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 others

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