The Big Book of Thinkers

OF

THE

BIG BOOK

THIN

KERS PHILOSOPHERS WHO SHAPED THE WORLD

DEAD HORSE PRINT

LAOZI c. 6th-4th century BC

Laozi was an ancient Chinese philosopher and writer. He is the reputed author of theao T Te Ching, and the founder of philosophicalaoism, T and a deity in religious Taoism and traditional Chinese religions. A semi-legendar y figure, Laozi was usually portrayed as a 6th-century BC contemporary of Confucius, but some modern historians consider him to have lived during the Warring States period of the 4th centur y BC. A central figure in Chinese culture, Laozi is claimed by both the emperors of theang T dynasty and modern people of the Li surname as a founder of their lineage. Laozi's work has been embraced by both various anti-authoritarian movements and Chinese Legalism.

READING LIST

12 3 Tae Te Ching (Unknown)

Tao: The Way (Written by Lie Yukou, & Zhuang Zhou)

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.

The Classic of the Way and Virtue (Unknown)

CONFUCIUS

551-479bc

“

551-479BC

Confucius was a Chinese philosopher and politician of the Spring and Autumn period. The philosophy of Confucius, also known as Confucianism, emphasized personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice, kindness, and sincerity. His followers competed successfully with many other schools during the Hundred Schools of Thought era only to be suppressed in favour of the Legalists during the Qin dynasty. Confucius is widely considered as one of the most important and influential individuals in shaping human history. His teaching and philosophy greatly impacted people around the world and remains influential today.

Death and life have their determined appointments; riches and honors depend upon heaven.

READING LIST

1 2 3 The Book of Rites (Unknown)

The Wisdom of Confucius (Written

by William Jennings)

The Analects of confucius (Written by James Legge)

SUN TZU 544-496BC

Sun Tzu was a Chinese general, militar y strategist, writer and philosopher who lived in the Eastern Zhou period of ancient China. Sun Tzu is traditionally credited as the author of The rt A of War, an influential work of militar y strategy that has affected Western and East Asian philosophy and milita ry thinking. His works focus much more on alternatives to battle, such as stratagem, delay , the use of spies and alternatives to war itself, the making and keeping of alliances, the uses of deceit and a willingness to submit , at least temporarily,to more powerful foes. Sun Tzu is revered in Chinese and East Asian culture as a legendar y historical and military figure.

READING LIST

12 3 The Art of War (C. 500BC)

Amazing secrets of Sun Tzu (Written by Gary Gagliardi)

A Treatise on Military Art (Written by Sunzi)

The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy.

“” It is all one to me where I begin; for I shall come back again there.

READING LIST

1 2 3 On Nature (Unknown)

Parmenides of Elea (Written by David Gallop)

PARMENIDES

515BC-Unknown

Parmenides of Elea was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from Elea in Magna Graecia. Parmenides of Elea was in his prime about 475 BC. Parmenides has been considered the founder of metaphysics or ontology and has influenced the whole histor y of Western philosophy.He was the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy, which also included Zeno of Elea and Melissus of Samos. Zeno's paradoxes of motion were to defend Parmenides' view. The single known work by Parmenides is a poem, On Nature, only fragments of which sur vive, containing the first sustained argument in the history of philosophy.

BUDDHA

“” 480-400BC

Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.

READING LIST

1 2 3 Abhidharma (Unknown)

The Jataka (Unknown)

The Mahayana Sutras (Unknown)

DIOTIMA

“� c. 440BC-Unknown

Love is not a god at all, but is rather a spirit that mediates between people and the objects of their desire. Love is neither wise nor beautiful, but is rather the desire for wisdom and beauty.

READING LIST

1 2 3 Symposium (Written by Plato)

Diotima's Children (Written by Frederick Beiser)

Socrates and Diotima (Written by Andrea Nye)

Diotima of Mantinea was an ancient Greek prophetess and philosopher thought to have lived circa 440 B.C.E., who plays an important role in Plato's Symposium. In the dialogue, her ideas are the origin of the concept of Platonic love. The name Diotima means one who honors or is honored

by Zeus, and her Mantinean origin is reminiscent of the root "mantis", which would suggest an association with prophecy. The Greek form also includes the sound nike: Diotima Mantinike as a pun in Greek would thus sound like "Diotima from Prophet-victor y".

“�

Suppose we try to locate the cause of disorder, we shall find it lies in the want of mutual love.

