions, Reasons and Causes."
(SFC, 9/5/03, p.A23)
1965 May 22, Heinrich Barth, Swiss philosopher (Das Sein in der Zeit), died.
(MC, 5/22/02)
1965 Imre Lakatos of London's School of Economics organized a session chaired by Karl Popper at which philosopher Thomas Kuhn spoke. In 2003 Steve Fuller authored "Kuhn vs. Popper: The Struggle for the Soul of Science."
(Econ, 8/9/03, p.71)
1966 Jul 12, D.T. Suzuki (96), Zen Buddhism scholar, died in Tokyo, Japan.
(MC, 7/12/02)
1969 Feb 26, Karl Jaspers (b.1883), German psychiatrist, philosopher, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Jaspers)
1969 Aug 6, Theodor Adorno, German philosopher, died of a heart attack. In 2008 Detlev Claussen authored “Theodor W. Adorno: One Last Genius."
(WSJ, 4/18/08, p.W5)(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/adorno.htm)
1970 Feb 2, Bertrand Russell (B.1872), philosopher, social gadfly and British MP, died in Merioneth. "Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling?" He wrote "Pricipia Mathmatica." In 1996 "Bertrand Russel: The Spirit of Solitude," 1871-1921 by Ray Monk was published.
(WSJ, 9/27/96, p.A16)(AP, 1/7/99)(HN, 5/18/99)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell)
1971 Prof. Carl Cohen of U of M published "Civil Disobedience."
(www.umich.edu/~newsinfo/MT/97/Fal97/mt10f97.html)
1973 Oct 18, Leo Strauss (b.1899), German-born political theorist, died. Strauss, who arrived in the US in 1937, contended that Western civilization draws strength from the unresolved contest between reason and revelation. His books included “Liberalism: Ancient and Modern," a collection of essays, “Natural Right and History," “Persecution and the Art of Writing," and “Thoughts on Machiavelli."
(WSJ, 9/15/07, p.W10)(www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Leo_Strauss)
1976 May 26, Martin Heidegger (b.1889), German philosopher (Holzweg), died in West Germany. His work included "Being and Time" (1927).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Heidegger)
1977 Aug 23, Marxist philosopher Rudolf Bahro was imprisoned in German DR.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Bahro)
1980 Apr 15, Jean-Paul Sartre (b.1905), Existentialist philosopher, novelist and dramatist, died in Paris. His work included "Being and Time" (1927) and "Nausea" (1938). He won the 1964 Nobel Prize for literature and his work included "Being and Nothingness." Philosophical replies to this work were written by Claude Levi-Strauss: "The Raw and the Cooked," a book that popularized structuralism in France, and by Michael Foucault: "Words and Things," ("The Order of Things" in the American edition). "If you're lonely while you’re alone, you’re in bad company." In 2000 Bernard-Henri Levy authored "Sartre: The Philosopher of the Twentieth Century." In 2015 Thomas R. Flynn authored “Sartre: A Philosophical Biography."
(SFEC, 4/19/98, BR p.8)(SFEC, 6/21/98, Z1 p.8)(AP, 4/15/99)(Econ, 8/30/03, p.60)(Econ., 2/21/15, p.82)
1981 Hilary Putnam of Harvard Univ. sought to prove that "I am a brain in a vat" is a type of self-defeating utterance, which can never be true.
(Econ, 11/15/03, p.80)
1983 May 21, Eric Hoffer (b.1902), longshoreman-philosopher, died in SF. His writings included "The True Believer" (1951), a critical view of mass movements, "The Passionate State of Mind," "The Ordeal of Change," and "The Temper of the Time."
(SFC, 1/22/00, p.A15)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Hoffer)
1984 Jun 25, Michel Foucault (57), philosopher (History of Sexuality), died of AIDs.
(MC, 6/25/02)
1985 Bernard Williams (1930-2003), English moral philosopher, authored "Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy" (1985).
(SSFC, 6/15/03, p.A27)
1987 Jul 28, James Burnham (81), philosopher (Coming Defeat of Communism), died.
(SC, 7/28/02)
1993 Jun 19, Abraham Kaplan (b.1918), American philosopher, died. He is best for being the first philosopher to systematically examine the behavioral sciences in his book "The Conduct of Inquiry" (1964). He dubbed “duologue" as a conversation in which neither party listened to the other.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Kaplan)(Econ, 8/16/14, p.64)
1996 May 27, George S. Boolos, Prof. of linguistics and philosophy at MIT, died at age 55. He was president of the Association for Symbolic Knowledge and was known as one of the originators of provability logic, the study of the logic of statements and what can and cannot be proved within mathematical systems. He was also an authority on the work of 19th cent. German mathematician and philosopher Gottlob Frege, regarded as the founder of modern logic.
(SFC, 5/30/96, p.A16)
2001 Stanford philosophy professors John Perry and Ken Taylor made an hour long radio pilot program, “Philosophy Talk," on the question: “Would you want to live forever?" San Francisco producers at KALW agreed to air the program.
(SFC, 2/10/10, p.E3)
2002 Nov 24, John Rawls (81), philosopher, died in Boston. His work included "A Theory of Justice" (1971), which advanced the concept of a social compact. The Rawls test: would the best off accept the arrangements if they believed at any moment they might find themselves in the place of the worst off."
(WSJ, 11/26/02, p.A1)(SFC, 11/29/02, p.A27)
2002 Steven Pinker authored "The Blank Slate," an examination of human nature and the political implications that follow the explication of human behavior.
(WSJ, 9/26/02, p.D10)
2002 Bernard Williams authored "Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy." It tempered the postmodernist line that "truth expresses no more than the power of some individual or group to impose its view of things on everyone else."
(SSFC, 9/22/02, p.M2)
2003 Jun 10, Bernard Williams (73), moral philosopher, died in Oxford. His books included: "Utilitarianism: For and Against" (1973), "Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy" (1985), "Shame and Necessity" (1993), and "Truth and Truthfulness" (2002). He coined the term "moral luck."
(SSFC, 6/15/03, p.A27)(Econ, 6/28/03, p.83)
2003 Aug, Donald Davidson, American philosopher, died. He argued that our basic beliefs about the world cannot be wrong through and through because otherwise we would have no reason to regard them as genuine beliefs.
(Econ, 11/15/03, p.80)
2003 Nov 4, Richard Arthur Wollheim, a philosophy professor whose writing on visual art and psychoanalysis made him one of the field's most innovative thinkers, died in London. He set out his views about visual art in "Painting as an Art," (1987). He was credited with coining the term "Minimalism" in his 1965 essay "Minimal Art," about monochromatic painting and Marcel Duchamp's piecing together of everyday objects into artworks. His 1968 book "Art and Its Objects" also won high praise.
(AP, 11/8/03)
2003 Daniel C. Dennett, philosopher at Tuft Univ., authored "Freedom Evolves." It expanded on his 1995 book "Darwin’s Dangerous Idea," which ignited anxiety about the incompatibility of determinism and free will.
(SSFC, 4/6/03, p.M5)
2003 Prof. Robert Fogelin of Dartmouth authored "Walking the Tightrope of Reason: The Precarious Life of a Rational Animal."
(SSFC, 9/21/03, p.M6)
2004 Jan 9, Norberto Bobbio (94), an Italian liberal philosopher, essayist and senator for life, died in Turin. One of his most important books is the 1955 "Politica e Cultura" ("Politics and Culture"). A 1994 essay, called "Destra e Sinistra" ("Left and Right"), was his best-selling work.
