Musonius Rufus (c. 30–before 101-2 C.E.) Gaius Musonius Rufus was one of the four great Stoic philosophers of the Roman empire, along with Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. Renowned as a great Stoic teacher, Musonius conceived of philosophy as nothing but the practice of noble behavior. He advocated a commitment to live for virtue, not pleasure, since virtue saves us from the mistakes that ruin

Avicenna (Ibn Sina): Logic Avicenna (Ibn Sina) (c. 980-1037 C.E., or 375-428 of Hegira) is one of the most important philosophers and logicians in the Arabic world. His logical works are presented in several treatises. Some of them are commentaries on Aristotle’s Organon, and are presented in al-Shifa al-Mantiq, the logical part of the Encyclopedic Book al-Shifa (The Cure), which also contains a

Hell In philosophy and theology, the word “hell,” in its most general sense, refers to some kind of bad post-mortem state. The English word is apparently derived from an Indo-European word meaning “to cover,” which is associated with burial, and by extension, with a “place of the dead.” Accounts of hell’s nature describe these dimensions: The duration of hell: is it temporary or permanent? The

Cyrenaics The Cyrenaics are one of the minor Socratic schools. The school was founded by Aristippus, a follower of Socrates. The Cyrenaics are notable mainly for their empiricist and skeptical epistemology and their sensualist hedonism. They believe that we can have certain knowledge of our immediate states of perceptual awareness, for example, that I am seeing white now. However, we cannot go beyond these experiences

Thick Concepts A term expresses a thick concept if it expresses a specific evaluative concept that is also substantially descriptive. It is a matter of debate how this rough account should be unpacked, but examples can help to convey the basic idea. Thick concepts are often illustrated with virtue concepts like courageous and generous, action concepts like murder and betray, epistemic concepts like dogmatic and