Reading paths
Short routes through the site, each a handful of stops with a sentence or two on why each comes next. Start with one marked “Start here” if philosophy is new to you. Paths for classes end with questions for discussion.
Start here
- Is there a self?Is there a lasting “I” behind our thoughts and feelings? Buddhist, Hindu, European and Japanese philosophers gave strikingly different answers.The Buddha, Śaṅkara, René Descartes and 3 more
- What is philosophy for?Six thinkers from Athens, China, India and Rome who saw philosophy as a way of living better, not just a set of theories, and how their answers differ.Socrates, Confucius, The Buddha and 3 more
Going further
- Buddhist philosophy from India to JapanFollow Buddhist thought from the Buddha's teaching on suffering and non-self, through the great Indian schools, to China and Japan, where it took new forms.The Buddha, Nāgārjuna, Kūkai and 5 more
- Confucians and their criticsTwo thousand years of argument over Confucius's legacy: Mohists, Legalists and later Confucians on human nature, ritual and how to rule.Confucius, Mencius, Zhu Xi and 5 more
- From Socrates to the StoicsHow one Athenian's questions about how to live led to Plato's Academy, Aristotle's Lyceum, and the Cynics, Epicureans and Stoics.Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and 4 more
- Women philosophers of early modern EuropeFive women of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who argued with Descartes, Locke, Newton and Rousseau about mind, matter, science and the education of women.Elisabeth of Bohemia, Anne Conway, Mary Astell and 2 more
