Writing PhilosophyWHAT IS GOOD PHILOSOPHICAL WRITING?
November 24, 2023

WHAT IS GOOD PHILOSOPHICAL WRITING?

Writing effectively for a philosophy course does not merely start with the general principles of good writing just outlined, it sets out to show mastery of these principles. It embodies…
LogicMANY-VALUE LOGICS
November 15, 2023

MANY-VALUE LOGICS

In the classical logics already discussed, the logical connectives are taken to be bivalent—that is, they allow of only two different truth values: true and false. One natural extension to…
PHILOSOPHICAL BOOKS AND TEXTESSENTIAL READING IN THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
November 27, 2023

ESSENTIAL READING IN THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

A comprehensive list of essential readings in the history of philosophy.
FORMS OF PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGTHE PERSONAL ESSAY
November 20, 2023

THE PERSONAL ESSAY

The personal essay is a self-reflective search for meaning. Unlike most philosophical writing, it is not argumentative. Instead, it is exploratory and speculative, often even somewhat confessional. It is typically…
FORMS OF PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGWriting PhilosophyFORMS OF PHILOSOPHICAL WRITING
November 20, 2023

FORMS OF PHILOSOPHICAL WRITING

The word essay comes from the French infinitive verb essayer, meaning “to try” or “to attempt.” In fact, when the word was first borrowed into the English language, as essay,…
PHILOSOPHICAL BOOKS AND TEXTGUIDES TO PHILOSOPHICAL WRITING
November 27, 2023

GUIDES TO PHILOSOPHICAL WRITING

As with developing any skill, learning to write philosophically takes practice. Here are some links to academic sites, along with several style guides, to aid you.
NON-WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL TRADITIONSHistory Of PhilosophyPHILOSOPHIES OF EAST ASIA
November 15, 2023

PHILOSOPHIES OF EAST ASIA

The dominant philosophical traditions in this part of the world began in Ancient China from the sixth century to 221 BC, which saw the development of China’s great philosophical movements…
Writing PhilosophyHOW DO YOU DO PHILOSOPHY?
November 24, 2023

HOW DO YOU DO PHILOSOPHY?

How do you do philosophy? Unlike many of the questions asked in the name of philosophy, this one has a straightforward answer. You do philosophy primarily through writing. Now, if…
NON-WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL TRADITIONSHistory Of PhilosophyMIDDLE EASTERN TRADITIONS
November 15, 2023

MIDDLE EASTERN TRADITIONS

As the Middle East is often called the cradle of civilization, it is also the source of some of the earliest philosophical literature. Much of it is devoted to what…
History Of PhilosophyTHE PRE-SOCRATICS
November 15, 2023

THE PRE-SOCRATICS

The origins of Western philosophy are usually attributed to Thales of Miletus (fl. sixth century BC), who taught that “everything was made of water” and thus that the universe, all…
POST-KANTIAN PHILOSOPHYHistory Of PhilosophyHEGELIANISM
November 15, 2023

HEGELIANISM

One common theme in post-Kantian philosophy was an attempt to overcome the remaining divisions between noumena and phenomena, and to reconcile the distinct faculties of sensibility and understanding in to…
ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHYHistory Of PhilosophyLOGICAL ATOMISM
November 15, 2023

LOGICAL ATOMISM

Although mostly associated with the logical analysis of language, analytic philosophy began in the philosophy of mathematics. Working independently, both Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell pursued programs of reducing mathematics…
LogicPROPOSITIONAL CALCULUS (PROPOSITIONAL LOGIC)
November 15, 2023

PROPOSITIONAL CALCULUS (PROPOSITIONAL LOGIC)

The simplest formal (logical) language is the propositional calculus. This considers the logical relationships that hold between complete propositions.
LogicRELEVANCE LOGICS
November 15, 2023

RELEVANCE LOGICS

A relevance logic is motivated by the idea that the premises of a valid argument must be somehow “relevant” to its conclusion. The idea is motivated by the fact that…
Writing PhilosophyESSENTIAL WRITING SKILLS
November 21, 2023

ESSENTIAL WRITING SKILLS

Having just walked through the basic process of writing a philosophy paper, we turn now to the essential skillset you should develop and apply not only to the writing of…

Books

  • The Complete Book of Yoga: Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Raja Yoga, Jnana Yoga

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  • Essays

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  • The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861

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  • Works of Love (Harper Perennial Modern Thought)

    $8.24
  • Meditations

    $3.28
  • A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Mor (Penguin Classics)

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  • A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful

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  • Thinking Out of Sight: Writings on the Arts of the Visible (The France Chicago Collection)

    $39.99
  • The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

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  • The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths

    $17.00
  • Pragmatism

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  • Heidegger And Aristotle: The Twofoldness of Being (Suny Series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy)

    $32.95

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Terms & Concepts

D

Determinism

The view that all events are determined, which means there is no free will and that there is only one possible history of the world, either because every event in…
I

Inconsistent

1) In formal logic, two sentences are inconsistent when they are not true on even one row of the truth table in the column under the (main) operator. 2) Incompatible,…
P

Private language argument

An argument, identified by Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), that no fixed meaning can be given to a language in the absence of a wider social context because there are no constraints…
S
Supervenience
E
Eudaimonia
L
Language game
V
Vicious circle (circular reasoning)
U
Upanishads
V
Verificationism
D
Duty
S
Stoicism
A
Appearance
View All