Primary texts first
Every thinker's page is built around what survives in their own words, or around the ancient reports that preserve them. Where a claim rests on a later tradition rather than a surviving text, the page says so.
About the journal
Thalassa
A reading room for the questions the Greeks asked first and nobody has finished answering. Built slowly, checked against sources, and free to use.
Why it exists
Most introductions to philosophy do one of two things. They flatten a thinker into a slogan, or they assume you already have the vocabulary and the century in your head. This journal tries the middle path: enough context that a page makes sense on its own, enough precision that it is still true when you go on to read the text itself.
The sea in the title is not decoration. Philosophy in the Greek world grew in port cities, where other people's answers arrived with the cargo. Miletus traded with Egypt and Babylon before Thales asked what everything is made of. The map of civilizations on this site exists because the geography is part of the argument.
Nothing here is behind a login or a paywall, and the site keeps no account for you. Your saved thinkers and reading list live in your own browser, on the device you saved them on, and are never sent anywhere.
Who writes it
Three students, in the evenings
None of us is a professional philosopher, which is exactly why the sourcing on this site is stricter than it strictly needs to be: everything here can be checked against the text it came from, and anything that cannot be checked is either marked as disputed or left out.
Editorial standards
How these pages are written
Dates are ranges, not certainties
Ancient lives are dated from scattered evidence. A date written with a leading 'c.' is an estimate that scholars still argue about, and the journal keeps the hedge rather than rounding it away.
Objections belong on the page
Each thinker carries a section of criticism. A view worth reading is worth seeing pressed, and a reader who only meets the flattering version of an argument has not met the argument.
No invented quotations
A line appears in the journal only if it can be traced to a text. Several of the most widely shared philosophical quotations cannot be, and they are left out.
Images credited, one by one
Portraits, sculpture and painting come from museum and Wikimedia Commons records. Most are in the public domain; a few are used under a Creative Commons licence, and those name the photographer and the licence. Each carries a caption saying what the work is, and most ancient portraits are later imaginings rather than likenesses.
Two names on the masthead
This is written by two people rather than by an institution, which is worth knowing when you weigh what it says. Where a page goes beyond what we can check, it says so instead of sounding confident.
Where to start
Six ways into the journal
Start from scratch
The Learn curriculum runs from the first questions to the harder debates, in order, at three levels.
Start from the map
Twelve regions of the ancient Aegean, each with the thinkers and cities that belong to it.
Start from a person
Lives, central ideas, the standard objections, and what to read first.
Start from a book
What each work argues, why it mattered, and honest advice on how to read it.
Start from the text itself
6 complete works, in translations free of copyright, read here with your place kept for you.
Start from a word
Virtue is not quite arete and happiness is not quite eudaimonia. The glossary is where most of the difficulty actually hides.
Corrections
Errors of fact, date and attribution are the ones worth hearing about, and they will be fixed on the page rather than quietly. Translation choices and disputed dates are marked where the dispute is real.
Sources and rights
Historical dates and attributions follow scholarly and museum records. Images are in the public domain and are credited individually in their captions. Translated passages are drawn from translations old enough to be free of copyright, and the translator is named wherever a translation is quoted.