The origins of Western philosophy lie with a set of men whose extraordinary contributions date as far back as 600 BC. Frequently, they are identified as Presocratics because these truth-seekers are predecessors of Socrates, the gifted Athenian thinker who greatly influenced the course of Wes...

Rousseau and Plato social contract ideas are extremely different. With that the thought of man is different. One believes that the true power is in the people while the other believes that the power lies in the government that rules the people. Therefore believing that a just man is one that obe...

A Comparison of Classic And Contemporary Philosophers Why is it so important that young children in our society receive a good education? The answer to that question is very simple; because they are our future. The old saying "the youth of today are the leaders off tomorrow" holds m...

Simplicity and Complexity "Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 18:4)." This seems to be a very simple scripture talking about simple ideas. Children understand the little things that adults have a tendency to exasperate inher...

Descartes' 'Cogito Ergo Sum' (I am, I exist) argument is a complex one. In many ways, he constructs a convincing argument for the existence of the self, and for the process of the thinking being, the essence of that self. In this meditation on his philosophy, Descartes on numerous ...

Plato uses the myth of the cave to address several important concerns of philosophy, the role of the philosopher and his journey to Knowledge. The story presents a group of men living in an underground cave. They are chained to a wall such that they can only see the back wall of the cave. There is...

In what sense and how far is the genius master of his madness? For it goes without saying that to a certain degree he is master of it, since otherwise he would be actually a madman. For such observations, however, ingenuity in a high degree is requisite, and love; for to make observation u...

Many have struggled to answer the question: "What is justice?" In The Republic, Plato strives to do just that, using the conversations between several characters in order to search for the true meaning of justice within an individual. What truly makes a person "just?" Through an analysi...

In prehistoric times advice and knowledge were passed from generation to generation in an oral tradition. The development of writing systems enabled knowledge to be stored and communicated with much greater accuracy in reporting and describing facts and details, This combined with the development o...

Raphael's "School of Athens" is considered by many art historians to be the absolute masterpiece of the Renaissance. It is the perfect pictorial counterpart to the enormous changes in thinking that came about in the 1300s as a result of economic and technological developments. Its rational perspe...