READING LIST

1 2 3 The Mozi (Unknown)

Mo Tzu (Unknown)

Mozi was a Chinese philosopher who founded the school of Mohism during the Hundred Schools of Thought Period. Mozi taught that everyone is equal in the eyes of heaven. He believed that those in power should be based on meritocracy , or those who are worthy of power should receive power. Mozi invoked heaven and calls on the Sage Kings to supporthis precedents.

Mozi is referenced in the Thousand Character Classic, which records that he was saddened when he saw dyeing of pure white silk, which embodied his conception of austerity, simplicity and chastity.

The Philosophy of the Mozi (Written by Chris Fraser)

MOZI

470-391BC

READING LIST

1 2 3 On The Soul (Written

by Plato)

Memorabilia (Written by Xenophon)

I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.

A Man for Our Times (Written by Paul Johnson)

Socrates was a classical Greek philosopher credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, and as being the first moral philosopher of the Western ethical tradition of thought. An enigmatic figure, he made no writings, and is known chiefly through the accounts of classical writers writing after his lifetime, particularly his students Plato and Xenophon. Other sources include the contemporaneous Antisthenes, Aristippus, and Aeschines of Sphettos.

Aristophanes, a playwright, is the main contemporary author to have written plays mentioning Socrates during Socrates' lifetime, though a fragment of Ion of Chios' Travel Journal provides important information about Socrates' youth.

SOCRATES 470-399BC

READING LIST

1 2 3

428-348bc

The Republic (375BC)

Symposium (370BC)

The Apology of Socrates (399BC)

Plato was an Athenian philosopher during the Classical period in Ancient Greece, founder of the Platonist school of thought , and the Academy,the first institution of higher learning in the Western world.

He is widely considered the pivotal figure in the history of Ancient Greek and Western philosophy , along with his teacher, Socrates, and his most famous student , Aristotle.Plato has also often been cited as one of the founders of Western religion and spirituality. The so-called Neoplatonism of philosophers like Plotinu s and Porphyry influenced Saint Augustineand thus Christiani ty.

PLATO 427-347BC

As empty vessels make the loudest sound, so they that have least with are the greatest babblers.

DIOGENES

“ 404-323BC

When I look upon seamen, men of science and philosophers, man is the wisest of all beings; when I look upon priests and prophets nothing is as contemptible as man.

Diogenes was a Greek philosopher and one of the founders of Cynic philosophy. He was born in Sinope in 412 or 404 BC and died at Corinth in 323 BC. A controversial figure, he was banished from Sinope when he took to de basement of currency.

After being exiled, he moved to Athens and criticized many cultural conventions of the city.

He modelled himself on the example of Heracles, and believed that virtue was better revealed in action than in theory. He used his simple lifestyle and behaviour to criticize the social values and institutions of what he saw as a corrupt, confused society. He had a reputation for sleeping and eating wherever he chose in a highly nontraditional fashion, and took to toughening himself against nature.

He declared himself a cosmopolitan and a citizen of the world rather than claiming allegiance to just one place.

READING LIST

1 2 3 The Cynic Philosophers (Written by Robert Dobbin)

Sayings and Anecdotes (Written by Robin Hard)

A History Of Cynicism (Written by Donald Dudley)

R E A D I N G L I S T 384-322bc

1 2 3 Politics (Unknown)

Metaphysics (Unknown)

“

We are what we repeatedly do.

Excellence, then, is not an act,but a habit.

Nicomachean Ethics (Unknown)

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He was the founder of the yLceum and the Peripatetic school of philosophy and Aristotelian tradition.

Along with his teacher Plato, he has been called the "Father of Western Philosophy". His writings cover many subjects, including physics, biolog y, zoology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, theatre, music, rhetoric, psychology, linguistics, economics, politics and government.

Aristotle provided a complex synthesis of the various philosophies existing prior to him, and it was above all from his teachings that the West inherited its intellectual lexicon, as well as problems and methods of inquiry. As a result, his philosophy has exerted a unique influence on almost every form of knowledge in the West and it continues to be a subject of contemporary philosophical discussion.

ARISTOTLE 384-322BC

“�

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.

EPICURUS

341-270BC

Epicurus was an ancient Greek philosopher and sage, who founded Epicureanism, a highly influential school of philosoph y.

He was born on the Greek island of Samos to Athenian parents.

Influenced by Democritus, Aristippus, Pyrrho, and possibly the Cynics, he turned against the Platonism of his day and established his own school, known as "the Garden", in Athens.

