Reference
Glossary
Terms used across the guide. Each entry links to the page where it is explained most fully.
- Accident
- A feature a thing happens to have and could lose without ceasing to be itself, such as Socrates being pale. See Aristotle →
- The Active Intellect
- In Aristotle a part of mind that makes understanding possible; in Ibn Sina the last of the heavenly intellects, the “Giver of Forms.” See 2. The search for rational foundations →
- Ash‘arites
- The school of theology founded by al-Ash‘ari (d. 936), dominant in Sunni Islam. They held that God creates every event directly. See 2. The search for rational foundations →
- Cogito
- Descartes’s “I think, therefore I am,” the one certainty that survives all doubt. See Descartes →
- Dhawq
- “Tasting”: direct experiential knowledge, which Ghazali found in the Sufis. See Ghazali →
- Dialectic
- For Plato, disciplined question and answer that tests every assumption and rises to the Form of the Good. See Plato →
- Dualism
- The view that there are two kinds of reality, mind and matter. Descartes is its classic defender. See Descartes →
- Duration (durée)
- Bergson’s name for real time as an undivided flow, which the intellect turns into a row of separate moments. See 1. Religion and philosophy →
- Emanation
- Reality flowing out of the highest principle as light flows from the sun: necessarily, without loss, and in descending degrees. Plotinus and Ibn Sina. See Ghazali →
- Epistemology
- The part of philosophy that asks how we know and where knowledge comes from. See I. Sources of Knowledge →
- Essence
- What a thing must be to be what it is, as against what it merely happens to be (its accidents). See Aristotle →
- Ethics
- The part of philosophy that asks what makes an action right and a life good. See III. Ethical Conduct →
- Eudaimonia
- Flourishing or happiness: for Aristotle, the activity of the soul in accordance with virtue over a complete life. See Aristotle →
- The Forms
- Plato’s eternal, unchanging realities, such as Justice itself and the Good, which physical things copy. See Plato →
- The four causes
- Aristotle’s four answers to “why?”: material (what it is made of), formal (what it is), efficient (what brought it about) and final (what it is for). See Aristotle →
- Hylomorphism
- Aristotle’s view that every natural thing is form in matter. See Aristotle →
- Idealism
- The view that reality is, in the end, mental or spiritual. Kant’s “transcendental idealism” is instead a claim about the limits of knowing. See II. The Ontological Spectrum →
- Intuition
- Direct knowing, not by step-by-step reasoning. For Bergson it grasps duration; for Iqbal it is “a higher kind of intellect.” See 1. Religion and philosophy →
- Kalam
- Islamic scholastic theology: reasoned argument to explain and defend belief. See 2. The search for rational foundations →
- Materialism
- The view that matter is all that finally exists, and mind is a product of physical processes. See II. The Ontological Spectrum →
- Matter (hylē)
- For Aristotle, not stuff but a role: whatever can take on a form. In itself it is pure potential. See Aristotle →
- Metaphysics
- The study of what is most basic in reality: being, substance, cause, space and time. Ontology is its core. See II. The Ontological Spectrum →
- Mu‘tazila
- A rationalist school of theology which held that reason can establish truths about God and morality. See 2. The search for rational foundations →
- The Necessary Existent
- Ibn Sina’s name for God: the being whose essence is to exist, so that it cannot not exist. See Ghazali →
- Occasionalism
- The view that created things do not truly cause anything; God brings about each effect on the occasion of its apparent cause. Held by the Ash‘arites and by Malebranche. See Ghazali →
- Ontology
- The part of philosophy that asks what really exists. See II. The Ontological Spectrum →
- Phronēsis
- Practical wisdom: the ability, gained from experience, to see what to do in a particular situation. See Aristotle →
- Poiēsis
- Making: action whose end is a product outside it, such as a house or a cure. See Aristotle →
- Potential and actual
- Aristotle’s answer to how change is possible: an acorn is potentially an oak, and change is that potential being realized. See Aristotle →
- Pragmatism
- An American movement (Peirce, James, Dewey) that judges ideas by their practical results. See 11. Two tests of truth →
- Praxis
- Doing: action whose end is the activity itself done well, such as acting justly. See Aristotle →
- Qalb (the heart)
- In the Quran and in Iqbal, the heart as a kind of inner perception that “sees.” See 8. Inner experience as knowledge →
- Realism
- The view that truth and reality exist independently of anyone’s mind. Plato is a realist about the Forms. See Plato →
- The receptacle
- In Plato’s Timaeus, space, the “nurse of becoming” in which the copies of the Forms appear. Aristotle read it as matter. See Plato →
- Recollection
- Plato’s view that learning is remembering what the soul knew before birth. See Plato →
- Subliminal self
- The idea that consciousness extends below the threshold of ordinary awareness. See 8. Inner experience as knowledge →
- Substance
- What exists in its own right rather than as a feature of something else. For Aristotle, the individual thing; for Plato, the Forms; for Descartes, mind and body. See Aristotle →
- Syllogism
- Aristotle’s form of reasoning: “All humans are mortal. Socrates is human. So Socrates is mortal.” See Aristotle →
- Teleology
- Explaining things by their purpose or end (Greek telos), Aristotle’s final cause. See Aristotle →
- Theōria
- Contemplation: knowing for its own sake, the highest activity for Aristotle. See Aristotle →
- The Unmoved Mover
- Aristotle’s God: pure actuality, “thought thinking itself,” which moves the heavens by being loved. See Aristotle →
- The World-Soul
- Plato’s idea that the cosmos is a living being with a soul that moves, thinks and holds it together. See Plato →