(AP, 1/10/04)
2004 Mar 21, C. West Churchman (90), former UC Penn. and UC Berkeley prof. and author of 12 books, died in Bolinas, Ca. He helped create the concept of corporate responsibility. His books included "Challenge to Reason," "The Design of Inquiring Systems," and "The Systems Approach."
(SFC, 3/25/04, p.B7)
2004 Jun 13, Author and academic Stuart Hampshire, a former chairman of the department of philosophy at Princeton University who argued that philosophy must be studied within the context of other disciplines, died in Oxford, England. His books included "The Freedom of the Individual."
(AP, 6/16/04)
2004 Oct 8, Jacques Derrida (74), one of France's best-known philosophers and the founder of the deconstructionist school, died of cancer in Paris.
(SSFC, 10/10/04, p.A14)
2005 May 20, Paul Ricoeur (92), a French philosopher whose broad interests included biblical interpretation and the study of human perception, died.
(AP, 5/21/05)
2006 Sep 12, Joan Valerie Bondurant, former spy and UC prof. of political science, died in Tucson, Az. She had translated documents for the CIA in India where she met Gandhi and grew fascinated by satyagraha, a thesis of nonviolent resistance. Her books included “Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict" (1958).
(SFC, 9/21/06, p.B5)
2006 Sep 19, Sam Harris published his polemic "Letter to a Christian Nation." It was a philosophical attack on the basic tenets held by all major religions.
(WSJ, 9/28/06, p.B2)
2005 Ted Honderich edited “The Oxford Companion to Philosophy," an update to the 1995 original.
(Econ, 5/21/05, p.85)
2005 Brian Leiter edited “The Future for Philosophy."
(Econ, 5/21/05, p.85)
2006 Joshua Foa Dienstag authored “Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit."
(WSJ, 9/15/06, p.W1)
2006 Ronald W. Dworkin, anesthesiologist and philosopher, authored “Artificial Happiness."
(WSJ, 6/24/06, p.P12)
2006 Michael Frayn authored “The Human Touch: Our Part in the Creation of the Universe." He addressed the question: How much of man’s conception of the world is made up by man?
(Econ, 9/9/06, p.80)
2007 Jun 8, Richard Rorty (b.1931), philosophy professor, died in Palo Alto, Ca. His books included “Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature" (1979). In 2008 Neil Gross authored “Richard Rorty: The Making of an American Philosopher."
(SFC, 6/11/07, p.A2)(Econ, 6/14/08, p.103)
2007 Nicholas Fern, British journalist, authored “The Latest Answers To the Oldest Questions."
(WSJ, 2/23/07, p.W4)
2008 Genevieve Lloyd authored “Providence Lost," a work of intellectual history in which the author attempts to restore some of the lost continuities that connect modern philosophy to its ancient sources.
(WSJ, 11/28/08, p.W6)
2009 Jan 11, Arne Naess (b.1912), Norwegian philosopher, writer and mountaineer, died. He was best known for launching the concept of "deep ecology," promoting the idea that Earth as a planet has as much right as its inhabitants, such as humans, to survive and flourish.
(AP, 1/13/09)
2009 Mar 16, Bernard d’Espagnat (87), French physicist and philosopher, was named in Paris as the winner of this year’s $1.42 million Templeton Prize.
(SFC, 3/17/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 17, Leszek Kolakowski (b.1927), Polish-born Oxford philosopher and historian of ideas, died in Oxford. “We Learn history not in order to know how to behave or how to succeed, but to know who we are." His work included the 3-volume series “Main currents of Marxism: Its Rise, Growth and Dissolution" (1976).
(Econ, 8/1/09, p.76)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leszek_Ko%C5%82akowski)
2011 James Miller authored “Examined Lives: From Socrates to Nietzsche."
(Econ, 1/29/11, p.82)
2012 Nov 10, Japan’s Inamori Foundation awarded its Kyoto Prizes. The advanced technology prize went to US computer scientist Ivan Sutherland, who developed the graphic interface program Sketchpad in 1963. Gayatri Chakrovoty Spivak, an Indian literary critic and professor at Columbia University, won the arts and philosophy prize. Yoshinori Ohsumi, a molecular biologist at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, received the basic sciences prize for his work on autophagy, a cell-recycling system that could be used to help treat neurodegenerative and age-related diseases such as Alzheimer's and cancer.
(AP, 11/10/12)
2014 Nick Bostrom, professor of philosophy at Oxford, authored “Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies," an examination of artificial intelligence. Here he asks the question: What happens when machines surpass humans in general intelligence?
(Econ, 8/9/14, p.68)(http://tinyurl.com/j2oc2cx)
2015 Nov 9, French philosopher Andre Glucksmann (78) died. He bridged the intellectual worlds of Jean-Paul Sartre and Michel Foucault and was a towering fighter against totalitarianism.
(AP, 11/10/15)
2016 Mar 13, Hilary Putnam (b.1926), American philosopher, died at his home in Arlington, Mass. His sixteen books included “The Many Faces of Realism" (1987).
(Econ, 3/26/16, p.106)
2016 Sarah Bakewell authored “At the Existential Café: Freedom, Being and Apricot Cocktails."
(Econ, 3/26/16, p.94)
2018 May 30, Spain's Princess of Asturias award for social sciences was awarded to American political philosopher Michael J. Sandel for his studies on democracy, justice and ethics.
(AP, 5/30/18)
2019 Jul 19, Hungarian philosopher Agnes Heller (90) died in Hungary. He was a student of Gyorgy Lukacs and later taught political theory for 25 years at the New School for Social Research in NYC.
(Reuters, 7/20/19)
2019 Dec 2, Stanford philosophy Pref. Kenneth Taylor (65), co-host of the popular syndicated radio show "Philosophy Talk," died at his home in Los Altos.
(SFC, 12/9/19, p.C3)
2020 Jan 12, Roger Scruton (75), one of Britain’s most prominent conservative philosophers, died after a six-month battle with cancer. Scruton was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2016 for services to philosophy, teaching and public education. His more than 50 books on morality, politics, culture and aesthetics included “The Meaning of Conservatism," “The Aesthetics of Architecture" and “England: An Elegy".
(AP, 1/13/20)
2021 May 2, Prominent German philosopher Juergen Habermas (91) said he will not accept the high-priced Sheikh Zayed Book Award from the United Arab Emirates, reversing an earlier decision.
(AP, 5/2/21)
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c600-500 BCE Epimenides, Cretan philosopher, is said to have originated the Liar paradox, by proclaiming that “All Cretans are liars."
(Econ, 10/4/03, p.77)
551BCE Confucius (d.479BCE), K'ung Fu-tzu [K'ung Fu-tse], Chinese philosopher, was born in Chufu, China. His followers transcribed his conversations in 20 books called the "Analects" following his death. He was an accountant and later taught the importance of centralized authority and filial piety. Like Aristotle, he believed the state to be a natural institution. He was the 11th child of a 70-year-old soldier. "All eminence should be based entirely on merit." "The way of a superior man is three-fold; virtuous, he is free from anxieties; wise, he is free from perplexities; bold, he is free from fear." "To see the right and not do it is cowardice." "Shall I teach you what knowledge is? When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you don't know a thing, to allow that you don't know it. This is knowledge."
(SFC, 8/10/96, p.E4)(http://eawc.evansville.edu, p.9)(SFC, 3/28/98, p.D3)(AP, 6/17/98)(SFEC, 2/27/00, Z1 p.2)(SFEC, 7/9/00, Z1 p.2)(SFC, 1/2/04, p.D8)
467BCE A meteorite crashed to earth and convinced Greek philosopher Anaxagoras that heavenly bodies were not divine beings. He became the world's earliest figure to be indicted for atheism.
