Philosophy Glossary

A rational and critical inquiry into the principles of reality, knowledge, action, and human life.

A general and abstract representation used to think about a class of objects, a property, or a relation.

An idea or content of thought used as a starting point for reflection, often less strictly defined than a concept.

A question constructed from a conceptual difficulty, an apparent contradiction, or a conflict of principles.

A structured formulation of a problem that brings out its issues and tensions.

A proposition or position that an author supports with arguments.

A coherent set of theses attributed to a thinker, school, or tradition.

A coherent organization of concepts and principles intended to explain a domain or reality as a whole.

An examination of the conditions, limits, and validity of an idea, a body of knowledge, or an institution.

A methodical decomposition of a notion or problem in order to distinguish its elements and relations.

An operation that brings several elements together into an overall understanding.

A statement that specifies the meaning of a term by indicating its essential features or conditions of use.

A separation of closely related notions in order to avoid confusion.

A particular case used to illustrate a general idea without, by itself, proving it.

A particular case sufficient to show that a universal proposition is false.

An imaginary scenario designed to test an intuition, a principle, or the consequences of a theory.

The operation by which meaning is attributed to a text, an action, a symbol, or a phenomenon.

The theory and practice of interpretation, especially of texts and historical expressions of human existence.

A Socratic method of questioning intended to bring out the implications of what an interlocutor thinks.

A method based on confronting positions, tensions, or contradictions in order to advance analysis.

A theoretical difficulty that seems to bring reasoning to an impasse.

A statement or situation contrary to intuition that often reveals a hidden difficulty in our concepts.

A set of reasons put forward to support or challenge a conclusion.

A proposition from which a line of reasoning starts in order to establish a conclusion.

A proposition that one seeks to establish from premises.

A reasoned transition from one or more propositions to another.

Reasoning in which the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises if the form is valid.

Reasoning that generalizes from observed cases and whose conclusion remains revisable.

Reasoning that proposes the most plausible explanatory hypothesis from observed facts.

A classical deductive argument composed of two premises and a conclusion.

A property of reasoning in which the conclusion cannot be false if its premises are true.

The quality of an argument that is both valid and based on true or well-established premises.

The absence of contradiction among several propositions within the same set.

A situation in which a proposition and its negation are asserted simultaneously in the same respect.

The principle according to which the same proposition cannot be both true and false in the same sense.

A proposition that is true by virtue of its logical form alone.

A logical relation in which the truth of one proposition entails the truth of another.

A relation between two propositions that always have the same truth value.

A proposition accepted as the starting point of a deductive system.

A proposition posited as the basis of an argument or theory without being demonstrated within that framework.

A deceptive line of reasoning that appears correct but contains a deliberate or structural error.

An incorrect line of reasoning made without necessarily intending to deceive.

The error of presupposing in the premises what one is precisely trying to prove.

An attack directed at a person or their circumstances rather than at the validity of their argument.

A tactic consisting in distorting an opposing position in order to refute it more easily.

The misleading presentation of a situation as allowing only two options when others exist.

An argument that invokes an authority; it is relevant only if that authority is competent on the question.

A methodological principle advising against multiplying hypotheses beyond what is necessary.

The philosophical study of knowledge, its justification, its sources, and its limits.

A cognitive relation through which a subject apprehends something as true or sufficiently justified.

A body of knowledge regarded as established according to criteria specific to a field.

A subject's acceptance of a proposition, whether or not it is true or justified.

A judgment that is often insufficiently justified and may vary among individuals or groups.

A Greek term for opinion, frequently opposed to rational or demonstrated knowledge.

A state in which a subject regards a proposition as indubitable; certainty alone does not guarantee truth.

A property attributed to a statement or judgment when it satisfies the criteria adopted for calling something true.

The view that a statement is true when it adequately corresponds to a fact.

The view that truth depends on a statement's coherent integration within a system of propositions.

The set of reasons that warrant regarding a belief as rationally acceptable.

An element or line of reasoning that establishes a proposition according to recognized criteria.

The character of what presents itself to the mind with such force that it appears to require no further demonstration.

The suspension or questioning of assent to a proposition.

The deliberate use of doubt as a tool for seeking more secure foundations of knowledge.

A position that questions the possibility, scope, or certainty of knowledge.