Epicurus and his followers were known for eating simple meals and discussing a wide range of philosophical subjects. He openly allowed women to join the school as a matter of policy. Epicurus is said to have originally written over 300 works on various subjects, but the vast majorit y of these writings have been lost .

READING LIST

1 2 3 Letter to Menoeceus (Unknown)

Principal Doctrines (Unknown)

Letter to Herodotus (Unknown)

ZENO OF CITIUM

334-262BC

Zeno of Citium was a Hellenistic philosopher of Phoenician origin from Citium, Cyprus. Zeno was the founder of the Stoic school of philosophy , which he taught in Athens from about 300 BC. Based on the moral ideas of the Cynics, Stoicism laid great emphasis on goodness and peace of mind gained from living a life of Vir tue in accordance with Nature. It proved very popular, and flourished as one of the major schools of philosophy from the Hellenistic period through to the Roman era.

“ �

If being is many,it must be both like and unlike, and this is impossible, for neither can the like be unlike, nor the unlike like

READING LIST

1 2 3 The Stoic Idea of the City (Written by Malcolm Schofield)

Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta (Written by Hans von Arnim)

The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics (Written by Brad Inwood)

SENECA

4BC-AD65

Seneca the Younger was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist,and, in one work, satirist of the Silver Age of Latin literature.

As a writer Seneca is known for his philosophical works, and for his plays, which are all tragedies. His prose works include a dozen essays and one hundred twenty-four letters dealing with moral issues. These writings constitute one of the most important bodies of primary material for ancient Stoicism. As a tragedian, he is best known for plays such as his Medea, Thyestes, and Phaedra.

Seneca's influence on later generations is immense, during the Renaissance he was "a sage admired and venerated as an oracle of moral, even of Christian edification; a master of literary style and a model for dramatic art."

READING LIST

12 3 Of Anger (AD45)

“

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (AD65)

There are more things that frighten us than injure us, and we suffer more in imagination than in reality.

De brevitate vitae (AD49)

Marcus Aurelius was a Roman emperor from 161 to 180 and a Stoic philosopher.He was the last of the rulers known as the Five Good Emperors, and the last emperor of the Pax Romana, an age of relative peace and stability for the Roman Empire.

He served as Roman consul in 140, 145, and 161. Meditations, the writings of "the philosopher", as contempora ry biographers called Marcus, are a significant source of the modern understanding of ancient Stoic philosophy.

They have been praised by fellow writers, philosophers, monarchs, and politicians centuries after his death.

READING LIST

1 2 3 Meditations (180)

The essential Marcus Aurelius (Adapted for the modern)

The thoughts (Unknown)

MARCUS AURELIUS 121-180

“

Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact.

Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.

HYPATIA

“

Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all

370-415 Hypatia was a Hellenistic Neoplatonist philosopher , astronomer, and mathematician, who lived in Alexandria, Egypt,then part of the Eastern Roman Empire. She was a prominent thinker of the Neoplatonic school in Alexandria where she taught philosophy and astronomy. She is the first female mathematician whose life is reasonably well recorded. Hypatia was renowned in her own lifetime as a great teacher and a wise counsellor.She is known to have written a commentary on Diophantus's thirteenvolume Arithmetica, which may survive in part, having been interpolated into Diophantus's original tex t, and another commentary on Apollonius of Perga's treatise on conic sections, which has not survived.

Many modern scholars also believe that Hypatia may have edited the surviving text of Ptolemy's Almagest, based on the title of her father Theon's commentary on Book III of the Almagest.

READING LIST

1 2 3 Mathematician and Martyr (Written by Michael Deakin)

Hypatia: The Life and Legend of an Ancient Philosopher (Written by Edward Watts)

Flow Down Like Silver (Written by Ki Longfellow)

AVICENNA

“�

980-1037

The world is divided into men who have wit and no religion and men who have religion and no wit.

READING LIST Avicenna was a Persian philosopher and polymath who is regarded as one of the most significant physicians, astronomers, thinkers and writers of the Islamic Golden Age, and the father of modern medicine.

Avicenna is also called "the most influential philosopher of the premodern era". He was a peripatetic philosopher influenced by Aristotelian philosophy. Of the 450 works he is believed to have written, around 240 have survived, including 150 on philosophy and 40 on medicine. Besides philosophy and medicine, Avicenna's corpus includes writings on astronomy, alchemy, geography and geology, psychology, Islamic theology,logic, mathematics, physics and works of poetry.

1 2 3

The Canon of Medicine (1025)

The Book of Healing (1027)

The Metaphysics (Unknown)

THOMAS AQUINAS

“ 1225-1274

To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary.

