Socrate (469—399 B.C.E.) Socrates is one of the few individuals whom one could say has so-shaped the cultural and intellectual development of the world that, without him, history would be profoundly different. He is best known for his association with the Socratic method of question and answer, his claim that he was ignorant (or aware of his own absence of knowledge), and his claim that the

Ancient Ethics Ethical reflection in ancient Greece and Rome starts from all of an agent’s ends or goals and tries to systematize them. Our ends are diverse. We typically want, tra l'altro, material comfort, health, respect from peers and love from friends and family, successful children, healthy emotional lives, and intellectual achievement. We see all these things as good for us. Così, systematizing our

Relativismo Talvolta viene identificato il relativismo (solitamente dai suoi critici) come tesi secondo cui tutti i punti di vista sono ugualmente validi. Nell'etica, ciò equivale a dire che tutte le morali sono ugualmente buone; in epistemologia implica che tutte le credenze, o sistemi di credenze, sono ugualmente vere. I critici del relativismo in genere respingono tali visioni come incoerenti poiché implicano la validità anche dell’idea secondo cui il relativismo

Confucio (551—479 B.C.E.) Better known in China as “Master Kong” (cinese: Kongzi), Confucius was a fifth-century BCE Chinese thinker whose influence upon East Asian intellectual and social history is immeasurable. As a culturally symbolic figure, he has been alternately idealized, deified, licenziato, vilified, and rehabilitated over the millennia by both Asian and non-Asian thinkers and regimes. Given his extraordinary impact on Chinese, coreano, Japanese, e

Michel Foucault: Political Thought The work of twentieth-century French philosopher Michel Foucault has increasingly influenced the study of politics. This influence has mainly been via concepts he developed in particular historical studies that have been taken up as analytical tools; “governmentality” and ”biopower” are the most prominent of these. Più in generale, Foucault developed a radical new conception of social power as forming strategies embodying intentions