What can be known or established independently of particular experience.

What depends on experience or observation.

What is held to be present in the mind independently of learning acquired through experience.

The thesis that truth, knowledge, or values depend at least in part on a frame of reference.

The idea that all knowledge of reality is situated within a perspective rather than produced from an absolute point of view.

The attitude of asserting doctrines as certain without sufficient examination of their foundations or limits.

The study of the methods, concepts, presuppositions, and limits of the sciences.

An organized activity of producing knowledge based on explicit, controllable, and revisable methods.

A provisional proposition put forward to explain facts or guide an investigation.

A structured set of concepts and propositions intended to explain a domain of phenomena.

A general and regular relation formulated within a theoretical framework and supported by observation or experiment.

An organized test of a hypothesis under specified conditions.

The methodical collection of information about a phenomenon without necessarily intervening in it.

The criterion according to which a scientific proposition must be open to confrontation with observations capable of refuting it.

The demonstration of an element incompatible with a proposition, hypothesis, or theory.

An increase in the empirical or rational support given to a hypothesis without necessarily making it certain.

A shared framework of problems, methods, concepts, and examples that organizes a scientific community at a given time.

A profound transformation of the dominant conceptual and methodological framework of a science.

According to Bachelard, a representation or intellectual habit that obstructs the construction of scientific knowledge.

A discontinuity through which scientific knowledge is constituted by separating itself from earlier forms of thought.

An approach that explains a complex phenomenon in terms of elements or levels regarded as more fundamental.

The appearance of properties of a system that cannot easily be reduced to the isolated properties of its components.

The thesis that some events are not entirely determined by the prior state of the world.

The position that the best scientific theories describe, at least approximately, real structures of the world.

The position that theories are valuable primarily as instruments for prediction and for organizing phenomena.

Philosophical inquiry into the most general principles of reality, being, and what exists.

The study of being, categories of entities, and ways of existing.

A general term for what is, as well as for the very question of what it means to exist.

That which exists in a determinate way; in Heidegger, it is distinguished from Being as the fundamental question.

The fact of actually being, or the mode in which a thing is present in reality.

The set of constitutive characteristics by which a thing is what it is.

What is conceived as existing in itself or as a relatively stable bearer of properties.

A property that can belong to a thing without constituting what it essentially is.

A property ascribed to a substance or subject.

A particular way in which a reality or substance exists or manifests itself.

General properties or concepts capable of applying to several individuals.

The thesis that universals are not independent realities but names, concepts, or classificatory practices.

The thesis that universals possess some form of reality independent of particular individuals.

A singular being, event, or object, distinct from a class or general property.

The relation by which a thing is the same as itself or remains the same through certain transformations.

The characteristic by which one thing is distinguished from another.

The character of what forms a whole or remains one despite a multiplicity of elements.

A position that admits several principles, substances, values, or levels of reality that are irreducible to one another.

The position that reality fundamentally rests on a single type of principle or substance.

A position that distinguishes two fundamental orders, for example mind and matter.

The doctrine that matter or physical reality constitutes the foundation of reality.

A family of doctrines that assigns a fundamental role to mind, ideas, or the conditions of representation.

The character of what remains within an order of reality without appealing to an external or higher principle.

The character of what exceeds a given order, especially the world of experience.

The character of what cannot be otherwise.

The character of what could be otherwise or might not exist.

The character of what can be without contradiction or under certain conditions.

The state of what is effectively realized, as opposed to what is merely possible.

In Aristotle, the real capacity of a being to become or accomplish something.

In Aristotle, the effective realization of a potentiality.

The field that studies consciousness, mental states, and their relation to the body and brain.

The set of mental faculties and states such as thinking, perceiving, willing, or imagining.

Awareness of oneself and the world that accompanies certain mental states.

A subject's capacity to take itself as an object of thought or experience.

The set of psychic processes or contents that influence activity without being directly present to consciousness.

The principle or representation through which a subject relates to itself as a personal unity.

A notion designating the lived or reflected identity of a subject, often broader than the psychological ego alone.

The problem of what allows a person to be regarded as the same through time.

A being regarded as a subject of consciousness, action, responsibility, and rights.

The dimension of experience as lived from the point of view of a subject.

An ideal of validity independent of a subject's preferences or particularities.

