One Hundred Philosophers: The Life and Work of the World's Greatest Thinkers

For some of the world�s 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�re 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�s 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 othersThe text is enhanced with more than 250 illustrations and a glossary of philosophical terms.