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Francisco Suárez died in Lisbon on 25 September 1617, having written the first metaphysics arranged in its own order rather than Aristotle's. William Faulkner was born on the day in 1897 and Glenn Gould in 1932: one took chronology apart in the novel, the other left the concert hall for the splicing block. Three refusals of the given order.
Gerolamo Cardano was born in Pavia on 24 September 1501; Paracelsus died in Salzburg on 24 September 1541. Two physicians who quarrelled with every authority they met, and who between them put a number where a quality had been: how much of a substance makes it poison, and how likely a throw of the dice is.
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Sigmund Freud died in Hampstead on 23 September 1939, after his physician Max Schur kept a promise made eleven years earlier. Augustus was born in Rome on 23 September 63 BC and died, Suetonius says, the easy death he had prayed for. Two lives that ended on their own terms, and two accounts of those endings argued over ever since.
Sigmund Freud
Faraday was born on 22 September 1791, Blanchot on 22 September 1907. André Gorz died on the day in 2007, with his wife Dorine, by their own decision. Three lives that each removed a centre, the atom, the author, the self-sufficient self; and two lesser names, Ruffini and Potebnia, who did the same to the formula and the word.
Arthur Schopenhauer died on his sofa in Frankfurt on 21 September 1860. Bernard Williams was born on the date in 1929, Mario Bunge in 1919, Peter van Inwagen in 1942; Savonarola in 1452, and Virgil died on it in 19 BC. Each had a view on how much philosophy can settle, and they do not agree.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Arthur Schopenhauer, Bernard Williams
Leo Strauss was born on 20 September 1899, Richard Montague in 1930, Gillian Rose in 1947 and Adrian Piper in 1948; Annie Besant died on the date in 1933. Four births and a death, and between them a quarrel about whether meaning is something hidden between the lines or something fully on the surface.
Leo Strauss
Paulo Freire was born on this day in 1921; Etienne Gilson died on it in 1978, Gianni Vattimo in 2023. On the same date in 1796 a Philadelphia printer published a letter no one had heard spoken. Four anniversaries, one argument about who is entitled to say what counts as knowledge.
Paulo Freire, Gianni Vattimo
Analytic philosophy tells its origin story as an escape from F. H. Bradley, the Merton recluse who died on 18 September 1924. But the regress argument about relations in Appearance and Reality was never answered, only bypassed, and the ethics of Ethical Studies anticipated the communitarian turn by a century.
F. H. Bradley
On 18 September 1944 the University of Chicago Press published The Road to Serfdom in an edition of 2,000 copies. On 18 September 1985 Monroe Beardsley died. Between them they left two arguments that order and meaning need no single authorising mind — and the same date supplies the objections.
Monroe Beardsley, F. H. Bradley
