About

An open door to philosophy.

An invitation to encounter ideas without turning them into recipes, and authors without placing them beyond criticism.

PHILO brings together thirty influential figures from different traditions and periods. This selection neither exhausts the history of philosophy nor establishes a universal ranking. It offers thirty starting points for an exploration intended to grow.

Each profile connects a life, concepts, reading guides and a bibliography. Connections between philosophers are editorial. They invite comparison without erasing disagreement or projecting today’s categories onto the past.

The guides are original educational introductions, not complete editions. Uncertain dates, works transmitted by disciples and indirect testimonies are identified. Adaptations of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations remain explicitly labelled.

Sources & reference points

Marcus Aurelius

Meditations — the complete text Marcus Aurelius — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Marcus Aurelius — Encyclopædia Britannica Marcus Aurelius — Wikisource Bibliography

Socrates

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Socrates Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Socrates Bibliography

Plato

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Plato Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Plato’s Ethics and Politics in The Republic Bibliography

Aristotle

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Aristotle Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Aristotle’s Ethics Bibliography

Confucius

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy · Confucius Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy · Ethics in Chinese Philosophy Bibliography

René Descartes

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — René Descartes Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Descartes’ Epistemology Bibliography

Baruch Spinoza

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Baruch Spinoza Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Spinoza’s Political Philosophy Bibliography

Immanuel Kant

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Immanuel Kant Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Kant’s Moral Philosophy Bibliography

Friedrich Nietzsche

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy · Friedrich Nietzsche Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy · Nietzsche’s Moral and Political Philosophy Bibliography

Simone de Beauvoir

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy · Simone de Beauvoir Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy · Simone de Beauvoir Bibliography

Epicurus

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Epicurus Diogenes Laertius, Book X — text and translation Bibliography

Seneca

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Standard Ebooks Bibliography

Epictetus

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Standard Ebooks Bibliography

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Rousseau Online — Collection complète Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Rousseau Bibliography

David Hume

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — David Hume Hume Texts Online — Peter Millican and Amyas Merivale Bibliography

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Hegel Wikisource — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Bibliography

Arthur Schopenhauer

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Arthur Schopenhauer Schopenhauer-Gesellschaft Wikisource — Arthur Schopenhauer Bibliography

Karl Marx

Marx–Engels Internet Archive Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe digital Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Karl Marx Bibliography

Jean-Paul Sartre

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy · Jean-Paul Sartre Bibliothèque nationale de France · Jean-Paul Sartre Bibliography

Hannah Arendt

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Hannah Arendt Library of Congress — Hannah Arendt Papers Bibliography

Thomas Aquinas

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Thomas Aquinas Corpus Thomisticum — Index operum Bibliography

Simone Weil

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Simone Weil Encyclopaedia Britannica — Simone Weil Bibliography

Søren Kierkegaard

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Søren Kierkegaard Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter — scholarly edition Bibliography

Laozi

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Laozi Chinese Text Project — Dao De Jing Bibliography

Averroes

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Ibn Rushd Encyclopaedia Britannica — Averroes Bibliography

Heraclitus

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Heraclitus Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Bibliography

Pythagoras

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Pythagoras Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Bibliography

Émilie du Châtelet

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Émilie du Châtelet Encyclopaedia Britannica — Émilie du Châtelet Bibliography

Michel Foucault

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Michel Foucault Collège de France — Michel Foucault Bibliography

John Locke

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — John Locke Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Bibliography

Images & typography

The portraits and Roman landscape are artistic interpretations generated for this project, not documentary photographs. Asset credits and licences are available below.

View credits

A space that belongs to you.

Your journal, saved guides and reading progress remain in your browser’s local storage; they are neither sent to a server nor synchronised across devices. Clearing browser data removes them.