[Big Ideas Simply Explained 01] • The Philosophy Book

To the complete novice, learning about philosophy can be a cause for dread-"I won't understand" is a common reaction to the mere mention of the subject, which is often assumed to be too complex and confusing for the average reader.

DK's The Philosophy Book will show that philosophy doesn't have to be a daunting subject. With the use of easy-to-follow graphics and artworks, succinct quotations, and thoroughly accessible text, this book cuts through the haze of misunderstanding surrounding the subject, untangling knotty theories and shedding light on abstract concepts.

The book is organized as a history of philosophy. Each idea-and the philosopher who first voiced it-is placed chronologically, and is cross-referenced to earlier and later ideas.

Contents

The Ideas (336PP)

Siddhartha Gautama

Thales: "Know Thyself"

Pythagoras

Lao Tzu: "The Tao That Can Be Told Is Not The Eternal Tao"

Confucius

Heraclitus

Parmenides

Protagoras: "Man Is The Measure Of All Things"

Zeno of Elea

Socrates

Plato: "Everything Is Becoming, Nothing Is"

Aristotle

Epicurus

Zeno of Citium: "Happiness Is A Good Flow Of Life"

Han Feizi

Plotinus

Augustine: "There Is No Salvation Outside The Church"

Avicenna

Averroës

Thomas Aquinas

William of Ockham

Niccolò Machiavelli: "Reprehensible Actions May Be Justified By Their Effects"

Francisco de Vitoria

Francisco Suárez

Francis Bacon

Thomas Hobbes

René Descartes: "I Think, Therefore I Am"

Benedictus Spinoza

John Locke

Gottfried Leibniz

George Berkeley

David Hume: "Reason Is The Slave Of The Passions"

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Immanuel Kant

Edmund Burke

Jeremy Bentham: "Every Law Is Contrary To Liberty"

Johann Gottlieb Fichte

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: "Only In The State Does Man Have A Rational Existence"

Arthur Schopenhauer

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling

Auguste Comte

Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Every Natural Fact Is A Symbol Of Some Spiritual Fact"

Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach

John Stuart Mill

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

Karl Marx: "From Each According To His Ability, To Each According To His Need"

Charles Sanders Peirce

William James

Friedrich Nietzsche: "Man Is Something To Be Surpassed"

Gottlob Frege

Edmund Husserl

Henri Bergson

Nishido Katara

Bertrand Russell

José Ortega y Gasset

Ludwig Wittgenstein: "The Limits Of My Language Are The Limits Of My World"

Martin Heidegger

Rudolf Carnap

Hans-Georg Gadamer

Gilbert Ryle

Karl Popper

Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno

Jean-Paul Sartre: "Man Is Condemned To Be Free"

Willard Van Orman Quine

Arne Dekke Eide Naess

John Rawls

Thomas Samuel Kuhn

Michel Foucault

Noam Chomsky: "Colorless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously"

Jurgen Habermas

Jacques Derrida: "There Is Nothing Outside Of The Text"

Richard Rorty

Saul Kripke