Browsing: Philosophy

A conceptual image accompanying an article on Louis Althusser’s late philosophy. The image represents history as an open field of material encounters rather than a process governed by a predetermined end. It relates to aleatory materialism, contingency, the void, the conjuncture, political intervention, reproduction, and the formation of structures that retrospectively appear necessary.

A conceptual image accompanying an article on Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant’s transcendental imagination. The image represents the relation between sensory intuition, conceptual understanding, schematism, finite knowledge, and Dasein’s ecstatic structure of future, having-been, and present.

A portrait or historical representation accompanying an article on Walter Kaufmann’s interpretation of Nietzsche. The image relates to Nietzsche’s refusal of systematic philosophy, his aphoristic method, perspectivism, genealogy, critique of the will to truth, analysis of nihilism, and project of the revaluation of values.

A portrait or historical representation of Søren Kierkegaard accompanying an article on his theology of Christian existence. The image relates to his concepts of the absolute paradox, the God-Man, offense, faith, despair, sin, the teleological suspension of the ethical, neighbourly love, and the distinction between Christianity and Christendom.

Thomas Aquinas, one of the most systematic and influential architects of medieval Western philosophy, brought the conceptual structure of scholastic thought to its highest degree of completion. The metaphysical and epistemological paths opened by Augustine, Boethius, and Anselm attained systematic coherence and philosophical maturity in Aquinas. His system is not merely a defence of Christian theology. In natural philosophy, ontology, epistemology, and ethics, it became one of the most enduring intellectual structures in the history of Western thought. Aquinas establishes a stable metaphysical balance between paired concepts such as nature and revelation, reason and faith, form and matter, necessity and…

A historical portrait or manuscript representation accompanying an article on Duns Scotus. The image relates to his concepts of haecceitas, or thisness, the ontological reality of singular beings, the univocity of being, direct knowledge of individuals, and the freedom of the will.

A historical portrait or manuscript representation accompanying an article on William of Ockham. The image relates to his nominalism, his distinction between individual realities and universal names, the principle known as Ockham’s Razor, and his influence on the transition from scholastic metaphysics towards modern logic and epistemology.

Scholastic philosophy is not merely the name of a historical period or a pedagogical style. It also designates a particular epistemic regime, institutional structure, and methodological reflex. The term Scholasticism derives from the Latin scholasticus, meaning “schoolman” or “teacher,” and refers to an intellectual tradition that developed around monasteries and, later, universities in the medieval Christian West. Its central aim was to establish a systematic relationship between philosophy and theology. It would nevertheless be mistaken to reduce scholastic thought to theology alone. The scholastic tradition also constructed systematic frameworks in logic, ontology, ethics, and epistemology. The origins of scholastic thought…

An oil painting by Philippe de Champaigne portraying Saint Augustine with a quill and a flaming heart. Augustine directs his gaze towards a ray of divine light bearing the Latin word Veritas, or “truth.” The quill refers to his philosophical and theological writings, while the burning heart symbolises inward love, spiritual desire, and caritas as the movement of created existence towards God.

A portrait or historical representation accompanying an article on Moses Maimonides and medieval Jewish philosophy. The image relates to Maimonides’ attempt to bring reason and revelation together through negative theology, disciplined interpretation, prophecy, Aristotelian philosophy, the Guide of the Perplexed, and the legal system of the Mishneh Torah.