See Wikipedia:Notability (people); Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons; Wikipedia:Categorization of people
Wikipedia:WikiProject Philosophy recommends that:
- Biographical articles should include a infobox template: template:Infobox Philosopher
- Biographical articles should be included in Category:Philosophers, at the top level, as well as in any appropriate sub-categories.
For the purposes of this list, a philosopher is someone who satisfies two criteria:
1. s/he has been identified as a philosopher in several reputable encyclopedic publications (e.g. MacMillan, Stanford, Routledge, Oxford, Duden... other German sources could be named here).
2. s/he has been identified as a philosopher in several articles published in reputable journals of philosophy (e.g. ...)
Notable dead philosophers should pass the test of criterion 1 to be non-controversial for inclusion in philosophical lists and categories (this list). In the case of notable living philosophers, criterion 1 can be replaced by criterion 2.
In the case of controversy, discussion among editors and WP:CONSENSUS is encouraged. Opinions can be sought at wipipedia:wikiproject Philosophy.
The preceding is my suggestion. What do others think? Universitytruth 22:54, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
Subcategories
Why all the subcategories? john k 19:16, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)
- Because philosophy is all about definition and distinction. --Oldak Quill 19:40, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I've been working on some category shifting to prepare for articles on new philosophers, I think it will be easier to navigate this way. Lucidish 21:12, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)
- Any news? Should we be moving philosopher entries out of Category:Philosophers and into its (proper) subcategories? Toby Woodwark 21:38, 2004 Jul 23 (UTC)
- On that, I have no opinion. It doesn't exactly hurt to have them both in their appropriate subcategories and the main category. I couldn't honestly decide whether or not to remove them from the main category (Philosophers) or not, but it seemed like a minor aesthetic thing. All philosophers ought to be in their proper subcategories, though, there's no question about that... Lucidish 02:00, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Nationalities
Why do we have a subcategory for British philosophers if we have separate categories for English and Scottish philosophers? Can we do away with British if we want to retain distinctions, or forget about English/Scottish/ etc? (British has the advantage of including Welsh philosophers, for which there is not yet a category, or classifying philosophers for whom the nationality is not clear.) -- Simonides 07:12, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- That was probably just somebody's mistake, go ahead and dump the British category imho. Lucidish 18:54, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Most of these "philosophers" certainly didn't call themselves that
When Grace Hopper was living, she did not call herself a philosopher. Certainly these people have accomplished great things, and certainly many of them can be called thinkers. Is "philosopher" now an honorific for them? Ancheta Wis 07:34, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- Yes. Lucidish 21:29, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Collaboration guidelines
The project for January is to:
- locate and standardise as many philosophical biographies as we can find,
- place them here on Category:Philosophers,
- standardising, adding, and interlinking the Philosopher infobox, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Philosophy/Before Dec 2005#Philosopher Template
- set project standards for biographies of philosophers Wikipedia:WikiProject Philosophy/readability#Biographical articles
Philosopher template
Folks, I suggest that we use the Template:Infobox Philosopher as it appears at David Hume as our model. Here it is, for your contemplation:
David Hume | |
|---|---|
| Era | 18th-century philosophy, |
| Region | Western Philosophy |
| School | British Empiricism/Scottish Enlightenment |
Main interests | Metaphysics, Epistemology, Mind, Ethics, Politics, Aesthetics, Religion |
Notable ideas | Problem of causation, Is-ought problem |
Guide for using this template
Just copy and paste it into your favourite philosopher's biography, then modify its contents to suit. Banno 21:14, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Images
When an image is absent, the template looks a bit odd (see J. L. Austin). Since this is likely to happen with a large number of the biographies, a solution is needed. Creating an alternate template without the image seems a cumbersome solution. Is there a generic single-point image that we can use in order to remove the uglies? Banno 21:32, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Ilmari Karonen was able to fix this problem - ans sot the Wikiproject philosophy is eternally in hos debt. Banno 00:59, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
Ilmari also fixed the template so that if no date is recorded for a death, it remains invisible - see FI John Searle. Banno 01:16, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
Alphabetization and pruning
This section needs some serious reorganizing. Many philosophers need to be re-alphabetized by their last name (for example, "Howard Bloom" should not be under "H"). Then there's the matter of pruning. "Contemporary philosophy", last I checked, was not the name of a philosopher. noosphere 05:40, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
- I'm going through the individual philosophers and add the sort keys to sort by last name. Most have them now, but still more to do. Also, I'm removing all of the individual bio articles from the main category and recategorizing them to subcategories. – Doug Bell talk•contrib 04:14, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
Definition of philosopher
I hate to ask, but some discussions concerning whether Goethe is a philosopher are taking place on another page. That led me to the German wikipedia, where the main page for category:philosopher[1] contains a number of specifications on who is included in the category. I think it could be helpful to develop such guidelines here as well. Universitytruth 16:56, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Here are the four criteria for inclusion, as per German wikipedia (followed by a translation/suggestion for making it useful for English wikipedia):
Die Person ...
