index

Knowledge Wiki — Index

LLM-synthesized concept pages, entity summaries, and cross-tradition connections. Updated by /knowledge-compile. Always loaded in Claude's context via @knowledge/wiki/index.md in .claude/CLAUDE.md.

Last updated: 2026-05-02


Entities — People, Texts, Traditions

ArticleSummary
entities/plato.mdAthenian philosopher (428–348 BCE); synthesizes themes across 12 dialogues in the corpus: justice, the Good, the soul, knowledge, cosmology, civic obligation
entities/lao-tzu.mdLegendary author of the Tao Te Ching; key concepts: the unnameable Tao, wu wei (non-action), complementary opposites, return to naturalness
entities/whitman-walt.mdAmerican poet (1819–1892); Leaves of Grass celebrates the cosmic self, democratic interconnectedness, and the body as sacred
entities/emerson-ralph-waldo.mdAmerican Transcendentalist (1803–1882); Nature + Essays; the Over-Soul as universal mind, correspondence between nature and spirit, self-reliance as spiritual discipline
entities/thoreau-henry-david.mdAmerican philosopher and naturalist (1817–1862); Walden, Civil Disobedience, Poems of Nature; conscience as sovereign, deliberate simplicity, principled noncooperation
entities/hesse-hermann.mdGerman-Swiss novelist (1877–1962); Siddhartha, Demian, Steppenwolf; the self as journey, wisdom cannot be taught, the multiple self
entities/nietzsche-friedrich.mdGerman philosopher (1844–1900); The Joyful Wisdom; God is dead, eternal recurrence, amor fati, no being behind doing
entities/spinoza-baruch.mdDutch-Jewish philosopher (1632–1677); The Ethics; God = Nature, the conatus, freedom through understanding, amor intellectualis Dei
entities/tolstoy-leo.mdRussian novelist and Christian anarchist (1828–1910); The Kingdom of God Is Within You; absolute nonviolence, the state as organized violence, direct influence on Gandhi
entities/george-fox.mdEnglish founder of the Quakers (1624–1691); 4 sources; the Inner Light, direct experience, radical equality, peace testimony
entities/margaret-fell.md"Mother of Quakerism" (1614–1702); Declaration and an Information + Women's Speaking Justified; foundational Peace Testimony, feminist theology, and gender equality
entities/ada-lovelace.md"Enchantress of Number" (1815–1852); Note G + Flyology; first computer programmer, poetical science, and visionary of general-purpose computation
entities/gibran-kahlil.mdLebanese-American poet (1883–1931); The Forerunner, The Madman; social masks, the madman as liberated self, pain as transformation
entities/omar-khayyam.mdPersian polymath and poet (1048–1131); Rubáiyát; agnostic carpe diem, failure of religious epistemology, the present as the only certain good
entities/shakespeare-william.mdEnglish playwright (1564–1616); works in the corpus split into 43 individual documents; Hamlet, Lear, The Tempest, Sonnets — dramatizes self, mortality, power, and justice without resolving them
entities/bhagavad-gita.mdHindu scripture (traditional); dharma, atman, karma yoga, bhakti yoga; Arjuna's dilemma as the paradigm case of civic duty and nonviolence in tension
entities/heian-court-literature.mdClassical Japanese women's writing (10th-11th century); Izumi Shikibu, Lady Sarashina; aesthetic sensitivity ("mono no aware") as a path to spiritual and philosophical insight
entities/truth-sojourner.mdAmerican abolitionist and activist (c. 1797–1883); Narrative; embodied justice, spiritual integrity under oppression, intersectionality of race and gender
entities/epictetus.mdGreek Stoic philosopher (c. 50–135 CE); Enchiridion; dichotomy of control, sovereign will, and the discipline of assent
entities/marcus-aurelius.mdRoman Emperor (161–180 CE); Meditations; the inner citadel, amor fati, and the practical application of Stoicism to leadership

Concepts — Ideas, Themes, Positions

ArticleSummary
concepts/impermanence.mdCross-tradition synthesis: Buddhist anicca, Taoist flux, Whitman's cycles, Nietzsche's eternal recurrence — what changes, what persists, and why it matters
concepts/the-good.mdPlato's agathon as the Form beyond all forms — traced through Republic, Gorgias, and Symposium, with connections to Taoist virtue (te)
concepts/the-self.mdSeven models of personal identity: Buddhist non-self, Platonic soul, Whitmanian multitudes, Hesse's journeying self, Spinoza's conatus, Nietzsche's performing self, Bhagavad-Gita's atman
concepts/logos-and-tao.mdSpeculative: Heraclitean logos and Lao Tzu's Tao as parallel concepts — the hidden ordering principle that precedes naming
concepts/civic-duty.mdFour traditions on civic obligation: Socrates (tacit consent), Thoreau (conscience sovereign), Tolstoy (state as organized violence), Bhagavad-Gita (svadharma as cosmic duty)
concepts/civil-disobedience.mdPrincipled refusal of unjust law: Thoreau's targeted noncooperation, Tolstoy's absolute nonresistance — the intellectual lineage to Gandhi and King; companion page to civic-duty
concepts/transcendentalism.mdAmerican Transcendentalism (Emerson + Thoreau + Whitman): Over-Soul, nature as spiritual text, self-reliance — connections to Platonism, Taoism, and Vedanta
concepts/nonviolence.mdCross-tradition synthesis: Buddhist ahimsa, Thoreau's noncooperation, Tolstoy's absolute nonresistance, Quaker peace testimony — counter-position: Bhagavad-Gita's dharmic warrior ethics
concepts/dharma.mdHindu dharma (cosmic duty, svadharma) vs. Buddhist dhamma (the teaching, the path) — same etymological root, different frameworks; primary source: Bhagavad-Gita
concepts/inner-light.mdGeorge Fox's "that of God in every man" — cross-tradition parallels to Emerson's Over-Soul, Buddhist Buddha-nature, Spinoza's amor intellectualis Dei

Connections — Cross-Tradition Synthesis

ArticleSummary
connections/cosmology-comparison.mdHow four traditions describe the origin and structure of the cosmos: Plato's Timaeus, Tao Te Ching, Whitman's Leaves of Grass, Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis