These were the concerns of Socrates, who spent his days in the ancient Athenian marketplace asking awkward questions, disconcerting the people he met by showing them how little they genuinely understood. This engaging book introduces the great thinkers in Western philosophy and explores their most compelling ideas about the world and how best to live in it.In forty brief chapters, Nigel Warburton guides us on a chronological tour of the major ideas in the history of philosophy. He provides interesting and often quirky stories of the lives and deaths of thought-provoking philosophers from Socrates, who chose to die by hemlock poisoning rather than live on without the freedom to think for himself, to Peter Singer, who asks the disquieting philosophical and ethical questions that haunt our own times.Warburton not only makes philosophy accessible, he offers inspiration to think, argue, reason, and ask in the tradition of Socrates. A Little History of Philosophy presents the grand sweep of humanity's search for philosophical understanding and invites all to join in the discussion.

    It identifies ten types of supposed truth and explains how easily each can become the midwife of falsehood. There is no species of truth that we can rely on unquestioningly, but that does not mean the truth can never be established. Attaining truth is an achievement we need to work for, and each chapter will end up with a truth we can have some confidence in.This history builds into a comprehensive and clear explanation of why truth is now so disputed by exploring 10 kinds of truth:1. Eternal truths.2. Authoritative truths.3. Esoteric truths.4. Reasoned truths.5. Evidence-based truths.6. Creative truths.7. Relative truths. 8. Powerful truths9. Moral truths.10. Holistic truths. Baggini provides us with all we need to restore faith in the value and possibility of truth as a social enterprise. Truth-seekers need to be sceptical not cynical, autonomous not atomistic, provisional not dogmatic, open not empty, demanding not unreasonable.

    His book must be read three times: the first in anger, the second in laughter, the third in respect....The wisdom is expressed with a certain ruthlessness. Scarcely a major historian escapes unscathed. Ten thousand members of the American Historical Association will rush to the index and breathe a little easier to find their names absent.

    The book gives more than it promises, the text as well as the extensive bibliography including contributions of the analysts."-Hibbert Journal

    In this illuminating Very Short Introduction, Roger Scruton--a well-known and controversial philosopher in his own right--tackles his exceptionally complex subject with a strong hand, exploring the background to Kant's work and showing why Critique of Pure Reason has proved so enduring.About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.

    From the self-mocking haikus of Zen masters on their deathbeds to the last words of Christian saints and modern-day sages, this text looks at what the world's greatest minds have made of death.

    This restoration project has yielded a collection to treasure. After years of hard work and preparation, we can only report that it is an emotionally thrilling moment to finally offer to the general public. Claude Frédéric Bastiat was an economist and publicist of breathtaking intellectual energy and massive historical influence. He was born in Bayonne, France on June 29th, 1801. After the middle-class Revolution of 1830, Bastiat became politically active and was elected Justice of the Peace in 1831 and to the Council General (county-level assembly) in 1832. He was elected to the national legislative assembly after the French Revolution of 1848. Bastiat was inspired by and routinely corresponded with Richard Cobden and the English Anti-Corn Law League and worked with free-trade associations in France. Bastiat wrote sporadically starting in the 1830s, but in 1844 he launched his amazing publishing career when an article on the effects of protectionism on the French and English people was published in the Journal des Economistes which was held to critical acclaim. The bulk of his remarkable writing career that so inspired the early generation of English translators and so many more is contained in this collection. If we were to take the greatest economists from all ages and judge them on the basis of their theoretical rigor, their influence on economic education, and their impact in support of the free-market economy, then Frédéric Bastiat would be at the top of the list. These volumes bring together his greatest works and represents the early generation of English translations. These translators were like Bastiat himself, people from the private sector who had a love of knowledge and truth and who altered their careers to vigorously pursue intellectual ventures, scholarly publishing, and advocacy of free trade. The collection consists of three sections, the first of which contains his best-known essays. In That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen, Bastiat equips the reader to become an economist in the first paragraph and then presents the story of the broken window where a hoodlum is thought to create jobs and prosperity by breaking windows. Bastiat solves the quandary of prosperity via destruction by noting that while the apparent prosperity is seen, what is unseen is that which would have been produced had the windows not been broken. The second section is Bastiat s Economic Sophisms, a collection of 35 articles on the errors of protectionism broadly conceived. Here Bastiat shows his mastery of the methods of argumentation, using basic logic and taking arguments to their logical extreme to demonstrate and ridicule them as obvious fallacies. In his Negative Railroad Bastiat argues that if an artificial break in a railroad causes prosperity by creating jobs for boatmen, porters, and hotel owners, then there should be not one break, but many, and indeed the railroad should be just a series of breaks a negative railroad. The third section is Bastiat's Economic Harmonies which was hastily written before his death in 1850 and is considered incomplete. Here he demonstrates that the interests of everyone in society are in harmony to the extent that property rights are respected. Because there are no inherent conflicts in the market, government intervention is unnecessary. Here we find a powerful but sadly neglected defense of the main thesis of old-style liberalism: that society and economy are capable of self-managing. Unless this insight is understood and absorbed, a person can never really come to grips with the main meaning of liberty.

