Paul Strathern
Author
Language
English
Description
"The Republic of Venice was the first great economic, cultural, and naval power of the modern Western world. After winning the struggle for ascendency in the late 13th century, the Republic enjoyed centuries of unprecedented glory and built a trading empire which at its apogee reached as far afield as China, Syria and West Africa. This golden period only drew to an end with the Republic's eventual surrender to Napoleon. The Venetians illuminates the...
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
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...
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
Paul Strathern offers a concise account of Plato's life and ideas, and explains their influence on man's struggle to understand his existence in the world. The book also include sections from Plato's work; a brief list of suggested reading for those who wish to push further; and chronologies that place Plato within his own age and in the broader scheme of philosophy.
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
Aristotle wrote on everything from the shape of seashells to sterility, from speculations on the nature of the soul to meteorology, poetry and art, and even the interpretation of dreams. Apart from mathematics, he transformed every field of knowledge that he touched. Above all, Aristotle is credited with the founding of logic. When he first divided human knowledge into separate categories, he enabled our understanding of the world to develop in a...
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
Immanuel Kant taught and wrote prolifically about physical geography yet never traveled farther than forty miles from his home in Konigsberg. How appropriate that in his philosophy he should deny that all knowledge was derived from experience. Kant's aim was to restore metaphysics. He insisted that all experience must conform to knowledge. According to Kant, space and time are subjective; along with various "categories," they help us to see the phenomena...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Between the birth of Dante in 1265 and the death of Galileo in 1642, something happened that transformed the entire culture of western civilization. Painting, sculpture, and architecture would all visibly change in such a striking fashion that there could be no going back on what had taken place. Likewise, the thought and self-conception of humanity would take on a completely new aspect. Sciences would be born--or emerge in an entirely new guise....
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
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...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
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...
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
"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 about,"...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
The Borgia family have become a byword for evil. Corruption, incest, ruthless megalomania, avarice, and vicious cruelty-all have been associated with their name. And yet, paradoxically, this family lived when the Renaissance was coming into its full flowering in Italy. Examples of infamy flourished alongside some of the finest art produced in western history.
This is but one of several paradoxes associated with the Borgia family. For the family which...
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
In García Márquez in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of García Márquez '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 García Márquez 's writings; a list of his chief works in English translation; a chronology of García Márquez 's life and times; and recommended reading for those who wish to push further....
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
Rene Descartes spent most of his childhood in solitude, a situation that also came to characterize his adult life. Happily, 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 reality;...