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Multitude (philosophy)
Multitude is a term in philosophy referring to a collective of people defined not by a shared identity, but by a common mode of existence. The concept has deep roots in historical texts. In ancient philosophy, thinkers explored the nature and role of "the many", typically in social and political contexts. Niccolò Machiavelli treated the multitude pragmatically, focusing on the passions and employing a form of realism near the dawn of early modern philosophy. The concept gained prominence in the 17th century through the work of Thomas Hobbes and Baruch Spinoza, who developed the term as part of their broader engagements with contemporary events and intellectual history, using increasingly technical language. Focusing on mechanism in philosophy amid the Scientific Revolution, Hobbes sought to apply principles of classical mechanics to model human behavior and political organization. He conceptualized the multitude as an unstable pre-political mass. He argued that it benefited fro ...
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Existence
Existence is the state of having being or reality in contrast to nonexistence and nonbeing. Existence is often contrasted with essence: the essence of an entity is its essential features or qualities, which can be understood even if one does not know whether the entity exists. Ontology is the philosophical discipline studying the nature and types of existence. Singular existence is the existence of individual entities while general existence refers to the existence of concepts or universals. Entities present in space and time have Abstract and concrete, concrete existence in contrast to abstract entities, like numbers and sets. Other distinctions are between Subjunctive possibility, possible, Contingency (philosophy), contingent, and Metaphysical necessity, necessary existence and between Matter, physical and Mind, mental existence. The common view is that an entity either exists or not with nothing in between, but some philosophers say that there are degrees of existence, me ...
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Sovereign
''Sovereign'' is a title that can be applied to the highest leader in various categories. The word is borrowed from Old French , which is ultimately derived from the Latin">-4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to talk of the beginnings of French, that is, when it wa ... , which is ultimately derived from the Latin , meaning 'above'. The roles of a sovereign vary from monarch, ruler or head of state to head of municipal government or head of a chivalric order. As a result, the word ''sovereignty'' has more recently also come to mean independence or autonomy. Head of state The word ''sovereign'' is frequently used synonymously with monarch. There are numerous titles in a monarchical rule which can belong to the sovereign. The sovereign is the autonomous head of the state. Examples of the various titles in modern sovereign leaders are: In some settings the use of the words ''Sovereign lady'' (sometimes with a capital ''L'' in ''lady'') have been ...
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Subject And Object (philosophy)
The distinction between subject and object is a basic idea of philosophy. *A subject is a being that exercises agency, undergoes conscious experiences, and is situated in relation to other things that exist outside itself; thus, a subject is any individual, person, or observer. *An object is any of the things observed or experienced by a subject, which may even include other beings (thus, from their own points of view: other subjects). A simple common differentiation for ''subject'' and ''object'' is: an observer versus a thing that is observed. In certain cases involving personhood, subjects and objects can be considered interchangeable where each label is applied only from one or the other point of view. Subjects and objects are related to the philosophical distinction between subjectivity and objectivity: the existence of knowledge, ideas, or information either dependent upon a subject (subjectivity) or independent from any subject (objectivity). Etymology In English the word ...
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Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri (; ; 1 August 1933 – 16 December 2023) was an Italian political philosopher known as one of the most prominent theorists of autonomism, as well as for his co-authorship of ''Empire (Hardt and Negri book), Empire'' with Michael Hardt. Born in Padua, Italy, Negri became a professor of political philosophy at the University of Padua, where he taught state and constitutional theory. Negri founded the Potere Operaio (Worker Power) group in 1969 and was a leading member of Autonomia Operaia, and published highly influential books, including Empire (Hardt and Negri book), ''Empire'' and ''Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire'', urging "revolutionary consciousness." Negri was accused in the late 1970s of being the mastermind of the left-wing urban guerrilla organization Red Brigades (Brigate Rosse or BR), which was involved in the Kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro, May 1978 kidnapping and murder of former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro. On 7 April 197 ...
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Michael Hardt
Michael Hardt (born 1960) is an American political philosopher and literary theorist. Hardt is best known for his 2000 book ''Empire'', which was co-written with Antonio Negri. Hardt and Negri suggest that several forces which they see as dominating contemporary life, such as class oppression, globalization and the commodification of services (or production of affects), have the potential to spark social change of unprecedented dimensions. A sequel, '' Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire'' was published in August 2004. It outlines an idea first propounded in ''Empire'', which is that of the multitude as possible locus of a democratic movement of global proportions. The third and final part of the trilogy, ''Commonwealth'', was published in 2009. Early life and education Hardt attended Winston Churchill High School in Potomac, Maryland. He studied engineering at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania from 1978 to 1983. In college during the 1970s energy crisis, ...