The property of many mental states of being directed toward something.

The experienced qualitative features of experience, such as the way a color or pain appears.

The process by which a subject apprehends its environment through sensory experience.

An elementary sensory datum resulting from a stimulus or bodily state.

The capacity to form or transform representations in the absence of their immediate object.

The capacity to retain, recall, or reconstruct past experiences and knowledge.

Reflective observation of one's own mental states.

The set of information-processing processes involved especially in perception, reasoning, and memory.

The thesis that certain mental phenomena emerge from complex physical systems without simply reducing to them.

The thesis that everything that exists is physical or ultimately depends on the physical.

A theory of mind that defines mental states by their functions and causal relations rather than by their substance.

The study of human acts, intentions, reasons, decisions, and responsibilities.

An event attributable to an agent insofar as the agent acts rather than merely undergoes something.

A being capable of initiating or directing an action.

The capacity of an individual or group to act and produce effects.

A conscious orientation or disposition of an agent toward an action or end.

The faculty or power by which a subject determines itself to act.

The examination of reasons and options preceding a decision.

The act by which an agent chooses among several possible courses of action.

The capacity to act or determine oneself under conditions that cannot be reduced to constraint.

The power attributed to an agent to choose among several possible courses of action.

The capacity to give oneself rules or principles of action.

A situation in which the rule of action comes from a will, authority, or desire external to the subject's rational principle.

The thesis that every event follows necessarily from prior conditions and laws.

The position that a form of freedom can be compatible with determinism.

The position that genuine freedom and determinism cannot both be true.

The idea that certain events must happen regardless of the choices or actions made.

The condition under which an agent can be regarded as the author of their actions and answer for their consequences.

Pressure or force that limits the possibility of acting according to one's own will.

A disposition acquired through repetition that spontaneously guides action.

Philosophical reflection on ways of living, values, and criteria for right or good action.

The set of norms, duties, and values that guide individual or collective conduct.

A quality or principle by virtue of which something is judged desirable, good, just, or worthy.

What is regarded as desirable or morally positive according to a given conception.

What is judged harmful, blameworthy, or contrary to the good.

A moral obligation that binds an agent independently of immediate preferences.

An explicit or implicit rule indicating what should be done or regarded as acceptable.

A stable disposition of character to act well in certain situations.

A stable disposition leading to conduct judged bad or deficient.

A state or form of life regarded as fulfilled, satisfying, or worth pursuing.

The doctrine that makes happiness or human flourishing the central end of moral life.

The doctrine that gives pleasure a fundamental value in defining the good life.

A theory that evaluates actions primarily according to their consequences for overall well-being.

An approach that judges actions according to duties or principles rather than solely by their consequences.

A family of theories that evaluates an action according to the value of its consequences.

An approach centered on the formation of the character and dispositions of a good person.

In Kant, an unconditional moral principle that commands independently of particular interests.

A subjective principle that an agent gives themselves to guide their action.

The value attributed to a person as an end in themselves and not merely as a means.

A disposition or conduct aimed at the good of others.

The thesis that an agent should give priority to pursuing their own interest.

Weakness of will by which a person acts against what they nevertheless judge to be better.

A situation in which several moral obligations or values come into conflict.

A situation in which every available option seems to violate an important moral requirement.

Ethical reflection on medicine, living beings, biotechnology, and practices of care.

Reflection on the moral status of animals and human obligations toward them.

Reflection on the moral value of nature, ecosystems, and future generations.

The normative and conceptual study of power, the state, justice, and collective organization.

The activity and domain relating to the organization of power and common life.

The capacity of an actor or institution to produce effects on conduct or situations.

Power recognized as legitimate by those over whom it is exercised.

The quality of a power, norm, or institution regarded as justified.

A sovereign political organization with institutions governing a territory and a population.

The supreme power of a political authority over its legal and political order.

The set of institutions and agents responsible for directing the political action of a state.

A regime in which political power is based, directly or indirectly, on the participation of the people.

A status linking a person to a political community and granting them rights and duties.

The possibility of participating in public life and enjoying rights protected against arbitrariness.

The principle that people should be treated equally in certain relevant respects.

A pursuit of justice attentive to particular situations and relevant differences.

A principle governing the distribution of rights, duties, goods, and sanctions.

