‘Enlightenment, understood in the widest sense as the advance of thought, has always aimed at liberating human beings from fear and installing them as masters. Yet the wholly enlightened earth radiates under the sign of…
Plato (c. 427-348) was an ancient Greek philosopher from Athens, mostly known for his Socratic dialogues The Republic and The Symposium. Born into an aristocratic family, he would have been expected to pursue a career…
Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (c. 1466-1563) was a Christian humanist philosopher from the Netherlands, now considered to be one of the most influential thinkers of the European Renaissance. As a provocateur of contemporary standards, he was…
Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD) was a Roman emperor and a Stoic philosopher, today mostly known for his Meditations. Born in 121 as Marcus Annius Verus, he grew up in a well-to-do family of distinguished politicians.…
Epicureanism is a school of philosophy founded in the 4th century BC by Epicurus. It was one of the major philosophical schools in the Hellenistic world, together with Stoicism and Skepticism, with philosophers like Epicurus,…
Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) was a humanist philosopher from the French Renaissance, mostly known for his Essays, with which he established and popularized the essay as a genre. Literally meaning ‘an attempt’ (from the French…