Great Thinkers A-Z

Description

Bringing together 100 short, accessible snapshots, this text details the people who have shaped western thought, from the ancient Greeks to today. The snapshots, written by the world's leading experts, describe a major thinker's life and work with suggestions for further reading on each one. Covering philosophers and cultural and scientific thinkers, such as Foucault, Darwin, Einstein and Freud, who have had a major impact on philosophy, this book should be of interest to anyone interested in the history of ideas and in contemporary thought.

Julian Baggini is co-editor (with Jeremy Stangroom) of The Philosophers' Magazine (www.philosophers.co.uk), Great Thinkers A-Z (2004) and New British Philosophy: The Interviews (2002). He is also the author of The Pig That Wants to be Eaten and What's It All About? Philosophy and the Meaning of Life (both Granta, 2005). Jeremy Stangroom is the author of the international bestseller Einstein's Riddle and its sequels. His writing has also appeared in the Guardian, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Daily Telegraph, and elsewhere. He holds a PhD from the London School of Economics.

"The entries are fairly easy to read and do offer a credible summary of each philosopher's contribution." - American Reference Books Annual, Vol. 36, 2005 * American Reference Books Annual * "If you just can't remember what you learned in college about Gottlob Frege or Gilbert Ryle, this is the place to turn for help. The editors' selections are both comprehensive and somewhat idiosyncratic, as they admit in their introduction: not every great thinker is included in the 100 here, but rather the representative of all major schools of thought, from Pythagoras to postmodern. This is not philosophy for dummies-Kant will never be simple-but the author of each segment boils the thinker's idea's down to a point where they can be fairly well absorbed. Most useful to the student who needs a quick reference on these thinkers and their ideas, this volume also provides lists of suggested reading for those who wish to use it as a starting point for further investigation." -- Publishers Weekly * Publishers Weekly *