Philosophy
Philosophy Reading List
Selections from From David White’s Philosophy for Kids (January-June)
Part I: Values
Question #1- Are you a fair and just person? (Plato 427-347, Greece)
Question #2- How do you know who your friends are? (Aristotle 384-322, Greece)
Question #3- Should you be rewarded for your efforts in school? (Confucius 551-479, China)
Question #4- Should you let little things bother you? (Marcus Aurelius 121-180, Rome)
Question #5- Is it your duty to give to charity? (Moses Maimonides 1135-1204, Spain)
Question #6- Will having fun make you happier than studying? (John Stuart Mill 1806-1873, Great Britain)
Question #7- Should you ever tell a lie? (Immanuel Kant, 1724-1804, Germany)
Question #8- Are there times when you should be violent? (Martin Luther King, Jr 1929-1968, Atlanta)
Question #9- Do you sometimes feel weird when you are with others? Simone de Beauvoir 1908-1986, France)
Question #10- Do we control technology or does technology control us? (Martin Heideggar 1889-1976, German)
Part II: Knowledge
Question #11- How do you know for certain that things move? (Zeno 495-430, Greece)
Question #12- What makes something you say true? (Aristotle)
Question #13- Can you doubt that you exist? (Rene Decartes 1596-1650, France)
Question #14- Does a tree make a sound if it falls in the forest with no one around? George Berkeley 1685-1753, )
Question #15- Are you certain that the law of gravity is really a law? (David Hume 1711-1776, Scotland)
Question #16- How can you tell when you know something? (Immanuel Kant)
Question #17- Can another person understand your feelings? (Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889-1951,)
Question #18- Can you lie to yourself? (Jean-Paul Sarte 1905-1980, France)
Question #19- Do you perceive things as they are or only as they seem to be? (Bertrand Russell 1872-1070, )
Question #20- Can computers think? (Daniel Dennett 1942-, )
Part III: Reality
Question #21- Can you think about nothing at all? (Parmenides 515-445, Greece)
Question #22- Does anything ever happen by chance? (Democritus 460-370, Greece)
Question #23- What happens to numbers when you are not using them? (Plato, Greece)
Question #24- Are numbers and people equally real? (Aristotle, Greece)
Question #25- Is time what you see when you look at a clock? (St. Augustine 354-430, North Africa)
Question #26- If the universe came from a Big Bang, where did the Big Bang come from? (St. Thomas Aquinas 1225-1274)
Question #27- Are you the same person you were five years ago? (John Locke 1632-1704, England)
Question #28- Do you have a free will? (Thomas Hobbes 1588-1679, )
Question #29- Does anything depend on everything? (Georg Hegel 1770-1831, Germany)
Question #30- Are impossible things ever possible?
Part IV: Critical Thinking
Question #31- Is it important to speak and write so that you can be understood?
Question #32- Should you always listen to the opinions of others?
Question #33- Should you criticize people or the opinions people have?
Question #34- Why is because such an important word?
Question #35- If many people believe that something is true, is it true?
Question #36- Do two wrongs balance out and make an action right?
Question #37- Do two wrongs balance out and make an action right?
Question #38- “I’m lying.” True or False
Question #39- Can something logical ever not make sense?
Question #40- “I Wonder…” what it means to define something?