Aristotle’s works can be said to be less focused on moral philosophy and more directed toward metaphysics and physics. Aristotelian science consists of the causal investigation of a specific department of reality – the nature of being. His emphasis on the concept of...
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Republic and Politics
Like his mentor, Aristotle also expanded his theories into the domain of political philosophy. However, like his other approaches, he yet again took a different point of view in ascertaining how society can be best organized. Plato’s Republic symbolized an...
Ethics and the Golden Mean
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were all greatly concerned with refining and structuring moral philosophy, finding answers to the most unconventional questions regarding human nature. However, as they hoped to seduce an absolute definition, they prevented themselves...
Beauty
It was an eventuality of the Socratic era that philosophers set out to define the concept of beauty – which became the cornerstone for the field of aesthetics. The seemingly straightforward question ‘What is beauty?’ opened a realm of endless definitions in order to...
Judging a work of art
When Athens developed, so did its culture. It went through a classical period of innovative growth in the subjects of poetry, music, theatre, architecture, and art. It was the same time great philosophical thinkers were emerging in Athens. Some of them failed to...
Cynics: Diogenes
The great Athenian philosophers – Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle left a legacy that proved to be hard to follow. After their demise, Greek philosophy was divided into four distinct schools of thought: cynics, skeptics, Epicureans, and stoics. The cynics rose as a sect...
Sceptics: Pyrrho and his followers
Pyrrhon Of Elis was the Greek philosopher from whom Pyrrhonism takes its name; he is generally accepted as the father of the sceptics. Scepticism, also spelled skepticism, in philosophy is the attitude of doubting knowledge claims set forth in various areas. Although...
Epicureans
In ancient polemics, the term Epicureanism was employed with a more generic meaning as the equivalent of hedonism, the doctrine that pleasure or happiness is the chief good. However, the school of thought is much more than connoted. Philosophy was, for Epicurus – the...
The immortal soul
The forefather of the Epicurean school of thought, Epicurus, was perhaps the first philosopher to systematically deny the widespread belief that humans are immortal. He established his arguments based on his theory of atomism and suggested that not only does all...
Stoics: philosophy of the Roman Empire
Stoicism is an ethical system founded on the principle that everything happens for a reason, and that reason is inherent within each individual. The Stoics believed that perception is the basis of true knowledge. In logic, their comprehensive presentation of the topic...
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Zeno’s paradoxes
Zeno of Elea was a disciple of Parmenides and a fellow Eleatic. He followed his master’s theory of monism and designed to show that any postulation that opposed the monistic teaching of Parmenides leads to contradiction and absurdity. Parmenides had argued using...
Sorites paradox
Paradoxes have always been of fundamental value to philosophers in presenting the peculiarities of a concept. For example, the renowned ‘liar paradox’ which came from Epimenides of Crete asserts that ‘Cretans are always liars'. The paradox in its most basic form...
The four elements
A century later, following the rise of philosophy, the question “what is the world made of” continued to be of major concern for philosophers. It was then, that Empedocles of Akragas reasoned with his theory of the four elements which was later unconditionally...
Democritus and Leucippus: atomism
Leucippus and his students Democritus were the forefathers of today’s theory of atoms. However, in that era, their theory was not as widely accepted as the theory of Empedocles – the four elements. The duo asserted that every material in the universe can be reduced to...
Athenian philosophy
In the late 5th century BCE, Athens emanated as the first unconventional polis of mainland Greece. It was a time of great socio-economic reforms and the center of significant military, trading and political power made its home in Athens. It also became the foremost...
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.
