John Neville Keynes (born Aug. 31, 1852, Salisbury, Wiltshire, Eng.—died Nov. 15, 1949, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire) was a British philosopher and economist who synthesized two poles of economic thought by incorporating inductive and deductive reasoning into his methodology. Keynes was educated at the Universities of London and Cambridge. After graduating from Cambridge (1875), he was a […]
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Kapila (flourished 550 bce?) was a Vedic sage who is often identified as one of the founders of the system of Samkhya, one of six darshans (systems) of Indian philosophy. He is not, however, the author of the text primarily responsible for giving the school its philosophical definition, Ishvarakrishna’s Samkhya-karika (c. 4th century ce), nor
Wassily Kandinsky (born December 4 [December 16, New Style], 1866, Moscow, Russia—died December 13, 1944, Neuilly-sur-Seine, France) was a Russian-born artist, one of the first creators of pure abstraction in modern painting. After successful avant-garde exhibitions, he founded the influential Munich group Der Blaue Reiter (“The Blue Rider”; 1911–14) and began completely abstract painting. His
Henry Home, Lord Kames (born 1696, Kames, Berwickshire, Scot.—died Dec. 27, 1782, Edinburgh) was a lawyer, agriculturalist, and philosopher. Kames was called to the bar in 1724 and was appointed a judge in the Court of Session in 1752. He became a lord of justiciary in 1763. He is best known for his Elements of
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Kabir (born 1440, Varanasi, Jaunpur, India—died 1518, Maghar) was an iconoclastic Indian poet-saint revered by Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs. The birth of Kabir remains shrouded in mystery and legend. One tradition holds that he was born in 1398, which would have made him 120 years old at his death. It is also uncertain who his
St. Justin Martyr (born c. 100, Flavia Neapolis, Palestine [now Nāblus]—died c. 165, Rome [Italy]; feast day June 1) was one of the most important of the Greek philosopher-Apologists in the early Christian church. His writings represent one of the first positive encounters of Christian revelation with Greek philosophy and laid the basis for a
Paul W. Taylor (born November 19, 1923, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.—died October 14, 2015, Hamilton, New Jersey) was an American philosopher best known for his book Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics (1986), which promulgated the biocentric viewpoint in environmental ethics and was a foundational work of environmental philosophy. (Read Peter Singer’s Britannica entry
George Tyrrell (born February 6, 1861, Dublin, Ireland—died July 15, 1909, Storrington, Sussex, England) was an Irish-born British Jesuit priest and philosopher. He was a prominent member of the Modernist movement, which sought to reinterpret traditional Roman Catholic teaching in the light of contemporary knowledge. Tyrrell was raised in the Anglican church but converted to
Hans Vaihinger (born Sept. 25, 1852, Nehren, Württemberg [Germany]—died Dec. 18, 1933, Halle, Ger.) was a German philosopher who, influenced by Arthur Schopenhauer and F.A. Lange, developed Kantianism in the direction of pragmatism by espousing a theory of “fictions” as the basis of what he called his “as if” philosophy. (See as if, philosophy of.)
Watsuji Tetsurō (born March 1, 1889, Himeji, Japan—died Dec. 26, 1960, Tokyo) was a Japanese moral philosopher and historian of ideas, outstanding among modern Japanese thinkers who have tried to combine the Eastern moral spirit with Western ethical ideas. (Read Peter Singer’s Britannica entry on ethics.) Watsuji studied philosophy at Tokyo University and became professor