Wittgenstein, Ludwig Josef Johann (1889–1951)  Austrian philosopher who spent much of his life in Cambridge,England. Wittgenstein was interested in metaphysics throughout his philosophical life, but his interest was not that of a metaphysician. He wrote: “In a certain sense one cannot take too much care in handling philosophical errors, they contain so much truth” (Wittgenstein, 1967, sect. 460). … -This article is about Wittgenstein’ ideas about metaphysics, which was translated into Persian by Sedigheh Bayat. -Please register your request to …

Aristotle (384–322 bc) Greek philosopher born in Stagira.  Aristotle’s writings can be said to have set the agenda for the western tradition in metaphysics. Indeed, “meta-physics” is a term derived from a first century bc edition of Aristotle’s work, in which a collection of his writings was put together under the title Ta Meta ta Phusika, which means simply “What comes after the writings on nature” (ta phusika). Since the writings thus put together concerned topics that seemed in certain …

Plato (c.427–347 bc) Greek philosopher. Traditionally the core of Plato’s metaphy-sics has been taken to be the thesis that there exists a realm of non-perceptible objects, called Forms (eide) or Ideas (Ideai), which are the only strictly real things and the subject matter of all knowledge, and that perceptible objects are in some sense copies of these Forms, less strictly real than they are,and incapable of being known. As an approximation this interpretation is correct. Only with a much clearer …

Williamson, Timothy (1955– )  British philosopher, formerly Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Edinburgh, currently Wykeham Professor of Logic at the University of Oxford. He has made contributions to logic, philosophy of language, and epistemology (arguing that knowledge is an unanalyzable mental state, not factorable into conditions such as justified true belief with or without extra elements such as causal or counterfactual ones). In metaphysics, he is most well known. … -This article is about Timothy’ ideas …

Descartes, René (1596–1650) French philosopher and mathematician. It would be hard to overestimate the philosophical influence of Descartes. Often called the“father of modern philosophy”, his arguments on doubt, the foundations of know-ledge, and the nature of the human mind, are familiar to countless students. But while Cartesian ideas almost inevitably form the point of departure for our understanding of how epistemology and philosophy of mind developed from the early modern period to the present day, the situation with respect to …

Aquinas, St. Thomas (1224/5–74) The philosophy of St.  Thomas Aquinas was strongly influenced by Aristotle and by the Islamic philosophers Avicenna and Averroes, whose works became available in Latin translations at the beginning of the thirteenth century. But Aquinas’s meta-physical thought contains a number of elements that are not to be found in his leading sources… -This article is about Aquinas’ ideas about metaphysics, which was translated into Persian by Sedigheh Bayat. -Please register your request to read more on …

Hume, David (1711–76) Scottish philoso-pher, historian and essayist, is customarily classified, along with Locke and Berkeley as one of the leading figures of eighteenth-century British empiricism.  Many regard Hume as the greatest philosopher ever to write in English. His philosophical works include A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40), An Enquiry concerning Human Under-standing (1748), An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals (1751) and Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (1779). Hume has often been characterized –especially by logical positivists seeking a forerunner …

Kant, Immanuel (1724–1804) Often regarded as the greatest of the modern philosophers, Kant spent most of his life in or near the East Prussian city of Königsberg. His contributions to metaphysics occur mainly in the first of his three Critiques, the Critique of Pure Reason (1781; 2nd edn., 1787). In the prefaces to the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant characterized metaphysics as previously practiced as a “battlefield of . . . endless controversies” (A viii) in which “no participant ha[s] …

Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844–1900) German writer and philosopher. Nietzsche was born in the Prussian provinces of Silesia and educated in classical languages and literatures.  He was appointed Professor of Classical Philology at Basel when only 24. By the time he was obliged by poor health to retire, a mere ten years later (in 1879), he had emancipated himself from two early influences – Schopenhauer and Richard Wagner (1813–83) – and his initial philological and cultural concerns had turned in a philosophical …