Branch
Epistemology
75 philosophers, 8 traditions
Knowledge and how we come by it: perception, reasoning and testimony as sources of knowledge, what justifies a belief, and whether scepticism can be answered.
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Themes in this branch
Philosophers
Listed where the reference works cited on their page describe significant work in epistemology.
Western
XenophanesWandering poet who mocked the idea that gods look and behave like humans, described one greatest god unlike mortals, and doubted that anyone can know the plain truth.
HeraclitusEphesian thinker who held that everything is in flux, that opposites form a unity, and that change is governed by a rational principle, the logos.
ParmenidesAuthor of a metaphysical poem arguing that what is cannot come to be or pass away, so that change and plurality are illusions of the senses.
ProtagorasThe first to call himself a sophist, he taught argument for a fee, held that "man is the measure of all things", and said he could not know whether the gods exist.- DemocritusCo-founder of ancient atomism, who held that the world is made of indivisible atoms moving in void, and that the good life is one of cheerfulness.
CiceroRoman statesman and orator whose dialogues brought Greek philosophy into Latin, setting rival schools' views side by side in the spirit of Academic scepticism.- Sextus EmpiricusPyrrhonian sceptic and doctor whose Outlines of Pyrrhonism is our fullest account of ancient scepticism, which sets argument against argument to reach tranquillity.
AugustineBishop of Hippo whose writings on sin, grace, free will and time made him the most influential Christian thinker of late antiquity and the Latin Middle Ages.
John Duns ScotusFranciscan philosopher-theologian, "the Subtle Doctor", known for the univocity of being, the "thisness" that makes each thing an individual, and a will free at the very moment of choice.
Nicholas of CusaCardinal, church reformer and self-taught philosopher whose _On Learned Ignorance_ taught that the infinite God, in whom all opposites coincide, lies beyond every measure of the mind.
Michel de MontaigneFrench essayist who revived ancient scepticism, took "What do I know?" as his motto, and made the free exercise of one's own judgement the aim of philosophy.
Francis BaconEnglish statesman and philosopher who planned a great renewal of all knowledge, based on experiment, a new method of induction and the conviction that knowledge is power.
René DescartesOften called the father of modern philosophy, he sought certain foundations for knowledge through methodical doubt and the insight 'I think, therefore I am'.
Blaise PascalFrench mathematician and scientist whose unfinished Pensées, a defence of Christianity, reflect on human wretchedness and greatness, the thinking reed.
John LockeEnglish empiricist who argued that all ideas come from experience, and whose case for natural rights and government by consent shaped liberal political thought.
Nicolas MalebrancheFrench priest and Cartesian who joined Descartes to Augustine, holding that we perceive bodies by way of ideas that exist in God, and that nothing but God truly causes anything.- Mary AstellEnglish rationalist philosopher who argued that the supposed defects of women's minds come from their education, not their nature, and set out a method by which women could think for themselves.
Catharine Trotter CockburnPlaywright and philosopher who defended Locke's Essay and Samuel Clarke's moral theory, grounding morality in reflection on human and divine nature.
George BerkeleyIrish philosopher and bishop who argued that there is no matter, only minds and their ideas, so that for ordinary things to be is to be perceived.
David HumeScottish empiricist and sceptic who argued that our beliefs about cause and effect rest on habit rather than reason.
Immanuel KantArgued that the mind actively structures experience, reconciling rationalism and empiricism, and grounded morality in the rational will.- Mary ShepherdScottish philosopher whose essays on cause and effect answered Hume, arguing that causes necessarily produce their effects and that reason, not habit, grounds our knowledge of an external world.
William JamesPsychologist and philosopher whose Principles of Psychology described the 'stream of thought', and who made pragmatism famous with a theory of truth as what works.
Edmund HusserlFounder of phenomenology, who studied consciousness as it is experienced, bracketing our taken-for-granted belief in the world to reveal how things show up for us.
John DeweyPragmatist and perhaps the most prominent American intellectual of his time, who treated thinking as a way of solving problems and saw democracy and education as bound together.
