Routledge History of Philosophy Volume IV

396 GLOSSARY
gnoseology:
habitus:
Hermeticism:
humanism:
idea:
or truths. The task of the philosopher, foundationalists
argue, is to discover such foundations; only then can
our claims to knowledge be justified. Descartes and
Spinoza were foundationalists, but not all
foundationalists are rationalists. For example, a
philosopher who says that all our knowledge is based
on indubitable propositions about the content of our
sense experience is a foundationalist.
another term for epistemology (q.v.).
a Latin translation of Aristotle’s term ‘hexis’ (cf.
Categories ch. 8), translated into English as either
‘habit’ or ‘state’. A habitus is a stable and long-lasting
quality of something: e.g. the various kinds of
knowledge and virtue, as opposed to (say) sickness
and health, or feelings of warmth and coldness.
doctrines derived from the so-called ‘Hermetic
books’, a collection of Greek and Latin works on a
medley of subjects—magic, astrology, theology and
philosophy. They were supposed to have been written
in the remote past by Hermes Trismegistus (‘Hermes
the thrice-greatest’), a Greek name for Thoth, the
Egyptian god of learning. In fact, the works are not of
great antiquity—they were written between the first
and third centuries AD—and contain little that is
distinctively Egyptian.
in the sense used in this book, the ideas and attitudes
that distinguished the ‘humanists’ of the Renaissance.
These were students and teachers of the studia
humanitatis—‘the humanities’. Their work involved
the correct establishment and close study of classical
texts that concerned the main five subjects—
grammar, rhetoric, poetics, moral philosophy and
history.
a term which was introduced into philosophy by Plato.
For him, an ‘idea’ (a term related to the Greek word
for ‘to see’) was related to understanding; e.g. the idea
of justice is what one sees with the mind’s eye when
one understands the true nature of justice. Plato
insisted that such ideas (or ‘forms’: eid ) are not in
the human mind but have an existence that is
independent of us. Later Platonic philosophers, the
so-called ‘neo-Platonists’ (see ‘neo-Platonism’)
agreed with him about this, but said that ideas existed
in the mind of God. It was this neo-Platonic usage to