The Ancients

The birth of philosophy across the world: the Greek Presocratics, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle; the Stoics, Epicureans and Cynics; and the parallel awakenings in China (Confucius, Laozi, the Legalists) and India (the Buddha, the Vedic and Hindu schools).

Part of Philosophy

41 moments in this segment.

1. -600 — Presocratic Philosophy — Ionian (Philosophize This!). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
2. -550 — The Presocratics (Crash Course). The first philosophers ask what the world is made of.
3. -550 — Presocratic Philosophy — Italian (Philosophize This!). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
4. -530 — Pythagoras: when mathematics became philosophy. A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
5. -500 — Buddhism's Four Noble Truths (BBC Radio 4). The core of the Buddha's teaching.
6. -500 — Intro to Confucianism (ReligionForBreakfast). The Confucian tradition explained.
7. -500 — Confucius (The School of Life). Ren, li, and the ethics that shaped East Asia.
8. -500 — Heraclitus & Parmenides — being vs becoming. A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
9. -500 — Laozi and the Daodejing (Overly Sarcastic Productions). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
10. -500 — The Buddha (c. 563–483 BC). Siddhartha Gautama: suffering, its cause, its cessation, and the Eightfold Path.
11. -500 — Laozi (6th c. BC). The legendary author of the Tao Te Ching — the Way that cannot be named, wu wei, the soft over the hard.
12. -500 — Heraclitus (c. 535–475 BC). "No man steps in the same river twice." The Presocratic of flux and the logos.
13. -500 — Confucius (551–479 BC). The Chinese sage of ren (benevolence) and li (ritual propriety) — the spine of East-Asian ethics.
14. -430 — The Socratic Method. A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
15. -430 — Socrates and the Sophists (Philosophize This!). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
16. -430 — Socrates (470–399 BC). The gadfly of Athens who claimed to know only that he knew nothing — and was executed for it.
17. -380 — Plato (Philosophize This!). A deep dive into Plato's Forms and the Republic.
18. -380 — Plato's Allegory of the Cave (TED-Ed). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
19. -380 — Plato on the Forms (The School of Life). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
20. -380 — Plato's Theory of Forms — David Sedley (Royal Institute of Philosophy). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
21. -380 — Plato (428–348 BC). Socrates' student: the Forms, the Republic, the Academy — the fountainhead of Western philosophy.
22. -375 — Is justice for the strong? — Plato's Republic. A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
23. -375 — Plato's Republic: justice, power & knowledge (Michael Sugrue). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
24. -350 — What is a good life? (Crash Course). The ancient question that started it all.
25. -350 — The Butterfly Dream — the Zhuangzi. A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
26. -350 — Mencius (372–289 BC). Confucius' great successor, who argued human nature is innately good.
27. -350 — Diogenes the Cynic (c. 412–323 BC). The philosopher in a barrel, searching by daylight with a lamp for an honest man.
28. -350 — Plato & Aristotle (Raphael's "School of Athens"). Plato points up to the Forms, Aristotle down to the world — the two poles of all that follows.
29. -340 — Aristotle & Virtue Theory (Crash Course). How to be good, the Aristotelian way.
30. -340 — Aristotle (The School of Life). Aristotle on virtue, the golden mean and flourishing.
31. -340 — Aristotle, Part 1 (Philosophize This!). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
32. -340 — Aristotle (384–322 BC). Logic, biology, ethics, politics, metaphysics — the systematizer who mapped almost every field.
33. -330 — Aristotle's guide to the good life (Nicomachean Ethics). Eudaimonia and the life well lived.
34. -330 — Aristotle's virtue ethics, eudaimonia & the golden mean. A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
35. -300 — The philosophy of Stoicism (TED-Ed). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
36. -300 — Zeno of Citium — the founder of Stoicism. A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
37. -300 — The Hellenistic Age: Epicurus (Philosophize This!). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
38. -300 — The case against the Stoics (Philosophize This!). A deeper look — part of the history of philosophy.
39. -300 — Epicurus (341–270 BC). Pleasure rightly understood: the absence of pain and fear, friendship and a quiet garden.
40. 0170 — Marcus Aurelius (121–180). The emperor-philosopher whose private "Meditations" became the great handbook of Stoicism.
41. 0170 — Stoic rules for a better life (Marcus Aurelius). The Stoicism of the emperor-philosopher.