Reflection on the legitimate criteria for distributing resources, benefits, and burdens.

A form of justice aimed at repairing or compensating for a wrong.

The set of institutionalized norms that organize social relations and may be backed by sanctions.

The view that certain rights or principles of justice exist independently of positive laws.

The set of legal rules actually in force in a given society.

A theoretical model explaining political authority on the basis of a real or hypothetical agreement among individuals.

The set of conditions and goods regarded as benefiting the community as a whole.

A political form in which public affairs are governed through institutions rather than as the private property of a ruler.

The arbitrary and oppressive exercise of power for the benefit of an individual or group.

A concept designating a regime that seeks to control political, social, and sometimes private life very extensively.

The public, deliberate, and generally nonviolent violation of a law judged unjust in order to obtain its reform.

An organized set of relations, institutions, and practices linking individuals.

The set of practices, norms, knowledge, symbols, and works transmitted within a society.

A notion designating a broad historical ensemble of social, technical, political, and cultural forms.

What is conceived as given independently of human artifice; its opposition to culture varies across traditions.

A durable structure of rules and practices organizing a domain of collective life.

The process by which an individual learns the norms and practices of their social environment.

A system of representations and values that organizes a view of the social and political world.

A situation in which a subject becomes estranged from themselves, their activity, others, or the product of their work.

The treatment of a person, relation, or process as a thing.

Human activity that transforms the world and produces and reproduces the conditions of existence.

An organized set of procedures and know-how used to achieve a result.

A notion designating the set of intellectual, social, and political transformations associated with the modern world.

The idea that history may be oriented toward an improvement in knowledge, techniques, or human conditions.

An approach that emphasizes the historically situated character of institutions, ideas, and values.

The weakening or absence of common norms that structure social conduct.

The study of meaning, reference, speech acts, and the relations among language, thought, and world.

The capacity and system that make it possible to produce and understand organized signs.

A conventional system of signs shared by a linguistic community.

The concrete use of a language by a speaker in a particular situation.

An element that refers to something else for an interpreter.

The material or perceptible side of a sign in the Saussurean tradition.

The concept associated with the signifier in the Saussurean tradition.

The intelligible content of an expression or the way in which it presents its object.

The object, individual, or state of affairs to which an expression refers.

A content capable of being true or false independently of its particular linguistic formulation.

A linguistic occurrence produced in a given context.

An action performed by means of words, such as promising, ordering, or declaring.

An utterance that performs an action by the very fact of being spoken under appropriate conditions.

In Wittgenstein, a practice in which the meaning of expressions depends on their uses within a form of life.

The hypothesis of a language whose terms could in principle be understood by only one subject.

The study of the meaning of signs and expressions.

The study of language use in context and of effects related to communicative intentions and situations.

The branch of philosophy that studies art, sensory experience, and judgments of taste.

The set of practices and works to which aesthetic, expressive, symbolic, or institutional value is attributed.

An aesthetic category associated with an experience of satisfaction or harmony whose status is philosophically debated.

An aesthetic experience linked to what exceeds ordinary forms of measure, mastery, or representation.

The faculty of judging or experiencing the aesthetic value of a work or form.

A judgment concerning aesthetic value or experience rather than factual truth alone.

The Greek notion of representation or imitation, central to ancient theories of art.

In Aristotle, the effect of tragedy connected with the engagement and working-through of emotions, especially pity and fear.

A conception according to which a work manifests or gives form to affects, experiences, or meanings.

The act or result by which a work makes something available to sight, hearing, or thought.

In Walter Benjamin, the historical singularity and irreducible presence associated with the original work of art.

The idea that art has its own ends or criteria and cannot be reduced to moral or utilitarian functions.

An artistic movement that claims a break with established forms and conventions.

An aesthetic category associated with irregularity, variety, and the visual effect of a scene.

The process by which an object, practice, or event is treated primarily in terms of its aesthetic appearance.

The rational study of concepts, arguments, and experiences related to religion.

A set of beliefs, practices, and institutions relating a community to a sacred or transcendent order.

Confident adherence to a religious truth or reality that cannot be reduced to rational demonstration.

The belief or doctrine affirming the existence of a personal or acting God.

A doctrine that admits a divine creator principle while often rejecting revelation or continuous supernatural intervention.

