Whitehead's Metaphysics

Definition:
                The main tenets of Whitehead's metaphysics were summarized in his most accessible work,Adventures of Ideas (1933), where he also defines his conceptions of beauty, truth, art, adventure, and peace.  He believed that "there are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths.  It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.


Sample Sentences:

• The content of Whitehead's Metaphysics can be confusing.
• Whitehead’s metaphysics is the most advanced and sophisticated version of process philosophy.
• Whitehead's metaphysics should be seen as the flourishing of ideas.

Usage:
          Whitehead's Metaphysics
          Metanexus

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                Whitehead's metaphysics is a concept of space and time.  It also is comprised of asking questions like "Why are we here?" and "How did things start?".  It also categorizes life into phases and whether or not things exist.


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Blaise Pascal

Definition:
                  a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Christian philosopher.  He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father.


Sample Sentences:

• Pascal was a prodigious mathematician and philosopher.
• Pascal was enormously influenced by the writings of Michel de Montaigne, the great French Renaissance skeptic.
• Pascal wrote the quote "the heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing."

Usage:
          Catholic Education
          Britannica


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                Pascal was a 17th century philosopher and mathematician born in France.  Among his greatest and most well known achievements is Pascal's Triangle (shown below) where the two numbers below equal the amount that is above it.  He also wrote the Provincial Letters.


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Beckett

Definition:
                an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet, who lived in Paris for most of his adult life and wrote in both English and French

Sample Sentences:

• Beckett would see his name become synonymous with a sort of existential bleakness that fails to convey the humor and hope in his work.
• The Nobel Prize in Literature 1969 was awarded to Samuel Beckett.
Beckett wrote the quote "Let me go to hell, that's all I ask, and go on cursing them there, and them look down and hear me, that might take some of the shine off their bliss."

Usage:
           NY Times
           Britannica


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                 Beckett was a 20th Century Irish novelist and poet who would become synonymous with existentialism.  He is said to have written the most influential play in the past 100 years with "Waiting for Godot." Although he is known as being bleak, his plays and other written works inspire and show hope and humor.


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Goethe

Definition:
                 a German writer, artist, and politician.  His body of work includes epic and lyric poetry written in a variety of metres and styles; prose and verse dramas; memoirs

Sample Sentences:

• Goethe's invitation in 1775 to the court of Duke Karl August at Weimar was a turning point in the literary life of Germany.
• Goethe is the only German literary figure whose range and international standing equal those of Germany’s supreme philosophers and composers.
• Goethe once said "I love those who yearn for the impossible."
  

Usage:
           NY Times
           Britannica

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                Goethe was an 18th century German writer and politician.  He was also a lawyer and thought that self education was the opening to freedom.  He saw the beauty in thinking of different things in the world and challenging the set order.


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Maslow

Definition:
                an American psychologist who was best known for creating Maslow's hierarchy of needs, a theory of self-actualization


Sample Sentences:

• Maslow was born April 1st, 1908 in Brooklyn, New York.
• Maslow died June 8th, 1970.
• At a time when most psychologists focused aspects of human nature that were considered abnormal, Abraham Maslow shifted to focus to look at the positive sides of mental health.

Usage:
          The New Atlantis
          The Economist

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                Maslow was the first to think of the hierarchy of needs in humans.  He proposed that after the basics of food, water, and shelter, there was more to life.  This included safety, love, esteem and self-actualization.

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Sartre

Definition:
                a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer and literary critic.

Sample Sentences:

• Sartre was a supporter of existentialism.
• Sartre is arguably the best known philosopher of the twentieth century.
• Sartre was born in Paris.

Usage:
          NY Times
          Britannica
         
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                 Sartre was a French philosopher in the 20th century. He was a believer in existentialism and was als a play write, novelist, and literary critic. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature but turned it down.He believed his writing was more that just a prize.


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Hume

Definition:
                a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism.  He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment.  

Sample Sentences:

• Hume is often grouped with John Locke, George Berkeley and a handful of others as a British Empiricist.
• Hume advocated a compatibility theory of free will that proved extremely influential on subsequent moral philosophy. 
• Hume has proved extremely influential on subsequent philosophy.

Usage:
          First Principles Journal
          Christian Courier

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                Hume was a Scottish skeptic and philosopher who has ended up being one of the most influential on later philosophy.  Empiricism is similar to existentialism in that they both believed in knowledge through experience.  He was the one who concluded that there can be no knowledge beyond experience.
    
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