Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, first published in 1751, was the third of David Hume's major philosophical treatises. Hume's aim in this elegant and lucid work was to present in a...

This work by Jean Jacques Rousseau probably represents the single greatest work in defining what we would call education today. I am a Francophone living in Northern Ontario and so I have read just the french version, but barring that I bel...

Count Ioannis Antonios Kapodistrias was a Greek diplomat of the Russian Empire and later the first head of state of independent Greece. Kapodistrias was born in Corfu, one of the Ionian Islands, which at the time of his birth were a possess...

Accept no substitutes. If you're interested in modern philosophy, this will be required reading. For the beginner I do recommend that one first look over the works of Locke, Hume, Berkely, Descartes, and Leibniz to obtain an understanding o...

Alexander Ypsilantis was a member of a prominent Phanariot Greek family, a prince of the Danubian Principalities, a senior officer of the Imperial Russian cavalry during the Napoleonic Wars, and a leader of the Filiki Eteria, a secret organ...

The Greek War of Independence, also known as the Greek Revolution was a successful war of independence waged by the Greek revolutionaries between 1821 and 1832 against the Ottoman Empire. The Greeks were later assisted by the Russian Empire...

A 19th-century literary masterpiece, tremendously influential in the arts and in philosophy, uses the Persian religious leader Zarathustra to voice the author’s views, including the introduction of the controversial doctrine of the Übermens...

Milman Parry was a scholar of epic poetry and the founder of the discipline of oral tradition. He studied at the University of California, Berkeley (B.A. and M.A.) and at the Sorbonne (Ph.D.). A student of the linguist Antoine Meillet at...

The most important philosopher of science since Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Sir Karl Popper finally solved the puzzle of scientific method, which in practice had never seemed to conform to the principles or logic described by Bacon -- see Th...

Ludwig Wittgenstein is widely regarded as the most important philosopher of the twentieth century, and the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is the only book-length work of philosophy he published in his lifetime. Together, these two facts con...

This book simultaneously gave voice to and shaped some of the central ideas of 20th Century thought and culture. Few books can equal it in importance. It is very hard--don't imagine that you can pick it up and read it on your own--but it is...

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert M. Pirsig. Arguably one of the most profoundly important essays ever written on the nature and significance of "quality" and definitely a necessary anodyne to the...

In this wondrously lucid and engaging book, renowned neurologist Antonio Damasio demonstrates what many of us have long suspected: emotions are not a luxury, they are essential to rational thinking. Descartes' Error takes the reader on an e...

A History of Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance. Gottlieb's elegant survey brings a breath of fresh air. Executive editor of The Economist, Gottlieb mines primary sources with a remarkably even hand. He demonstrates that, while c...

As he seeks to unlock the secrets of such things as joy and sorrow, Antonio Damasio pursues a unifying theory in Looking for Spinoza. Why Spinoza? The philosopher, whom Damasio calls a "protobiologist," firmly linked mind and body, paving t...