Tradition
Greek & Roman
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Democritus
Democritus of Abdera developed, with his teacher Leucippus, the atomist theory of nature. He held that division cannot go on forever: reality consists of…
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Diodorus Cronus
Diodorus Cronus was a Greek philosopher of the Dialectical school, active in Athens and Alexandria, famed for his logical puzzles. His Master Argument derived,…
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Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope, exiled from his Black Sea home, lived in Athens and Corinth and became the exemplary Cynic philosopher. He taught less by…
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Carneades
Carneades of Cyrene led Plato's Academy in Athens during its skeptical phase and was famed as a debater; on an embassy to Rome in…
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Chrysippus
Chrysippus of Soli succeeded Cleanthes as head of the Stoic school in Athens and gave Stoicism its systematic form. He developed a logic of…
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Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman orator, lawyer and statesman who, chiefly in his last years, wrote dialogues presenting Greek philosophy in Latin. Broadly…
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Anaxagoras
Anaxagoras of Clazomenae was a Pre-Socratic philosopher who spent much of his career in Athens, reportedly the first philosopher to settle there. He held…
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Anaximander
Anaximander of Miletus was a Pre-Socratic philosopher, traditionally a pupil or associate of Thales. He held that the source of all things is the…
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Anaximenes
Anaximenes of Miletus was the third of the Milesian Pre-Socratics, after Thales and Anaximander. He held that the underlying principle of all things is…
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Arcesilaus
Arcesilaus of Pitane became head of Plato's Academy in Athens around 268 BCE and turned it in a skeptical direction, beginning the period known…
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Agrippa
Agrippa was a Pyrrhonian skeptic, probably of the first century CE, about whom almost nothing is known beyond his name. Diogenes Laërtius credits him…
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Plato
Athenian philosopher, student of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle, who founded the Academy in Athens. His dialogues, most featuring Socrates as the main speaker,…
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Aristotle
Student of Plato for some twenty years and later tutor to Alexander the Great, Aristotle founded the Lyceum in Athens. His writings on logic,…
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Seneca
Roman Stoic philosopher, dramatist and statesman, born in Corduba in Hispania, who served as tutor and then adviser to the emperor Nero. Ordered to…
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Epictetus
Greek Stoic teacher born a slave in Hierapolis in Phrygia, who studied under Musonius Rufus in Rome and, after Domitian expelled the philosophers, taught…
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I keep reading summaries of philosophers instead of the books. Is that so bad?
Confession: in the year since I burnt out and started reading philosophy, I've read maybe three actual books and hundreds of summaries, threads, videos and ‘ten ideas from Stoicism’ posts. I can tell you what Kant, Nietzsche and the Gita say in…
Started by Rohan DesaiAnswer first (no replies yet) -
Diogenes was doing stand-up: the Cynic method as performance
I've just read the Diogenes stories in Diogenes Laertius, and I'm convinced the man was doing comedy, in the serious sense. Look at the famous ones. Plato defines a human as a featherless biped; Diogenes plucks a chicken, brings it to the…
Started by Gemma PritchardReply first (no replies yet) -
How can you talk about non-being without turning it into a something?
Every morning I practise taiji in the park and every evening I read a few lines of the Laozi with my grandson's dictionary. Chapter 40 says, roughly, that the things of the world are born from being, and being is born from…
Started by Liu MingqiaoAnswer first (no replies yet) -
My kitchen friendships end when people change jobs. Were they only friendships of utility?
For fifteen years in kitchens the pattern has been the same. You work ten-hour services side by side with someone, you cover for each other, you eat together at midnight, you know about their kids and their visa problems. Then they move…
Started by Joel D'SouzaReply first (no replies yet) -
Testing the theories of laughter on Nasreddin Hodja
Superiority, relief, incongruity, benign violation: I took the philosophers' theories of humour onto my bus route and tried them on the stories my grandfather told.
Started by Serkan AydoğduReply first (no replies yet) -
How much should one result change your mind? Thinking in degrees of belief
Base rates, the Dutch book and an ancient sceptic's coil of rope: a data scientist's case for believing by degrees.
Started by Wanjiru NjengaReply first (no replies yet) -
Can a machine be your friend? Aristotle, Buber and the ethics of AI companions
Companion apps are sold as friends and partners. The oldest theory of friendship explains what they can and cannot be, and shows where the real ethical problem lies.
Started by Derek HollisReply first (no replies yet) -
What the Stoics meant by ‘indifferent’, seen from a night shift
Health, life and death are 'indifferents' in Stoic ethics. That does not mean they don't matter, and getting the difference right changes how the Stoics read at a bedside.
Started by Elin HedqvistReply first (no replies yet) -
Adab, li and hexis: is character trained the same way in three traditions?
When a girl comes to learn batik in my mother's workshop, she doesn't begin by drawing. She begins by preparing cloth, heating wax, watching. She learns how to sit, how to hold the canting, how to speak to the older women. After…
Started by Ratna WulandariAnswer first (no replies yet) -
What is aesthetics? A beginner’s guide
Six questions that make up the philosophy of beauty and art, explained for someone meeting them for the first time, with a restorer's view of why they matter.
Started by Chiara BellandiReply first (no replies yet) -
Free will explained: the main positions, and what physics does and doesn’t settle
A physics reader's guide to the four classic answers, the options that don't fit the usual grid, and the question underneath them all.
Started by Lars EriksenReply first (no replies yet) -
Should a struggling state pay for music? Mozi and Xunzi’s quarrel
More than two thousand years before modern arts-funding debates, the Mohists argued that music wastes what the poor need, and Xunzi replied that a society without music cannot hold together. Both were partly right.
Started by Chen YutingReply first (no replies yet) -
Why does sad art feel good? What the rasa theorists worked out
A Sanskrit argument that ran for two centuries gives the most careful answer I know to the old puzzle of enjoying grief on the stage.
Started by Meera KulkarniReply first (no replies yet) -
Read the Republic with ‘citizen community’ in place of ‘state’ and the argument changes
Every year one of my students asks why we bother with Plato's Republic, since it's obviously a blueprint for a totalitarian state. I've started giving them an exercise that I'd like to share here. Take any English translation that renders polis as…
Started by Nikos TheodoridisReply first (no replies yet) -
Political philosophy in ten questions
A beginner's map of the questions political philosophers ask, from why anyone should obey a state to what we owe people beyond our borders, with answers drawn from several traditions.
Started by Hamza QureshiReply first (no replies yet)