Metaphysics is a difficult branch of Philosophy, but it is rather easy to define: It is the study of the most fundamental concepts and beliefs about those beliefs. “Metaphysical” concepts include Being, Existence, Purpose, Universals, Property, Relation, Causality, Space, Time, Event, and many others. These concepts are fundamental,...

Baruch Benedict de Spinoza (24 Nov 1632 - 21 Feb 1677) was a Dutch philosopher from a Portuguese Jewish family, whose controversial metaphysical ideas led to cherem (or removal) against him from Jewish Society, and his works were banned by the Vatican. Despite his considerable scientific aptitude, the breadth and importance of Spinoza's work...

George Berkeley (12 Mar 1685 - 14 Jan 1753, and pronounced: “Barkly”) was an Anglo-Irish philosopher who advanced a theory of “Immaterialism”, seen as a powerful “Subjective Idealism”, Berkeley argued we can directly know only our own Sensation and Idea of an Object. The notion of “Matter”, for example, is an Idea dependent upon being Perceived by the...

René Descartes (31 Mar 1596 - 11 Feb 1650, and pronounced: “Deycart”), also known as Renatus Cartesius and dubbed “Father of Modern Philosophy”, was a French philosopher crucial to Western Philosophy in the fields of Metaphysics and Philosophy of Mind, and he was a key figure, with Francis Bacon and others, in the Scientific...

Plato (428-27 - 348-47 BC) was a major Greek thinker in Ancient Philosophy, a student of Socrates, founder of the first Academy, and with his student Aristotle and the most important modern philosopher Kant, is still considered one of the singularly important philosophers of all time. Some thirty-five “Socratic” dialogues...

Aristotle (384-322 BC) was a major Greek thinker in Ancient Philosophy, a student of Plato (who was student of Socrates) and a teacher of Alexander the Great. Aristotle was the first to treat many of the subjects we know separately, from Metaphysics, Logic and Physics to Ethics, Poetics, Politics and more. Alongside Plato and...

Thomas Hobbes (5 Apr 1588 - 4 Dec 1679) was an English political philosopher, most famous for his book Leviathan (1651) and his view of a “State of Nature” to avoid as a life which would be “brutish, nasty and short”. His view of the necessity of a powerful central Government, where some may be stronger or more intelligent than others, but none are beyond fear...

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1 Jul 1646 - 14 Nov 1716) was a German philosopher and mathematician who wrote primarily in Latin and French, with works widely distributed in journals and tens of thousands of letters and unpublished manuscripts. Leibniz, independently of Isaac Newton, invented Calculus, and he also invented the Binary Number...

Immanuel Kant (22 Apr 1724 - 12 Feb 1804, and pronounced: “Kaunt”) was a Prussian (German) philosopher, generally regarded as the most major figure in Modern Philosophy, put alongside Plato and Aristotle from Ancient Philosophy. This makes Kant one of history's most influential thinkers. Known for his highly articulated...

Gilles Louis René Deleuze (18 January 1925 - 4 November 1995, and pronounced: “Deluzz”) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on Philosophy, Literature, Film, and Fine Art. Two of his most popular works were the volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Anti-Oedipus (1972) and A Thousand Plateaus (1980),...

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