Viewing is restricted to Madison College Students, Faculty and Staff off-campus. Please login with your username & password. Entries are from the The Essentials of Philosophy and Ethics.

Meet the Philosophers of Ancient Greece
by
Meet the Philosophers of Ancient Greece brings the thoughts and lives of the pioneers of Western philosophy down from their sometimes remote heights and introduces them to a modern audience. Comprising of seventy essays, written by internationally distinguished scholars in a lively and accessible style, this book presents the values, ideas, wisdom and arguments of the most significant thinkers from the world of ancient Greece.

Plato, from Credo Reference: "PLATO (427–347 BCE)." The Essentials of Philosophy and Ethics. Abingdon: Hodder Education, 2006. Credo Reference. Web. 15 June 2011.

Thomas Hobbes, detail of an oil painting by John Michael Wright; in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, LondonCopyright © 1994-2010 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

The French Enlightenment philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau argued against slavery on the grounds that all persons are equal in nature. “Man is born free,” he observed in The Social Contract (1762), “and everywhere he is in chains.” (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)