To one without faith, no explanation is possible.

Thomas Aquinas was an Italia-Dominican friar, philosopher, Catholic priest, and Doctor of the Church. An immensely influential philosopher, theologian, and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism, he is also known within the latter as the Doctor Angelicus and the Doctor Communis. The name Aquinas identifies his ancestral origins in the county of Aquino in present-day Lazio, Italy.

He was the foremost classical proponent of natural theology and the father of Thomism; of which he argued that reason is found in God. His influence on Western thought is considerable, and much of modern philosophy developed or opposed his ideas, particularly in the areas of ethics, natural law, metaphysics, and political theory.

READING LIST

1 2 3 On Being and Essence (Unknown)

Summa contra Gentiles (1265)

Summa Theologica (1485)

”

NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI

1469-1527

READING LIST

1 23 The Prince (1532)

The Art of War (1521)

Discourses on Livy (1521)

Niccolò Machiavelli was an Italian diplomat, politician, historian, philosopher, writer, playwright and poet of the Renaissance period. He has often been called the father of modern political philosophy and political science. For many years he served as a senior official in the Florentine Republic with responsibilities in diplomatic and military affairs. He wrote comedies, carnival songs, and poetry. His personal correspondence is of high importance to historians and scholars. He worked as secretary to the Second Chancery of the Republic of Florence from 1498 to 1512, when the Medici were out of power. He wrote his best-known work in 1513, having been exiled from city affairs.

“” It is better to be feared than to be loved, if you cannot be both.

1561-1626

FRANCIS BACON

“�

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.

Francis Bacon was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and as Lord Chancellor of England. His works are credited with developing the scientific method and remained influential through the scientific revolution. Bacon has been called the father of empiricism. His works argued for the possibility of scientific knowledge based only upon inductive reasoning and careful observation of events in nature. Francis Bacon was a patron of libraries and developed a functional system for the cataloguing of books by dividing them into three categories; history, poetry, and philosophy.

READING LIST

1 2 3 Novum Organum (1620)

New Atlantis (1627)

The Advancement of Learning (1604)

READING LIST

1 23 Leviathan (1651)

On the Citizen (1642)

Behemoth (1681)

“�

The condition of man is a condition of war of everyone against everyone. The reality of life is nasty, brutish and short.

Thomas Hobbes was an English philosopher, considered to be one of the founders of modern political philosophy. Hobbes is best known for his 1651 book Leviathan, which expounded an influential formulation of social contract theory. In addition to political philosophy, Hobbes also contributed to a diverse array of other fields, including history, jurisprudence, geometry, the physics of gases, theology, ethics, and general philosophy. His last words were said to have been "A great leap in the dark", uttered in his final conscious moments. His body was interred in St John the Baptist's Church, Ault Hucknall, in Derbyshire.

THOMAS HOBBES 1588-1679

RENE DESCARTES 1596-1650

RenĂŠ Descartes was a French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. A native of the Kingdom of France, he spent about 20 years of his life in the Dutch Republic after serving for a while in the Dutch States Army of Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange and the Stadtholder of the United Provinces. One of the most notable intellectual figures of the Dutch Golden Age, Descartes is also widely regarded as one of the founders of modern philosophy. Descartes laid the foundation for 17th-century continental rationalism, later advocated by Spinoza and Leibniz, and was later opposed by the empiricist school of thought consisting of Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume.

READING LIST

1 2 3 Discourse on the Method (1637)

Meditations on First Philosophy (1641)

Cogito, ergo sum.

I think, therefore I am

Passions of the Soul (1649)

All mankind, being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.

JOHN LOCKE 1632-1704

John Locke was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "Father of Liberalism".

Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Sir Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social contract theory. His work greatly affected the development of epistemology and political philosophy. His writings influenced Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the American revolutionaries. His contributions to classical republicanism and liberal theory are reflected in the United States Declaration of Independence.

READING LIST

1 2 3 Two Treatises of Government (1689)

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)

Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

BARUCH SPINOZA 1632-1677

Baruch Spinoza was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese Sephardi origin. One of the early thinkers of the Enlightenment and modern biblical criticism, including modern conceptions of the self and the universe, he came to be considered one of the great rationalists of 17th-century philosophy.

Inspired by the ideas of RenĂŠ Descartes, Spinoza became a leading philosophical figure of the Dutch Golden Age. His philosophical accomplishments and moral character prompted Gilles Deleuze to name him "the 'prince' of philosophers."

