Aristotle
Who was Aristotle, what did he write, and why does a thinker from the fourth century BCE still shape how we …
Reference Desk
Bad Faith
What is bad faith (mauvaise foi) in Sartre’s philosophy? Sartre’s examples of the waiter and the …
Democritus
Twenty-four centuries before the periodic table, Democritus of Abdera argued that everything – rocks, …
Existentialism
What is existentialism? A beginner’s guide to the movement from Kierkegaard to Heidegger, Sartre, …
Friedrich Nietzsche
Who was Friedrich Nietzsche, what did he write, and what did he mean by the death of God, master and slave …
Heraclitus
Who was Heraclitus, what did he mean by saying that everything flows, and why has this obscure aristocrat from …
Love in Buddhism
The Buddha told a grieving grandmother that those who have a hundred dear ones have a hundred sorrows. The …
Love in Hinduism
Hinduism has no single word for love – it has a dozen. This guide explains the main ones, surveys how …
Love in Islam
The Qur’an says that God loves and is loved, and Muslims have argued for fourteen centuries about what …
Love in Judaism
What does Judaism teach about love? From the Shema and Leviticus to Maimonides, Hasidism, Buber and Levinas: …
Michel Foucault
Who was Michel Foucault, what did he write, and what did he mean by discourse, power/knowledge, discipline, …
Mind, Philosophy of
Is your mind the same thing as your brain? Something separate from it? A pattern of behaviour, a kind of …
Plato
Who was Plato, what did he write, and why does a thinker who died almost 2,400 years ago still shape how we …
Plato: Lysis
A guide to Plato’s Lysis, the first philosophical work on friendship: its setting, Socrates' …
Pythagoras
Who was Pythagoras, what did he actually teach, and how did a wandering religious leader from the sixth …
Socrates
Who was Socrates, why did Athens put him to death, and how did a man who claimed to know nothing become the …
Virtue
For two thousand years, ‘virtue’ was the central word in Western ethics – the name for …
Virtue Ethics
Virtue ethics asks not what you should do but what kind of person you should be. This guide explains the …