The Sophists weren’t just debaters but educators. They guided their clients in rhetoric arguments as well as ethics. They coined the term – arete – which could mean excellence and also carries a notion of self-actualization – reaching one’s true potential. The...
Philosophy
Home » Philosophy »
Beginnings of political philosophy
As Athens was the first Democratic establishment in a sense, it encouraged its citizens (a certain class) to participate in the decisions of the state. With such initiatives, Athenian philosophers realized that they need to consider not only moral philosophy for the...
Plato and the Socratic dialogues
The reason why Socrates' influence was not forgotten in history was due to his mentee, Plato, who preserved his principles and ideologies in his writings. Plato was one of Socrates’ followers and was immensely inspired by his theories and methods. All of Plato’s works...
Plato’s theory of Forms
Plato's theory of Forms is one of the most enduringly strange parts of his philosophy. It is also one of the main centers of gravity around which Plato's work turns. In the centuries since Plato, philosophers have disagreed about the nuances of Plato's theory. But...
Plato’s cave
Plato’s cave was the first-ever philosophical thinking experiment. To demonstrate his theory of Forms, he asked his students to consider a suppository occurrence that could explain his notion. As presented by Plato, the allegory of the cave imagines a group of people...
Morality and religion
The flame which sparked the foundation of philosophy was indeed religion due to its thought-provoking nature. Later on, ancient Greek philosophers began to see religion as distanced and irrational and they wished to explain things with reason rather than religion....
Plato vs Aristotle
Plato established his own institute for philosophical study by the early half of the 4th century BCE – The Academy. There history found yet another great mind and contributor to philosophy, Aristotle. Just as eccentric with his approaches and ingenious in his insight,...
Scientific observation and classification
Aristotle was known to be a meticulous naturalist and a perfectionist in his methods of structuring and organizing his investigations. After his master’s death, he spent several years researching plants and animals in the region of Asia. What he gained from it was the...
Aristotle: knowledge from experience
Aristotle’s greatest contribution to the philosophical branch of epistemology was his argument that humans gain knowledge from experience instead of an inmate knowledge of Forms (as suggested by Plato). He came to this conclusion after he realized that his knowledge...
Logic and the syllogism
Yet again, the problem of how can philosophers justify their theories with rational arguments arose. However, Aristotle could not agree with the ways of early philosophers or even Socrates’ dialectical reasoning. It is then, that he established a system of logic as we...
Connect
Latest posts:
Infinite regress
Similar to how Anaximander presented a series of questions to Thales’ theory that remained unanswered, most philosophical debates never lead to a certain conclusion. The reason behind this is that once they ask ‘What supports this?’, it leads to an incessant chain of...
Heraclitus: everything is in flux
Heraclitus, like Thales, was a solitary thinker known for his theory of the ‘unity of opposites. Though he was primarily concerned with explanations of the world around he also advocated for concepts like social harmony. Most of his works (which failed to survive to...
Pythagoras: a universe ruled by numbers
Pythagoras was born in 570 BCE, in Ionia, Greece. He was the one of his kind Greek philosopher, mathematician, and founder of the Pythagorean brotherhood, a religious movement he initiated in Italy. He established the principles which later inspired the thoughts of...
Xenophanes – evidence and true belief
Another distinguished Ionian philosopher, Xenophanes, was the first one to produce evidence-based philosophical arguments. He traveled through many Greek colonies and studied the works of philosophers before him. Soon he crafted his own theory of cosmic composition...
Parmenides: monism
In the 5th century, the center of philosophy moved to Italy. Parmenides, a Greek philosopher of Elea in southern Italy was the one who founded Eleaticism – the leading pre-Socratic school of Greek thought. His general teaching has been preserved and revised from a...
Free Course in Semiology
A completely and truly free course on Semiology (Semiotics). Learn about the meaning of signs, how and why did the field emerged. What is the relationship between the street signs and the signs that we use every day - words.
