These should be the most basic topics in philosophy--topics about which we'd like to have articles soon. Please see the most basic encyclopedia article topics for general instructions on constructing this list.

You can also go to the Philosophy main index for a more comprehensive listing.

Please, before you write on any of these topics, use the search engine below to see whether others have already written on the topic under a slightly different title or as part of another article.

(Sources for ideas, so far: The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy; try the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

A priori -- A posteriori -- A priori and a posteriori knowledge -- Abduction -- Absolute -- Aesthetics -- Age of Enlightenment -- Agnosticism -- Altruism -- Ambiguity -- American Philosophical Association -- analytic philosophy -- Aristotle -- atheism -- axiom --

Bertrand Russell -- Buddhist philosophy --

causality -- Cogito, ergo sum -- continental philosophy --

David Hume -- deduction -- determinism -- dualism --

Eastern philosophy -- epistemic justification -- epistemology -- ethical relativism -- ethics -- existentialism -- existence

fatalism -- Friedrich Nietzsche -- free will --

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel --

hedonism -- humanism --

idealism -- Immanuel Kant -- Indian philosophy -- induction -- inference --

Jean-Jacques Rousseau -- John Locke -- John Stuart Mill -- justification --

law of non-contradiction -- logic -- Ludwig Wittgenstein --

Marxism -- materialism -- metaphysics -- monism -- moral absolutism --

nihilism -- noumenon --

pantheism -- perception -- phenomenon (a la Kant) -- philosopher -- philosophy -- physicalism -- Plato -- Plato's Republic or The Republic of Plato -- Platonism -- pluralism -- positivism (also: logical empiricism; logical positivism) -- pragmatism --

realism -- relativism -- Rene Descartes -- Republic --

Soren Kierkegaard -- scholasticism -- semantics -- skepticism (or scepticism) -- social contract -- solipsism -- sophistry -- stoicism -- Symposium (by Plato) --

tabula rasa -- thing in itself or thing-in-itself -- Thomas Aquinas -- Thomas Hobbes -- Thus Spake Zarathustra --

utilitarianism --

Western philosophy --

Zeno's paradoxes