Jane AddamsAmerican pragmatist and social philosopher who founded Chicago's Hull House, built an ethics on 'sympathetic knowledge', and won the Nobel Peace Prize for her work against war.
Maria MontessoriItalian physician, psychologist and philosopher whose educational method, based on children's freedom in a prepared environment, now guides schools around the world.
G. E. MooreCambridge philosopher who helped found analytic philosophy, argued that goodness cannot be defined in natural terms, and defended common sense against sceptics and idealists.- Edith Landmann-KalischerGerman philosopher of art and value who argued that aesthetic judgements are cognitive, as objective as sense perception, and that art can be true by mirroring the mind.
- Karl PopperPhilosopher of science who made falsifiability the mark of a scientific theory, and a political philosopher who defended the 'open society' against totalitarianism.
Ayn RandRussian-born American novelist-philosopher whose Objectivism defended rational egoism, individual rights and capitalism, through novels such as Atlas Shrugged.- Maurice Merleau-PontyThe leading phenomenologist of post-war France, who made the lived, perceiving body the starting point for understanding mind, world, language and art.
W. V. O. QuineHarvard logician and philosopher who attacked logical empiricism's distinction between analytic and synthetic truths and saw philosophy as continuous with science.- Michel FoucaultFrench historian and philosopher who wrote histories of madness, the prison and sexuality to show how knowledge and power shape what seems natural and necessary.
Richard RortyAmerican pragmatist whose Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature attacked the idea of knowledge as a mental mirror of reality, and who defended a liberalism resting on solidarity rather than foundations.
Robert NozickAmerican philosopher whose Anarchy, State, and Utopia made the classic case for a libertarian minimal state against Rawls, and who went on to new theories of knowledge and personal identity.
Jewish
- Saadia GaonRabbi and head of the Sura academy whose Book of Doctrines and Beliefs, written in Arabic, argues that reason and revelation confirm each other.
Judah HaleviHebrew poet of the 'Golden Age of Spanish Jewry' whose Kuzari defends Judaism against the philosophers, holding that God is known through history and prophecy rather than proof.
Salomon MaimonLithuanian-born Jewish philosopher whose "sceptical rationalism" made him the critic Kant said understood him best, and whose objections shaped German Idealism.
Hermann CohenFounder of the Marburg School of neo-Kantianism and the leading German-Jewish philosopher of his generation, whose Religion of Reason found reason's religion in the sources of Judaism.
Arabic and Islamic
- Ayn al-Qudat HamadaniPersian philosopher, Sufi master and judge, executed at thirty-four, whose Essence of Reality was the first full philosophical defence of mysticism in Islamic thought.
- Fakhr al-Din al-RaziTheologian and philosopher who tested every argument of Avicenna's system in turn, and whose critical commentaries set the agenda for later Islamic thought.
SuhrawardiFounder of the Illuminationist school, who described reality as a hierarchy of lights and held that the deepest knowledge comes through direct presence.
RumiPersian Sufi poet of the Mathnawi who mocked philosophers' 'wooden legs', yet shaped post-Avicennian philosophical Sufism with his critique of reason's reach.- Ibn TaymiyyaDamascene scholar and reformer who attacked Aristotelian logic and the theology of the philosophers, and argued that true revelation and sound reason never conflict.
Indian
NāgārjunaBuddhist philosopher who founded the Madhyamaka ('middle way') school, arguing that all things are empty of intrinsic nature.
BhāvivekaMadhyamaka thinker who insisted on formally stated inferences in the manner of Dignāga, criticised Buddhapālita, and began the 'Svātantrika' line.
CandrakīrtiMadhyamaka commentator whose Clear Words defended Buddhapālita's reductio method against Bhāviveka, and whose 'Prāsaṅgika' reading became authoritative in Tibet.
DharmakīrtiBuddhist philosopher of logic and knowledge whose account of perception, inference and “exclusion” dominated Indian and Tibetan debate for centuries.- Kumārila BhaṭṭaMīmāṃsā philosopher who argued that every cognition is to be trusted until overturned, and defended the authority of the Vedas against Buddhist critics.
- ŚrīguptaIndian Madhyamaka philosopher whose Introduction to Reality gave the first complete Madhyamaka form of the 'neither one nor many' case for emptiness.
