A classic treatise of the philosophy of Stoicism, «Tusculan Disputations» are a series of books written by Cicero around 45 BC with the intent of popularizing philosophy in Ancient Rome. «Tusculan Disputations» consists of the following five books, which are presented here in their entirety: 1. On the Contempt of Death., 2. On Bearing Pain., 3. On Grief of Mind., 4. On Other Perturbations of the Mind., and 5. Whether Virtue Alone Be Sufficient f ...
In 1781, Immanuel Kant published his first and most famous work, the «Critique of Pure Reason.» To the German philosopher's dismay, the work was at first poorly received and largely misunderstood by his readers. As a result, two years later Kant produced his «Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics that will be Able to Present Itself as a Science» to serve as an introduction to the «Critique.» He restated the main ideas of his philosophy in w ...
German philosopher and significant 18th century late Enlightenment thinker Immanuel Kant wrote «Critique of Judgment» in 1790 to solidify his ideas on aesthetics. Divided into two sections, one on aesthetic judgment and the other on teleological judgment, «Critique» proceeds to analyze the human experience of the beautiful and the sublime. From the effect of art and nature to the role of imagination, from objectivity of taste to the limits of re ...
French philosopher Henri Bergson produced four major works in his lifetime, the second of which, «Matter and Memory», is a philosophical and complex nineteenth century exploration of human nature and the spirituality of memory. In this work, Bergson investigates the function of the brain, and opposes the idea of memory being of a material nature, lodged within a particular part of the nervous system. He makes a claim early in this essay that Mat ...
Marcus Annius Verus was born in Rome, A. D. 121, and assumed the name of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, by which he is known to history, on his adoption by the Emperor T. Aurelius Antoninus. M. Aurelius was educated by the orator Fronto, but turned aside from rhetoric to the study of the Stoic philosophy, of which he was the last distinguished representative. The «Meditations,» which he wrote in Greek, are among the most noteworthy expressions of th ...
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was considered to be one of the most important and influential figures in Western philosophy for his work in the areas of metaphysics, anthropology, theoretical physics, logic, and moral philosophy. Remarkably, Kant never left the town of Konigsberg, Germany, where he had been born, received schooling, and served as lecturer at the University. Despite his provinciality, Kant developed original and comprehensive ideas in ...
German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer wrote a strong text to explain his belief system in «The World as Will and Representation.» Rather than viewing the world as a construct within itself, Schopenhauer argued that the world exists beyond the five senses. He believed that rather than seeing an object in its true form, we only see and understand our perception of it. His ideas are classified as post-Kantian philosophy, just one strand of thought ...
George Berkeley was an Irish Philosopher who is best known for putting forward the idea of subjective idealism. «A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge» is one of Berkeley's best known works and in it Berkeley expounds upon this idea of subjective idealism, which in other words is the idea that all of reality, as far as humans are concerned, is simply a construct of the way our brains perceive and according to Berkeley no o ...
A classic work of ancient Greek literature from one of the most famous of all ancient Greek philosophers, the «Phaedo» is the story of the last moments of Socrates life as recounted by Phaedo a first-hand witness to Socrates final hours. In those last moments Socrates explains that his suicide does not matter because his soul is immortal and he proceeds to give four reasons why this is so. No two greater figures than Plato and Socrates exist in ...
