Curated category
Catholic philosophers
- Thomas AquinasThomas Aquinas was the youngest of nine children, and his family had a plan for him. His brothers would be soldiers. He would follow his uncle Sinibald…
- Luis de MolinaLuis de Molina was born into a noble family in Castile on the 29th of September 1535, and he died in Madrid on the 12th of October 1600, the very year his…
- Dante AlighieriDante Alighieri began his most famous poem with a line of plain confusion: "Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita," or "Midway upon the journey of our life."…
- Augustine of HippoAugustine of Hippo was born on the 13th of November 354 in Thagaste, a small town in Roman North Africa that today is Souk Ahras, Algeria.
- Pope John Paul IIPope John Paul II was born Karol Józef Wojtyła on the 18th of May 1920, in the small Polish town of Wadowice. By the time he died on the 2nd of April 2005…
- René DescartesRené Descartes opened his treatise on emotions, the Passions of the Soul, with a startling promise. He would write on the topic, he said, "as if no one had…
- Clement of AlexandriaClement of Alexandria spent years wandering the ancient world before he ever arrived in Alexandria. Born around 150 AD under the full Roman name Titus…
- Gregory of NyssaGregory of Nyssa wrote something no one in the ancient world had written before him: a direct, unequivocal argument that slavery itself was sinful.
- Gregory of NazianzusGregory of Nazianzus once compared himself to the Prophet Jonah, begging to be thrown overboard. "Seize me and throw me," he told a council of 150 bishops in…
- Teresa of ÁvilaTeresa of Ávila was born Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda Dávila y Ahumada on the 28th of March 1515, and she died either just before midnight on the 4th of October…
- Thomas MoreThomas More climbed the scaffold at Tower Hill on the 6th of July 1535 and, finding the structure so rickety it might collapse, told the waiting official: "I…
- ErasmusDesiderius Erasmus woke before dawn, ink already on his fingers, and on a busy day he wrote or answered as many as forty letters in his own hand.
- Leon Battista AlbertiLeon Battista Alberti once boasted that he could stand with his feet together and spring clean over a man's head. He claimed he could throw a coin so high…
- Blaise PascalBlaise Pascal was born on the 19th of June, 1623, in Clermont-Ferrand, in France's Auvergne region by the Massif Central, and he died 39 years later having…
- Gabriel MarcelGabriel Honoré Marcel was born on the 7th of December 1889 in Paris, and by the time he died on the 8th of October 1973 he had written more than a dozen…
- Frederick CoplestonFrederick Charles Copleston was born on the 10th of April 1907 in the parish of Trull, near Taunton in Somerset, and he would go on to write one of the most…
- Giovanni Pico della MirandolaGiovanni Pico della Mirandola was 23 years old when he announced a challenge to the entire intellectual world. In December 1486, he published 900 theses…