چکیده :
در این کتاب به فیلسوفان و متفکرانی پرداخته شده که نام آن ها جسته گریخته در تاریخ مکتوب بشر به عنوان سردمداران و طلایه داران روشنگری همواره مطرح بوده است ، نه تنها در جهان غرب بلکه در سراسر جهان نقش آن ها در تحول فکر و اندیشه و به تبع آن رونق علم بسیار مهم و درخور توجه است.
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.