Glossary of philosophical terms, organized by area.
Ontology and metaphysics
Terms addressing what exists, how things relate, and the structure of being.
- relational-ontology — the position that relations are ontologically prior to the entities they connect
- ontological-turn — the movement in social theory and philosophy that takes ontological questions seriously again
- ontologization — the process by which a conceptual distinction hardens into a claim about what exists
- animism — the attribution of life, agency, or sentience to nonhuman entities
- multinaturalism — Viveiros de Castro’s thesis that cultures share concepts but inhabit different natures
- perspectivism — the view that the world is constituted differently from different subject-positions
- geontologies — Elizabeth Poynton’s framework for how power governs through the distinction between life and nonlife
- intra-action — Karen Barad’s term for the mutual constitution of entities through their interaction
- mereology — the study of parts, wholes, and the relations between them
Existentialism and nihilism
Terms concerned with meaning, its absence, and responses to that absence.
- existentialism — the philosophical tradition centering individual existence, freedom, and responsibility
- absurdism — Camus’s position that the proper response to meaninglessness is revolt, not despair
- nihilism — the philosophical confrontation with the absence of inherent meaning or value
- active-nihilism — nihilism as a creative force that clears space for new values
Affect and phenomenology
Terms addressing experience, feeling, and embodied engagement with the world.
- affective-process — processes constituted through and organized by affect
- crisis-ordinariness — Berlant’s concept of crisis as a background condition of everyday life rather than an exceptional event
- grievability — Butler’s framework for which lives are recognized as worthy of mourning
- natality — Arendt’s concept of the capacity to begin something new through action
- libidinal-investment — psychic attachment to objects, structures, or positions that shapes behavior
- reproductive-futurism — Edelman’s term for the political logic that organizes the present around the figure of the child
- cruel-optimism — overlaps with sociology; attachment to conditions that obstruct flourishing
Logic and philosophy of mathematics
Terms at the intersection of formal logic, foundations, and philosophy of science.
- law-of-excluded-middle — the classical principle that every proposition is either true or false
- mathematical-constructivism — the position that mathematical objects exist only when constructively demonstrated
- polyvalence — the property of admitting more than two truth values
- intertheoretic-reduction — the relation between theories when one can be derived from another
Political philosophy
Terms addressing power, justice, and the structure of political life.
- procedural-liberalism — governance through neutral procedures that obscure substantive inequalities
- accursed-share — Bataille’s concept of the excess that every economy must expend or destroy
- opacity — Glissant’s claim that the right to not be fully understood is a condition of genuine relation
Semiotics and meaning
Terms concerned with signs, meaning-making, and symbolic action.
- simulacra — Baudrillard’s concept of copies without originals that precede and replace the real
- symbolic-act — an action whose significance lies in what it means rather than what it materially accomplishes
- quasi-event — an event-like occurrence that does not fully resolve into a determinate happening
- provenness — the condition of having been demonstrated or established through proof
- constructivism
- dialectics
- epistemology
- materialism