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The Great Philosophers: Plato (Great Philosophers Ser.)
by Bernard WilliamsPlato c428 ? c348BC Without the work of Plato, western thought is, quite literally, unthinkable. No single influence has been greater, in every age and in every philosophic field. Even those thinkers who have rejected Plato?s views have found themselves working to an agenda he set. Yet between the neo-platonist interpretations and the anti-platonist reactions, the stuff of `Platonism? proper has often been obscured. The philosopher himself has not necessarily helped in the matter: at times disconcertingly difficult, at other disarmingly simple, Plato can be an elusive thinker, his meanings hard to pin down. His dialogues complex and often ironically constructed and do not simply expand his views, which in any case changed and developed over a long life. In this lucid and exciting new introductory guide, Bernard Williams takes his reader back to first principles, re-reading the key texts to reveal what the philosopher actually said. The result is a rediscovered Plato: often unexpected, always fascinating and rewarding.
The Great Philosophers: Popper (GREAT PHILOSOPHERS)
by Frederic RaphaelKarl Popper 1902-1994The political history of the twentieth century has been full of savage 'certainties'. A similar idea of history warranted the callous savageries of both Marxism and Fascism. They shared a faith in what Karl Popper called 'Historicism': the belief that the future could be predicted and that man had to align himself with its bloody progress.Totalitarianism, Popper maintained, was based on ideas implicit in Western philosophy, from Plato to Hegel and Marx. It was his unique achievement to challenge the fundamental arguments in which Left and Right cloaked their authority.At a time when Communism and Fascism were devastatingly alluring to many intellectuals, Popper attacked their philosophical roots with passionate reasonableness and unflinching scepticism. As Frederic Raphael suggests in this elegant and intriguing introduction to his philosophy of science and history, Popper's epic modesty may have made him the most radical thinker of our times.
The Great Philosophers: Popper (Great Philosophers Ser. #17)
by Frederic RaphaelKarl Popper 1902-1994 The political history of the twentieth century has been full of savage `certainties?. A similar idea of history warranted the callous savageries of both Marxism and Fascism. They shared a faith in what Karl Popper called `Historicism?: the belief that the future could be predicted and that man had to align himself with its bloody progress. Totalitarianism, Popper maintained, was based on ideas implicit in Western philosophy, from Plato to Hegel and Marx. It was his unique achievement to challenge the fundamental arguments in which Left and Right cloaked their authority. At a time when Communism and Fascism were devastatingly alluring to many intellectuals, Popper attacked their philosophical roots with passionate reasonableness and unflinching scepticism. As Frederic Raphael suggests in this elegant and intriguing introduction to his philosophy of science and history, Popper?s epic modesty may have made him the most radical thinker of our times.
The Great Philosophers: Rorty (Great Philosophers Ser.)
by Gideon CalderPopular Great Philosopher's Series.An accessible overview of the work of one of our most influential living philosophers, as part of the popular Great Philosophers series. Richard Rorty is often cited as the most prominent philosophical defender of postmodernism. Best known for his unusually readable books and articles on philosophy - most notably Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979) and Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989) - Rorty has for some years now been a wide-ranging public intellectual, unwilling to be confined within the boundaries of academe. There is no real school of Rortianism. But Rorty-bashing is almost an industry in itself. He is a renegade to purists, a reactionary to radicals and a subversive to conservatives. And yet he presents his ideas as the culmination and extension of many of the most familiar and fashionable trends in contemporary thinking.
The Great Philosophers: Russell
by Ray MonkBertrand Russell 1872-1970Bertrand Russell discovered mathematics at the age of eleven. It was, he recalled, a transporting experience: 'as dazzling as first love.'From that moment on, he would pursue his passion with undying devotion and all but erotic fervour. Mathematics might succeed, he felt, where philosophy had failed, reducing thought to its purest form, and freeing knowledge from doubt and contradiction.And so, for a time, it seemed. Russell's mathematical investigations effortlessly resolved at a stroke some of philosophy's most intractable problems. Yet if mathematics could be a liberating mistress, she was an unreliable one...Opening up the work of one of our age's undisputed giants, Ray Monk's exhilaratingly clear, readable guide tells a compelling human tale too: a moving story of love and loss, of ecstatic triumph and deep disillusion.
