Philosophical Dictionary

Socrates is the go-to proof that democracy can't be trusted: the wisest man in Athens, killed by a jury of ordinary citizens. The surviving sources tell a messier story, involving a bloody oligarchic coup, an amnesty nobody could mention in court, and a philosopher who defied both sides. So who really sentenced him?

Did philosophy exist before Socrates? You betcha! In this article we will discuss some of the philosophers who existed before that particular bearded guy, the Presocratics.

Prisoners chained in a cave take shadows for reality. One gets out, sees the sun, and comes back to tell the others, who laugh at him and would kill him if they could. Here is a simple summary of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, what every symbol means, how it connects to the theory of Forms, the sun and the divided line, why it ends with a threat of murder, and why it still describes our screens today.

Memento mori is Latin for “remember that you must die”. A Roman general heard it in a triumph, Stoics practised it daily, monks kept skulls on their desks and Holbein hid one in a masterpiece. Does thinking about death make you wiser, or just more anxious?

We discuss love, loss, and "Last Christmas" in our newest article, in which we are the meme. Let's talk about classical definitions of love in our first holiday post of the year.

In which we discuss epistemology in the terms of Socrates and his final dialogue, the Apology. What do we know? How do we know it? We touch on this from the context of the founder of Western philosophy.