Ancient Philosophy
The Presocratics, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, alongside classical thought from China and India.
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The shift from mythic to rational explanation of the cosmos in archaic Greece, from Homer and Hesiod's poetic cosmology to the Milesian search for a single material principle underlying nature.
The flowering of Athenian philosophy, from Socratic ethics and Plato's Theory of Forms to Aristotle's systematic science of logic, nature, and human flourishing.
The philosophical world after Alexander the Great, when the self-sufficient Greek polis gave way to vast, multicultural empires and philosophy turned to address the individual as a citizen of the cosmos rather than of any one city.
An exploration of the Hundred Schools of Thought that flourished amid the collapse of Zhou authority, from Confucius's vision of ethical self-cultivation to the competing visions of Daoism, Mohism, and Legalism on how human beings should live and be governed.
The roots of Indian philosophical reflection in the Vedic corpus, and the emergence of the astika and nastika schools of thought that grew out of it.
A survey of the ethical instruction texts, funerary theology, and cosmological speculation of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia that shaped the wisdom literature later received into Greek and biblical thought.
The dualistic cosmology and ethical vision of Zoroaster, from the prophetic hymns of the Gathas to the Achaemenid and Sassanian courts, and its lasting influence on later Mediterranean and Asian religious philosophy.