Curated category
Philosophy
- EpistemologyEpistemology is the branch of philosophy that asks what knowledge is, where it comes from, and how far it can reach. The word feels ancient, yet it was…
- Friedrich NietzscheOn the 3rd of January 1889, in the streets of Turin, Friedrich Nietzsche caused a public disturbance and two policemen approached him.
- Immanuel KantImmanuel Kant lived so rigidly that his neighbors in Königsberg were said to set their watches by his daily walks. He was born Emanuel on the 22nd of April…
- PlatoPlato wrote that the safest general characterization of European philosophy is that it consists of a series of footnotes to him.
- AristotleAncient Greek scholars gave Aristotle a name reserved for one man: among medieval Muslim scholars he was "The First Teacher", and to Christians like Thomas…
- Jean-Jacques RousseauJean-Jacques Rousseau came into the world barely breathing. "I was born almost dying, they had little hope of saving me," he later wrote of his arrival in…
- Free willFree will sits at the heart of almost every moral judgment human beings make. When courts decide whether someone deserves punishment, when we praise a friend…
- Republic (Plato)The Republic opens with Socrates and Glaucon walking down to Piraeus, the port of Athens, when a man named Polemarchus intercepts them.
- David HumeDavid Hume was born on the 7th of May 1711 in a tenement on the north side of Edinburgh's Lawnmarket, into a family that was, by his own account, far from…
- John LockeJohn Locke composed his own obituary in Latin, and it begins with a command to a passerby. "Stay traveller: near this place lies JOHN LOCKE." The tablet, he…
- StoicismListen to the story of Stoicism, the practical craft a slave, an emperor, and an exile built for staying steady. Follow the thread from Epictetus to now.
- SocratesSocrates wrote nothing down. Not a single text, not a stray fragment, survives in his own hand. Everything known about the ancient Greek philosopher from…
- ExistentialismExistentialism asks the most personal question imaginable: how does a person build a meaningful life when the universe offers no instructions?
- EthicsEthics asks a question that most people have felt but few can fully answer: how should one live? That question sits at the center of moral philosophy, a…
- LogicLogic is the study of correct reasoning, and it starts with something as ordinary as a Sunday. Take the premises "it's Sunday" and "if it's Sunday then I…
- ConsciousnessConsciousness is the fact of being aware of something inside yourself, or of states and objects in the world around you.
- PhilosophyPhilosophy began with a word that may have been coined by a man who measured the music in plucked strings. Some sources credit the pre-Socratic thinker…
- MetaphysicsMetaphysics is the branch of philosophy that asks what reality is made of at its most basic level. Aristotle gave it a striking name.
- ConfuciusConfucius asked a single question when he came home from court and learned that the stables had burned down. He said, "Was anyone hurt?" He did not ask about…
- EpicureanismEpicureanism was founded in 307 BCE, and for more than six centuries it shaped how millions of people thought about pleasure, death, and the gods.