Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) was key thinker in the Anglo-Saxon analytic tradition. It has become common practice to differentiate between the early Wittgenstein of ‘Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus’, published in 1921, and the later Wittgenstein of ‘Philosophical Investigations’ published posthumously in 1953. This underplays a degree of continuity but certainly encapsulates a decisive shift in his thinking. He… Read More »
Like Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) was a catalyst, a take-off point for many divergent thinkers. Left-Hegelians diverged one way, Right-Hegelians another. There is no one reading of Hegel. Nor can his considerable body of work be captured in a mere blog. I will do the best I can. Hegel charged himself with replacing… Read More »
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is one of the most influential of ‘modern’ philosophers, covering a lot of ground in an impeccably fine-tuned and systematic manner. Offering any kind of summary of his works in a thousand or so words is impossible, so I may err on the side of profligacy on this occasion. But I’m assisted… Read More »
Michael Worton, one time Professor of French Literature and a Vice-Provost at UCL, once told me Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) was the most important philosopher of the 20th century. Against that I once heard A J Ayer explain to Malcolm Muggeridge live on TV that Heidegger misused the verb ‘to be’. Maybe the truth is somewhere… Read More »
Aristotle’s (384-322 BC) was a polymath who studied at Plato’s Academy. He came to differ significantly from Plato in his approach and subject matter however, attributing much more importance to the empirical observation of the physical world than to an abstract, invisible, eternal world of ‘forms’. Forms for him did not exist in a realm… Read More »
Graduating in 1971 I began a Ph.D in philosophy with David Hamlyn at Birkbeck College, University of London. I’d particularly enjoyed philosophy as an undergrad and this was a natural development. However, soon in need of an income I applied for and obtained a research job in sociology, which offered the possibility of doing a… Read More »