Surveys category: 1940 books

Do our lives have meaning? Should we create more people? Is death bad? Should we commit suicide? Would it be better to be immortal? Should we be optimistic or pessimistic? Since Life, Death, and Meaning: Key Philosophical Readings on the Big Questions first appeared, David Benatar's distinctive anthology...

At the age of eight, Karl Popper was puzzling over the idea of infinity and by fifteen was beginning to take a keen interest in his father's well-stocked library of books. Unended Quest recounts these moments and many others in the life of one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century,...

The book proposes a critique of Nietzsche's works 'from within'. In doing so, it answers the continuing question asked by any reader of Nietzsche: Why did he decide not to write the major work he said he would write?

This book treats of the history of Spinoza, the distinguished philosopher.

He that is to govern a whole nation, must read in himself, not this, or that particular man; but mankind. Leviathan is both a magnificent literary achievement and the greatest work of political philosophy in the English language. Permanently challenging, it has found new applications and new refutations...

A challenging new look at the great thinkers whose ides have shaped our civilization From Socrates to Sartre presents a rousing and readable introduction to the lives, and times of the great philosophers. This thought-provoking book takes us from the inception of Western society in Plato’s...

Discover the world's greatest thinkers and their groundbreaking notions! Too often, textbooks turn the noteworthy theories, principles, and figures of philosophy into tedious discourse that even Plato would reject. Philosophy 101 cuts out the boring details and exhausting philosophical methodology,...

From the author of Eichmann in Jerusalem and The Origins of Totalitarianism, “a book to think with through the political impasses and cultural confusions of our day” (Harper’s Magazine) Hannah Arendt’s insightful observations of the modern world, based on a profound knowledge of the...

Michael Onfray passionately defends the potential of hedonism to resolve the dislocations and disconnections of our melancholy age. In a sweeping survey of history's engagement with and rejection of the body, he exposes the sterile conventions that prevent us from realizing a more immediate, ethical,...

What would the global history of philosophy look like if it were told not as a story of ideas but as a series of job descriptions—ones that might have been used to fill the position of philosopher at different times and places over the past 2,500 years? The Philosopher does just that, providing...

Extrait : "L'Inde et la Perse, où la race européenne eut son berceau, offrent déjà sous une forme tantôt instinctive et méthodique, tantôt réfléchie et philosophique, de hautes doctrines sur l'origine du monde et sur la destinée de l'homme. La première doctrine de l'Inde fut le polythéisme,...

Extrait : "La « conscience morale », à nos yeux, n'est pas une sorte de faculté séparée, distincte des autres ; elle est réductible à la conscience de la vie et de l'être. Celle-ci, en pénétrant jusqu'au fond de soi, y trouve un acte essentiel, auquel on a donné le nom de « Raison » et...

♦ Cet ebook bénéficie d’une mise en page esthétique optimisée pour la lecture numérique. ♦ « L'essentiel pour le bonheur de la vie, c'est ce que l'on a en soi-même. » Ce texte d’Arthur Schopenhauer, loin de n’être qu’un simple traité de philosophie, est un magnifique...

Based on refractions of earlier beliefs, modern angels - at once terrible and comforting, frighteningly other and reassuringly beneficent - have acquired a powerful symbolic value. This interdisciplinary study looks at how humans conversed with angels in medieval and early modern Europe, and how they explained and represented these conversations.