Philosophy for busy people. Read a succinct account of the philosophy of Plato in just one hour.Plato is still seen by many as the greatest of all philosophers, inspiring many of the finest thinkers through the ages. Indeed, many see all later philosophy as nothing but attempts to answer the questions he raised. He founded the Academy, the world’s first university, in 387 BC and taught that the physical world is not reality but rather a reproduction of the true source.Plato: Philosophy in an...
Philosophy for busy people. Read a succinct account of the philosophy of Kant in just one hour.Immanuel Kant taught and wrote prolifically about physical geography yet never travelled farther than forty miles from his home in Königsberg. Appropriately, his philosophy strenuously denies that all knowledge is derived from experience, insisting instead that all experience must conform to knowledge. Kant’s aim was to restore metaphysics. According to Kant, space and time are subjective; along with...
Philosophy for busy people. Read a succinct account of the philosophy of Neitzsche in just one hour.Philosophy has always been dangerous for philosophers; Friedrich Nietzsche made it dangerous for everyone. His ideas presaged a collective madness which was to ravage Europe throughout the first half of the twentieth century, drawing a chilling parallel with the insanity that gripped Nietzsche towards the end of his life. His philosophy is one of aphorisms and penetrating psychological insights,...
One of the two major philosophical traditions of the twentieth century was linguistic analysis, derived largely from Wittgenstein. The other, diametrically opposed, came from Heidegger, and its fundamental question was: ‘What is the meaning of existence?’ For Heidegger, this was not a query that could simply be ‘analysed away’ – it was beyond the reach of logic or reason. This was the primary ‘given’ of every individual life. To confront it, Heidegger needed to develop an entirely new form of...
Philosophy for busy people. Read a succinct account of the philosophy of Foucault in just one hour.The French philosopher Michel Foucault set about his task rather like a historian. After painstaking research, he concluded that knowledge and power were intimately related throughout history. He illustrated this central idea of his philosophy through studies of madness, sexuality, and discipline and punishment, arguing that there is no such thing as absolute truth, only different truths about...
Philosophy for busy people. Read a succinct account of the philosophy of Aristotle in just one hour.The philosophy of Aristotle dominated Western thought for over a thousand years. He had a mind that mastered all disciplines from mathematics to politics and had a continuing impact on every sphere of knowledge he touched. Above all, Aristotle is credited with the founding of logic. He divided human knowledge into separate categories, and enabled our understanding of the world to develop in a...
Philosophy for busy people. Read a succinct account of the philosophy of Wittgenstein in just one hour.Ludwig Wittgenstein saw himself as ‘the last philosopher’. In his view, philosophy in the traditional sense was finished. A superb logician, Wittgenstein distrusted language and sought to solve the problems of philosophy by reducing them to the purest form of logic. Everything else – metaphysics, aesthetics, ethics, finally even philosophy itself – was excluded. He famously stated, ‘of that...
Philosophy for busy people. Read a succinct account of the philosophy of Schopenhauer in just one hour.Arthur Schopenhauer, the ‘philosopher of pessimism,’ makes it clear that he regards the world and our life in it as a bad joke. However, if the world is indifferent to our fate it doesn’t thwart us deliberately – its façade is supported by what Schopenhauer calls the universal Will. He saw this as a force that is blind and without purpose, bringing on all our misery and suffering. Schopenhauer...