(WSJ, 11/21/03, p.W4)
427BCE May 21, Plato, Greek philosopher, was born. His work included the "Republic," and the dialogues "Critias" and "Timaeus" in which he mentioned the island empire of Atlantis. He claimed that an Egyptian priest confided information about Atlantis to Solon, the Athenian legislator, whose memoirs Plato claimed to have read. In 1998 e books on Atlantis were published: "Atlantis Destroyed" by Rodney Castleden and "Imagining Atlantis" by Richard Ellis.
(HN, 5/21/98)(WSJ, 6/26/98, p.W9)
399BC Feb 15, Socrates was condemned to death on charges of corrupting the youth and introducing new gods into Greek thought. A tribunal of 501 citizens found Socrates guilty of the charge of impiety and corruption of youth. Socrates b.(469BC) had been the teacher of two leaders who were held responsible for the Greek‘s loss to Sparta in the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC). Plato‘s Apology, Crito, and Phaedo describe Socrates‘ trial, imprisonment and death.
(eawc, p.11)(HNQ, 3/21/00)
399BC May 7, Socrates (b.469BC), Greek philosopher, committed suicide. He had been indicted for rejecting the Gods acknowledged by the State, of bringing in strange deities, and of corrupting the youth. In 2007 Emily Wilson authored “The Death of Socrates."
(www.crystalinks.com/socrates.html)(WSJ, 11/24/07, p.W8)
393BC Phaedrus (b.~444), an Athenian aristocrat associated with the inner-circle of the philosopher Socrates, died. He was indicted in the profanation of the Eleusinian mysteries in 415 during the Peloponnesian War, causing him to flee Athens.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaedrus_(Athenian))
380BC Georgias, a Socratic dialogue, was written by Plato about this time. It examines the politics of manipulation and the skills of persuasion and lying.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgias_(dialogue))(Econ., 1/30/21, p.15)
372BC-289BC In China the Confucianist Meng-Tzu (Mencius) lived about this time. He departed from the ideas of Confucius by positing a theory of just rebellion against immoral rulers. "The great man is he who does not lose his child's heart."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mencius)(AP, 11/19/98)
360BC Greek philosopher Plato, in his "dialogues" from about this time, said an island he called Atlantis "in a single day and night... disappeared into the depths of the sea." He described Atlantis as "an island situated in front of the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Hercules." In 2011 a US-led research team, using a satellite photo of a suspected submerged city, suggested a site just north of Cadiz, Spain, as the site of Atlantis.
(Reuters, 3/12/11)
c350BC The new philosophy of the Cynics emerged led by Greek philosopher Diogenes (404-323). He argued against conventional life and that people should live naturally and strive for self-sufficiency.
(eawc, p.13)(SFC, 10/29/08, p.G2)
322BCE Mar 7, Aristotle (d.322 BCE) died. His writings included treatises on logic, metaphysics, ethics, politics, rhetoric and natural sciences. He first described language in terms of subject and predicate as well as parts of speech. Aristotelian logic is based on a small number of unambiguous constructs, such as, "if A, then B": the truth of one implies the truth of another. This celebrated rule gives Aristotelian reasoning the power to establish facts through inference. The constructs also included A=A, representing that every entity is equal to itself. He defined politics as the science of the sciences that looks after well-being. His writings included "De Generatione Animalum." His "Historia Animalium" was later translated by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson." "Hope is a waking dream." The opening of his "Metaphysics" began: "All men by nature desire to know."
(V.D.-H.K.p.44,45)(I&I, Penzias, p.73)(Hem., 1/96, p.11)(LSA, Spg/97, p.6)(EEE, p.12)(AP, 8/9/98)(WSJ, 9/30/98, p.A16)(NH, 12/98, p.10)(SFC, 8/13/02, p.A13)
130 Roman Emperor Hadrian made Arrian, a 2nd-century disciple of the Greek philosopher Epictetus, the governor of Cappadocia. Some years earlier Arrian had compiled the Enchiridion or Handbook of Epictetusis, a short manual of Stoic ethical advice.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrian)
150-250 Acharya Nagarjuna, Indian philosopher, lived about this time. He founded the Madhyamaka school of Mahayana Buddhism.
(Econ, 1/8/11, p.43)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagarjuna)
480 Boethius (d.524) was born in Rome about this time. He acquired an important post under the Ostrogoth King Theodoric, but later fell into disfavor and was imprisoned. In prison he wrote his famous "The Consolation of Philosophy."
(V.D.-H.K p.113)
524 Anicius Manlius Severinus Boëthius, commonly called Boethius (b.~477), Roman senator, consul, magister officiorum, and philosopher of the early 6th century, died in Pavia.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boethius)
1037 Jun 21, Avicenna (b.980), a Persian polymath, died in Iran. Of the 450 works he is known to have written, around 240 have survived, including 150 on philosophy and 40 on medicine. He attributed illness to an imbalance in bodily fluids.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avicenna)(Econ, 4/18/20, p.36)
1165 Jul 28, Ibn al-'Arabi, Muslim mystic, philosopher, was born.
(SC, 7/28/02)
1274 Mar 7, Thomas Aquinas (48), Italian theologian, saint, died.
(MC, 3/7/02)
1290 William of Ockham (d.1349), English Franciscan scholastic philosopher, was born. He became known for the maxim called Occam’s Razor (Ockham’s razor): "Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem." (Entries should not be multiplied unnecessarily). A modern version of this principle of logic might be: "The simpler, the better." [see 1349]
(V.D.-H.K.p.123)(WUD, 1994 p.996)(AP, 2/4/99)
1349 William of Ockham (b.1290), English Franciscan scholastic philosopher, died. He proclaimed that the only real things are singular entities like an apple or man, and that universals have no existence whatever; they are mere names. The divine and nature each has its own validity, but the one is vastly more important that the other, with the one determining salvation, and the other the mere comfort of the body during its life. [see 1290]
(V.D.-H.K.p.123)(WUD, 1994 p.996)(AP, 2/4/99)
1509 Erasmus (1466-1536), a Dutch philosopher and Christian scholar, lectured at Cambridge and dedicated his "In Praise of Folly," a witty satire on church corruption and scholastic philosophy, to Thomas More. The essay was first printed in June, 1511.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Praise_of_Folly)
1536 Jul 12, Desiderius Erasmus (b.1469 in Rotterdam) died, humanist, priest (Novum instrumentum omne), died. His most famous works included "In Praise of Folly" and a Greek text of the New Testament. In 1999 Prof. Charles Trinkaus published "Collected Works of Erasmus: Controversies," an examination of the religious conflict between humanism and the Reformation.
(V.D.-H.K.p.159-160)(SFC, 9/27/99, p.A26)(WSJ, 1/31/03, p.W13)(MC, 7/12/02)
1552 Aug 14, Fra Paolo Sarpi, [Paulus Venetus], expert, philosopher, was born in Venice.
(MC, 8/14/02)
1568 Sep 5, Tommasso Campanella, Italian philosopher and poet, who wrote “City of the Sun," was born.
(HN, 9/5/98)
1572 Michel de Montaigne, French philosopher, observed that “there are men on whom the mere sight of medicine is operative."