He died on 21 February 1677 at the age of 44.

Later, a shrine was made of his home in The Hague.

READING LIST

1 2 3 Ethics (1677)

Improvement of the Understanding (1677)

“

He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason.

Tractatus TheologicoPoliticus (1670)

VOLTAIRE

“

1694-1778

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

READING LIST

1 2 3 Candide (1759)

Treatise on Tolerance (1763)

Voltaire was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher famous for his wit, his criticism of \Christianity, especially the Roman Catholic Church, as well as his advocacy of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state. Voltaire was a versatile and prolific writer, producing works in almost every literary form, including plays, poems, novels, essays, and historical and scientific works. He wrote more than 20,000 letters and more than 2,000 books and pamphlets.

He was an outspoken advocate of civil liberties, despite the risk this placed him in under the strict censorship laws of the time. As a satirical polemicist, he frequently made use of his works to criticize intolerance, religious dogma, and the French institutions of his day.

Zadig (1747)

READING LIST

1 2 3 A Treatise of Human Nature (1739)

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)

Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779)

David Hume was a Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, who is best known today for his highly influential system of philosophical empiricism, scepticism, and naturalism.

Hume strove to create a naturalistic science of man that examined the psychological basis of human nature. Hume argued against the existence of innate ideas, positing that all human knowledge derives solely from experience.

Hume influenced utilitarianism, logical positivism, the philosophy of science, early analytic philosophy, cognitive science, theology, and many other fields and thinkers.

Immanuel Kant credited Hume as the inspiration who had awakened him from his "dogmatic slumbers".

“ �

Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.

DAVID HUME 1711-1776

JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher, writer and composer. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Enlightenment throughout Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolution and the development of modern political, economic and educational thought. Rousseau befriended fellow philosophy writer Denis Diderot in 1742, and would later write about Diderot's romantic troubles in his Confessions. During the period of the French Revolution, Rousseau was the most popular of the philosophers among members of the Jacobin Club. He was interred as a national hero in the PanthĂŠon in Paris, in 1794, 16 years after his death.

READING LIST

1 2 3 The Social Contract (1762)

On Education (1762)

Discourse on Inequality (1755}

“�

Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.

THOMAS PAINE 1737-1809

“” What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value.

READING LIST

1 2 3 Common Sense (1776)

The Age of Reason (1794)

Rights of Man (1791)

Thomas Paine was an English-born American political activist, philosopher, political theorist, and revolutionary. He authored the two most influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution and inspired the patriots in 1776 to declare independence from Great Britain. His ideas reflected Enlightenment-era ideals of transnational human rights. In December 1793, he was arrested and was taken to Luxembourg Prison in Paris. While in prison, he continued to write. In 1802, he returned to the U.S. where he died on June 8, 1809. Only six people attended his funeral as he had been ostracized for his ridicule of Christianity.

READING LIST

1 2 3

1715-1797ad A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)

Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787)

A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)

“�

1759-1797

WOLLESTONECRAFT

MARY

I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves.

Mary Wollstonecraft was an English writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights.

Until the late 20th century, Wollstonecraft's life, which encompassed several unconventional personal relationships at the time, received more attention than her writing. Today Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers, and feminists often cite both her life and her works as important influences. After Wollstonecraft's death, her widower published a memoir of her life, revealing her unorthodox lifestyle, which inadvertently destroyed her reputation for almost a century. However, with the emergence of the feminist movement at the turn of the twentieth century, Wollstonecraft's advocacy of women's equality and critiques of conventional femininity became increasingly important.

ADAM SMITH

Adam Smith was a Scottish economist, philosopher and author as well as a moral philosopher, a pioneer of political economy and a key figure during the Scottish Enlightenment. He is commonly known as ''The Father of Economics’’ or ''The Father of Capitalism''.

Smith laid the foundations of classical free market economic theory. The Wealth of Nations was a precursor to the modern academic discipline of economics. In this and other works, he developed the concept of division of labour and expounded upon how rational self-interest and competition can lead to economic prosperity. Smith was controversial in his own day and his general approach and writing style were often satirised by writers such as Horace Walpole.

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.