The position that denies or does not recognize the existence of deities.

The position of suspending judgment about God's existence when it is considered unknowable or unproven.

The doctrine that identifies God with the totality of reality or refuses to radically separate God and nature.

The conception of a God situated beyond the world and not reducible to the natural order.

The conception according to which the divine is present within the world or reality itself.

An attempt to reconcile the existence of an all-good and all-powerful God with the existence of evil.

The philosophical difficulty raised by the coexistence of evil and the attributes traditionally ascribed to God.

The supposed manifestation of a divine truth to human beings.

An event interpreted as exceptional and attributed to divine or supernatural intervention.

Reflection on ultimate ends: death, judgment, salvation, the end of the world, or final destiny.

The position that gives priority to faith over reason in access to religious truths.

The first principle or fundamental origin from which the Presocratics explain the world.

Nature conceived as a process of growth, emergence, and the inherent ordering of things.

The world understood as an ordered whole.

A Greek term that can mean word, reason, discourse, or principle of intelligibility.

In Anaximander, the indefinite or unlimited principle from which things arise.

The doctrine that reality is composed of indivisible elements moving in the void.

In Latin Epicureanism, the slight spontaneous swerve of atoms that avoids absolute mechanical determinism.

In Parmenides, the one, necessary, and immutable reality opposed to the becoming of appearances.

The process of change through which things arise, transform, and disappear.

A practice of critical dialogue aimed at testing definitions and beliefs.

The attitude by which Socrates often feigns ignorance in order to lead an interlocutor to examine their certainties.

Socratic refutation that brings the contradictions of a position to light.

An intelligible and stable reality of which sensible things are imperfect instances.

In Plato, the domain of realities accessible to the intellect rather than to the senses alone.

In Plato, the theory that learning consists in part in remembering truths the soul already knew.

Plato's image of philosophical education as a passage from appearances to the intelligible.

In Plato's Timaeus, the divine craftsman who orders the world using the intelligible Forms as models.

The Aristotelian doctrine that sensible substances are composed of matter and form.

In Aristotle, that out of which a thing is made.

In Aristotle, the structure or essence that makes a thing what it is.

In Aristotle, the principle or agent from which a change originates.

In Aristotle, the end or function for the sake of which a thing is or acts.

The state of fulfillment of a being that fully realizes its form or end.

The ultimate end of human action, identified especially with happiness in Aristotle.

Aristotle's formula according to which the human being fulfills its nature within a political community.

A school that makes virtue, reason, and agreement with the order of the world the foundations of the good life.

In Stoicism, freedom from disordered passions that disturb judgment.

A state of tranquility of the soul sought by several Hellenistic schools.

In Epictetus, the faculty of choice and judgment that truly depends on us.

The Stoic distinction between what depends on us and what does not.

A school that makes pleasure understood as the absence of disturbance and pain the principle of a happy life.

The absence of bodily pain in the Epicurean tradition.

The traditional summary of four Epicurean remedies against the main human fears.

A school that values a simple life, free from superfluous social conventions and in accordance with nature.

A practice of suspending judgment aimed at tranquility in the face of dogmatic claims.

Suspension of judgment, central to ancient skepticism and later taken up again by phenomenology.

An equal balance of force between opposing arguments that leads the skeptic to suspend judgment.

A late ancient tradition according to which all reality proceeds hierarchically from a supreme principle, the One.

In Plotinus, the absolutely simple principle beyond even being and thought.

In Neoplatonism, a fundamental level of reality, especially the One, Intellect, and Soul.

The process by which the multiplicity of reality proceeds from a first principle without exhausting it.

A medieval intellectual tradition based on the analysis of authorities, disputation, and logical argumentation.

A scholastic form of examining a problem through objections, replies, and an argued resolution.

A medieval university debate structured around a question and opposing arguments.

The medieval problem of articulating revealed truths with knowledge accessible to reason.

The doctrine that the world is created out of nothing rather than from preexisting matter.

The property of a being that exists through itself and does not depend on an external cause.

The idea that the world might not have existed or could have been otherwise.

An argument that proceeds from contingent or caused realities to a first cause or ultimate ground.

An argument that attempts to derive God's existence from the very concept of a supreme being.

The doctrine that the term 'being' is said of God and creatures neither in exactly the same sense nor in a wholly different one.

