Introduction

'Philosophy For You' is a project for Western Civilization II at the State University of New York at Morrisville - Norwich Extension. It is based on the book Aristotle Would Have Liked Oprah, by Ethel Diamond. The purpose of the book is to provide modern people, who might have otherwise overlooked the wisdom in ancient and medieval philosophy, the chance to explore it and learn how it still applies to our society today. This website is a project that was developed to increase my personal understanding of philosophy and how it has helped shape Western Civilization, and to promote the same knowledge to other who are interested. Enjoy.

Aristotle Would Have Liked Oprah is an excellent book, one that I would recommend to anyone. It covers many of the greatest minds in history and a brief description of their philosophy. The author presents it is an easy to read manner, and she presents and explains difficult concepts in a way that the reader can relate to.

I have made every attempt to select and present some of the more prevalent ideas in this book, but of course due to the context and the length of the book, it would be virtually impossible to present everything- especially since reading the book would be much more beneficial. What I have done is present the main ideas of some of the more prominent philosophers named in Aristotle Would Have Liked Oprah and then added my own thoughts on how it relates to our current society and how we can each apply it to our daily lives. I have also used other sources for small sections of each page for the philosophers such as the quote and often the time period in which they lived in. These details were not always supplied by the book, but I felt it necessary to research the information on my own to become a more productive independent learner, and it seemed to benefit the page and add an important dimension that it would have lacked otherwise.