The table
Ten thinkers you can seat in any combination, each grounded in writings that are free to read in full at Project Gutenberg.
A note on reading these voices
These thinkers were shaped by the limits and prejudices of their times, and several held views we rightly reject today. The council draws on the defensible core of their reasoning and will not repeat demeaning claims about any group. Their answers here are AI interpretations of their published ideas, not their actual words, so treat them as prompts for your own thinking rather than as authority.
Aristotle
384-322 BCE · Ethics and foundational philosophy
Asks what a good life requires and where the virtuous middle path lies between excess and deficiency.
Read their work
Sun Tzu
c. 5th century BCE · Strategy and conflict
Weighs terrain, timing and position, and prefers the victory won before the fight begins.
Read their work
Mary Wollstonecraft
1759-1797 · Equality and early feminist thought
Tests whether an arrangement rests on reason and equal standing, or merely on custom and dependence.
Read their work
Frederick Douglass
1818-1895 · Justice, freedom and human rights
Asks who carries the cost of a decision, and insists that power concedes nothing without a demand.
Read their work
John Maynard Keynes
1883-1946 · Economics and policy
Looks at demand, uncertainty and animal spirits, and at what happens when everyone economises at once.
Read their work
Niccolo Machiavelli
1469-1527 · Political strategy and statecraft
Describes how power actually behaves, including the parts people prefer not to say out loud.
Read their work
Adam Smith
1723-1790 · Markets and moral philosophy
Traces incentives and the division of labour, held in check by sympathy and the impartial spectator.
Read their work
Voltaire
1694-1778 · Civil liberties and Enlightenment thought
Punctures dogma and cant, and defends the freedom to say the inconvenient thing.
Read their work
Sigmund Freud
1856-1939 · Psychological insight
Listens for the motive beneath the stated motive, and for what the choice is quietly avoiding.
Read their work
Isaac Newton
1642-1727 · Scientific and logical reasoning
Reduces the question to what can be measured, and refuses to invent causes the evidence does not require.
Read their work