Browse by time · century
4th century BC
400 BC – 301 BC
Showing 125 works across all media from the 4th century BC
The Republic
380 BC · 528 pages
Asked why anyone should be just when nobody is watching, Socrates answers by building an entire city in conversation. The allegory of the cave has never stopped explaining people to themselves.
★ 8.8
★ 8.1
We learn an art or craft by doing the things that we shall have to do when we have learnt it.
The Nicomachean Ethics · 322 BC
Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.
The Nicomachean Ethics · 322 BC
The Wisdom Books
Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes
Author unknown
400 BC · 416 pages
Job loses everything, demands an explanation, and gets a whirlwind of questions back. Ecclesiastes calls all of it breath. Proverbs, unmoved by either, tells you how to live anyway.
★ 7.6
The Metaphysics
350 BC · 459 pages
Aristotle asks what a thing most fundamentally is, and the answer runs through matter, form, and cause to a god who moves the whole world simply by being loved.
★ 7.6