Philosophy Pages
| Dictionary | Study Guide | Logic | F A Q s | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| History | Timeline | Philosophers | Locke | |||
| Philosophy Pages
| Dictionary | Study Guide | Logic | F A Q s | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| History | Timeline | Philosophers | Locke | |||
American psychologist and philosopher; brother of the novelist Henry James. James contributed significantly to the development of pragmatism as a comprehensive philosophical method.
For a discussion of his life and works, see James.
Theological belief that obedience to divine will is possible only for those on whom god has already chosen to bestow grace, leaving no room for the exercise of human freedom. This view was originated by Dutch bishop Cornelius Jansen (1585-1638) and defended against Jesuit attacks by members of the Port-Royal community, including Arnauld and Pascal.
Recommended Reading: Leszek Kolakowski, God Owes Us Nothing: A Brief Remark on Pascal's Religion and on the Spirit of Jansenism (Chicago, 1998); William Doyle, Jansenism: Catholic Resistance to Authority from the Reformation to the French Revolution (Palgrave, 2000).
German physician, psychiatrist, and philosopher educated at Heidelberg and Göttingen. In Philosophie (1931), Von der Wahrheit (On Truth) (1947), and Einführung in die Philosophie (Way to Wisdom) (1950) Jaspers developed a version of existentialism in which the effort to understand our concrete existence leads from careful self-analysis to a personal quest for authenticity in relation to the transcendent "Encompassing." Jaspers also wrote on topics in the history of philosophy in Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte (On the Origin and Goal of History) (1949) and Die großen Philosophen (The Great Philosophers) (1957). He also commented on the national emotions associated with the aftermath of World War II in Die Schuldfrage (The Question of German Guilt) (1946). A basic statement of his philosophical development may be found in On My Philosophy (1941).
Recommended Reading: Karl Jaspers: Basic Philosophical Writings: Selections (Humanity, 1994); Karl Jaspers, Philosophy of Existence, tr. by Richard F. Grabau (Pennsylvania, 1971); Karl Jaspers, Reason and Existenz: Five Lectures (Marquette, 1997); Hannah Arendt / Karl Jaspers Correspondence 1926-1969, ed. by Lotte Kohler and Hans Saner (Harcourt Brace, 1993); Philosophy of Karl Jaspers, ed. by Lewis Edwin Hahn (Open Court, 1981); Chris Thornhill, Karl Jaspers: Politics and Metaphysics (Routledge, 2002); Richard Wisser, Karl Jaspers: Philosoph unter Philosophen, ed. by Leonard H. Ehrlich (Rodopi, 1993); and Karl Jaspers Today, ed. by Leonard H. Ehrlich and Richard Wisser (UPA, 1988). |
Also see SEP, Christopher Scott Wyatt, EB, and ELC.
American political leader. Jefferson's draft for the Declaration of Independence (1776) and his Autobiography (1821) reflect thorough absorption of the philosophical and political views of John Locke, many of which he shared with other American founders.
Recommended Reading: Allen Jayne, Jefferson's Declaration of Independence: Origins, Philosophy, and Theology (Kentucky, 2000); Garrett Ward Sheldon, The Political Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson (Johns Hopkins, 1993); and Daniel J. Boorstin, The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson (Chicago, 1993).
One of Mill's Methods for the discovery of a causal relationship. If an antecedent circumstance is invariably present when, but only when, a phenomenon occurs, it may be inferred to be the cause of that phenomenon.
Example: "The seventeen students who attended the review session earned grades of C or better on the final exam, while the eleven students who did not earned grades of D or F. Therefore, attending the review session was an effective way to prepare for the final exam."
Recommended Reading: John Stuart Mill, System of Logic (Classworks, 1986).
Also see EB.
The complex event comprising the occurrence of both of its constituent events. The probability of a joint occurrence is calculated by the formula:
P(A • B) = P(A) × P(B, if A)
Thus, for example, the chances of getting "heads" both times on two tosses of a coin are equal to the chances of getting "heads" on the first toss (1/2) times the chances of getting "heads" on the second toss (1/2), or 1/4.
