The pre-Socratics were the first philosophers in the West and possibly the world, living in the 500s - early 400s BC. They asked questions about the world and tried to answer them by applying human reason, knowledge, and science rather than mere myth. While some of their answers were wrong, the nature of their discourse... Continue Reading →
The classical Greeks are considered the founders of Western civilization, but what made them significant and set them apart from others? They were the first to think about thinking. They tried to understand the structure of the universe, and to master it using reason. They also posited absolute moral values for all people to follow.... Continue Reading →
Dante Alighieri and Francesco Petrarch were Florentine thinkers active in the 13th and 14th centuries. But their worldviews were very different, and two of their most famous texts reflect this. Dante’s On Monarchy uses Aristotelian scholasticism to argue that the Holy Roman Emperor has the right to rule over Europe. Meanwhile, Petrarch’s On His Own... Continue Reading →
Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher who pushed back against the narratives of progress and the rationalistic ordering of society in nineteenth century Europe, seeing these along with the societal traditions as hypocritical and repressive. In “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense”, Nietzsche strongly critiques the idea of rationality and classification in a... Continue Reading →
Plato’s Republic is a Socratic dialogue on justice, how the perfect city-state should be ordered, and how the virtuous man should behave. In “Book X”, Glaucon and Socrates explore the nature of poetry. They argue that Poetry must be excluded from a well-ordered state, as it is an imitative art form, thrice removed from the... Continue Reading →
In mid-16th century Europe, two intellectual groups, the resistance theorists and counter-revolutionary theorists, reconceptualized the nature of political power. They asked similar questions about the nature of society, government and the right of resistance, but came to very different conclusions. In 1556 the English theorist John Ponet published his Short Treatise on Political Power. Twenty... Continue Reading →
Perhaps no other time in history is more misunderstood and underappreciated than the Middle Ages. In popular culture, the Middle Ages is depicted as a backward time with constant warfare and plagues where barely any great inventions were produced. On the other hand, the classical antiquity period of Ancient Greece and Rome is seen as... Continue Reading →
diegodelaparra 