Columns of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi in Greece

If you travel northwest from Athens, on the road to Corinth, you will come to the ruins of the once great city of Delphi. Delphi is the place once thought by the Greeks to be the center of the world. Here, in the 6th century B.C., the Oracle in the Temple of Apollo, was at its busiest, as it was called upon to dispense wisdom and to give answers to some of the pressing questions of the day. But, the Oracle of the classical world was silent before the age old questions like Who am I? Why am I here? What should I be doing? and Where am I going?

From the beginning of time man has been trying to make sense of himself and his world. He has been seeking understanding. But as time marches on, man isn’t getting the understanding he seeks, he isn’t happier, and he hasn’t been able to conquer his own nature.

What’s wrong? With all the great minds and thinking that have gone before us, with all the lessons of history left for us to examine, it is difficult to imagine why we aren’t further along than we are. Why are we asking the same questions in our search for meaning, the Greeks were asking 2600 years ago. Do we not yet have enough information available to us?

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Since its first publication in 1945? Lord Russell’s A History of Western Philosophy has been universally acclaimed as the outstanding one-volume work on the subject — unparalleled in its comprehensiveness, its clarity, its erudition, its grace and wit. In seventy-six chapters he traces philosophy from the rise of Greek civilization to the emergence of logical analysis in the twentieth century. Among the philosophers considered are: Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, the Atomists, Protagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Cynics, the Sceptics, the Epicureans, the Stoics, Plotinus, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, Benedict, Gregory the Great, John the Scot, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, William of Occam, Machiavelli, Erasmus, More, Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, the Utilitarians, Marx, Bergson, James, Dewey, and lastly the philosophers with whom Lord Russell himself is most closely associated — Cantor, Frege, and Whitehead, co-author with Russell of the monumental Principia Mathematica.

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In 1572 Montaigne retired to his estates in order to devote himself to leisure, reading and reflection. There he wrote his constantly expanding ‘essays’, inspired by the ideas he found in books from his library and his own experience.

He discusses subjects as diverse as war-horses and cannibals, poetry and politics, sex and religion, love and friendship, ecstasy and experience. Above all, Montaigne studied himself to find his own inner nature and that of humanity. The Essays are among the most idiosyncratic and personal works in all literature. An insight into a wise Renaissance mind, they continue to engage, enlighten and entertain modern readers.

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When Aristotle articulated the central question of the group of writings we know as his Metaphysics, he said it was a question that would never cease to raise itself.

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Epicureanism is commonly regarded as the refined satisfaction of physical desires. As a philosophy, however, it also denoted the striving after an independent state of mind and body, imperturbability, and reliance on sensory data as the true basis of knowledge. Epicurus (ca. 341-271 B.C.) founded one of the most famous and influential philosophical schools of antiquity. In these remains of his vast output of scientific and ethical writings, we can trace Epicurus’ views on atomism, physical sensation, duty, morality, the soul, and the nature of the gods.

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The Epicureans vs the Stoics. Greek philosophy SHOWDOWN.

Epicurus and Zeno were two philosophers who lived somewhere around the general viscinity of 200 BC and became leaders of two different competing lifestyle organisations which were part religion and part feelgood newage fad, like the Atkins diet or the Secret.

Both Epicureanism and Zeno’s movement, which was called Stoicism, are important first steps in understanding the branch of philosophy known as ethics, what it means for something to be good or bad, if these values are objective or subjective or whether they exist at all.

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