The Great Philosophers: Russell (GREAT PHILOSOPHERS)
by Ray MonkBertrand Russell 1872-1970Bertrand Russell discovered mathematics at the age of eleven. It was, he recalled, a transporting experience: 'as dazzling as first love.'From that moment on, he would pursue his passion with undying devotion and all but erotic fervour. Mathematics might succeed, he felt, where philosophy had failed, reducing thought to its purest form, and freeing knowledge from doubt and contradiction.And so, for a time, it seemed. Russell's mathematical investigations effortlessly resolved at a stroke some of philosophy's most intractable problems. Yet if mathematics could be a liberating mistress, she was an unreliable one...Opening up the work of one of our age's undisputed giants, Ray Monk's exhilaratingly clear, readable guide tells a compelling human tale too: a moving story of love and loss, of ecstatic triumph and deep disillusion.
The Great Philosophers: Schopenhauer (Great Philosophers Ser. #19)
by Michael TannerSchopenhauer 1788 ? 1860 Western philosophy?s most profound and unrelenting pessimist, Schopenhauer hymned the miseries of human existence with a joylessness that was little short of lyrical. Yet he thrilled to the beauties of music and art. How did such deep bleakness and such sublime enthusiasm come to coincide in one man, one mind? Only by squaring these two sides of Schopenhauer can we truly hope to understand this most paradoxical ? even perverse of thinkers. Only through his thoughts on Beauty can we apprehend his attitude towards Truth. The failure of later philosophers down the generations to resolve these apparent contradictions has seen Schopenhauer?s thought unjustly marginalized and philosophy itself much poorer. Michael Tanner?s enthralling introduction teases out the difficulties and unpicks the paradoxes to reveal the exhilarating coherence beneath. It amounts to nothing less than a rediscovery of one of Western tradition?s greatest philosophers.
The Great Philosophers: Socrates (GREAT PHILOSOPHERS)
by Anthony Gottlieb'If you put me to death,' Socrates warned his Athenian judges, 'you will not easily find anyone to take my place.' So indeed it would prove, a single cup of hemlock robbing the western philosophical tradition of the man with best claims to be its founding father.Yet Socrates' influence was not so easily to be done away with. His words lovingly recorded by his devoted disciple Plato, his doctrines reached a posterity which has, through twenty-seven centuries now, taken him as its teacher.The marriage of idealism and scepticism in his though; his sense of education as self-discovery; his view of philosophy as preparation for life: these have been the stuff of western thought at its best. So completely did Socrates embody these values, he was prepared to die in their defence...
The Great Philosophers: Socrates (Great Philosophers Ser. #No. 6)
by Anthony GottliebSocrates 469 ? 399BC `If you put me to death,? Socrates warned his Athenian judges, `you will not easily find anyone to take my place.? So indeed it would prove, a single cup of hemlock robbing the western philosophical tradition of the man with best claims to be its founding father. Yet Socrates? influence was not so easily to be done away with. His words lovingly recorded by his devoted disciple Plato, his doctrines reached a posterity which has, through twenty-seven centuries now, taken him as its teacher. The marriage of idealism and scepticism in his though; his sense of education as self-discovery; his view of philosophy as preparation for life: these have been the stuff of western thought at its best. So completely did Socrates embody these values, he was prepared to die in their defence?
The Great Philosophers: Spinoza (GREAT PHILOSOPHERS)
by Roger ScrutonBorn to be misunderstood, Spinoza was a man whose theology was banned for Godlessness. The very virtuosity of his reasoning left logicians unsettled, while even to professional thinkers in our own time, Spinoza has seemed too clever by half. And yet, as Roger Scruton shows in this strikingly readable introduction to the man and his though, Spinoza's concerns were both simple and sublime. Few philosophers, indeed, have shown such a straightforward, sustained and honest interest in uncovering the most fundamental aspects of existence. Too important to be dismissed as a mere genius, Spinoza is rediscovered here in all his quiet and consoling simplicity.