(Econ, 11/1/08, p.92)
1588 Apr 5, Thomas Hobbes (d.1679), English philosopher (Leviathan), was born. "The reputation of power IS power."
(HN, 5/5/97)(AP, 5/31/99)
1592 Sep 13, Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (b.1533), French philosopher (L'Amiti), died of quinsy, a recognized complication of tonsillitis, at the Château de Montaigne.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_de_Montaigne)
1596 Mar 31, Rene Descartes (d.1650), French philosopher, was born in La Haye, France. He proposed a numerical index that represented fundamental notions. He made consciousness the defining feature of the self. Descartes died in Sweden. In 1997 Paul Strathern published: "Descartes in 90 Minutes," and Keith Devlin published "Goodbye Descartes: The End of Logic and the Search for a New Cosmology of the Mind." In 1998 the French biography by Genevieve Rodis-Lewis was translated to English: "Descartes: His Life and Thought."
(V.D.-H.K.p.203)(Wired, 8/96, p.86)(WSJ, 3/18/97, p.A20)(AP, 3/30/97) (WSJ, 7/23/98, p.A14)(WSJ, 8/21/98, p.W13)
1623 Jun 19, Blaise Pascal (d.1662), French mathematician, physicist, religious writer, was born. He affirmed that the heart has its reasons, which reason does not comprehend. The French mathematician invented the roulette wheel in an effort to create a perpetual motion machine. He formulated the first laws of atmospheric pressure, equilibrium of liquids and probability." All the troubles of man come from his not knowing how to sit still."
(V.D.-H.K.p.123)(SFEC, 3/23/97, z1 p.7)(AP, 6/19/98)(AP, 5/28/99)(HN, 6/19/99)
1632 Nov 24, Baruch (Benedict) de Spinoza (d.1677), Dutch rationalist philosopher, was born in Amsterdam. "Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear."
(AP, 9/24/99)(MC, 11/24/01)
1650 Feb 11, Rene Descartes (b.1596), French mathematician and philosopher: "I think therefore I am", died in Stockholm. In 1666 his bones were exhumed for transfer to France. In 2008 Russell Shorto authored “Descartes’ Bones: A Skeletal History of the conflict Between Faith and Reason."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Descartes)(SFC, 11/5/08, p.E3)
1651 Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), English philosopher, authored “Leviathan." In it he tried to deduce from 1st principles the shape that society should take.
(SSFC, 6/27/04, p.M3)
1669 Jul 21, John Locke's Constitution of English colony Carolina was approved.
(MC, 7/21/02)
1670 Spinoza (1632-1677), Dutch philosopher, authored "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus" an enlightened assessment of the Old Testament and a plea for religious toleration. Spinoza, revived Erasmian tradition and put the notion of skepticism at the heart of his treatise.
(WSJ, 12/15/05, p.D8)(Econ., 12/19/20, p.64)
1676 Jul 21, Anthony Collins, English philosopher (A discourse on free-thinking), was born.
(MC, 7/21/02)
1677 Feb 21, [Benedictus] Baruch Spinoza (b.1632), Dutch philosopher, died. In 2003 Antonio Damasio authored "Looking for Spinoza," a look at contemporary neurological research in contrast with the opposing philosophical views of Spinoza and Descartes.
(WUD, 1994 p.1371)(MC, 2/21/02)(SSFC, 2/2/03, p.M4)
1679 Dec 4, Thomas Hobbes (b.1588), English philosopher, died. "The reputation of power IS power." Hobbes sought to separate politics from religion. In his book “Leviathan" he argues that the only way to secure civil society is through universal submission to the absolute authority of a sovereign.
(WSJ, 7/30/03, p.A12)(WSJ, 9/15/07, p.W10)(www.thefreedictionary.com/Hobbesian)
1711 Apr 26, David Hume (d.1776), Scottish historian and philosopher, was born. His work included the “Treatise of Human Nature" and the 6-volume “History of England." Use of the new calendar puts his birthday on May 7.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hume)
1711 May 7, David Hume (d.1776), Scottish historian and philosopher, was born. His work included the “Treatise of Human Nature" and the 6-volume “History of England." The old style calendar puts his birthday on April 26.
(http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/hume/index.html)
1724 Apr 22, Immanuel Kant (d.1804), German philosopher (Critique of Pure Reason), was born in Konigsberg (Kaliningrad). He held that space is just a "form of sensibility" that our minds impose on experience to give it structure. His work included the essay "Perpetual Peace."
(V.D.-H.K.p.40)(HN, 4/22/98)(WSJ, 8/21/98, p.W13)(WSJ, 1/7/98, p.A10)
1729 Sep 6, Mozes Mendelssohn, German enlightened philosopher (Haksalah), was born. [see Sep 26]
(MC, 9/6/01)
1743 Benjamin Franklin and John Bartram founded the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia as an American counterpart to the British Royal Society.
(WSJ, 4/25/09, p.W3)(www.amphilsoc.org/library/exhibits/nature/stork.htm)
1744 Aug 25, Johann G. von Herder, German philosopher, theologist, poet, was born.
(MC, 8/25/02)
1753 Mar 25, Voltaire left the court of Frederik II of Prussia.
(MC, 3/25/02)
1758 Mar 22, Jonathan Edwards (54), theologian, philosopher (Original Sin), died.
(MC, 3/22/02)
1762 May 19, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, German philosopher, was born. He developed ethical idealism out of Immanuel Kant's work.
(HN, 5/19/99)
1770 Aug 27, The German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) was born in Stuttgart. He wrote "The Science of Logic." Hegel greatly influenced Karl Marx. His method was to metaphysicize everything, that is, to discern in concrete reality the working of some Idea or Universal Mind. Hegel proposed that all change, all progress, is brought about by the conflict of vast forces. A world-historical figure or nation or event lays down a challenge. This thesis, as he called it, is opposed by an antithesis. The conflict between them is resolved, inevitably, by a synthesis of the two forces on a higher plane of being.
(V.D.-H.K.p.258)(AP, 8/27/97)(HN, 8/27/98)
1773 Apr 6, James Mill (d.1836), English philosopher, historian (Hist of British India) and economist, was born in Scotland.
(V.D.-H.K.p.253)(WUD, 1994 p.909)(MC, 4/6/02)
1778 Jul 3, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, writer and philosopher, died. He was considered part of the French Enlightenment along with Voltaire and Diderot.
(WSJ, 2/18/97, p.A18)(WSJ, 6/7/00, p.A24)(MC, 7/3/02)
1781 Immanuel Kant published his "Critique of Pure Reason." The questions of whether the universe has a beginning and whether it is limited in space are described as antinomies (that is, contradictions). This is because he saw compelling arguments for and against. [see 1790]
(BHT, Hawking, p.8)
1784 Jul 30, Denis Diderot (b.1713), French philosopher, critic, and encyclopedist, died. "Let us strangle the last king with the entrails of the last priest."
(WSJ, 6/15/99, p.A16)(MC, 7/30/02)
1784 German philosopher Emmanuel Kant wrote his essay “What is enlightenment?" Here he crystallized the essence of the metaphysics movement in the motto Sapere aude (Dare to know).
(WSJ, 9/1/04, p.AD10)(Econ, 9/3/16, p.72)
1790 Emmanuel Kant published his "Critique of Judgement." His analysis of the nature of art and aesthetic experience proved to be a major influence on modern ideas. These ideas were later revisited by Murdoch in her 1998 work "Existentialists and Mystics." [see 1781]
(WSJ, 2/17/98, p.A20)
1790 The opera "The Philosopher’s Stone" was composed and first performed. A 1997 score showed that a number of composers wrote various sections. Mozart’s name was associated with the 2nd act finale and a duet. It was a singspiel based on fairytales with a libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. Other composers included Johann Baptist Henneberg, Benedikt Schack, Franz Haver Gerl and Emanuel Schikaneder.
