Sublime

I want to draw particular attention to the underlying notion of “self-interest.”56 It is in a real sense the key to the new philosophy. The term first appears in English right around Hobbes’ time, and it is, indeed, directly borrowed from interesse, the Roman law term for interest payments. When it was first introduced, most English authors seemed

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Chrysippus, or other Stoics inspired by his work, had an elaborate theory of knowledge, in the main empirical and based on perception, though they allowed certain ideas and principles, which were held to be established by consensus gentium, the agreement of mankind. But Zeno, as well as the Roman Stoics, regarded all theoretical studies as subordin

I can summarize a thousand years of moral philosophy in a few sentences: pre–Hobbes and Bentham, human nature was viewed as a battle between our desire to be good and our temptations to behave badly, and the gist of moral philosophy and religious faith was that we should treat each other as we want to be treated ourselves—the golden rule—and we sho

In the original Greek, philosophia has the meaning “love of wisdom.” In other words, philosophy is “the study of the love of wisdom,” and philosophers are “lovers of wisdom.” Conversely, one could say that if a person were to become a complete “wise man” who knows all there is to know, that person would no longer be a lover of wisdom (philosopher).