The «Meno» begins abruptly with a question of Meno, who asks, 'whether virtue can be taught.' Socrates replies that he does not as yet know what virtue is, and has never known anyone who did. 'Then he cannot have met Gorgias when he was at Athens.' Yes, Socrates had met him, but he has a bad memory, and has forgotten what Gorgias said. Will Meno tell him his own notion, which is probably not very different from that of Gorgia ...
Aristotle's «Nicomachean Ethics» is considered to be one of the most important treatises on ethics ever written. In an incredibly detailed study of virtue and vice in man, Aristotle examines one of the most central themes to man, the nature of goodness itself. In Aristotle's «Nicomachean Ethics», he asserts that virtue is essential to happiness and that man must live in accordance with the «doctrine of the mean» (the balance between ex ...
Carl, or Karl, Ludwig Michelet was a 19th century German philosopher and doctor of philosophy educated in the doctrine of Hegel to which he spent his life defending and continuing the tradition of. In this short work, «The Philosophy of Art» we find a treatise similar to Hegel's «Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics.» In his introduction to the work Michelet states that «art has for its object the production and realization of the beautiful, ...
Arguably the most influential western philosophical mind since Aristotle, Immanuel Kant was born in 1724 in the Koningsberg, a city in Eastern Prussia where he would live his entire life. A lifelong academic, at sixteen years old Kant entered the University of Koningsberg, where he would go on to tutor for nine years, and then teach. Kant's major concerns involved both religion and science, as he sought reconciliation between the two. His w ...
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, a late 18th and early 19th century German philosopher, was one of the foremost thinkers of German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality revolutionized European philosophy and was an important precursor to Continental philosophy and Marxism. He created a framework known as Absolute Idealism that was able to account for the relation of the mind, nature, art, the state, and history. Ultimately, he ...
One of the middle or transitional dialogues of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, «Gorgias» is one of his more important writings. Plato contrasts the rhetorician and the philosopher, whose differing specialties are persuasion and refutation, respectively. The famous foreign rhetorician Gorgias has been drawn to Athens and its intellectual sophistication and is the initial reason for the discussion. However, as Plato delves into arguments both ...
Although born into an aristocratic family who put heavy stock in class rank, Peter Kropotkin is now known as one of the first well-known advocates for anarchist communism. At thirteen, Kropotkin, the son of a prince, became disillusioned with the world of rank and status in which he lived and began exploring alternative realms of thought. His vocal dissention landed him in a Russian prison in 1874. In 1876, he was transferred to a military hospi ...
Benedict de Spinoza, a Jewish-Dutch philosopher, laid the foundation for the Enlightenment movement of the 18th century in Europe and is regarded as one of the great rationalists of 17th century philosophy. Presented here are «A Theologico-Political Treatise» and «A Political Treatise», two works that precede Spinoza's most famous work «Ethics». In «A Theologico-Political Treatise» Spinoza argues for the separation of theology and philosoph ...
Thirteen of Plato's most well-known dialogues are included in the collection «Essential Dialogues of Plato.» Plato was a learned student of the early philosopher Socrates. Because Socrates did not write any works before his untimely death, Pluto took Socrates' beliefs and expressed them through imagined dialogues between the philosopher and his students. It was the first time in Western history that a philosophical dialectic between th ...
