Book Details

Here are all the terms one would expect to find in a comprehensive dictionary of philosophy - idealism and empiricism, ethics and aesthetics, Epicureanism and Stoicism, deism and pantheism, liberalism and conservatism, existentialism and logical positivism, and much more. Blackburn also defines many terms and concepts not normally found in such reference works, including entries for apathy, laughter, and the meaning of life, and he includes relevant terms from disciplines such as mathematics, physics, biology, artificial intelligence, and linguistics. In addition, there are capsule biographies of nearly five hundred individuals, from the pre-Socratics, to such major figures as Aquinas, Hegel, Nietzche, Darwin, and Einstein, to such contemporary figures as Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault. Many more women appear here than in other philosophical dictionaries, ranging from Lady Anne Finch Conway, a 17th-century Quaker philosopher, to Hypatia, and important 4th-century Neoplatonist and mathematician to Alexandria.