The Great Philosophers: Spinoza (Great Philosophers Ser. #21)
by Roger ScrutonBorn to be misunderstood, Spinoza was a man whose theology was banned for Godlessness. The very virtuosity of his reasoning left logicians unsettled, while even to professional thinkers in our own time, Spinoza has seemed too clever by half. And yet, as Roger Scruton shows in this strikingly readable introduction to the man and his though, Spinoza's concerns were both simple and sublime. Few philosophers, indeed, have shown such a straightforward, sustained and honest interest in uncovering the most fundamental aspects of existence. Too important to be dismissed as a mere genius, Spinoza is rediscovered here in all his quiet and consoling simplicity.
The Great Philosophers: The Lives and Ideas of History's Greatest Thinkers
by Stephen LawSince the beginning of time mankind has struggled with the big questions surrounding our existence. Whilst most people have heard of Socrates, Machiavelli and Nietzsche, many are less clear on their theories and key concepts. In The Great Philosophers, bestselling author Stephen Law condenses and deciphers their fundamental ideas. Avoiding the technical jargon and complex logic associated with most books on philosophy, Law brings the thoughts of these great thinkers, from Confucius and Buddha to Wittgenstein and Sartre, to life.
The Great Philosophers: The Lives and Ideas of History's Greatest Thinkers
by Stephen LawSince the beginning of time mankind has struggled with the big questions surrounding our existence. Whilst most people have heard of Socrates, Machiavelli and Nietzsche, many are less clear on their theories and key concepts.In The Great Philosophers, bestselling author Stephen Law condenses and deciphers their fundamental ideas. Avoiding the technical jargon and complex logic associated with most books on philosophy, Law brings the thoughts of these great thinkers, from Confucius and Buddha to Wittgenstein and Sartre, to life.
The Great Philosophers: The Lives and Ideas of History's Greatest Thinkers
by Stephen LawSince the beginning of time mankind has struggled with the big questions surrounding our existence. Whilst most people have heard of Socrates, Machiavelli and Nietzsche, many are less clear on their theories and key concepts. In The Great Philosophers, bestselling author Stephen Law condenses and deciphers their fundamental ideas. Avoiding the technical jargon and complex logic associated with most books on philosophy, Law brings the thoughts of these great thinkers, from Confucius and Buddha to Wittgenstein and Sartre, to life.
The Great Philosophers: Turing (GREAT PHILOSOPHERS)
by Andrew HodgesAlan Turing's 1936 paper On Computable Numbers, introducing the Turing machine, was a landmark of twentieth-century thought. It settled a deep problem in the foundations of mathematics, and provided the principle of the post-war electronic computer. It also supplied a new approach to the philosophy of the mind.Influenced by his crucial codebreaking work in the Second World War, and by practical pioneering of the first electronic computers, Turing argued that all the operations of the mind could be performed by computers. His thesis, made famous by the wit and drama of the Turing Test, is the cornerstone of modern Artificial Intelligence.Here Andrew Hodges gives a fresh and critical analysis of Turing's developing thought, relating it to his extraordinary life, and also to the more recent ideas of Roger Penrose.
The Great Philosophers: Turing (Great Philosophers Ser. #No. 3)
by Andrew HodgesAlan Turing 1912 ? 1954 Alan Turing?s 1936 paper On Computable Numbers, introducing the Turing machine, was a landmark of twentieth-century thought. It settled a deep problem in the foundations of mathematics, and provided the principle of the post-war electronic computer. It also supplied a new approach to the philosophy of the mind. Influenced by his crucial codebreaking work in the Second World War, and by practical pioneering of the first electronic computers, Turing argued that all the operations of the mind could be performed by computers. His thesis, made famous by the wit and drama of the Turing Test, is the cornerstone of modern Artifical Intelligence. Here Andrew Hodges gives a fresh and critical analysis of Turing?s developing thought, relating it to his extraordinary life, and also to the more recent ideas of Roger Penrose.
