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, …
Fallacies
A fallacy in Critical Thinking is an error in argumentation that makes an argument invalid.
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: …
Mahatma Gandhi
Who was Mohandas K. Gandhi, what did he believe, and why do his ideas of truth, non-violence, satyagraha and …
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' …
Presocratics
The Presocratic philosophers were a group of thinkers who lived in ancient Greece before the time of 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 …