As suggested by Augustine’s argument about the problem of evil humans were given free will. In Christian belief, God allowed Adam the freedom to choose whether he would eat the forbidden fruit. God is omnipotent, yet he gave us the free will to decide our actions. He...
Philosophy
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The Consolation of Philosophy
The book written by Roman philosopher Boethius around 524 CE, during his imprisonment under the charges of treason, conveyed his thoughts on the debate of free will and determinism. His ideas in the text are presented as a conversation between him and philosophy...
Scholasticism and dogma
Scholasticism developed as the philosophical systems and speculative tendencies of various medieval Christian thinkers, who, working against a background of fixed religious dogma, sought to solve new general philosophical problems. During this time, libraries and...
Abelard and Universals
Although his narrative is more popularly termed Abelard and Heloise, Peter Abelard was more than his illicit love affair. He was one of the most prominent Christian philosophers in the 11th century in France. He held astonishing insight on Aristotelian logic and...
Existence of God: the ontological argument
Scholasticism and the assimilation of Aristotelian ideas into Christianity sparked a renewed interest to reconcile faith and reason. The ontological argument proceeds from the idea of God to the reality of God. It was first clearly formulated by St. Anselm in his...
Pascal’s wager
While it has become common opinion that God’s existence can not be proven rationally and is solely a matter of faith and subjectivity, philosophers were keen on speculating theories on the subject wee into the Age of Reason. Pascal’s wager is a practical argument for...
Existence of God: the cosmological argument
In the long list of arguments, the cosmological argument is the form of argument used in natural theology to prove the existence of God. Thomas Aquinas, in his Summa Theologiae, presented two versions of the cosmological argument: the first-cause argument and the...
Natural Law
In philosophy, natural law is a system of right or justice held to be common to all humans and derived from nature rather than from the rules of society, or positive law. There have been several disagreements over the meaning of natural law and its relation to...
Acts and omissions
Moral philosophy and ethics form a significant part of philosophical tandems. However, in common usage ‘ethics’ is simply how we judge the morality of our actions. Each action is based on judgment while every judgment stems from two things – the consequences of our...
Nominalism
In the Middle Ages, when Platonic and Aristotelian realism were associated with orthodox religious belief, nominalism could be interpreted as heresy. And while Platonism had firmly become a part of Christian religious doctrines, Aristotelian philosophy was seen as...
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Virtue and knowledge
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...
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...
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.