The Great Philosophers: Voltaire
by John GrayPart of the GREAT PHILOSOPHERS series.Voltaire's savage laughter range out across eighteenth-century Europe, puncturing the pomposities and hypocrisies of power. Kings and cardinals felt the sting of his satire; governments and aristocracies endured his derision.Yet the aims of the Enlightenment's clown were nothing if not serious: to throw back the blinds of ignorance and superstition and let the sun of science and intellect stream in; to rebuild benighted Christendom as a new civilisation, secular and free.Herald of reason and revolution, Voltaire's mocking voice has echoed through two centuries of change. But as the Enlightenment's achievements have come increasingly into question, the joke has rebounded on the comedian himself. A creation of Christianity in way he never realised, Voltaire owed more to his epoch's orthodoxies than he could have ever guessed.John Gray's absorbing provocative introduction offers a radical reassessment of a fascinating and important figure, at once demythologizing the icon and revealing his genuine greatness.
The Great Philosophers: Voltaire (GREAT PHILOSOPHERS)
by John GrayPart of the GREAT PHILOSOPHERS series.Voltaire's savage laughter range out across eighteenth-century Europe, puncturing the pomposities and hypocrisies of power. Kings and cardinals felt the sting of his satire; governments and aristocracies endured his derision.Yet the aims of the Enlightenment's clown were nothing if not serious: to throw back the blinds of ignorance and superstition and let the sun of science and intellect stream in; to rebuild benighted Christendom as a new civilisation, secular and free.Herald of reason and revolution, Voltaire's mocking voice has echoed through two centuries of change. But as the Enlightenment's achievements have come increasingly into question, the joke has rebounded on the comedian himself. A creation of Christianity in way he never realised, Voltaire owed more to his epoch's orthodoxies than he could have ever guessed.John Gray's absorbing provocative introduction offers a radical reassessment of a fascinating and important figure, at once demythologizing the icon and revealing his genuine greatness.
The Great Philosophers: Wittgenstein (GREAT PHILOSOPHERS)
by Peter HackerThis highly accessible account offers an illuminating introduction to Wittgenstein's philosophy of mind and to his conception of philosophy. Combining passages from Wittgenstein's writings with detailed interpretation and commentary, Hacker leads us into a world of philosophical investigation in which 'to smell a rat is ever so much easier than to trap it.'Wittgenstein claimed that the role of philosophy is to dissolve conceptual confusions, to untie the knots in our understanding that result from entanglement in the web of language. He overturned centuries of philosophical reflection on the nature of 'the inner', of our subjective experience and of our knowledge of self and others. Traditional conceptions of 'the outer', of human behaviour, were equally distorted and so too was the relation between the inner and the outer. Hacker shows how Wittgenstein's examination of our use of words clarifies our notions of mind, body and behaviour.
The Great Philosophers: Wittgenstein (Great Philosophers Ser.)
by Peter HackerLudwig Wittgenstein 1889 ? 1951 P.M.S. Hacker?s Wittgenstein offers an illuminating introduction to Wittgenstein?s philosophy of mind and to his conception of philosophy. Combining passages from Wittgenstein?s writings with detailed interpretation and commentary, Hacker leads us into a world of philosophical investigation in which `to smell a rat is ever so much easier than to trap it.? Wittgenstein claimed that the role of philosophy is to dissolve conceptual confusions, to untie the knots in our understanding that result from entanglement in the web of language. He overturned centuries of philosophical reflection on the nature of `the inner?, of our subjective experience and of our knowledge of self and others. Traditional conceptions of `the outer?, of human behaviour, were equally distorted and so too was the relation between the inner and the outer. Hacker shows how Wittgenstein?s examination of our use of words clarifies our notions of mind, body and behaviour.
