Common Ground
Philosophy Study Guides
The classical literature and philosophy study guides, given their own room. They aren't sacred texts of a living tradition, but they earn a close read the same way — Zach's own skill turned on a different shelf of very old books.
New
Philosophy Library
Concept cards and quizzes, chapter by chapter — starting with Alan Watts' The Book.
The Guides
19 guidesMore titles land here over time — Jung and Campbell are on the list, simplified in Zach's own words rather than extended quotation, since both are still in copyright.
Dante — The Divine Comedy
Study guide to Dante's Divine Comedy (composed c. 1308–1320): 100 cantos across Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, structured around contrapasso, the guides Virgil and Beatrice, and love in three states (disordered, being corrected, rightly ordered).
Homer — The Iliad and The Odyssey
Study guide covering both Homeric epics: the Iliad (15,693 lines, the rage of Achilles across the final weeks of the Trojan War's tenth year) and the Odyssey (12,110 lines, Odysseus's ten-year, non-linear journey home to Ithaca), both in dactylic hexameter with shared oral-formulaic epithets.
Euripides — The Bacchae
Study guide to Euripides's Bacchae (staged posthumously c. 405 BCE): the god Dionysus comes to Thebes in disguise, is refused by its young king Pentheus, and leads him step by step into the mountain rites he banned, where Pentheus is torn apart by the women of his own family.
Aeschylus — The Oresteia
Study guide to Aeschylus's Oresteia (458 BCE), the only complete Greek tragic trilogy to survive: Agamemnon is killed by his wife Clytemnestra, their son Orestes kills her in turn, and the cycle of revenge ends in a court of law founded by Athena.
Virgil — The Aeneid
Study guide to Virgil's Aeneid (written c. 29–19 BCE), Rome's founding epic: the Trojan prince Aeneas escapes burning Troy, crosses the Mediterranean, loses Dido, descends to the underworld, and wins a war in Italy that ends on a question about mercy.
Plato — The Apology
Study guide to Plato's Apology of Socrates (written c. 399–390 BCE): the three speeches Socrates gave at his trial in Athens, where he was charged with impiety and with corrupting the young, and chose to defend his way of life instead of begging for his life.
Epictetus — The Enchiridion
Study guide to Epictetus's Enchiridion, or Handbook (c. 100–135 CE), compiled by his student Arrian: a short manual of Stoic practice built on the distinction between what is up to us and what is not, from a former slave who taught philosophy in Greece.
Seneca — Letters from a Stoic
Study guide to Seneca's Moral Letters to Lucilius (c. 62–65 CE): 124 short, personal letters from an elder statesman to a younger friend on time, death, fear, friendship, grief and how to live, written near the end of his life under Nero.
Lucretius — On the Nature of Things
Study guide to Lucretius's On the Nature of Things (De Rerum Natura, c. 55 BCE): a Latin epic poem that sets out Epicurean philosophy in six books, arguing that the world is made of atoms moving in empty space, that death is nothing to us, and that fear of death and of the gods is the root of human misery.
Cicero — On Duties
Study guide to Cicero's On Duties (De Officiis, 44 BCE): a three-book letter from the Roman statesman to his son on what a good person owes others, arguing that what is morally right and what is useful never truly conflict, and testing the claim on tyrants, oaths, the ring of Gyges and the story of Regulus.
Boethius — The Consolation of Philosophy
Study guide to Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy (c. 524 CE): a dialogue between a condemned former consul and Lady Philosophy, written in prison in alternating prose and verse, on Fortune, true happiness, providence and fate, and how divine foreknowledge fits with human freedom.
Plato — The Phaedo
Study guide to Plato's Phaedo (c. 380–360 BCE): Socrates' last day in prison, his case that the soul survives death and that a philosopher need not fear it, the objections of Simmias and Cebes, the myth of the other world, and the death scene.
Aristotle — The Nicomachean Ethics
Study guide to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (c. 335–322 BCE): happiness as flourishing, virtue as habit and the mean, practical wisdom, friendship, and the best life.
Augustine — The Confessions
Study guide to Augustine's Confessions (c. 397–400 CE): a bishop's account of his life addressed to God, from the stolen pears to the garden at Milan, then an inquiry into memory, time and creation.
Meditations (Marcus Aurelius)
Dense reference guide to Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, private Stoic notebooks written c. 161-180 CE and never intended for publication, covering all twelve books individually and the core Stoic vocabulary underlying them.
Plato — The Republic
Study guide to Plato's Republic (composed c. 375 BCE, 10 books, dialogue set in Piraeus over one evening): the question of justice, built up via an ideal city, the tripartite soul, and the Sun/Line/Cave analogies.
Sophocles — Oedipus Rex
Study guide to Sophocles's Oedipus Rex (composed c. 429 BCE, single-act tragedy set in Thebes over one day): a plague-driven murder investigation in which the king discovers he is both detective and killer.
The Analects
Study guide to Confucius's Analects (Lunyu), a compilation of his sayings and dialogues with disciples assembled after his death. Organizes the text around core concepts — ren (humaneness), li (ritual propriety), the junzi (exemplary person) ideal, learning (xue), and virtue-based governance.
The Enneads
Study guide to Plotinus's Enneads, the foundational Neoplatonic philosophical system built on three hypostases — the One (beyond being), Intellect/Nous (self-thinking thought containing the Platonic Forms), and Soul (mediating between Intellect and matter) — and the soul's return (epistrophe) to its source through contemplation.