Robert Whitfield
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English
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Description
These brief and enlightening explorations of our greatest thinkers bring their ideas to life in entertaining and accessible fashion. Philosophical thought is deciphered and made comprehensive and interesting to almost everyone. Far from being a novelty, each book is a highly refined appraisal of the philosopher and his work, authoritative and clearly presented.
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
These brief and enlightening explorations of our greatest thinkers bring their ideas to life in entertaining and accessible fashion. Philosophical thought is deciphered and made comprehensive and interesting to almost everyone. Far from being a novelty, each book is a highly refined appraisal of the philosopher and his work, authoritative and clearly presented.
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
These brief and enlightening explorations of our greatest thinkers bring their ideas to life in entertaining and accessible fashion. Philosophical thought is deciphered and made comprehensive and interesting to almost everyone. Far from being a novelty, each book is a highly refined appraisal of the philosopher and his work, authoritative and clearly presented.
Author
Language
English
Description
With Friedrich Nietzsche, philosophy was dangerous not only for philosophers but for everyone. Nietzsche ended up going mad, but his ideas presaged a collective madness that had horrific consequences in Europe in the early 1900s. Though his philosophy is more one of aphorisms and insights than a system, it is brilliant, persuasive, and incisive. His major concept is the will to power, which he saw as the basic impulse for all our acts. Christianity...
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In Kafka in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of Kafka's life and ideas, and explains their influence on literature and on man's struggle to understand his place in the world. The book also includes selections from Kafka's writings; a list of his chief works in English translation; a chronology of Kafka's life and times; and recommended reading for those who wish to push further.
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Description
In Dostoevsky in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of Dostoevsky's life and ideas, and explains their influence on literature and on man's struggle to understand his place in the world. The book also includes selections from Dostoevsky's writings; a list of his chief works in English translation; a chronology of Dostoevsky's life and times; and recommended reading for those who wish to push further.
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René Descartes spent most of his childhood in solitude, a situation that also came to characterize his adult life. Fortunately, these countless lonely hours helped Descartes produce the declaration that changed all philosophy: “I think, therefore I am.” Eventually convincing himself to doubt and disregard sensory knowledge, Descartes found he could prove his existence through his thoughts. This internal information, he believed, was the true...
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Kierkegaard wasn't really a philosopher in the academic sense. Yet he produced what many people expect of philosophy. He didn't write about the world, he wrote about life, about how we live and how we choose to live. His subject was the individual and his or her existence, the “existing being.” In Kierkegaard's view, this purely subjective entity lay beyond the reach of reason, logic, philosophical systems, theology, or even “the pretenses of...
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By the end of his life, D. H. Lawrence had despaired of Western civilization, which he felt had corrupted and weakened the human spirit. He believed that we had somehow lost touch with our instinctual being and no longer responded to the "true voice" of our blood. His works were an attempt to revive a life we have lost, and in them it is possible to glimpse something vivid, something now damaged, that we nonetheless recognize in ourselves. This is...
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Hegel's dialectical method produced the most grandiose metaphysical system known to man. Its most vital element was the dialectic of the thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. This sprung from Hegel's aim to overcome the deficiencies of logic and ascend toward Mind as the ultimate reality. His view of history as a process of humanity's self-realization inspired Marx to synthesize his philosophy of dialectical materialism. In Hegel in 90 Minutes, Paul...
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Weaving fiction with fact, fantastic matter with historical figures, Borges' frequent theme of a world where time, culture, and place converge is not only timely but pertinent in our advance toward globalization. Drawing from his multi-ethnic and –lingual upbringing in Argentina, Borges' focus on universal themes early on came to belittle the sentiments of racism and communism, earning him widespread recognition. His work is both timeless and touching,...
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From a young age, James Joyce showed a precocious and original intellect and a confidence in his own artistic destiny. He would indeed go on to transform the nature of modern literature, employing a unique stream-of-consciousness technique rich in symbolism and wordplay. Through his art, the Dublin native sought to reveal the radiance and meaning that lurks in the everyday world—"the soul of the commonest object”—evoking a heightened sense of...
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“If we accept Wittgenstein's word for it,” Paul Strathern writes, “he is the last philosopher. In his view, philosophy in the traditional sense was finished.” Ludwig Wittgenstein was a superb logician who distrusted language and sought to solve the problems of philosophy by reducing them to logic. All else—metaphysics, aesthetics, ethics, finally even philosophy itself—was excluded. They were all wrong, he argued. “What we cannot speak...