Philosophy in 90 Minutes

René Descartes spent much of his life in solitude. Fortunately, these countless lonely hours helped Descartes produce the declaration that changed all philosophy: "I think, therefore I am." Convincing himself to doubt and disregard sensory knowledge, Descartes found he could prove his existence through his thoughts alone. This internal reality, he believed, was the true reality, while the external was hopelessly deceiving. In Descartes in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of Descartes's life and ideas and explains their influence on man's struggle to understand his existence in the world. The book also includes selections from Descartes's work, a brief list of suggested readings for those who wish to delve deeper, and chronologies that place Descartes within his own age and in the broader scheme of philosophy.

Aristotle wrote on everything from the shape of seashells to sterility, from speculations on the nature of the soul to meteorology, poetry, 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 systematic fashion. In Aristotle in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of Aristotle's life and ideas and explains their influence on man's struggle to understand his existence in the world. The book also includes selections from Aristotle's work, a brief list of suggested readings for those who wish to delve deeper, and chronologies that place Aristotle within his own age and in the broader scheme of philosophy.

In an age when philosophers had scarcely glimpsed the horizons of the mind, a boy named Aristocles decided to forgo his ambitions as a wrestler. Adopting the nickname Plato, he embarked instead on a life in philosophy. In 387 BC he founded the Academy, the world's first university, and taught his students that all we see is not reality but merely a reproduction of the true source. And in his famous Republic he described the politics of "the highest form of state." In Plato in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert 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 includes selections from Plato's work, a brief list of suggested reading for those who wish to delve deeper, and chronologies that place Plato within his own age and in the broader scheme of philosophy. The 90 Minutes series includes brief but authoritative interpretations of the world's greatest thinkers, deciphering philosophical thought in an entertaining and accessible fashion and making it comprehensible and interesting to almost everyone.

Immanuel Kant taught and wrote prolifically about physical geography yet never traveled further than forty miles from his home in Königsberg. How appropriate it is then 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 of the world-though never its true reality. In Kant in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of Kant's life and ideas and explains their influence on man's struggle to understand his existence in the world. The book also includes selections from Kant's work, a brief list of suggested readings for those who wish to delve deeper, and chronologies that place Kant within his own age and in the broader scheme of philosophy.

We see our age as the greatest in human history, filled with seemingly unending originality. Yet such dynamism is not a necessary characteristic of great eras. Among the most long-lasting and stable civilizations was that of medieval Europe. There stasis was achieved, and with it a stability that permitted the development of structured thought and intellectual embellishment of unparalleled degree. Like the vast Gothic cathedrals of western Europe, certainties of thought were part and parcel of the medieval age. Its monument of the intellect was the largely static, cumulative philosophy of Scholasticism. And the acknowledged maestro of Scholastic philosophy was Thomas Aquinas. In Thomas Aquinas in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of Aquinas' life and ideas and explains their influence on man's struggle to understand his existence in the world. The book also includes selections from Aquinas' work, a brief list of suggested readings for those who wish to delve deeper, and chronologies that place Aquinas within his own age and in the broader scheme of philosophy.

With Friedrich Nietzsche, philosophy was dangerous not only for philosophers but for everyone. Nietzsche ultimately went 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 he saw as a subtle perversion of this concept-thus Nietzsche's famous pronouncement, "God is dead." In Nietzsche in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of Nietzsche's life and ideas and explains their influence on man's struggle to understand his existence in the world. The book also includes selections from Nietzsche's work, a brief list of suggested readings for those who wish to delve deeper, and chronologies that place Nietzsche within his own age and in the broader scheme of philosophy.

In Rousseau we encounter a walking ego, a naked sensibility. Feeling triumphs over intellectual argument in his works, which are both deeply stirring and deeply inconsistent. Yet while his contemporaries Kant and Hume may have been superior academic philosophers, the sheer power of Rousseau's ideas was unequaled in his time. It was he who encouraged the introduction of both liberty and irrationality into the public domain. In Rousseau in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of Rousseau's life and ideas and explains their influence on man's struggle to understand his existence in the world. The book also includes selections from Rousseau's work, a brief list of suggested readings for those who wish to delve deeper, and chronologies that place Rousseau within his own age and in the broader scheme of philosophy.

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 psychology." Nonetheless, it was the source of all these subjects. The branch of philosophy to which Kierkegaard gave birth has come to be known as existentialism, a much discussed and debated topic of philosophy. In Kierkegaard in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of Kierkegaard's life and ideas and explains their influence on man's struggle to understand his existence in the world. The book also includes selections from Kierkegaard's work, a brief list of suggested readings for those who wish to delve deeper, and chronologies that place Kierkegaard within his own age and in the broader scheme of philosophy.

If we accept Wittgenstein's word for it, 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. "What we cannot speak about," he declared, "we must pass over in silence." In Wittgenstein in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of Wittgenstein's life and ideas and explains their influence on man's struggle to understand his existence in the world. The book also includes selections from Wittgenstein's work, a brief list of suggested readings for those who wish to delve deeper, and chronologies that place Wittgenstein within his own age and in the broader scheme of philosophy.

Hume reduced philosophy to ruins: he denied the existence of everything-except our actual perceptions themselves. I alone exist, he argued, and the world is nothing more than part of my consciousness. Yet we know that the world remains, and we go on as before. What Hume expressed was the status of our knowledge about the world, a world in which neither religion nor science is certain. In Hume in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of Hume's life and ideas and explains their influence on man's struggle to understand his existence in the world. The book also includes selections from Hume's work, a brief list of suggested readings for those who wish to delve deeper, and chronologies that place Hume within his own age and in the broader scheme of philosophy.