Plato was the first great philosopher of the West to organize and record the issues and questions that define philosophy. A student of Socrates, Plato preserved the teachings of his mentor in many famous "dialogues" that deal with classic issues like...

Plato

A Portuguese Jew living in Holland, Spinoza was excommunicated because of the unorthodox view he took of God. Spinoza wrote in the rationalist style of a geometric proof to develop his idea of God as the infinite, indwelling cause of all things, a un...

Baruch Spinoza

Jean-Paul Sartre, a French philosopher, is perhaps the best known advocate of existentialism. In this view, no external authority gives life meaning: mankind is radically free and responsible. In every moment we choose ourselves, with no assurance th...

Jean-Paul Sartre

St. Thomas Aquinas is known for producing history's most complete system of Christian philosophy. In the late 13th century, this quiet, reflective Dominican scholar combined the work of Aristotle with Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and pagan thought to r...

St. Thomas Aquinas

Nietzsche condemned nearly all of the religious and philosophical thought of his day to blunt terms (e.g., God is dead). He says the only reality is this world of life and death, conflict and change, creation and destruction. For centuries, religious...

Friedrich Nietzsche

For Kierkegaard, truth is a subjective reality which we must live, not something to simply consider and discuss. His self-consciousness and self-examination highlight the practical demands of existence, and he opposes the speculative thinking of phil...

Soren Kierkegaard

Immanuel Kant's "transcendental" philosophy transcends the question of "what" we know to ask "how" we know it. Before Kant, philosophers had debated for centuries whether knowledge is derived from experience or reason. Kant says that both views are p...

Immanuel Kant

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) was Plato's student, but revised his teacher's ideas to be more consistent with ordinary experience. He thought human beings are one with the rest of nature, yet set apart from it by their ability to reason. Aristotle systema...

Aristotle

David Hume (1711-1776) represented the culmination of the British philosophy of sense-experience. Although he lived in the age of reason, Hume had profound doubts about our ability to know anything in the world with certainty. This skepticism colored...

David Hume

St. Augustine (354-430 A.D.) was the first great systematic Christian philosopher. He attempted to combine the philosophical insights of Plato with the faith explicated in the Bible. Augustine thought of Plato's eternal forms as ideas in the mind of ...

St. Augustine

Friedrich Hegel developed a profound and influential synthesis of all prior knowledge. He aimed to make philosophy an all-comprehensive science that would restate, in rational language, the truth of Christianity. In Hegel's vast speculative and ideal...

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

John Dewey was America's most influential philosopher. He wanted philosophy to rise above old tired disputes to address new, more vital questions and problems. Dewey's views are known as "pragmatism", which emphasizes action and results. He believed ...

John Dewey

Featuring performances by: William Bennett, Elayne Bennett, Stephen Collins, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Megan Gallagher, Charlton Heston, Simon Jones, Rita Moreno, Tonya Pinkins, Richard Thomas, and Betty White. More than two million readers and listeners h...

The Moral Compass

This star-studded rendition of Ogden Nash's humorous verses backed by a full-orchestra performance of Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals will surely delight adults and children of all ages.  Performed by Ted Danson, Audrey Hepburn, Charlton Heston,...

Carnival of the Animals

Today we see little public outrage about Bill Clinton's misconduct. With enormous skill, the president and his advisors have constructed a defensive wall built of bricks left over from Watergate: diversion, half-truth, equivocation, and sophistry. It...

The Death of Outrage

Philosophy

Charlton Heston was an American Academy Award-winning film actor. Heston was known for playing heroic roles, such as Moses in The Ten Commandments, Colonel George Taylor in Planet of the Apes and Judah Ben-Hur in Ben-Hur. Early in his career, he was one of a handful of Hollywood actors to publicly speak out against racism and was active in the civil rights movement. During the latter part of his movie career, he starred in films such as The Omega Man and Soylent Green, which have a strong environmental message. He was president of the National Rifle Association from 1998 to 2003.

Listen to Charlton Heston

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