CORE PRINCIPLES

1 2 3 The Wealth of Nations (1776)

The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)

Lectures on Jurisprudence (1763)

IMMANUEL KANT 1724-1804

Immanuel Kant was a Prussian-German philosopher in the Age of Enlightenment. In his doctrine of transcendental idealism, he argued that space, time, and causation are mere sensibilities; "things-in-themselves" exist, but their nature is unknowable. In his view, the mind shapes and structures experience, with all human experience sharing certain structural features. He drew aparallel to the Copernican revolution in his proposition that worldly objects can be intuited a-priori and that intuition is therefore independent from objective reality. Kant believed that reason is the source of morality, and that aesthetics arise from a faculty of disinterested judgment. Kant's views continue to have a major influence on contemporary philosophy, especially the fields of epistemology, ethics, political theory, and post-modern aesthetics.

READING LIST

1 2 3 Critique of Pure Reason (1781)

Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785)

Critique of Judgment (1790)

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.

EDMUND BURKE 1729-1797

READING LIST

1 2 3 Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757)

A Vindication of Natural Society (1756)

Edmund Burke was an Anglo-Irish statesman and philosopher. Born in Dublin, Burke served as a member of parliament between 1766 and 1794 in the House of Commons with the Whig Party after moving to London in 1750.

Burke was a proponent of underpinning virtues with manners in society and of the importance of religious institutions for the moral stability and good of the state. In the 19th century, Burke was praised by both conservatives and liberals.

Subsequently in the 20th century, he became widely regarded as the philosophical founder of modern conservatism.

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

JEREMY BENTHAM Jeremy Bentham was an English philosopher, jurist, and social reformer regarded as the founder of modern utilitarianism. Bentham defined as the "fundamental axiom" of his philosophy the principle that it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.

He called for the abolition of slavery, capital punishment and physical punishment, including that of children. He has also become known as an early advocate of animal rights. Bentham's students included his secretary and collaborator James Mill and his son, John Stuart Mill. He had considerable influence on the reform of prisons, schools, poor laws, law courts, and Parliament itself.

READING LIST

1 2 3 An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789)

A Fragment on Government (1776)

Stretching his hand up to reach the stars, too often man forgets the flowers at his feet.

Theory of Legislation (1802)

1748-1832

ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER 1788-1860

“�

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

READING LIST

1 2 3 The World as Will and Representation (1819)

The Art of Being Right (1831)

The Wisdom of Life (1851)

Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher. He is best known for his 1818 work The World as Will and Representation, wherein he characterizes the phenomenal world as the product of a blind and malignant metaphysical will. Building on the transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant, Schopenhauer developed an atheistic metaphysical and ethical system that rejected the contemporaneous ideas of German idealism. He was among the first thinkers in Western philosophy to share and affirm significant tenets of Eastern philosophy, such as asceticism and the notion of the world-as-appearance.

His work has been described as an exemplary manifestation of philosophical pessimism.

Auguste Comte was a French philosopher and writer who formulated the doctrine of positivism.

He is often regarded as the first philosopher of science in the modern sense of the term. Comte is also seen as the founder of the academic discipline of sociology.

Comte's social theories culminated in his "Religion of Humanity", which presaged the development of non-theistic religious humanist and secular humanist organizations in the 19th century.

Comte may have coined the word altruism.

Comte died in Paris on 5 September 1857 from stomach cancer and was buried in the famous Père Lachaise Cemetery.

“” Men are not allowed to think freely about chemistry and biology: why should they be allowed to think freely about political philosophy?

READING LIST

1 2 3 Course of Positive Philosophy (1830)

A General View of Positivism (1848)

System of Positive Polity (1851)

AUGUSTE COMTE 1798-1857

“

�

Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing .

READING LIST

1 2 3 On Liberty (1859)

Utilitarianism (1861)

The Subjection of Women (1869)

JOHN STUART MILL

1806-1873

John Stuart Mill was a British philosopher, political economist, and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of classical liberalism, he contributed widely to social theory, political theory, and political economy. Dubbed "the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century", Mill's conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state and social control. Mill was a proponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by his predecessor Jeremy Bentham. He contributed to the investigation of scientific methodology, though his knowledge of the topic was based on the writings of others, notably William Whewell, John Herschel, and Auguste Comte, and research carried out for Mill by Alexander Bain.

“

Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.

Søren Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher, theologian, poet, social critic and religious author who is widely considered to be the first existentialist philosopher. He wrote critical texts on organized religion, Christendom, morality, ethics, psychology, and the philosophy of religion. Much of his philosophical work deals with the issues of how one lives as a "single individual", giving priority to concrete human reality over abstract thinking and highlighting the importance of personal choice and commitment.

Kierkegaard died in 1855 after over a month, possibly from complications from a fall he had taken from a tree in his youth.

