French philosophy French philosophy French philosophy, here taken to mean philosophy in the French language, has been extremely diverse and has influenced Western philosophy as a whole for centuries, from the medieval scholasticism of Peter Abelard, through the founding of modern philosophy by René Descartes, to 20th century philosophy of science, existentialism, phenomenology, structuralism, and postmodernism. Peter Abelard (1079 – April 21, 1142) was a scholastic philosopher, theologian and logician. The story of his affair with and love for Héloïse has become legendary. The "Chambers Biographical Dictionary" describes him as "the keenest thinker and boldest theologian of the 12th Century". The general
Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature how philosophical paradigm shifts and their associated philosophical "problems" can be considered the result of the new metaphors, vocabularies, and mistaken linguistic associations which are necessarily a part of those new paradigms. "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature" was seen to be somewhat controversial upon its publication. It had its greatest success outside analytic philosophy, despite its reliance on arguments by Quine and Sellars, and was widely influential in the humanities. It was criticized extensively by analytic philosophers. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature is a 1979 book by American philosopher Richard Rorty, in