The Great Philosophers:Aristotle (GREAT PHILOSOPHERS)
by Kenneth McleishAristotle c. 384- c.322 BCThe ideas Aristotle outlined in his Poetics have formed the foundation for the whole history of western critical theory. No work has had more influence upon the literature of centuries - neither has any been so profoundly, so perversely misunderstood.Mystification, moralization, recruitment into the cause of this or that literary culture... with all the interpretations, Aristotle has too seldom been permitted to speak for himself. If the prescriptive rigidities of the Renaissance went entirely against the grain of his open, accepting empiricism, the psychologising mania of the moderns has been no truer a reflection of his thought.Kenneth McLeish's introduction cuts through centuries of accreted obscurity to reveal the forthright, astonishingly original book which Aristotle actually wrote. The philosopher who emerges proves more 'modern' than any of his interpreters.
The Great Philosophers:Berkeley (GREAT PHILOSOPHERS)
by David BermanPart of the GREAT PHILOSOPHERS series.George Berkeley 1685-1753A scientist, theologian and writer on medicine and economics, George Berkeley was in his way a most improbable philosopher. A master of English prose, he was suspicious of language; scornful of abstractions, he looked instead to immediate experience for the basis of his thought.David Berman's readable guide traces Berkeley's experimentalism - for experiments with sight and touch to near-death experience - finding in his writings an intriguing marriage of philosophy and psychology.
The Great Philosophers:Democritus (GREAT PHILOSOPHERS)
by Paul CartledgePart of the GREAT PHILOSOPHERS series.Democritus c. 460-c. 370BCThe Renaissance's 'Laughing Philosopher'; our own age's 'Prophet of Quark': throughout the modern philosophical tradition, Democritus has been a man little known beyond his labels.Yet if the image of the cheerful ironist understates his true seriousness, that of father of modern nuclear physics - though by no means entirely unfounded - loses sign of the man in the hyperbole. Flattering as it is, it fails to do justice either to the full range of Democritus' interests or to the astonishing originality of his ideas.For Democritus' remarkable investigations took him far beyond the realms of physics and chemistry to explore the science of existence as a whole. Perception, selfhood and society; ethic, politics and the law: as Paul Cartledge's enthralling introduction makes clear, Democritus has much to teach us, in all these fields and more.
The Great Philosophers:Derrida (GREAT PHILOSOPHERS)
by Christopher JohnsonPart of the GREAT PHILOSOPHERS series.Jacques Derrida 1930-2004As critics investigate the 'death of the author', they find Derrida's prints all over the murder weapon. No other recent philosopher has aroused so much suspicion - or been so badly misrepresented.His every idea a tug at the rug beneath us, questioning our sense of ourselves, our world and the language by which both are articulated, Derrida would make uncomfortable reading under any circumstances. Add to this an at time vertiginous abstruseness and a following whose 'deconstructive' readings appear to be doing away with writing as we know it, and the hostility is understandable.Yet as Christopher Johnson shows in this eloquent, exhilarating guide, 'deconstruction' doesn't mean 'destruction' - nor does it involve any 'con'. In what may seem mere convoluted cleverness, momentous consistencies can be found; in Derrida's apparently rarefied rhetoric can be read the most radical, relevant commentary we have on the world we inhabit today.
The Great Philosophers:Heidegger
by Jonathan ReeHeidegger 1889-1976'We ourselves the entities to be analysed.' With those words, Martin Heidegger launched his assault on the 'sham clarity' of traditional Western thought. We are neither immortal souls nor disembodied intellects, he argues, but finite historical existences. And we are bound to the world by threads of interpretation and misinterpretation more strange and tangled than we can ever hope to comprehend.In his masterpiece Being and Time (1927) Heidegger used his technique of 'existential analysis' to undercut traditional dilemmas of objectivity and subjectivity, rationality and irrationality, absolutism and relativism. Truth itself, he argues, is essentially historical.The greatest adventures of twentieth-century thought can be seen as footnotes to Being and Time, and in this brilliantly lucid exposition Jonathan Rée spells out all its main arguments without blunting any of its disturbing paradoxes.