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Ever since humankind raised its head toward the heavens in search of universal understanding and spiritual fulfillment, wars, pogroms, persecution, prejudice, and contempt have been the means of resolving the many and varied disagreements that have arisen over matters religious.
In his Letter Concerning Toleration, Locke offers a compelling plea for freedom of conscience and religious expression. He outlines the limits of social and political incursion into the realm of personal belief or non-belief, discusses the dangers of mixing church and state, and strikes hard at those who would use...

John Dewey, one of America's greatest popular philosophers and educators, emphasizes the importance of critical thinking and the vital role education should play.
In this progressive work, written more than 80 years ago, Dewey, recognizing that we are born with the ability to think, argues that the educator's fundamental role is to train us to think well. At a time when America is lamenting the lack of solid training in the sciences at the elementary and secondary levels, Dewey's enthusiastic correlation between the scientific mind and the natural attitude of childhoodmarked by curiosity,...

Leibniz (1646 - 1716) was a true polymath and has been called the most comprehensive thinker since Aristotle. In these two great works by the founder of modern German speculative philosophy, the reader is introduced to Leibniz's metaphysics, including his conception of physical substance, the motion and resistance of bodies, and the role of the divine within the dynamic universe.

The art of rhetoric, or persuasive public speaking, was brought to perfection in classical Athens. During the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.E., rhetoric came under the scrutiny of the philosophers. While Plato dismissed public speaking as mere hackwork devoid of a rational basis, Aristotle defended it as a true art.
In his great work, Treatise on Rhetoric, which laid the foundations of philosophical rhetoric, Aristotle deals at length with the processes of argument and with style, including rhythm and meter. For Aristotle, rhetoric is a brand of the art of reasoning; its function he...

As the indisputable father of Western philosophy, Socrates stands as the archetype of free inquiry and intellectual honesty throughout history. He dared to explore the minds of men, to analyze the content of cherished beliefs, and to distinguish knowledge and truth from opinion. This philosophical gadfly irritated the people of Athens, who tried him for corrupting their youth, and subsequently sentenced him to death for his "crime."

In these four short works by Plato, we come to experience the full range of Socrates' penetrating mind. In the Euthyphro, Socrates searches after the truth...