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Karl Marx
Karl Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He is best-known for the 1848 pamphlet '' The Communist Manifesto'' (written with Friedrich Engels), and his three-volume (1867–1894), a critique of classical political economy which employs his theory of historical materialism in an analysis of capitalism, in the culmination of his life's work. Marx's ideas and their subsequent development, collectively known as Marxism, have had enormous influence. Born in Trier in the Kingdom of Prussia, Marx studied at the universities of Bonn and Berlin, and received a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Jena in 1841. A Young Hegelian, he was influenced by the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and both critiqued and developed Hegel's ideas in works such as '' The German Ideology'' (written 1846) and the '' Grundrisse'' (written 1857–1858). While in Paris, Marx wrote ...
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Contemporary Philosophy
Contemporary philosophy is the present period in the history of Western philosophy beginning at the early 20th century with the increasing professionalization of the discipline and the rise of analytic and continental philosophy. The phrase "contemporary philosophy" is a piece of technical terminology in philosophy that refers to a specific period in the history of Western philosophy (namely the philosophy of the 20th and 21st centuries). However, the phrase is often confused with modern philosophy (which refers to an earlier period in Western philosophy), postmodern philosophy (which refers to some philosophers' criticisms of modern philosophy), and with a non-technical use of the phrase referring to any recent philosophic work. Professionalization Process Professionalization is the social process by which any trade or occupation establishes the group norms of conduct, acceptable qualifications for membership of the profession, a professional body or association to overse ...
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Charismatic Authority
In the field of sociology, charismatic authority is a concept of organizational leadership wherein the authority of the leader derives from the personal charisma of the leader. In the tripartite classification of authority, the sociologist Max Weber contrasts charismatic authority (character, heroism, leadership, religious) against two other types of authority: (i) rational-legal authority (modern law, the sovereign state, bureaucracy) and (ii) traditional authority (patriarchy, patrimonialism, feudalism). The Ancient Greek word became known through the Pauline epistles to Christian communities in the first century of the Common Era, wherein the word ''charisma'' denoted and described a ''gift'' of divine origin that demonstrated the divine authority possessed by the early leaders of the Church. Weber developed the theological term and the concept of ''charisma'' into a secular term for the sociological study of organizations. Terms derived from ''charisma'' include ''charismat ...
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Superstition
A superstition is any belief or practice considered by non-practitioners to be irrational or supernatural, attributed to fate or magic (supernatural), magic, perceived supernatural influence, or fear of that which is unknown. It is commonly applied to beliefs and practices surrounding luck, amulets, astrology, fortune telling, Spirit (animating force), spirits, and certain paranormal wikt: entity, entities, particularly the belief that future events can be foretold by specific unrelated prior events. The word ''superstition'' is also used to refer to a religion not practiced by the majority of a given society regardless of whether the prevailing religion contains alleged superstitions or to all religions by the antireligion, antireligious. Contemporary use Definitions of the term vary, but they commonly describe superstitions as irrational beliefs at odds with scientific knowledge of the world. Stuart Vyse proposes that a superstition's "presumed mechanism of action is inc ...
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Understand
Understanding is a cognitive process related to an abstract or physical object, such as a person, situation, or message whereby one is able to use concepts to model that object. Understanding is a relation between the knower and an object of understanding. Understanding implies abilities and dispositions with respect to an object of knowledge that are sufficient to support intelligent behavior. Understanding is often, though not always, related to learning concepts, and sometimes also the theory or theories associated with those concepts. However, a person may have a good ability to predict the behavior of an object, animal or system—and therefore may, in some sense, understand it—without necessarily being familiar with the concepts or theories associated with that object, animal, or system in their culture. They may have developed their own distinct concepts and theories, which may be equivalent, better or worse than the recognized standard concepts and theories of their cul ...
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Affect (philosophy)
Affect (from Latin ''affectus'' or ''adfectus'') is a concept, used in the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza and elaborated by Henri Bergson, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, that places emphasis on bodily or embodied experience. The word affect takes on a different meaning in psychology and other fields. For Spinoza, as discussed in Parts Two and Three of his ''Ethics'', affects are states of mind and body that are related to (but not exactly synonymous with) feelings and emotions, of which he says there are three primary kinds: pleasure or joy (''laetitia''),Part III, Proposition 56. pain or sorrow (''tristitia'') and desire (''cupiditas'') or appetite."In truth I cannot recognize any difference between human appetite and desire". Subsequent philosophical usage by Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari and their translator Brian Massumi, while derived explicitly from Spinoza, tends to distinguish more sharply than Spinoza does between affect and what are conventionally called emotions ...
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Immanence
The doctrine or theory of immanence holds that the divine encompasses or is manifested in the material world. It is held by some philosophical and metaphysical Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the basic structure of reality. It is traditionally seen as the study of mind-independent features of the world, but some theorists view it as an inquiry into the conceptual framework of h ... theories of divine presence. Immanence is usually applied in monotheism, monotheistic, Pantheism, pantheistic, Pandeism, pandeistic, or Panentheism, panentheistic faiths to suggest that the spirituality, spiritual world permeates the Wikt:mundane, mundane. It is often contrasted with theories of transcendence (religion), transcendence, in which the divine is seen to be outside the physical world, material world. Major faiths commonly devote significant philosophical efforts to explaining the relationship between immanence and transcendence but do so in different ways, su ...
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