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Philosophy Page

Ambiguity, irony, and wit, to say nothing of deliberate pondering and metaphoric analogy, are not common either in the texts exchanged by managers or in those by which children are taught to "read." For it is not truly reading that they are taught; it is the receiving of communication. We do this in the strange belief that they ought not to have to suffer perplexity, but it is only as the mind notices its perplexity, and suffers -- for the noticing is not by itself enough -- that it begins to move from recitation to consideration, to taking some grasp of itself.

-- Richard Mitchell

The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.

-- Socrates

Philosophy: The Love of Wisdom

Philosophy is the most important of the sciences, because it deals with the foundations and presuppositions of all the others. Physics can tell us what claims are supported by empirical data, but it cannot tell us why we should trust empirical data in the first place. Economics can tell us what policies will promote economic growth, but cannot tell us why economic growth is valuable or how it should be weighed against other values. Philosophy deals with the most basic questions about the nature of knowledge, reality, and value. But philosophy is not only the queen of the sciences; it is also a way of life. It is through philosophy that we wake from a world of our own making -- a world of unquestioned assumptions and unexamined inconsistencies -- to the intelligible reality which awaits our investigation, and within which alone our minds can be fully alive.

Can you out-argue Socrates?
Test your philosophical pumpitude!


Supplementary Course Materials

Philosophy PowerPoints

Ethics Study Guide

Medical Ethics Study Guide

Confucius: Selections

Herodotus: Histories (excerpts)

Plato: Hipparchus (excerpts)

Plato: Laches (excerpts)

Plato: Alcibiades

Plato: Symposium (excerpts)

Plato: Gorgias (excerpts)

Plato: Protagoras (excerpts)

Plato: Euthyphro

Plato: Theaetetus (excerpts)

Aristotle: Rhetoric (excerpts)

Lao-tzu: Tao Te Ching (excerpts)

Stoic Doctrine

Cicero: On Duties (excerpts)

Seneca: Letters to Lucilius (excerpts)

Seneca: To Novatus on Anger (excerpts)

Epictetus: Discourses (excerpts)

Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologiae (excerpts)

John Locke: Divine Authority and the Law of Nature

David Hume: Treatise on Human Nature (excerpts)

David Hume: Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (excerpts)

Adam Smith: Theory of Moral Sentiments (excerpts)

Thomas Paine: Common Sense and Rights of Man (excerpts)

Immanuel Kant: Critique of Pure Reason (excerpts)

Immanuel Kant: Critique of Practical Reason (excerpts)

Immanuel Kant: The Metaphysics of Morals (excerpts)

John Stuart Mill: Autobiography (excerpts)

John Stuart Mill: On Bentham and Coleridge (excerpts)

Bentham’s Mummy!

Herbert Spencer: Social Statics (excerpts)

Friedrich Nietzsche: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (excerpts)

Friedrich Nietzsche: Twilight of the Idols (excerpts)

Friedrich Nietzsche: The Antichrist

Ayn Rand: The Anti-Conceptual Mentality

Ayn Rand: Three Theories of the Good

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