The Originals: Classic Readings in Western Philosophy

Table of Contents

• • Introduction for Instructors
  • Dedication
  • Acknowledgements
  • How to Do Philosophy

• The Value of Philosophy

• • Plato - On Defending Philosophy
  • Bertrand Russell – On the Value of Philosophy

• Epistemology

• • Rene Descartes – On Doubt and Certainty
  • John Locke – On the Foundation of Knowledge
  • George Berkeley – On Materialism and Idealism
  • David Hume – On Empiricism
  • Immanuel Kant – On the Sources of Knowledge
  • William James - On Pragmatism
  • Bertrand Russell – On Truth and Falsehood

• Metaphysics

• • Plato – On the Allegory of the Cave
  • Plato – On Forms
  • Aristotle – On Categories
  • Aristotle - On Language and the Way Truth Works
  • Gottfried Wilhelm Liebniz – On Substances
  • David Hume – On Liberty and Necessity

• Philosophy of Religion

• • St. Anselm – On the Ontological Proof of God's Existence
  • St. Thomas Aquinas – On the Five Ways to Prove God's Existence
  • Blaise Pascal – On the Wager for God's Existence
  • David Hume– On the Irrationality of Believing in Miracles
  • Søren Kierkegaard – On Encountering Faith
  • William James – On the Will to Believe
  • William Paley – On The Teleological Argument

• Ethics and Morality

• • Plato – On Justice
  • Aristotle - On Virtue
  • David Hume – On the Foundations of Morals
  • Immanuel Kant – On Moral Principles
  • Jeremy Bentham - On the Principle of Utility
  • John Stuart Mill – On Utilitarianism

• Socio-Political Philosophy

• • Bertrand Russell – On Anti-Suffragist Arguments
  • Karl Marx & Frederick Engels – On Communism
  • Mary Wollstonecraft – On the Rights of Women
  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau - On Inequality
  • John Locke – On Property and the Formation of Societies
  • Thomas Hobbes – On The Social Contract
  • John Stuart Mill – On The Equality of Women

• Art and Aesthetics

• • David Hume – On Opinion and Taste
  • Immanuel Kant – On the Aesthetic Taste
  • Aristotle – On Tragedy
  • Plato – On the Value of Art and Imitation
  • Edmund Burke – On the Sublime
• • About the Editor
  • Works Cited