Philosophy
The Western philosophical inquiry into being, knowledge and the divine.
- PlatonismThe philosophy of Plato and of the schools that interpreted him, from the Academy to the Middle Platonists.
- Early Greek PhilosophyThe Greek thinkers before Socrates, who first asked what single source and order underlie the many things of the world.
- HeraclitusGreek philosopher of Ephesus who taught the hidden unity of opposites, governed by the logos.
- ParmenidesGreek philosopher of Elea who argued that being is one, whole and unchanging.
- PlatoAthenian philosopher whose dialogues founded the Western philosophical tradition.
- The RepublicPlato’s dialogue on justice in the soul and the city. Books VI and VII contain the images of the sun, the divided line and the cave, and the Form of the Good, “beyond being”, which shaped the whole later tradition of ascent.
- FormsPlato’s eternal, unchanging realities, such as Beauty itself and the Good, of which the things of the senses are images.
- ErosLove as longing for the beautiful and the good, which in Plato draws the soul upward to the divine.
- NeoplatonismThe late ancient Platonism of Plotinus and his successors, centred on the One and the soul’s return to it.
- PlotinusFounder of Neoplatonism and philosopher of the One.
- ProclusHead of the Platonic school in Athens and the great systematizer of late Neoplatonism.
- The EnneadsStephen MacKenna’s celebrated English translation of the fifty-four treatises of Plotinus, arranged by Porphyry in six groups of nine, together with Porphyry’s Life of Plotinus. The last treatise, VI.9, “On the Good, or the One”, describes the soul’s union with the One.
- StoicismThe Hellenistic school that taught life in agreement with the divine reason pervading the cosmos.
- EpictetusStoic teacher, born a slave, whose discourses teach freedom through the right use of judgment.
- Marcus AureliusRoman emperor and Stoic, whose private notebook, the Meditations, is one of the classics of spiritual writing.
- LogosWord, reason or account: for the Stoics the divine reason that orders the cosmos, and for Christians the Word of God.
- German IdealismThe philosophy of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, which sought to overcome Kant’s division between the knower and the Absolute.
- G. W. F. HegelGerman philosopher of the Absolute as spirit, coming to know itself through nature and history.
- F. W. J. SchellingGerman philosopher of nature and of the Absolute identity of subject and object.
- Intellectual intuitionA knowing that grasps its object directly, without senses or concepts: denied by Kant, claimed by Fichte and Schelling.
- The OneIn Neoplatonism, the first principle, beyond being and thought.
- Baruch SpinozaDutch philosopher who identified God with the one infinite substance.
- MetaphysicsThe study of what is fundamentally real.
- EpistemologyThe study of knowledge and its limits.
- Philosophy of religionPhilosophical examination of religious claims and experience.
- Philosophy of mindPhilosophical study of mind, consciousness and their place in nature.