In medieval Aristotelianism, the intellectual principle that makes intelligible forms actual.

The debate over the status of general concepts and their relation to particular things.

The tradition deriving from Thomas Aquinas that articulates Aristotelianism, metaphysics, and Christian theology.

A medieval current influenced by Averroes's commentaries on Aristotle.

A doctrine that gives the will a fundamental role relative to the intellect in action or theology.

A current that gives reason a major role in access to fundamental knowledge.

A current according to which sensory experience plays a decisive role in the origin and justification of knowledge.

The Cartesian certainty according to which the very act of thinking attests to the existence of the thinking subject.

In Descartes, a criterion of truth applied to representations grasped by the mind with self-evidence.

The distinction between thinking substance and extended substance.

The doctrine that God is the true cause connecting events that we believe to be causally linked.

In Leibniz, a simple and indivisible substance representing the world from its own point of view.

In Leibniz, the coordination of substances without direct interaction according to an order instituted by God.

The principle that nothing is without a reason explaining why it is thus rather than otherwise.

In Spinoza, the striving by which each being perseveres in its being.

Spinoza's formula identifying God and Nature as a single infinite substance.

In Spinoza, a modification of the power to act accompanied by the idea of that modification.

In Spinoza, an idea understood through its causes and possessing sufficient intelligibility.

An image associated with Locke according to which the mind contains no determinate innate ideas prior to experience.

In Locke, properties supposed to belong to objects themselves, such as extension or shape.

In Locke, powers of objects to produce in us sensations such as colors or smells.

An empiricist principle explaining certain mental operations through habitual connections between representations.

The analysis according to which we observe regular successions rather than a directly perceptible necessary connection.

The difficulty of logically justifying the move from past regularities to general expectations about the future.

A family of theories associated with Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau that explain political order through an agreement among individuals.

Kant's project of examining the powers and limits of reason before any metaphysical claim.

In Kant, what concerns the conditions of possibility of experience and knowledge.

An object as it appears within the forms and categories of our experience.

In Kant, the limiting concept of a thing considered independently of the conditions of our sensible experience.

In Kant, the immediate mode through which an object is given in space and time.

A pure concept of the understanding that structures experience, such as causality or substance.

The faculty of producing concepts and making judgments.

The faculty that seeks the unconditioned and principles beyond immediate empirical use.

A judgment that extends knowledge while claiming validity independently of particular experience.

A conflict between opposing theses that reason can produce when it exceeds its legitimate use.

In Kant, the capacity of rational will to give itself the moral law.

A being that must never be treated merely as a means, especially a rational person.

Kant's ideal of a community of rational beings who treat one another as ends.

Kant's doctrine that we know objects as they appear under the conditions of our sensibility and understanding.

The principle of unity of the 'I think' that accompanies representations.

The group of post-Kantian philosophies developed especially by Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel.

In Fichte, the principle of original activity from which experience is organized.

In Schelling and other idealists, a philosophy that seeks to conceive nature as an organized dynamic process.

An ultimate principle conceived as independent, unconditioned, or an all-encompassing totality.

In Hegel, the process by which human and historical reality progressively attains self-consciousness.

The dynamic by which determinations enter into tension, negate one another, and are preserved within more complex forms.

A Hegelian term for a cancellation that simultaneously preserves and raises what it overcomes.

The process by which self-consciousness depends on its relation to other consciousnesses.

A figure in the Phenomenology of Spirit illustrating a struggle for recognition and the reversal of dependencies.

In Hegel, the level of spirit realized in law, morality, and institutions.

A Marxist approach that analyzes history through material conditions of production and social relations.

The historical organization of productive forces and relations of production.

A group defined especially by its position within economic and social relations of production.

Conflict between classes with antagonistic interests, regarded in Marxist analysis as a driver of historical transformation.

In Marx, the process by which social relations appear as natural properties of commodities.

In Marxian analysis, the difference between the value produced by labor and the value returned to the worker as wages.

Transformative human activity through which theory and practice are articulated.

Nietzsche's method of examining the history of values and the forces that produced their meaning.

In Nietzsche, a notion designating a dynamic of affirmation, interpretation, and increase of forces.

A diagnosis of the loss or devaluation of the highest values that give meaning to existence.