(SFC, 6/13/97, p.C11)(WSJ, 11/4/98, p.A20)
1791 Jul 13, The bones of the greatest French satirist, philosopher, and writer, Voltaire (Jean-Marie Arouet) were enshrined in the Pantheon in Paris.
(MC, 7/13/02)
1794 Mar 29, Marie-Joseph de Condorcet (50), mathematician (Theory of Comets) and philosopher, died as a fugitive from French Revolution Terrorists.
(MC, 3/29/02)
1794 Jun 8, Maximilian Robespierre, French Revolutionary leader, worried about the influence of French atheists and philosophers, staged the "Festival of the Supreme Being" in Paris.
(MC, 6/8/02)
1795 Oct 7, Johann Georg Zimmermann (b.1728), Swiss philosophical writer, naturalist, and physician, died in Hanover, Germany. His books included "Solitude Considered with Respect to Its Dangerous Influence Upon the Mind and Heart" (1791).
{Switzerland, Philosophy, Writer}
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Georg_Ritter_von_Zimmermann)(Econ., 5/2/20, p.71)
1797 Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), the third president of the United States (1801-1809), began serving as US Vice President. He was also elected president of the American Philosophical Society this year and continued to 1815. A philosopher-statesman of the Enlightenment, Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, was George Washington’s first Secretary of State and vice-president under John Adams.
(www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/private-banks-quotation)
1797 Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), German philosopher, authored "The Metaphysics of Morals," in which he wrote “If justice perishes, then it is no longer worthwhile for men to live upon the earth".
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Metaphysics_of_Morals)
1798-1857 Auguste Comte, the French founder of the philosophical system of Positivism.
(WUD, 1994, p.303)(WSJ, 6/22/99, p.A22)
1806 May 20, John Stuart Mill (d.1873), British philosopher and economist, was born. He promoted utilitarianism and is known as the last great economist of the classical school. He authored "Principles of Political Economy" wherein in theorized that production was the real basis for economic law. He felt that the market was capable of allocating resources but not of distributing income. "If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
(V.D.-H.K.p.253)(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R20)(AP, 1/13/00)(HN, 5/20/01)
1813 May 5, Soren Kierkegaard (d.1855), Danish philosopher and theologian, was born. He founded Existentialism and believed that man's relation to God must be an agonizing experience. "Truth is not introduced into the individual from without, but was within him all the time." His books included the philosophical novel "Diary of a Seducer."
(WUD, 1994, p.786)(AP, 10/23/97)(SFC, 9/4/98, p.C5)(HN, 5/5/99)
1762 May 19, Johann Gottlieb Fichte (d.1814), German philosopher, was born. He developed ethical idealism out of Immanuel Kant's work.
(HN, 5/19/99)
1814 Jan 27, Johann Gottlieb Fichte (b.1762), German philosopher, died.
(MC, 1/27/02)
1818 May 5, Karl Marx, German philosopher, was born in Prussia. He argued that history was marked by various stages of class struggle and capitalism which had overcome feudalism would in turn be overcome by socialism and the elimination of private property. He and Friedrich Engels founded Communism. Together they wrote "The Communist Manifesto" and "Das Capital."
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R20)(AP, 5/5/97)(HN, 5/5/99)
1826 The Faculties of Philosophy and Law were reestablished at the Univ. of Innsbruck.
(StuAus, April '95, p.97)
1828 Apr 21, Hippolyte Taine, French philosopher, historian (Voyage in Italy), was born.
(MC, 4/21/02)
1833 Aug 11, Robert G. Ingersoll (d.1899), advocate of scientific realism and humanistic philosophy, was born in Dresden, NY. "Heresy is what the minority believe; it is the name given by the powerful to the doctrines of the weak." "The history of the world shows that when a mean thing was done, man did it; when a good thing was done, man did it." "Courage without conscience is a wild beast."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_G._Ingersoll)(AP, 6/28/97)(AP, 6/7/98)(AP, 7/20/98)
1854 Apr 29, Henri Poincare (1912), French mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, was born. He investigated the idea of space and led to the notion that space is too complex for mathematics. Rather space is an assumption, and it can be described and controlled only so far as we assume it. In other words there is no such thing as space. Instead, there are as many spaces as there are people... for every person can assume an indefinite number of different spaces.
(V.D.-H.K.p.272)(MC, 4/29/02)
1855 Nov 11, Soren A. Kierkegaard (b.1813), Danish philosopher and theologian, died. In 2005 Joakim Garff authored “Søren A. Kierkegaard: A Biography."
(www.connect.net/ron/kierkegaard.html)(WSJ, 2/3/05, p.D8)
1860 Sep 21, Arthur Schopenhauer (b.1788), German philosopher known for his pessimism and philosophical clarity, died. At age 25 he published his doctoral dissertation," On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason," which examined the four separate manifestations of reason in the phenomenal world.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Schopenhauer)
1861 Feb 15, Alfred North Whitehead (d.1947), English philosopher (Adv of Ideas) and mathematician, was born. "We think in generalities, but we live in detail." "I have always noticed that deeply and truly religious persons are fond of a joke, and I am suspicious of those who aren’t." "It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true."
(AP, 4/11/97)(AP, 10/5/97)(AP, 9/8/98)(MC, 2/15/02)
1865 Jan 19, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (b.1809), French economist and a socialist, died. “Property is theft." He was the founder of Mutualist philosophy and was the first person to declare himself an anarchist.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Joseph_Proudhon)
1867 Oct, Karl Marx (1818-1883), London-based German philosopher, sociologist, economic historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist, published Volume 1 of “Das Kapital, Kritik der politischen Okonomie" (Capital: Critique of Political Economy). The first English edition was published in 1887. It is a critical analysis of capitalism as political economy, meant to reveal the economic laws of the capitalist mode of production, and how it was the precursor of the socialist mode of production. Volumes II and III remained mere manuscripts upon which Marx continued to work for the rest of his life and were published posthumously by Engels.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx)
1868 Mar 22, Wilhelm Storasta-Vydunas, Lithuanian philosopher and writer, was born in Jonaiciai. He died Feb 2, 1920, in Germany.
(LHC, 3/22/03)
1872 May 18, Bertrand Russell (d.1970), English mathematician, philosopher and social reformer, was born.
(WSJ, 9/27/96, p.A16)(AP, 1/7/99)(HN, 5/18/99)
1874 Jul 28, Ernst Cassirer, German philosopher, educator (Essay on Man), was born.
(SC, 7/28/02)
1881 May 1, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (d.1955), French Jesuit philosopher, paleontologist, was born. He authored the "Phenomenon of Man" wherein he proposed the idea of the noosphere, i.e. sphere of mind, in which all the minds of all the humans on earth could be conceived of as both separate and as combined in one great, single intelligence.
(V.D.-H.K.p.388)(MC, 5/1/02)
1882 Friedrich Nietzsche authored “Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft" (The Gay Science), in which he pronounced the death of God.
(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/nietzsch.htm)
1882 Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), English philosopher, culminated his visit to the US with a dinner a Delmonico’s in NYC, at which mostly Republican men of science, religion, business and government participated. In 2008 Barry Werth authored “Banquet at Delmonico’s: Great Minds, the Gilded Age, and the Triumph of Evolution in America."
(WSJ, 1/9/09, p.A11)
1883 May 9, Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset was born in Madrid.
(AP, 5/9/08)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Ortega_y_Gasset)
1884 Jul 7, Lion Feuchtwanger, German philosopher, writer (Jud Suss), was born.
(MC, 7/7/02)
1884 Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), English philosopher, authored his libertarian bible: “The Man versus the State."
