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1. Love and pursuit of wisdom by intellectual means and moral self-discipline.
3. A system of thought based on or involving such inquiry: the philosophy of Hume.
4. The critical analysis of fundamental assumptions or beliefs.
5. The disciplines presented in university curriculums of science and the liberal arts, except medicine, law, and theology.
6. The discipline comprising logic, ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, and epistemology.
7. A set of ideas or beliefs relating to a particular field or activity; an underlying theory.
8. A system of values by which one lives: has an unusual philosophy of life.






The branch of metaphysics that deals with the nature of being.


The view that all matter has consciousness.


The study of language, especially in a philosophical manner and as a science; the investigation of the laws of human speech, the relation of different tongues to one another, and historical development of languages; linguistic science. Note: Philology comprehends a knowledge of the etymology, or origin and combination of words; grammar, the construction of sentences, or use of words in language; criticism, the interpretation of authors, the affinities of different languages, and whatever relates to the history or present state of languages. It sometimes includes rhetoric, poetry, history, and antiquities.




2. A dualistic philosophy dividing the world between good and evil principles or regarding matter as intrinsically evil and mind as intrinsically good.




1. Of, relating to, or possessing intellectual or spiritual knowledge.
2. One of the so-called philosophers in the first ages of Christianity, who claimed a true philosophical interpretation of the Christian religion. Their system combined Oriental theology and Greek philosophy with the doctrines of Christianity. They held that all natures, intelligible, intellectual, and material, are derived from the Deity by successive emanations, which they called Eons.


1. One who believes that it is impossible to know whether there is a God.
2. One who is skeptical about the existence of God but does not profess true atheism.


2. The doctrine that there is no God or gods.




The doctrine holding that mental activities are simply epiphenomena of the neural processes of the brain.




The study of the occult meanings of numbers and their supposed influence on human life.


A literary and philosophical movement, associated with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller, asserting the existence of an ideal spiritual reality that transcends the empirical and scientific and is knowable through intuition.


One of several doctrines holding that all reality is objective and external to the mind and that knowledge is reliably based on observed objects and events.


The science of human duty; the body of rules of duty drawn from this science; a particular system of principles and rules concerting duty, whether true or false.




The doctrine, intermediate between nominalism and realism, that universals exist only within the mind and have no external or substantial reality.


The doctrine holding that abstract concepts, general terms, or universals have no independent existence but exist only as names.


1. The scholastic doctrine, opposed to nominalism, that universals exist independently of their being thought.
2. The modern philosophical doctrine, opposed to idealism, that physical objects exist independently of their being perceived.






The view that the world consists of or is explicable as two fundamental entities, such as mind and matter.


The theory that the heathen divinities originated in the personification of elemental powers.


The doctrine in the philosophy of mind according to which mental states are defined by their causes and effects.




The view that all that exists is ultimately physical.


1. The doctrine that people's duty is to promote human welfare.
2. The doctrine emphasizing a person's capacity for self-realization through reason; rejects religion and the supernatural.


1. An extreme form of skepticism that denies all existence.
2. A doctrine holding that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated.


2. The doctrine that absolute knowledge is impossible, either in a particular domain or in general.
3. A methodology based on an assumption of doubt with the aim of acquiring approximate or relative certainty.


A movement consisting of varying but associated theories, originally developed by Charles S. Peirce and William James and distinguished by the doctrine that the meaning of an idea or a proposition lies in its observable practical consequences.


1. The theory that the self is the only thing that can be known and verified.
2. The theory or view that the self is the only reality.


A principal philosophy and system of religion of China based on the teachings of Lao-tzu in the sixth century B.C. and on subsequent revelations. It advocates preserving and restoring the Tao in the body and the cosmos.




1. The ethical doctrine that morality has its foundations in self-interest.
2. The ethical belief that self-interest is the just and proper motive for all human conduct.


The view that the value of an action derives solely from the value of its consequences.






The formal theory and study of part-whole relationships; this branch of logic


A theory, especially in ethics or aesthetics, that conceptions of truth and moral values are not absolute but are relative to the persons or groups holding them.


The system of thought holding that all phenomena can be explained in terms of natural causes and laws.




A doctrine contending that sense perceptions are the only admissible basis of human knowledge and precise thought.


The doctrine that all events are predetermined by fate and are therefore unalterable.


A method of analyzing phenomena, as in anthropology, linguistics, psychology, or literature, chiefly characterized by contrasting the elemental structures of the phenomena in a system of binary opposition.


That philosophy or doctrine which recognizes or deals only with externals, or objects of sense perception; positivism; phenomenalism.


Any of various theories that justify moral principles or political arrangements by appealing to a social contract that is voluntarily committed to under ideal conditions for such commitment.


The doctrine of those who maintain the existence of two gods or of two original principles (as in Manicheism), one good and one evil; dualism.


The doctrine of belief that matter is God, or that there is no God except matter and the universe; pantheism.



Natural philosophy
