Philosophy

Wonder is the feeling of the philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder

A Philosophical Dictionary Volume 04

Voltaire

The Enlightenment saw the creation of a new way of structuring information in books. The first work to employ this method was the Dictionnaire Historique et Critique (1697) by Pierre Bayle, in which the information is ordered alphabetically. Other im...

A Philosophical Dictionary Volume 03

Voltaire

The Enlightenment saw the creation of a new way of structuring information in books. The first work to employ this method was the Dictionnaire Historique et Critique (1697) by Pierre Bayle, in which the information is ordered alphabetically. Other im...

A Philosophical Dictionary Volume 02

Voltaire

The Enlightenment saw the creation of a new way of structuring information in books. The first work to employ this method was the Dictionnaire Historique et Critique (1697) by Pierre Bayle, in which the information is ordered alphabetically. Other im...

Twenty-six and One and Other Stories

Maksim Gorky

"Twenty-six Men and a Girl" is a pioneering story of social realism, and is a story of lost ideals. Twenty-six men labor in a cellar, making kringles in an effective prison. They are looked down upon by all around them, including the bun bakers. Thei...

What is Art?

Lev Tolstoy

Tolstoy sees the developing professionalism of art as hampering the creation of good works. The professional artist can and must create to prosper, making for art that is insincere and most likely partisan – made to suit the whims of fashion or...

The Possessed (The Devils)

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

A troubled Varvara Petrovna has just returned from Switzerland where she has been visiting Nikolai Vsevolodovich. She berates Stepan Trofimovich for his financial irresponsibility, but her main preoccupation is an "intrigue" she encountered in Switze...

Crime and Punishment

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, a former law student, lives in extreme poverty in a tiny, rented room in Saint Petersburg. Isolated and antisocial, he has abandoned all attempts to support himself, and is brooding obsessively on a scheme he has devise...

The Philosophy of Spinoza

Baruch Spinoza

Spinoza's political philosophy is scattered in three books, the Theologico-political Treatise, the Ethics and the Political Treatise. A first look at its main principles could bring the uninformed reader to believe that it is the same as Hobbes's. Ye...

Theologico-Political Treatise Part IV

Baruch Spinoza

Spinoza agreed with Thomas Hobbes that if each man had to fend for himself, with nothing but his own right arm to rely upon, then the life of man would be "nasty, brutish, and short". The truly human life is only possible in an organised community, t...

Theologico-Political Treatise Part III

Baruch Spinoza

Spinoza was not only the real father of modern metaphysics and moral and political philosophy, but also of the so-called higher criticism of the Bible. He was particularly attuned to the idea of interpretation; he felt that all organized religion was...