According to Kant, we wouldn’t be able to talk about ethics at all if we couldn’t see us as free beings who are capable of deciding. (more...)

Does an ‘engaged’ Buddhist really have to draw on this picture of the Buddha as a ‘social activist’ to find support for their own activism? (more...)

I focus in this final piece on a neglected aspect of Buddha’s teachings: the condemnation of social activism and political engagement. (more...)

Changing the world, challenging patriarchy, revolution, and the whole ethos of radical reformism is nothing like what the Buddha taught. (more...)

Buddhism is widely admired in the West for its commitments to progressive social activism. But is this really in the spirit of true Buddhism? (more...)

What are the books that brought us to philosophy? For John Shand, philosophy professor at the Open University, it was Karl Popper’s “The Open Society and Its Enemies” (more...)

The pursuit of happiness has always been one of the main driving forces of human lives. This article recounts the amazing history of the concept of happiness, from ancient times to today, from Eudaimonia to Gross National Happiness. (more...)

The poems of Homer, the Ilias and the Odyssey, mark the proper start of Greek civilization and can be seen as what shaped Greek identity, argues ancient philosophy Professsor Livio Rossetti. (more...)

One way of thinking about and getting an understanding of Kant’s Categories is to draw an analogy with the Stevenson Screen. This article sheds light on what Kant’s Categories are and how they function in our understanding of the world. (more...)

The Principal Doctrines is the main work of Epicurus on happiness. This article presents the original text with explanations and discussion questions. It also includes tips for organising an Epicurus reading group or book club. (more...)

According to Shénnóng, rulers had a limited number of very simple functions, mainly concerning agriculture. A ruler should teach people agricultural arts, inspect their fields, and keep a grain store. (more...)

Radical scepticism has a good claim to be both the longest lasting tradition in philosophy and the consistently least popular. There’s a lot to be said for it. (more...)

Plato’s use of drunkenness, mainly in the Symposium but also in the Phaedrus, is a metaphor designed to defend Socrates’ philosophical inspiration. (more...)

We discuss Plato’s description of Socrates’ philosophical inspiration as “drunkenness” and/or Dionysian mania; Plato’s metaphor draws on earlier Greek poetry. (more...)

The Dao De Jing is often not so different from other philosophies of its time. Acting according to nature, virtue as a skill, and the Daoist praise of humility are reminiscent of similar passages in the works of Stoics, Epicureans and Aristotle. (more...)

The Dao De Jing, one of the main books of Daoism, has always appealed to hermits. In this article, we look at it through a hermit’s eyes. (more...)

The Dao De Jing, literally “The Classic of the Way and the Virtue,” is traditionally attributed to an author known only as Lao Zi, which means “Old Master.” (more...)

The overall aim of Descartes’ philosophy is to found science on a secure and absolutely certain footing. Without that anything built by science would be open to doubt following from the weakness of its foundation. (more...)

Epicurus’ view on the value of friends has often been romanticised and equally often misunderstood. Here, we discuss Epicurus’ philosophy of friendship. (more...)

For Epicurus, pleasure is nothing but the absence of pain. Pain can further be subdivided into pain of the body and trouble in the soul. (more...)

Epicurus believed that the most reliable way to be happy is to reduce one’s desires until it’s easy to satisfy them. (more...)

The “artificial man” is not a new concept. Today, we call them robots, but many cultures have a myth about the creation of man and often it is a god who, through the use of divine powers, makes man out of some inanimate material. (more...)

Bertrand Russell’s book ‘The Conquest of Happiness’ (1930) attempts to analyse the conditions for happiness in our modern world, focusing on the different mindsets of the unhappy and the happy person. (more...)

Plato’s ideas about the eternal world of perfect Forms provided a template upon which Christian philosophers could build their vision of the eternal, transcendent realm of God. (more...)

Zeno of Elea (490-430 BC) is famous for his paradoxes that seem to prove, among other points, that no movement is possible. If an arrow in flight is standing still whenever we take a photograph of it, when is it actually moving? (more...)

German Romantics, much like their English counterparts, valued spontaneity and naturalness, in part as a reaction to the beginning loss of the natural world due to industrialisation and urbanisation. (more...)

Love is characterised by: 1. Exclusivity; 2. Constancy; 3. Reciprocity; 4. Uniqueness; and 5. Irrepleaceability of the beloved. (more...)

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) distinguishes three types of work; Labor, work, and action. (more...)

A Stoic is an adherent of Stoicism, an ancient Greek and Roman philosophy of life. Stoics thought that, in order to be happy, we must learn to distinguish between what we can control and what we cannot. (more...)

Robert Sternberg thinks that we can best describe love as composed of three “primary” components that combine to produce all the kinds of love that we observe around us: intimacy, passion and decision or commitment. (more...)

For Confucius, one’s personal loyalties to family, friends, co-workers and superiors are more important than the rules of some abstract ethical theory. (more...)

The theory of evolution changed our understanding of our own humanity, but overlooks that we are able to act against our instincts and to be truly free. (more...)

In Plato’s Symposion, the doctor Eryximachos says that love is the harmony of opposites. This resonates with beliefs in the traditional medicine of many cultures, as well as with our concept of a “balanced” person. (more...)

In Plato’s Symposium, Plato defines love as the desire for the eternal possession of the good. (more...)