By era
Ancient
23 entries
Aristocracy
Rule by the best: government entrusted to a hereditary or qualified elite held to possess the virtue and judgment the many lack.
11 min
Primary textAshtavakra Gita
A dialogue in which the sage Ashtavakra tells King Janaka that he is already free, already pure consciousness, and that the only obstacle is the belief that there is an obstacle.
112 min
IdeologyCivic Republicanism
Freedom is not a possession you hold in private; it is an achievement that survives only where citizens actively govern themselves.
12 min
ThinkerConfucius
The teacher who held that a good society is built not by law or force but by cultivated people fulfilling their roles with humaneness and ritual grace.
11 min
TraditionDaoism
The way of the Dao: to align with the nameless source of all things by ceasing to force, and to let action arise of itself.
12 min
IdeologyDirect Democracy
Rule in which citizens make the laws and decide policy themselves, rather than delegating the decision to elected representatives.
11 min
ConceptDistributive Justice
The question of how a society should allocate its benefits and burdens, and by what standard any pattern of holdings counts as just.
10 min
ConceptDivine Command Theory
The view that what makes an act morally obligatory is that God commands it, and what makes it wrong is that God forbids it.
9 min
Mental modelFirst Principles Thinking
Reason up from the few things you are sure are true, rather than down from what everyone already assumes.
6 min
ConceptFree Will and Determinism
Whether the choices we experience as free can be real if every event, including the choice, is fixed by prior causes and the laws of nature.
10 min
ConceptHedonism
The claim that pleasure, or the absence of pain, is the only thing good in itself.
8 min
TraditionJust War Theory
A tradition that treats war as sometimes justified but always bound by rules: rules for when you may fight, and rules for how you may fight.
11 min
TraditionMahayana Buddhism
The 'Great Vehicle' of Buddhism, which holds that the goal is not private liberation but the vow to free all beings, grounded in the doctrine that all things are empty of fixed self-nature.
12 min
ConceptNatural Law
The view that there is an objective moral order grounded in human nature and knowable by reason, prior to and independent of any human command.
9 min
IdeologyOligarchy
Rule by the few, most often the wealthy, exercised in their own interest rather than the common good.
10 min
IdeologyRepublicanism
A politics in which rule is a public matter, held in common and without a master, aimed at the common good and secured by the freedom of citizens to live free from domination.
11 min
ThinkerThe Buddha
A teacher who diagnosed suffering as rooted in craving and a mistaken sense of self, and prescribed a disciplined path out of it.
11 min
ConceptThe Problem of Evil
If God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and wholly good, why is there so much suffering?
8 min
ConceptThe Problem of Universals
Do properties and kinds like redness or humanity exist as real things shared by many objects, or are they only names we give to resemblances among particulars?
7 min
Thought experimentThe Ship of Theseus
If every plank of a ship is replaced one by one, is it still the same ship? A puzzle about what makes a thing the same thing over time.
8 min
Primary textThe Upanishads
The concluding portion of the Vedas, where Indian thought turns from ritual to the inner self and asks what, if anything, is ultimately real.
10 min
IdeologyTheocracy
Rule in the name of God, where religious law is the law of the state and clergy either hold power or certify who may.
11 min
ConceptTheories of Truth
Rival accounts of what makes a proposition true: matching the world, fitting a system, working in practice, or nothing substantive at all.
10 min