Popular Great Philosopher's Series Richard Webster expert on FreudA critical reassessment of one of the most controversial philosophers of the last century.Few figures have had so decisive and fundamental...

Schopenhauer 1788 - 1860Western philosophy's most profound and unrelenting pessimist, Schopenhauer hymned the miseries of human existence with a joylessness that was little short of lyrical. Yet he thrilled...

Born to be misunderstood, Spinoza was a man whose theology was banned for Godlessness. The very virtuosity of his reasoning left logicians unsettled, while even to professional thinkers in our own time,...

Popular Great Philosopher's Series.An accessible overview of the work of one of our most influential living philosophers, as part of the popular Great Philosophers series. Richard Rorty is often cited...

Part of the GREAT PHILOSOPHERS series.A.J. Ayer 1910-1989Ayer is best remembered for Language, Truth and Logic (1936), which introduced British and American readers to the logical positivism of the Vienna...

Part of the GREAT PHILOSOPHERS series.Jacques Derrida 1930-2004As critics investigate the 'death of the author', they find Derrida's prints all over the murder weapon. No other recent philosopher has...

Part of the GREAT PHILOSOPHERS series.George Berkeley 1685-1753A scientist, theologian and writer on medicine and economics, George Berkeley was in his way a most improbable philosopher. A master of English...

'The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts' Bertrand Russell'Science is what you know. Philosophy is what you...

'If you put me to death,' Socrates warned his Athenian judges, 'you will not easily find anyone to take my place.' So indeed it would prove, a single cup of hemlock robbing the western philosophical tradition...

This highly accessible account offers an illuminating introduction to Wittgenstein's philosophy of mind and to his conception of philosophy. Combining passages from Wittgenstein's writings with detailed...

'Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.' KantIn today's increasingly fractured world of oppression and uncertainty, Kant's moral philosophy is more important than ever before. And never...

'Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all' Aristotle'Knowing yourself is the mark of all wisdom''You will never do anything in this world without courage'Aristotle was one...

'What experience and history teaches us is that people and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it''What and how much I possess is a matter of indifference...

Alan Turing's 1936 paper On Computable Numbers, introducing the Turing machine, was a landmark of twentieth-century thought. It settled a deep problem in the foundations of mathematics, and provided the...

'Courage is knowing what not to fear' Plato'One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors' Without the work of Plato, western thought...

'Judge a man by his questions, rather than by his answers.' VoltaireVoltaire was one of the first philosophers to be commercially successful internationally. Famous for his strong views on the importance...

Part of the GREAT PHILOSOPHERS series.John Locke 1632-1704What Newton did for physics in the seventeenth century, Locke did for philosophy. The revolution wrought by these two giants established the intellectual...

Pascal 1623-1662The moralist who advocated dressing up, the ascetic who liked a flutter, the devout Christian who lauded vanity, Pascal is a funnier, more ironic philosopher than his reputation as an...

R. G. Collingwood 1889-1943Many philosophers have been interested in aesthetics, but Collingwood was passionate about art. His theories were never merely theoretical: aesthetics for him was a vivid, vibrant...

Part of the GREAT PHILOSOPHERS series.Democritus c. 460-c. 370BCThe Renaissance's 'Laughing Philosopher'; our own age's 'Prophet of Quark': throughout the modern philosophical tradition, Democritus has...

Karl Popper 1902-1994The political history of the twentieth century has been full of savage 'certainties'. A similar idea of history warranted the callous savageries of both Marxism and Fascism. They...