Recommended Reading: Richard Lowry, The Architecture of Chance: An Introduction to the Logic and Arithmetic of Probability (Oxford, 1989); Ian Hacking, An Introduction to Probability and Inductive Logic (Cambridge, 2001); and Donald Gillies, Philosophical Theories of Probability (Routledge, 2000).
The mental act of affirming a proposition or the capacity for distinguishing truth from falsity.
Swiss psychiatrist. Jung rejected Freudian accounts of infant sexuality as the source of the libido and emphasized a generalized will to live. In Wandlungen und Symbolen der Libido (The Psychology of the Unconscious) (1912), Jung developed a rich account of the unconscious, positing shared primordial "archetypes" as elements established innately in the collective unconscious of all human beings rather than as features of individual personality in The Archetypes and The Collective Unconscious (1926). Such underlying mental contents, Jung claimed in The Association Method (1910), can be observed most easily through the free association of words. A simple statement of his most basic principles may be found in chapter IX of Modern Man in Search of a Soul (1933).
Recommended Reading: Carl Gustav Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Vintage, 1989); The Essential Jung, ed. by Anthony Storr (Princeton, 1999); The Portable Jung, ed. by Joseph Campbell and R. F. C. Hull (Viking, 1976); The Cambridge Companion to Jung, ed. by Polly Young-Eisendrath and Terence Dawson (Cambridge, 1997); Marilyn Nagy, Philosophical Issues in the Psychology of C.G. Jung (SUNY, 1991); and Thomas Mulvihill King, Jung's Four and Some Philosophers: A Paradigm for Philosophy (Notre Dame, 1999). |
Also see The Jung Index, EB, Stephen Palmquist, and C. George Boeree.
The attempt to provide acceptable conditions for international conflict. As developed by Augustine and Aquinas, just war theory typically distinguishes the conditions under which war may be intitiated (ius ad bellum), including a legitimate authority exercising a right intention in pursuit of a just cause, from the rules under which war may be conducted (ius in bello), including concern with proportionality of the means and discrimination between combatants and non-combatants.
Recommended Reading: Just War Theory, ed. by Jean Bethke Elshtain (NYU, 1991); Richard J. Regan, Just War: Principles and Cases (Catholic U. of A., 1996); Paul Christopher, The Ethics of War and Peace: An Introduction to Legal and Moral Issues (Prentice Hall, 1998); and Paul Ramsey, Speak Up for Just War or Pacifism (Penn. State, 1988). |
Also see SEP, EB, Mark Rigstad, SEP, CE, and IEP.
Equitable distribution of goods and evils in a social institution, including the moral sanctions of reward and punishment. After surveying alternative notions of the virtue of justice {Gk. δικαιωσυνη [dikaiôsunê]}, Plato defined it as the harmonious function of diverse elements of society or of the distinct souls within an individual person. Most social philosophers of the Western tradition, however, have followed Aristotle's conceptions of retributive and distributive justice. In contemporary philosophy, Rawls employs a notion of "justice as fairness" to argue that social inequalities are justifiable only if the benefit even the least favored members of a society.
Recommended Reading: Richard D. Parry, Plato's Craft of Justice (SUNY, 1996); John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Belknap, 1999); Martha Craven Nussbaum, Sex & Social Justice (Oxford, 2000); Cynthia Willett, The Soul of Justice: Social Bonds and Racial Hubris (Cornell, 2001); Nicholas Rescher, Fairness: Theory and Practice of Distributive Justice (Transaction, 2002); Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality (Basic, 1984); and Randy E. Barnett, The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law (Oxford, 2000). |
Also see SEP on justice as a virtue, distributive justice, international justice, and intergenerational justice, Christopher Phillips, EB, Robert Arp, and PP.
What is offered as grounds for believing an assertion. Hence, also, an explanation of the legitimacy of each step in the formal proof of the validity of a deductive argument.
Recommended Reading: Empirical Knowledge, ed. by Paul K. Moser (Rowman & Littlefield, 1996); Robert Audi, The Structure of Justification (Cambridge, 1993); Knowledge, Truth, and Duty: Essays on Epistemic Justification, Responsibility, and Virtue, ed. by Matthias Steup (Oxford, 2001); and The Justification of Deduction (Oxford, 1974). |