(Econ, 3/12/11, SR p.18)
1888 Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), German philosopher, authored “Twilight of the Idols." It included the phrase: "What does not destroy me makes me stronger," which unwittingly inspired 21st century musicians.
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche)(http://tinyurl.com/64vslba)
1889 Apr 26, Ludwig Wittgenstein (d.1951), philosopher (Tractatus), was born in Vienna, Austria. He pondered the nature of knowledge and the limits of language. He argued that the criteria for the correct use of any language must be social. "The human body is the best picture of the human soul."
(SFEC, 10/27/96, BR p.4)(SFC, 1/31/98, p.E1)(WSJ, 8/21/98, p.W13)(AP, 1/3/01)(MC, 4/26/02)
1891 May 18, Rudolf Carnap, philosopher (German Logical Positivist), was born.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1893 Mar 5, Hippolyte Taine (64), French philosopher, historian, died.
(MC, 3/5/02)
1895 Jul 12, R. Buckminster Fuller (d.1983), architect and engineer, was born. "The more we learn the more we realize how little we know."
(AP, 7/1/97)(HN, 7/12/01)
1897-1955 Bernard De Voto, American author, journalist and critic: "History abhors determinism, but cannot tolerate chance." Determinism refers to the notion that a cause precedes every event.
(AP, 8/20/97)(SSFC, 4/6/03, p.M5)
1898 Jul 25, Eric Hoffer (d.1983), American longshoreman, philosopher and author of “In Our Time," was born: “Our present addiction to pollsters and forecasters is a symptom of our chronic uncertainty about the future. ... We watch our experts read the entrails of statistical tables and graphs the way the ancients watched their soothsayers read the entrails of a chicken." “It almost seems that nobody can hate America as much as native Americans. America needs new immigrants to love and cherish it." “We do not usually look for allies when we love. Indeed, we often look on those who love with us as rivals and trespassers. But we always look for allies when we hate."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Believer)(AP, /21/97)(AP, 10/28/97)(AP, 5/23/98)
1900 Aug 25, Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (55) died in Weimar, Germany. In 1999 Ronald Taylor translated into English the book "Nietzsche and Wagner" by Joachim Köhler. In 2002 Taylor translated Joachim Kohler’s "Zarathustra’s Secret: The Interior Life of Friedrich Nietzsche." In 2004 Georges Liebert authored "Nietzsche and Music."
(WSJ, 2/4/99, p.A20)(AP, 8/25/00)(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.M5)(WSJ, 1/28/04, p.D6)
1903 Dec 8, Herbert Spencer (b.1820), English philosopher, died. He was later considered to be the father of Social Darwinism. He is best known for coining the phrase "survival of the fittest," which he did in “Principles of Biology" (1864).
(WSJ, 1/9/09, p.A11)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Spencer)
1905 Jun 21, Jean-Paul Sartre (d.1980), French philosopher and existentialist, was born. He won the Nobel Prize in 1964 but declined it. His works include “The Road to Freedom."
(HN, 6/21/98)(AP, 2/15/00)
1908 Jan 9, French philosopher and feminist Simone de Beauvoir was born in Paris.
(AP, 1/9/08)
1908 Jan 27, Antanas Maceina (d. Jan 27, 1987), philosopher and representative of modern Lithuanian Catholicism, was born.
(LHC, 1/27/03)
1910 Aug 26, William James (b.1842), American psychologist and philosopher, died. His work included “the Principles of Psychology" (1890) and “The Varieties of Religious Experience" (1902). William James was the older brother of novelist Henry James. In 2006 Robert D. Richardson authored the biography: “William James."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James)
1912 Jun 28, Karl F. von Weisacker, German physicist, philosopher, was born.
(MC, 6/28/02)
1912 Sep 5, John Cage (d.1992), inventive composer, writer, philosopher, and artist, was born. [2nd source says Sep 15] “The highest purpose is to have no purpose at all."
(HN, 9/5/98)(SFC, 12/27/99, p.E3)(AP, 6/20/00)
1912 The Anthroposophical Society was founded based on the teaching of Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), Austrian philosopher, author, social reformer, architect and esotericist. He preached that diseases strengthen children’s physical and mental development.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Steiner)(Econ, 3/26/15, p.67)
1912 German philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) introduced phenomenology, the philosophical study of the structures of experience and consciousness.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Husserl)(Econ, 3/26/15, p.94)
1914 Apr 19, Charles Sanders Peirce (b.1839), American polymath, philosopher and scientist, died in Milford, Pa. In 1883 he used randomization in a psychological experiment at Johns Hopkins Univ.
(www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Charles_Peirce)(Econ, 5/5/12, p.17)
c1914-1919 Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), Viennese-born philosopher, wrote his "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" while serving in the Austrian army during WW I. He had "set out to chart the logical limits of language and ended with poetic gestures toward what words could not capture." In 1996 Marjorie Perloff wrote "Wittgenstein’s Ladder: Poetic Language and the Strangeness of the Ordinary."
(SFEC, 10/27/96, BR p.4)
1935 Aug 15, Humorist Will Rogers (55), American comedian and "cowboy philosopher," and aviation pioneer Wiley Post (36) were killed when their airplane crashed near Point Barrow, Alaska. Rogers once said: "Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there."
(AP, 8/15/97)(HN, 8/15/98)(MC, 8/15/02)
1938 Paul-Louis Landsberg (1901-1943), German philosopher, authored “The Experience of Death: and The Moral Problem of Suicide." Landsberg, a Jewish Catholic, died in a Nazi concentration camp.
(Econ, 7/12/08, p.92)(http://tinyurl.com/6bjhe7)
1943 Jean-Paul Sartre wrote his best play "The Flies." It was based on an ancient myth. “Being and Nothingness," his most famous philosophical treatise, was also published this year.
(WSJ, 8/12/98, p.A13)
1945 Indonesia’s future President Sukarno, facing the need to pull together the diverse archipelago, promulgated Pancasila as the philosophical foundation of the Indonesian state. Its five principals included: Belief in the one and only God; Just and civilized humanity; the unity of Indonesia; Democracy guided by the inner wisdom in the unanimity arising out of deliberations amongst representatives; and Social justice for all of the people of Indonesia. The doctrine protected Indonesia’s six officially recognized religions.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancasila_%28politics%29)(Econ, 1/28/17, p.35)
1949 German philosopher Karl Jaspers introduced the concept of the Axial Age in his book Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte (The Origin and Goal of History).
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_Age)
1950 Theodor Adorno (1903-1969), German philosopher, authored “The Authoritarian Personality," an inquiry into the fascist potential of American citizens.
(WSJ, 4/18/08, p.W5)
1950 Walter Paepcke, chairman of Container Corp. of America, founded the Aspen Institute in Colorado as a gathering place for business leaders, artists and philosophers to contemplate society’s underlying values: "a global forum for leveraging the power of leaders to improve the human condition;" "an educational institute that promotes leadership based on values."
(WSJ, 1/31/03, p.W13)
1951 Apr 29, Ludwig Wittgenstein (b.1889), Austrian-born philosopher, died in Cambridge, England. His “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicos" (1921) purported to address all of philosophy’s major problems. His posthumous work was edited by Elizabeth Uncombed (d.2001), and included his "Philosophical Investigations" (1953).
(SFC, 1/16/01, p.C4)(WSJ, 2/28/09, p.W10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein)
1951 Theodor Adorno (1903-1969), German philosopher, authored “Minima Moralia," Reflections From a Damaged Life," in which he called all traditional experience of the world into question.
