A political philosophy whose central claim is that a government’s authority is justified only insofar as it secures the liberty of its subjects, Liberalism is generally traced to John Locke…
The philosophical system developed by Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), Transcendental Idealism sought to overcome the epistemological problems of Empiricism while providing a rational justification for Liberalism.
Kant’s philosophy continued to dominate throughout the nineteenth century, although there were increasing concerns about the overall coherence of his system; in particular, there was doubt as to whether the…
One common theme in post-Kantian philosophy was an attempt to overcome the remaining divisions between noumena and phenomena, and to reconcile the distinct faculties of sensibility and understanding in to…
Pragmatism was a philosophical movement in the United States concerned with the relationship between abstract theory and practical activity, and with the value of philosophical reflection.
While the focus of western philosophy has primarily been on the analysis and understanding of our most basic concepts, another important theme has been the preparation and education of man…
As originally developed by Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), phenomenology seeks to provide a detailed description of the way in which things are presented to us—that is to say, phenomena —in an…
A broad philosophical and literary movement that flourished during the first half of the twentieth century, Existentialism emphasized the uniqueness of human experience over the generalizations of traditional scientific or…
A group of philosophers, cultural critics, and social scientists based around the Frankfurt (Germany) Institute for Social Research were primarily concerned with integrating philosophical analysis with then-recent results in the…