Home › Thinkers
Twenty voices across civilizations, each opened by their own words.
Each page leads with a real primary-source quotation — in the original Greek, Chinese, Latin, German, or French where one exists — and links to the human questions the thinker speaks to. Biography and interpretation are in progress.
Greek
Socrates
The examined life.
Greek
Plato
The Forms, the philosopher-king.
Greek
Aristotle
Practical wisdom, the political animal.
Roman
Cicero
Natural law and true friendship.
Confucian
Confucius
Ren, ritual, the exemplary person.
Confucian
Mencius
The innate goodness of nature.
Daoist
Laozi
The Dao, wu wei.
Daoist
Zhuangzi
The butterfly dream.
Legalist
Han Feizi
Law over character.
Renaissance
Machiavelli
Power as it is.
Renaissance
Montaigne
The essay; "What do I know?"
Early Modern
Descartes
I think, therefore I am.
Early Modern
Hobbes
The social contract.
Enlightenment
Hume
The bundle self; reason and passion.
Enlightenment
Kant
The categorical imperative.
19th c.
Marx
Change the world, don't just interpret it.
20th c.
Wittgenstein
Meaning is use.
20th c.
Rawls
Justice as fairness.