(WSJ, 4/18/08, p.W5)
1951 Erich Hoffer (1898-1983), a self-educated longshoreman and moral and social philosopher, authored “The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Believer)(WSJ, 12/29/07, p.W8)
1952 Jun 2, Philosopher John Dewey died at age 92.
(MT, Fall. ‘97, p.19)
1954 Jan 3, Albert Einstein wrote a letter to the philosopher Eric Gutkind describing belief in God as "childish superstition" and saying Jews were not the chosen people. In 2008 the letter was put up for auction and sold for $404,000.
(AFP, 5/13/08)(AP, 5/16/08)
1959 Norman O. Brown (d.2002), philosopher, authored "Life Against Death." His 1966 book "Love’s Body" was a follow-up.
(SFC, 10/7/02, p.A19)
1962 "The Structure of Scientific Revolution" by Berkeley Prof. Thomas Samuel Kuhn (1923-1996), eminent historian of science, was published. Kuhn distinguished between ordinary science, which solves problems within a particular paradigm and revolutionary science, which introduces a new world view.
(V.D.-H.K.p.211)(SFC, 6/21/96, p.E2)
1962 British Philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) cut an album of his work, a greatest hits of the many inerviews he had given. His voice later endured on YouTube.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell)(Econ, 4/18/20, p.68)
1963 Donald Davidson (d.2003 at 86), Prof. of Philosophy at UC Berkeley, authored "Actions, Reasons and Causes."
(SFC, 9/5/03, p.A23)
1965 May 22, Heinrich Barth, Swiss philosopher (Das Sein in der Zeit), died.
(MC, 5/22/02)
1965 Imre Lakatos of London's School of Economics organized a session chaired by Karl Popper at which philosopher Thomas Kuhn spoke. In 2003 Steve Fuller authored "Kuhn vs. Popper: The Struggle for the Soul of Science."
(Econ, 8/9/03, p.71)
1966 Jul 12, D.T. Suzuki (96), Zen Buddhism scholar, died in Tokyo, Japan.
(MC, 7/12/02)
1969 Feb 26, Karl Jaspers (b.1883), German psychiatrist, philosopher, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Jaspers)
1969 Aug 6, Theodor Adorno, German philosopher, died of a heart attack. In 2008 Detlev Claussen authored “Theodor W. Adorno: One Last Genius."
(WSJ, 4/18/08, p.W5)(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/adorno.htm)
1970 Feb 2, Bertrand Russell (B.1872), philosopher, social gadfly and British MP, died in Merioneth. "Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling?" He wrote "Pricipia Mathmatica." In 1996 "Bertrand Russel: The Spirit of Solitude," 1871-1921 by Ray Monk was published.
(WSJ, 9/27/96, p.A16)(AP, 1/7/99)(HN, 5/18/99)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell)
1971 Prof. Carl Cohen of U of M published "Civil Disobedience."
(www.umich.edu/~newsinfo/MT/97/Fal97/mt10f97.html)
1973 Oct 18, Leo Strauss (b.1899), German-born political theorist, died. Strauss, who arrived in the US in 1937, contended that Western civilization draws strength from the unresolved contest between reason and revelation. His books included “Liberalism: Ancient and Modern," a collection of essays, “Natural Right and History," “Persecution and the Art of Writing," and “Thoughts on Machiavelli."
(WSJ, 9/15/07, p.W10)(www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Leo_Strauss)
1976 May 26, Martin Heidegger (b.1889), German philosopher (Holzweg), died in West Germany. His work included "Being and Time" (1927).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Heidegger)
1977 Aug 23, Marxist philosopher Rudolf Bahro was imprisoned in German DR.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Bahro)
1980 Apr 15, Jean-Paul Sartre (b.1905), Existentialist philosopher, novelist and dramatist, died in Paris. His work included "Being and Time" (1927) and "Nausea" (1938). He won the 1964 Nobel Prize for literature and his work included "Being and Nothingness." Philosophical replies to this work were written by Claude Levi-Strauss: "The Raw and the Cooked," a book that popularized structuralism in France, and by Michael Foucault: "Words and Things," ("The Order of Things" in the American edition). "If you're lonely while you’re alone, you’re in bad company." In 2000 Bernard-Henri Levy authored "Sartre: The Philosopher of the Twentieth Century." In 2015 Thomas R. Flynn authored “Sartre: A Philosophical Biography."
(SFEC, 4/19/98, BR p.8)(SFEC, 6/21/98, Z1 p.8)(AP, 4/15/99)(Econ, 8/30/03, p.60)(Econ., 2/21/15, p.82)
1981 Hilary Putnam of Harvard Univ. sought to prove that "I am a brain in a vat" is a type of self-defeating utterance, which can never be true.
(Econ, 11/15/03, p.80)
1983 May 21, Eric Hoffer (b.1902), longshoreman-philosopher, died in SF. His writings included "The True Believer" (1951), a critical view of mass movements, "The Passionate State of Mind," "The Ordeal of Change," and "The Temper of the Time."
(SFC, 1/22/00, p.A15)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Hoffer)
1984 Jun 25, Michel Foucault (57), philosopher (History of Sexuality), died of AIDs.
(MC, 6/25/02)
1985 Bernard Williams (1930-2003), English moral philosopher, authored "Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy" (1985).
(SSFC, 6/15/03, p.A27)
1987 Jul 28, James Burnham (81), philosopher (Coming Defeat of Communism), died.
(SC, 7/28/02)
1993 Jun 19, Abraham Kaplan (b.1918), American philosopher, died. He is best for being the first philosopher to systematically examine the behavioral sciences in his book "The Conduct of Inquiry" (1964). He dubbed “duologue" as a conversation in which neither party listened to the other.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Kaplan)(Econ, 8/16/14, p.64)
1996 May 27, George S. Boolos, Prof. of linguistics and philosophy at MIT, died at age 55. He was president of the Association for Symbolic Knowledge and was known as one of the originators of provability logic, the study of the logic of statements and what can and cannot be proved within mathematical systems. He was also an authority on the work of 19th cent. German mathematician and philosopher Gottlob Frege, regarded as the founder of modern logic.
(SFC, 5/30/96, p.A16)
2001 Stanford philosophy professors John Perry and Ken Taylor made an hour long radio pilot program, “Philosophy Talk," on the question: “Would you want to live forever?" San Francisco producers at KALW agreed to air the program.
(SFC, 2/10/10, p.E3)
2002 Nov 24, John Rawls (81), philosopher, died in Boston. His work included "A Theory of Justice" (1971), which advanced the concept of a social compact. The Rawls test: would the best off accept the arrangements if they believed at any moment they might find themselves in the place of the worst off."
(WSJ, 11/26/02, p.A1)(SFC, 11/29/02, p.A27)
2002 Steven Pinker authored "The Blank Slate," an examination of human nature and the political implications that follow the explication of human behavior.
(WSJ, 9/26/02, p.D10)
2002 Bernard Williams authored "Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy." It tempered the postmodernist line that "truth expresses no more than the power of some individual or group to impose its view of things on everyone else."
(SSFC, 9/22/02, p.M2)
2003 Jun 10, Bernard Williams (73), moral philosopher, died in Oxford. His books included: "Utilitarianism: For and Against" (1973), "Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy" (1985), "Shame and Necessity" (1993), and "Truth and Truthfulness" (2002). He coined the term "moral luck."
(SSFC, 6/15/03, p.A27)(Econ, 6/28/03, p.83)
2003 Aug, Donald Davidson, American philosopher, died. He argued that our basic beliefs about the world cannot be wrong through and through because otherwise we would have no reason to regard them as genuine beliefs.