    He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952."I cannot but have Reverence for all that is called life. I cannot avoid compassion for everything that is called life. That is the beginning and foundation of morality. "' Albert Schweitzer spanning many decades and a host of topics, this rich collection of the words of Albert Schweitzer offers a glimpse into the life and thought of an eminent humanitarian."Reverence for Life" was Schweitzer's unifying term for a concept of ethics. He believed that such an ethic would reconcile the drives of altruism and egoism by requiring a respect for the lives of all other beings and by demanding the highest development of an individual's resources. The thread of this inspirational belief appears throughout his deeply insightful writings. Excerpts from previously(continued from front flap)unpublished letters to John F. Kennedy, Norman Cousins, Bertrand Russell, and others show how truly committed Schweitzer was to creating a global consciousness and cultivating a dignity toward all people. A foreword by Schweitzer's daughter, Rhena Schweitzer Miller, an introduction by the editor, and a brief biographical sketch of Schweitzer's life round out this stunning collection of quotations.

    Each essay gives a biographical background for its subject and a description of the main strands of their thought, together with summaries of their major works.The thirty-four chronologically-organized essays are a comprehensive introduction to Western philosophy's major figures.Dr Jeremy Stangroom is a founding editor of The Philosophers' Magazine, one of the world's most popular philosophy publications. He has written and/or edited numerous books, including: New British Philosophy, What Philosophers Think and Great Thinkers A-Z (all with Julian Baggini); The Dictionary of Fashionable Nonsense and Why Truth Matters (with Ophelia Benson); and What Scientists Think. He is a frequent contributor to New Humanist magazine, and he is also the editor of the Royal Institute of Philosophy web site.James Garvey teaches philosophy at the University of Nottingham and is Secretary of the Royal Institute of Philosophy.

    1681) is perhaps the key founding liberal text. A Letter Concerning Toleration, written in 1685 (a year when a Catholic monarch came to the throne of England and Louis XIV unleashed a reign of terror against Protestants in France), is a classic defense of religious freedom. Yet many of Locke's other writings, not least the Constitutions of Carolina, which he helped draft are almost defiantly anti-liberal in outlook.This comprehensive collection brings together the main published works (excluding polemical attacks on other people's views) with the most important surviving evidence from among Locke's papers relating to his political philosophy. David Wootton's wide-ranging and scholarly introduction sets the writings in the context of their time, examines Locke's developing ideas and unorthodox Christianity, and analyzes his main arguments. The result is the first fully rounded picture of Locke's political thought in his own words.

    This  volume contains the essential statements of  Rationalism's three greatest figures: Descartes, who  began it; Spinoza, who epitomized it; and Leibniz,  who gave it its last serious expression.

    Jonathan Glover ambitiously attempts a moral psychology, tracing the patterns of human psychology that breed violence. Shrewd case studies examine the intellectual follies and moral horrors of the First World War's trench warfare, Hitler's Holocaust, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the ideologically driven social experimentation by Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, and the ethnic and tribal hatreds that tore apart the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

    A scholar, wit, lawyer and statesman, he wrote widely on politics, philosophy and science - declaring early in his career that 'I have taken all knowledge as my province'. In this, his most famous work, he considers a diverse range of subjects, such as death and marriage, ambition and atheism, in prose that is vibrant and rich in Renaissance learning. Bacon believed that rhetoric - the force of eloquence and persuasion - could lead the mind to the pure light of reason, and his own rhetorical genius is nowhere better expressed than in these vivid essays.

    Rider Haggard, whose work has recently attracted new attention from scholars and students. Contributors engage with topics such as industrial culture, religion and science and the broader issues of the politics of gender, sexuality and race. The Companion includes a chronology and a comprehensive Guide to Further Reading.

    In the following half, aptly titled “On Changing the World,” Chomsky applies these concepts to the issues that would remain the focus of his increasingly political work of the period—his criticisms of the war in Indochina and the Cold War ideology that supported it, of the centralization of U.S. decision-making in the Pentagon and the growing influence of multinational corporations in those circles, and of the politicization of American universities in the post–World War II years, as well as his analyses of the Cuban Missile Crisis and Nixon’s foreign policies.