1. hat Schriften veröfftlicht, die in der Fachphilosophie diskutiert werden (oder wurden);
2. wird in einem einschlägigen Fachlexikon aufgeführt oder in der DDB als Philosoph bezeichnet;
3. ist einer breiteren Öffentlichkeit bekannt für Wirken/Schreiben bzgl. Philosophie als Weltweisheit und/oder Lebensform, wobei mindestens eine auch in der (sonstigen) Philosophie diskutierte Frage (z.B. Was ist das gute Leben?) thematisiert wird ggf. auch nach in der Fachphilosophie nicht angewandten Methoden;
4. hat einen Lehrstuhl im Bereich Philosophie an einer Universität inne. (Kann alleine u.U. nicht hinreichend sein).
The person...
1. has published writings that are (or have been) discussed in academic philosophy (e.g. philosophical journals);
2. is listed in a philosophical lexicon or is named a philosopher by the DDB (could be Library of Congress in our case);
3. is known to a wider public as someone who writes about philosophy / worldly wisdom, who writes about at least one question that is normally thematized in philosophy (e.g., What is the good life?), even if this involves methods not used in academic philosophy;
4. holds a professorship in Philosophy (may not be sufficient for inclusion)
Comments? Universitytruth 17:02, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
- Library of Congress? I don't think so. Banno 21:11, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
- Banno, what would be your positive suggestion in this case then? Universitytruth 21:30, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
- Excuse my facetious remark. Being a philosopher is more a question of being a member of a family rather than satisfying certain explicit criteria, and for that reason any definition will be controversial. But for reasons of practicality, you make a very valid point, and I think your criteria are good, provided that they are used inclusively rather than exclusively. By that I mean not just that anyone satisfying at least one criteria should be included; but also that anyone who does not satisfy more than one should not be excluded. So, for example, Rand could be included on the basis of criteria (3), even if she did not satisfy (1)
- Two points present themselves. Which list, or lists, should be used for the purposes of (2)? And more generally, three of the four points are to do with academic philosophy - is this too much? Banno 22:47, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
- You open up a huge can of worms (not to say Pandora's box) if you include Goethe as a philosopher. In that case, you would certainly have to include Giacomo Leopardi, perhaps Dante and even Dostoyevski and Tolstoy, not to mention Jesus Christ, Mohammed, etc., etc...
This may not be such an enormous problem though: since categores were designed to help people find things,I don't think they have to be very rigid. More inetersting is the problem of which infobox to use in such cases: the philosophy infobox, the literature infobox, etc.. The above criteria are far too flexible for me if we were dealing with a question of what I personally think should be the definfition of philosophy. But they are fine for the purposes of helping people find interesting connections. How many people know that Leopardi wrote extensively (though not partcualrly orignally) about moral philosophy, the meaning of life, the (non)existence of god, empiricism, materialism and so on? I would not call him a philosopher becasue his ideas are almost wholly borrowed from Rousseau and others, he is completely asystematic and random in his observations, etc, but he certainly "philosophized" a great deal indeed. There's nothing else to call vast parts of the Zibaldone. --Lacatosias 10:37, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
In the absence of further comment, I have combined two of Universitytruth's points into one, and unilateraly adopted them as the criteria for philosophership. Banno 06:55, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
I was hoping for further comment, but meanwhile have tweaked the criteria I proposed and Banno nicely edited. Reading over the Talk page, I see that Banno's suggestion is to be more inclusive than my recent tweak would have it. I wonder what people think of my suggestion, that fulfilling two criteria should allow someone to be considered a philosopher without controversy, and that fulfiling one criterion might need to involve discussion among editors, but would not immediately exclude someone. I have to admit that I am inclined not to regard Goethe as a philosopher, though he was clearly an intellectual. This involves no value judgement at all. It's just that he doesn't seem to satisfy criteria suggested in WP:LIST, namely that a relevant publication would say "X is a philosopher." In the case of writers of whom publications say "While X was not a philosopher in the technical sense, his/her works...", I think one has to be very careful about categorizing. These thoughts are meant not to be a meanie and 'exclude' people, but rather to ensure that lists and categories of philosophers (a special subgroup of writers and thinkers) don't turn into lists and categories of people who write. Universitytruth 12:28, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
Introducing systemic bias
On thinking about this a bit more, it is clear that the criteria as stated introduce systemic bias. Firstly, in most of the world, a professorship is a chair, or head of a university Department; but in the US and Canada it is only a lectureship. But since I cant imagine someone who holds a chair not also meeting the criteria for publication, the simplest thing to do is to remove that criteria.
Secondly, relying on the Library of Congress introduces an obvious bias, as would relying on the Philosopher's index. Furthermore, neither is openly accessible.
So I've reduced it to two criteria; one for academic philosophers, and one for popular philosophers. How does that look? Banno 22:06, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, it seems WP:LIST is evolving. The most useful paragraphs there (IMHO) have been moved to the Talk page. Other items that are not official guidelines yet, but seem useful to me, are the following. I think they can help us in this Category discussion as well:
- Each item on a list is an individual fact and requires an individual source.
- Each item needs its own citation allowing that item to be traced to a published source which confirms that the item belongs on the list.
So perhaps the second point should be stressed. I will now try to tweak the guidelines at the top of this page, in this direction. Universitytruth 15:05, 18 July 2006 (UTC)