(Econ, 11/15/03, p.80)
2003 Nov 4, Richard Arthur Wollheim, a philosophy professor whose writing on visual art and psychoanalysis made him one of the field's most innovative thinkers, died in London. He set out his views about visual art in "Painting as an Art," (1987). He was credited with coining the term "Minimalism" in his 1965 essay "Minimal Art," about monochromatic painting and Marcel Duchamp's piecing together of everyday objects into artworks. His 1968 book "Art and Its Objects" also won high praise.
(AP, 11/8/03)
2003 Daniel C. Dennett, philosopher at Tuft Univ., authored "Freedom Evolves." It expanded on his 1995 book "Darwin’s Dangerous Idea," which ignited anxiety about the incompatibility of determinism and free will.
(SSFC, 4/6/03, p.M5)
2003 Prof. Robert Fogelin of Dartmouth authored "Walking the Tightrope of Reason: The Precarious Life of a Rational Animal."
(SSFC, 9/21/03, p.M6)
2004 Jan 9, Norberto Bobbio (94), an Italian liberal philosopher, essayist and senator for life, died in Turin. One of his most important books is the 1955 "Politica e Cultura" ("Politics and Culture"). A 1994 essay, called "Destra e Sinistra" ("Left and Right"), was his best-selling work.
(AP, 1/10/04)
2004 Mar 21, C. West Churchman (90), former UC Penn. and UC Berkeley prof. and author of 12 books, died in Bolinas, Ca. He helped create the concept of corporate responsibility. His books included "Challenge to Reason," "The Design of Inquiring Systems," and "The Systems Approach."
(SFC, 3/25/04, p.B7)
2004 Jun 13, Author and academic Stuart Hampshire, a former chairman of the department of philosophy at Princeton University who argued that philosophy must be studied within the context of other disciplines, died in Oxford, England. His books included "The Freedom of the Individual."
(AP, 6/16/04)
2004 Oct 8, Jacques Derrida (74), one of France's best-known philosophers and the founder of the deconstructionist school, died of cancer in Paris.
(SSFC, 10/10/04, p.A14)
2005 May 20, Paul Ricoeur (92), a French philosopher whose broad interests included biblical interpretation and the study of human perception, died.
(AP, 5/21/05)
2006 Sep 12, Joan Valerie Bondurant, former spy and UC prof. of political science, died in Tucson, Az. She had translated documents for the CIA in India where she met Gandhi and grew fascinated by satyagraha, a thesis of nonviolent resistance. Her books included “Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict" (1958).
(SFC, 9/21/06, p.B5)
2006 Sep 19, Sam Harris published his polemic "Letter to a Christian Nation." It was a philosophical attack on the basic tenets held by all major religions.
(WSJ, 9/28/06, p.B2)
2005 Ted Honderich edited “The Oxford Companion to Philosophy," an update to the 1995 original.
(Econ, 5/21/05, p.85)
2005 Brian Leiter edited “The Future for Philosophy."
(Econ, 5/21/05, p.85)
2006 Joshua Foa Dienstag authored “Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit."
(WSJ, 9/15/06, p.W1)
2006 Ronald W. Dworkin, anesthesiologist and philosopher, authored “Artificial Happiness."
(WSJ, 6/24/06, p.P12)
2006 Michael Frayn authored “The Human Touch: Our Part in the Creation of the Universe." He addressed the question: How much of man’s conception of the world is made up by man?
(Econ, 9/9/06, p.80)
2007 Jun 8, Richard Rorty (b.1931), philosophy professor, died in Palo Alto, Ca. His books included “Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature" (1979). In 2008 Neil Gross authored “Richard Rorty: The Making of an American Philosopher."
(SFC, 6/11/07, p.A2)(Econ, 6/14/08, p.103)
2007 Nicholas Fern, British journalist, authored “The Latest Answers To the Oldest Questions."
(WSJ, 2/23/07, p.W4)
2008 Genevieve Lloyd authored “Providence Lost," a work of intellectual history in which the author attempts to restore some of the lost continuities that connect modern philosophy to its ancient sources.
(WSJ, 11/28/08, p.W6)
2009 Jan 11, Arne Naess (b.1912), Norwegian philosopher, writer and mountaineer, died. He was best known for launching the concept of "deep ecology," promoting the idea that Earth as a planet has as much right as its inhabitants, such as humans, to survive and flourish.
(AP, 1/13/09)
2009 Mar 16, Bernard d’Espagnat (87), French physicist and philosopher, was named in Paris as the winner of this year’s $1.42 million Templeton Prize.
(SFC, 3/17/09, p.A2)
2009 Jul 17, Leszek Kolakowski (b.1927), Polish-born Oxford philosopher and historian of ideas, died in Oxford. “We Learn history not in order to know how to behave or how to succeed, but to know who we are." His work included the 3-volume series “Main currents of Marxism: Its Rise, Growth and Dissolution" (1976).
(Econ, 8/1/09, p.76)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leszek_Ko%C5%82akowski)
2011 James Miller authored “Examined Lives: From Socrates to Nietzsche."
(Econ, 1/29/11, p.82)
2012 Nov 10, Japan’s Inamori Foundation awarded its Kyoto Prizes. The advanced technology prize went to US computer scientist Ivan Sutherland, who developed the graphic interface program Sketchpad in 1963. Gayatri Chakrovoty Spivak, an Indian literary critic and professor at Columbia University, won the arts and philosophy prize. Yoshinori Ohsumi, a molecular biologist at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, received the basic sciences prize for his work on autophagy, a cell-recycling system that could be used to help treat neurodegenerative and age-related diseases such as Alzheimer's and cancer.
(AP, 11/10/12)
2014 Nick Bostrom, professor of philosophy at Oxford, authored “Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies," an examination of artificial intelligence. Here he asks the question: What happens when machines surpass humans in general intelligence?
(Econ, 8/9/14, p.68)(http://tinyurl.com/j2oc2cx)
2015 Nov 9, French philosopher Andre Glucksmann (78) died. He bridged the intellectual worlds of Jean-Paul Sartre and Michel Foucault and was a towering fighter against totalitarianism.
(AP, 11/10/15)
2016 Mar 13, Hilary Putnam (b.1926), American philosopher, died at his home in Arlington, Mass. His sixteen books included “The Many Faces of Realism" (1987).
(Econ, 3/26/16, p.106)
2016 Sarah Bakewell authored “At the Existential Café: Freedom, Being and Apricot Cocktails."
(Econ, 3/26/16, p.94)
2018 May 30, Spain's Princess of Asturias award for social sciences was awarded to American political philosopher Michael J. Sandel for his studies on democracy, justice and ethics.
(AP, 5/30/18)
2019 Jul 19, Hungarian philosopher Agnes Heller (90) died in Hungary. He was a student of Gyorgy Lukacs and later taught political theory for 25 years at the New School for Social Research in NYC.
(Reuters, 7/20/19)
2019 Dec 2, Stanford philosophy Pref. Kenneth Taylor (65), co-host of the popular syndicated radio show "Philosophy Talk," died at his home in Los Altos.
(SFC, 12/9/19, p.C3)
2020 Jan 12, Roger Scruton (75), one of Britain’s most prominent conservative philosophers, died after a six-month battle with cancer. Scruton was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2016 for services to philosophy, teaching and public education. His more than 50 books on morality, politics, culture and aesthetics included “The Meaning of Conservatism," “The Aesthetics of Architecture" and “England: An Elegy".
(AP, 1/13/20)
2021 May 2, Prominent German philosopher Juergen Habermas (91) said he will not accept the high-priced Sheikh Zayed Book Award from the United Arab Emirates, reversing an earlier decision.
(AP, 5/2/21)
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Subject = Philosophers
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