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

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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
The text is enhanced with more than 250 illustrations and a glossary of philosophical terms.