ŚāntarakṣitaBuddhist philosopher who joined Madhyamaka, Yogācāra and the logic of Dharmakīrti into one system, then took it to Tibet as the first abbot of Samye.- KamalaśīlaStudent of Śāntarakṣita who helped bring Indian Buddhist scholasticism to Tibet, and is remembered for defending gradual awakening against a Chan master.
- JayarāśiSceptic of the materialist Cārvāka tradition whose "Lion of the Dissolution of All Categories" argued that no school had ever validly defined the sources of knowledge it relied on.
- RatnakīrtiBuddhist philosopher at Vikramaśīla whose crisp restatements of his teacher's work capture the final stage of Dignāga's tradition in India, and defend idealism and even solipsism.
- ŚrīharṣaIndian philosopher and poet whose Sweets of Refutation argued that every attempt to define knowledge, truth or the categories of reality collapses under its own standards.
- VeṅkaṭanāthaSouth Indian polymath, known as Vedānta Deśika, whose more than 100 works in Sanskrit and Tamil reshaped Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta and Śrī Vaiṣṇava thought.
- GaṅgeśaLogician of the Nyāya school whose Jewel founded “New Nyāya” (Navya-Nyāya), the standard technical language of Indian philosophical argument for centuries.
Sarvepalli RadhakrishnanPhilosopher and statesman who presented Advaita Vedanta to the West as religion founded on intuitive experience, and later served as India's vice-president and president.
Tibetan
Ngok Loden SherabThe 'Great Translator' and pioneer interpreter of Indian epistemology, whose Sangphu tradition set the main line of Tibetan logic until Sakya Paṇḍita.- Chapa Chökyi SengéTibetan epistemologist of the Ngok tradition who rejected both idealism and representationalism, and whose account of the objects of cognition shaped later Gelug thought.
Sakya PaṇḍitaSakya scholar, one of Tibet's greatest philosophers, whose Treasure of Reasoning turned Tibetan epistemology to Dharmakīrti's Pramāṇavārttika and criticised his Tibetan predecessors.
TsongkhapaTibetan philosopher whose reading of Madhyamaka joined a robust realism about the conventional world to emptiness, and whose school became the Gelug.
Chinese
ZhuangziDaoist thinker whose playful, paradoxical stories question fixed points of view and celebrate a spontaneous, free-flowing way of life.- Wang ChongEastern Han critic who tested received teachings, sages included, against the evidence, and explained nature as the spontaneous workings of qi rather than the will of Heaven.
- SengzhaoBuddhist monk and disciple of Kumārajīva whose Treatises of Zhao are the main source for early Chinese Madhyamaka, teaching emptiness through paradox.
Shao YongNorthern Song thinker, sometimes counted a fifth founder of Neo-Confucianism, known for mathematical and numerological laws and for warning that subjectivity blocks knowledge of things.
Lu XiangshanSouthern Song Confucian, friend and critic of Zhu Xi, who held that principle is complete within the heart-mind, and with Wang Yangming gave his name to the 'learning of the heart-mind'.
Wang YangmingMing statesman, general and Neo-Confucian thinker who taught that moral understanding is innate in every mind, and that knowing and acting are one.
Hu ShiStudent of John Dewey and leader of China's New Culture Movement, who championed pragmatism, the scientific method and the vernacular against Confucian tradition.
Mou ZongsanNew Confucian who argued, against Kant, that human beings have intellectual intuition, a direct moral knowing that makes sagehood possible and gives the world its moral meaning.
Japanese
African
Léopold Sédar SenghorSenegalese poet, statesman and philosopher, a founder of Négritude, who read in African religions an ontology of vital forces and gave the movement its philosophy.- Kwasi WireduGhanaian philosopher whose programme of "conceptual decolonisation" helped establish modern African philosophy as a discipline, critical of both colonial habits of thought and unexamined tradition.
- Paulin HountondjiBeninese philosopher whose critique of "ethnophilosophy" argued that African philosophy must be critical, argued work by individual thinkers, not a reconstruction of a people’s collective worldview.