Themes

Questions that philosophers in different traditions and centuries have all worked on. Each theme follows one question through time.

• Faith and reason33 philosophers · 5 traditionsHow do truths claimed from revelation or scripture relate to what reason can find out for itself? Islamic, European and Indian thinkers gave strikingly different answers.

  

  

  

  Augustine, Śaṅkara, al-Ghazali and 30 more
• Free will and fate16 philosophers · 4 traditionsAre our choices really our own, or are they fixed by fate, by God or by prior causes? Thinkers in China, Greece, the Islamic world and Europe argued over what freedom requires.

  

  

  

  Augustine, al-Ghazali, Immanuel Kant and 13 more
• God20 philosophers · 4 traditionsDoes God exist, can reason prove it, and what could God be? Muslim, Jewish, Christian and Hindu thinkers built arguments, while Buddhist and sceptical ones took them apart.

  

  

  

  Avicenna, Maimonides, Thomas Aquinas and 17 more
• How to govern32 philosophers · 4 traditionsWho should rule, what makes their power legitimate, and how should a state be run? Answers range from moral example and impartial law to philosopher-rulers and the consent of the governed.

  

  

  

  Confucius, Plato, Mencius and 29 more
• Human nature12 philosophers · 3 traditionsAre human beings born good, bad or neither, and what does that mean for how they should live and be governed? Chinese, Greek, Islamic and European thinkers answered very differently.

  

  

  

  Confucius, Aristotle, Mencius and 9 more
• Knowledge and scepticism40 philosophers · 5 traditionsWhat can we know, and how? Thinkers in several traditions have asked which sources of knowledge can be trusted, and whether the sceptic's doubts can ever be answered.

  

  

  

  Plato, Zhuangzi, Nāgārjuna and 37 more
• Language and meaning10 philosophers · 3 traditionsHow do words come to mean anything, and what is the relation between language, thought and the world? Chinese, Indian and European thinkers gave very different answers.

  

  

  

  Xunzi, Augustine, Ludwig Wittgenstein and 7 more
• The good life34 philosophers · 6 traditionsHow should one live, and what makes a human life go well? Traditions have answered with virtue, tranquil pleasure, harmony with nature, or an end to suffering.

  

  

  

  Laozi, Confucius, Socrates and 31 more
• The self26 philosophers · 5 traditionsIs there a lasting self beneath our changing thoughts and bodies, or only a stream of events? Traditions have answered with a soul, a self identical with all reality, or none at all.

  

  

  

  The Buddha, Plato, Śaṅkara and 23 more
• What is ultimately real43 philosophers · 6 traditionsWhat is reality fundamentally made of or grounded in? Answers range from water, forms and the One to brahman, emptiness, the Dao and existence itself.

  

  

  

  Laozi, Plato, Nāgārjuna and 40 more