One Hundred Philosophers The Life and Work of the World's Greatest Thinkers Paperback - 2004

From the publisher

For some of the world 1/2s great thinkers, including Aristotle, Aquinas, and Hegel, philosophy is a vast system of fixed, capital-T Truth for humankind to discover, explore and comprehend. For others, even among those with philosophies as diverse as William James and Ludwig Wittgenstein, philosophy is simply a tool, or a process for ascertaining individual factual truths specific to a given time and place. It is often said that if you ask any ten philosophers to define their subject, you 1/2re likely to get ten different answers. Here, presented for non-specialist readers, is an easy-to-understand survey of ideas put forth by 100 important philosophers, from the pre-Socratics of ancient Greece to the analytic philosophers of the present day. Each thinker is summarized in a single illustrated page, or in many instances, in a two-page spread. Each entry includes the philosopher 1/2s birth and death dates, titles of major works, major influences, a capsule biographical sketch, and a brief summary of his or her most important ideas. In addition to philosophers in our own Western tradition, readers will find Chinese sages, including Confucius and Lao-tzu, the Indian Buddhist philosopher Ngrjuna, and thinkers representing other cultures. Just a few of the 100 important thinkers represented in this book are:

• Plato
Aristotle
• Augustine of Hippo
Roger Bacon
• Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Hobbes
• John Locke
Rene Descartes
• Baruch Spinoza
Immanuel Kant
• G.W.F. Hegel
Friedrich Nietzsche
• William James
Ludwig Wittgenstein
• Martin Heidegger
Jean-Paul Sartre
• Alfred Jules Ayer
Willard V.O. Quine
• Thomas Kuhn
Donald Davidson
• and many others