Meet Viktor Frankl: The Last of the Human Freedoms
A psychiatrist who survived four camps, lost almost everyone, and built a therapy around the one thing that could not be taken from him.
Meet a Mentorphilosophy2 min
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22 entries
Meet Confucius: The Adviser Nobody Would Hire
He spent years travelling between states looking for a ruler who would let him try his ideas, largely failed, and taught the students who reshaped Chinese civilisation.
Meet a Mentorphilosophy2 min
Meet Nagarjuna: The Philosopher Who Refused to Have a Position
He argued that nothing whatever exists on its own — and that this is the most hopeful thing anyone has ever said. Eighteen centuries later, nobody has landed a clean hit on the argument.
Meet a Mentorphilosophy3 min
Meet Socrates: The Man Who Wrote Nothing
He left no books, founded no school, and charged no fees — then changed philosophy permanently by asking people what they meant.
Meet a Mentorphilosophy2 min
Meet Voltaire: The Man Who Did Not Say It
Europe’s most famous writer for sixty years, and the most misquoted man on this site. What he actually said is better.
Meet a Mentorphilosophy4 min
Meet Cicero: The Voice That Outlived the Republic
No noble blood, no army — just the best-trained voice in Rome. He rose to consul on words alone, and paid for his last speeches with his life.
Meet a Mentorleadership2 min
Meet Ralph Waldo Emerson: Trust Thyself
He left the pulpit when he could no longer say the words, and spent fifty years teaching America to stop imitating and start trusting its own mind.
Meet a Mentorphilosophy2 min
Meet Jonathan Edwards: Seventy Resolutions
At nineteen he wrote seventy rules for his own life and read them every week for the rest of it. Colonial America’s sharpest mind aimed itself first.
Meet a Mentorphilosophy2 min
When a Trusted Man Betrays You: Confucius and Machiavelli at the Same Table
A minister has betrayed the ruler who raised him. Confucius counsels self-examination and moral example; Machiavelli counsels swift, exemplary punishment. Both cannot be entirely right.
debatephilosophy5 min
Meet the Buddha: The End of Unnecessary Suffering
A prince left a palace to face the one thing wealth could not solve — and came back with a method, not a religion.
Meet a Mentorspirituality1 min