If we do not abandon, as ethical relativism does, the search for objectively valid norms of conduct, what criteria for such norms can we find? The kind of criteria depends on the type of ethical system – the norms of...
What is the main task for any state? Providing security, creating a diverse and stable reform-oriented middle class, or unifying the citizenship through education into a strong community? These three views on political theory can be correlated with the names...
Plato lived from 428/427 or 424/423 BCE to 348/347 BCE. He was born and died in Athens, and reached 80. He was a student of Socrates, and started a school of philosophy, the Academy, when he was around 40. Aristotle (384-322...
This is a short treatise by Aristotle, written approximately around 350B.C. It was originally published in: Ross, W. D. (Ed.) (1930). The works of Aristotle (vol. 3). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Translated by J. I. Beare. Part 1 We have, in the...
This text is a foundational text of Western philosophy; it was written in 350 B.C.E. In it, Aristotle defines the nature of philosophy in relation to scientific knowledge. He starts with human curiosity – the desire to know does not...
It’s one of the classics of Western Philosophy. You can find the full text at the Internet Classics Archive, here. Quotes from the Nicomachean Ethics (c. 325 BC): We are not studying in order to know what virtue is, but...
Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics addresses the character and the behavior of the individual (virtue ethics.) At the end of this book, he declares that the inquiry into ethics necessarily leads to politics, and his book Politics therefore deals with the “philosophy...
Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.) is one of the greatest philosophers of all time. Together with Plato, he shaped Western philosophy for two millenia, and his ideas and concepts are still discussed today. He wrote about two-hundred treatises, but we currently know...
Anaximander (610-546BC) is a pre-socratic philosopher; what we know about him originates mainly in texts from Aritstotle and others. Only one fragment of his writings survives; it is considered to be the oldest fragment in the history of Western thinking....