A Nietzschean motif that tests the affirmation of a life one would accept to live again indefinitely.

A Nietzschean figure of a creative overcoming of the human being attached to inherited values.

A reactive affect by which powerlessness can transform its frustrations into moral values hostile to what surpasses it.

The project of reevaluating and creating values beyond moral frameworks judged decadent.

A method and tradition that describes the structures of experience as it presents itself to consciousness.

The bracketing of spontaneous commitments concerning the existence of the world in order to examine experience.

Husserl's methodical suspension of the natural attitude.

In Husserl, an intentional act of consciousness.

In Husserl, the object as intended within an intentional experience.

The pre-theoretical horizon of everyday experience on which scientific constructions rest.

In Heidegger, the mode of being proper to the human being insofar as it relates to its own being.

Heidegger's structure according to which human existence is always already engaged in a world of meanings and practices.

In Heidegger, the fundamental structure of Dasein as a being engaged in possibilities.

The existential relation to one's own finitude that allows for a more authentic appropriation of existence.

A mode of existence in which a subject more fully assumes their possibilities and responsibility.

The limited, temporal, and mortal character of human existence.

A family of philosophies that place concrete existence, freedom, anxiety, and responsibility at the forefront.

Sartre's formula according to which the human being has no predetermined nature and defines itself through its actions.

In Sartre, a way of concealing one's own freedom by treating oneself as a thing or a fixed role.

In Sartre, the massive mode of being of things that simply are what they are.

In Sartre, the mode of being of consciousness marked by distance from itself, project, and negation.

In Sartre, the power of consciousness to introduce negativity and distance itself from the given.

The experience of freedom, finitude, or the absence of an ultimate foundation in several existentialist philosophies.

In Camus, the tension between the human need for meaning and the silence of the world.

In Camus, a response to the absurd consisting in living and acting without recourse to metaphysical consolation.

The character of what is other; a central notion in philosophies of relation to others.

In Levinas, the manifestation of the other that ethically calls the subject to responsibility.

In Merleau-Ponty, a notion designating the intertwining of the perceiving body and the sensible world.

The body lived from within as a power of perception and action, rather than as a mere physical object.

A tradition that gives a central place to conceptual, logical, and linguistic analysis of philosophical problems.

The clarification of a statement through examination of its logical structure.

Russell's and the early Wittgenstein's project of analyzing the world and language into logically simple elements.

An expression of the form 'the F' analyzed by Russell in order to clarify its logical functioning.

A state of affairs held to obtain in the world and to which a statement can correspond.

An idea associated with logical positivism according to which the cognitive meaning of a statement depends on its conditions of verification.

A movement of the Vienna Circle that privileged logical analysis and science while criticizing traditional metaphysics.

Counterexamples showing that a justified true belief is not always sufficient to constitute knowledge.

The thesis that justification or knowledge can depend on factors external to what the subject is aware of.

The thesis that the factors justifying a belief must be accessible to the subject.

A tradition that links meaning and truth to practices, consequences, and inquiry.

In Dewey and the pragmatists, the process of resolving problematic situations through experimentation and revision.

In Peirce, the principle of clarifying a concept through the conceivable practical effects of its object.

The idea that the search for truth is a collective, public, and revisable process.

A unit of action performed through language, developed especially by Austin and Searle.

A form of shared intention that makes it possible to think about common actions, rules, and institutions.

A relation according to which a difference at one level of properties implies a difference at a more fundamental level.

A tool of logic and metaphysics used to represent different coherent ways things could be.

In Kripke, an expression that refers to the same object in every possible world in which that object exists.

Putnam's thought experiment used to defend the idea that meaning also depends on the external environment.

An approach that explains human phenomena through the constitutive relations of a system rather than through isolated elements.

An organized set of relations defining the place and function of its elements.

A heterogeneous group of critical approaches to fixed structures, attentive to history, power, and the instability of meaning.

In Derrida, a reading that brings to light hierarchical oppositions and internal tensions within a text or concept.

Derrida's neologism designating both difference and deferral through which meaning is never given as total presence.

In Derrida, the mark of an absence and a difference that participates in the production of meaning.

In Foucault, a method for analyzing the historical rules that make certain discourses possible.

A method that studies the historical emergence of practices, norms, and power relations without assuming a simple origin.