SOREN KIERKEGAARD 1813-1855

READING LIST

1 2 3 Either/Or (1843)

Fear and Trembling (1843)

The Concept of Anxiety (1844)

KARL MARX

1818-1883

Karl Marx was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist and socialist revolutionary.

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Marx has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history, and his work has been both lauded and criticised. His work in economics laid the basis for much of the current understanding of labour and its relation to capital, and subsequent economic thought.

Many intellectuals, labour unions, artists and political parties worldwide have been influenced by Marx's work, with many modifying or adapting his ideas. Marx is typically cited as one of the principal architects of modern social science.

The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways.

The point, however, is to change it.

READING LIST

1 2 3 Das Kapital (1867)

The Communist Manifesto (1848)

A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859)

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher, cultural critic, composer, poet, philologist, and Latin and Greek scholar whose work has exerted a profound influence on modern intellectual history. He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. He became the youngest ever to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869 at the age of 24. Nietzsche resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life; he completed much of his core writing in the following decade.

READING LIST

1 2 3 Beyond Good and Evil (1886)

In 1889, at age 44, he suffered a collapse and afterward a complete loss of his mental faculties. He lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her death in 1897 and then with his sister Elisabeth FĂśrster-Nietzsche.

Nietzsche died in 1900.

The Antichrist (1894)

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The Gay Science (1882)

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster.

And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

1869-1940

EMMA GOLDMAN

“ ” The demand for equal rights in every vocation of life is just and fair; but, after all, the most vital right is the right to love and be loved.

READING LIST

1 2 3 Anarchism and Other Essays (1910)

The Social Significance of the Modern Drama (1914)

Living My Life (1931)

Emma Goldman was an anarchist political activist and writer. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the 20th century. During her life, Goldman was lionized as a freethinking "rebel woman" by admirers, and denounced by detractors as an advocate of politically motivated murder and violent revolution. Her writing and lectures spanned a wide variety of issues, including prisons, atheism, freedom of speech, militarism, capitalism, marriage, free love, and homsexuality. Although she distanced herself from first-wave feminism and its efforts toward women's suffrage, she developed new ways of incorporating gender politics into anarchism. After decades of obscurity, Goldman gained iconic status in the 1970s by a revival of interest in her life, when feminist and anarchist scholars rekindled popular interest.

“” The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.

READING LIST

1 2 3 A History of Western Philosophy (1945)

The Problems of Philosophy (1912)

Principia Mathematica (1910)

Bertrand Russell was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, essayist, social critic, political activist, and Nobel laureate.

At various points in his life, Russell considered himself a liberal, a socialist and a pacifist, although he also confessed that his sceptical nature had led him to feel that he had never been any of these things, in any profound sense.Russell was born in Monmouthshire into one of the most prominent aristocratic families in the United Kingdom. Russell was a prominent anti-war activist and he championed anti-imperialism. He criticised Stalinist totalitarianism, attacked the involvement of the United States in the Vietnam War and was an outspoken proponent of nuclear disarmament.

BERTRAND RUSSELL 1872-1970

He left academia several times, serving as an officer on the front line during World War I, where he was decorated a number of times for his courage; teaching in schools in remote Austrian villages where he encountered controversy for hitting children when they made mistakes in mathematics; and working as a hospital porter during World War II in London. He described philosophy as the only work that gave him real satisfaction.

READING LIST

Ludwig Wittgenstein was an AustrianBritish philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language.

1 2 3

Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus (1921)

Philosophical Investigations (1953)

On Certainty (1969)

LUDWIG

WITTGENSTEIN

“” What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.

1889-1951

KARL POPPER 1902-1994

Sir Karl Popper was an Austrian-born British philosopher, academic and social commentator. Popper is known for his rejection of the classical inductivist views on the scientific method in favour of empirical falsification.

In political discourse, he is known for his vigorous defence of liberal democracy and the principles of social criticism that he believed made a flourishing open society possible. His political philosophy embraced ideas from major democratic political ideologies, including social democracy, libertarianism/ classical liberalism and conservatism, and attempted to reconcile them. Popper died of "complications of cancer, pneumonia and kidney failure" in Kenley at the age of 92 on 17 September 1994.

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We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other reason than that only freedom can make security secure.

READING LIST

1 2 3 The Open Society and its enemies (1945)

The Poverty of Historicism (1944)

The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1934)

AYN RAND

Ayn Rand was a Russian-American writer and philosopher.She is known for her two bestselling novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and for developing a philosophical system she named Objectivism. Educated in Russia, she moved to the United States in 1926. She had a play produced on Broadway in 1935 and 1936.

