Philosophical Dictionary

Plato's Cave usually stops at 'enlightenment.' The real ending, from Republic Book VII, has a prisoner going blind twice and one exact line about killing anyone who tries to free the others. Here's what the Cave actually says about truth, education, and who gets punished for ending an illusion.

A chilling tale in which you are visited by the Zeitgeist, a timely spirit, who warns you about your own complacency and overthinking. Based off Charles Dickens' classic "A Christmas Carol," this chilling seasonal tale introduces us to the Three Spirits of Philosophy. To be continued.

In the Aristotle and Plato meme, Plato hands his student a dish labelled “a fairly congruent theory of metaphysics” and Aristotle flings it across the room. Behind the joke sit two rival answers about where reality lives, what courage is, who should rule and how to find anything out. Which of them did the meme miss?

The meme has Plato lying back with a cigar after winning arguments against his made-up characters. Many of those characters were real people, and Plato does not always let Socrates win. So what is the Socratic method, why did Socrates call it midwifery, and does it still work once you leave the dialogue?

We explain philosophy memes so you actually know why you're laughing.

The Plato’s cave meme turns the feed into a cave: internet users chained, algorithms casting shadows, one guy who logs off. Plato’s own text has a prize for predicting the shadows, Nietzsche’s abyss line begins with monsters, and filtered selfies made the shadow personal. So is leaving the cave enough?