In Foucault, the historical configuration of the conditions of possibility of knowledge in a given era.

A network of discourses, institutions, practices, and techniques involved in the exercise of power.

A concept designating forms of power that take the management of the life of populations as their object.

In Foucault, a set of techniques of power directed at bodies and populations.

The production of norms used to classify, correct, and govern conduct.

Foucault's model of a power based on the permanent possibility of being observed.

In Deleuze and Guattari, a non-hierarchical and multiple model for organizing relations.

The process by which a practice, identity, or assemblage becomes detached from the territory that organized it.

In Deleuze and Guattari, a provisional composition of heterogeneous relations that produces effects.

A concept used differently by various authors to think about a copy or appearance that blurs the opposition between original and representation.

In Baudrillard, a situation in which signs and simulations tend to become more operative than the distinction between representation and reality.

The process through which individuals acquire esteem, rights, and identity through their social relations.

A framework for analyzing the combined effects of several social relations and forms of domination.

In Indian traditions, a complex notion that can designate order, duty, law, or the right path depending on context.

The principle that actions have moral or existential consequences in several Indian traditions.

The cycle of conditioned existences through birth, death, and rebirth in several Indian traditions.

Liberation from the cycle of samsara in various Indian philosophies.

In several Indian traditions, the principle of the self or deep identity, interpreted differently across schools.

In Vedānta, ultimate reality or the absolute principle, whose relation to ātman varies across schools.

A non-dualist school of Vedānta affirming the ultimate identity of ātman and Brahman.

A principle of nonviolence and non-harm developed in several Indian traditions.

In Buddhism, the unsatisfactory or painful character of conditioned existence.

The Buddhist doctrine of the absence of a permanent and independent self.

The Buddhist notion of the impermanence of all conditioned phenomena.

In Buddhism, the extinction of attachment, ignorance, and the causes of suffering.

In Mahāyāna Buddhism, the absence of intrinsic and independent existence in phenomena.

The Buddhist principle according to which phenomena arise in dependence on causes and conditions.

In Daoism, the way or fundamental process according to which the world unfolds.

The Daoist principle of non-forced action or action in accordance with the course of things.

A pair of complementary polarities used in Chinese thought to describe relational transformations.

A Chinese notion designating the breath or vital dynamic circulating through the world and living beings.

In Confucianism, the virtue of humanity, benevolence, and right relation to others.

In Confucianism, the set of rites, forms, and conduct that order social life.

The Confucian ideal of a morally cultivated person capable of governing their conduct.

The Confucian principle that social order requires words, roles, and conduct to correspond appropriately.

A notion in some African philosophies emphasizing interdependence and relational humanity.

A family of Andean conceptions of the good life emphasizing community and relations with living beings.

An approach that brings several philosophical traditions into dialogue without taking any one of them as a prior universal norm.

A paradox illustrating the indecision of an agent placed between two strictly equivalent options.

The problem of the identity of an object whose parts are all gradually replaced.

A skeptical thought experiment asking how one could distinguish ordinary reality from a perfectly undetectable simulation.

The hypothesis of an extremely powerful deceiver used to push methodical doubt to its maximum.

The figure of an intelligence that, knowing all laws and positions of matter, could predict the future in a deterministic universe.

A quantum-physics thought experiment often used philosophically to discuss measurement, superposition, and observation.

Searle's argument intended to show that correctly manipulating symbols is not necessarily sufficient to understand their meaning.

Nozick's thought experiment asking whether we would choose a life of simulated pleasures rather than a real life.

A family of moral dilemmas studying differences among acting, allowing, intention, and consequences.

Rawls's device asking us to choose principles of justice without knowing our future place in society.

A theoretical scenario imagining the human condition before or without political institutions.

A Platonic story questioning the justice of a person who could act with complete impunity.

A paradox produced by a statement that asserts its own falsity.

The question of whether an omnipotent being can perform an action that would limit its own power.

A decision problem opposing intuitive principles of rationality in the face of a highly reliable predictor.

A thought experiment about personal identity in which a person is reproduced elsewhere after their body is analyzed.

A thought experiment about qualia asking whether knowing all physical facts about color is enough to know what it is like to see it.

A hypothetical being physically identical to a human but lacking conscious experience, used against certain forms of physicalism.