After two early novels that were initially unsuccessful, she achieved fame with her 1943 novel, The Fountainhead. In 1957, Rand published her best-known work, the novel Atlas Shrugged. Afterward, she turned to non-fiction to promote her philosophy, publishing her own periodicals and releasing several collections of essays until her death in 1982.

1905-1982

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The smallest minority on earth is the individual.

Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.

READING LIST

1 2 3 The Fountainhead (1943)

Atlas Shrugged (1957)

The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)

“” JEAN PAUL SARTRE 1905 - 1980

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

READING LIST

1 2 3 Nausea (1938)

Being and Nothingness (1943)

Existentialism Is a Humanism (1946)

Jean-Paul Sartre was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism and phenomenology, and one of the leading figures in 20th-century French philosophyand Marxism. His work has also influenced sociology, critical theory, post-colonial theory, and literary studies, and continues to influence these disciplines.

Sartre died on 15 April 1980 in Paris from edema of the lung. 50,000 Parisians descended onto boulevard du Montparnasse to accompany Sartre's cortege.

READING LIST

1 2 3 The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)

The Human Condition (1958)

On Revolution (1963)

Hannah Arendt, was a Germa philosopher and political theorist. Her many books and articles on topics ranging from totalitarianism to epistemology have had a lasting influence on political theory. Arendt is widely considered one of the most important political philosophers of the twentieth century. Her works cover a broad range of topics, but she is best known for those dealing with the nature of power and evil, as well as politics, direct democracy, authority, and totalitarianism. She is best remembered for the controversy surrounding the trial of Adolf Eichmann, and her attempt to explain how ordinary people become actors in totalitarian systems. She is commemorated by institutions and journals devoted to her thinking, and on stamps, street names and schools, amongst other things.

HANNAH ARENNDT

1906 1975

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Only the mob and the elite can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself. The masses have to be won by propaganda.

“ One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion.

1908-1986

Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir was a French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist and social theorist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, she had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory. De Beauvoir wrote novels, essays, biographies, memoirs and monographs on philosophy, politics, and social issues. She was known for her 1949 treatise The Second Sex, a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism; and for her novels, including She Came to Stay and The Mandarins. De Beauvoir died of pneumonia on 14 April 1986 in Paris, aged 78. She is buried next to Jean Paul Sartre at the Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris.

SIMONE DE BOUVOIR

1 2 3 The Second Sex (1949)

The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947)

READING LIST

The Mandarins (1954)

“ ” The lyricism of marginality may find inspiration in the image of the “outlaw,” the great social nomad, who prowls on the confines of a docile, frightened order.

MICHEL FOUCOLT 1926-1984

READING LIST

1 2 3 Madness and Civilisation (1961)

The History of Sexuality (1976)

Discipline and Punish (1975)

Michel Foucault, was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, social theorist and literary critic. From 1966 to 1968, Foucault lectured at the University of Tunis before returning to France, where he became head of the philosophy department at the new experimental university of Paris VIII. In 1970, Foucault was admitted to the Collège de France, a membership he retained until his death. He also became active in a number of left-wing groups involved in campaigns against racism and human rights abuses and for penal reform.

Foucault died in Paris of HIV/AIDS; he became the first public figure in France to die from the disease. His partner Daniel Defert founded the AIDES charity in his memory.

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You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.

1913-1960

READING LIST

123

ALBERT CAMUS

The Outsider (1942)

The Fall (1956)

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)

Albert Camus was a French philosopher, author, and journalist. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957, the second-youngest recipient in history. Camus was born in Algeria to French parents. He studied philosophy at the University of Algiers, and was in Paris when the Germans invaded France during World War II. Camus joined the French Resistance where he served as editor-in-chief at Combat, an outlawed anti-Fascist newspaper.

Philosophically, Camus's views contributed to the rise of the philosophy known as absurdism. He is also considered to be an existentialist, even though he firmly rejected the term throughout his lifetime. He died prematurely in 1960 following a car accident.

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There is a deep human need for beauty, and if you ignore that need in architecture, your buildings will not last, since people will never feel at home in them

READING LIST

123 How to be a Conservative (2014)

The Aesthetics of Architecture (1979)

The Meaning of Conservatism (1980)

1944-2020

ROGER SCRUTON

Sir Roger Vernon Scruton was an English philosopher and writer who specialised in aesthetics and political philosophy, particularly in the furtherance of traditionalist conservative views in the modern day.

Scruton embraced conservatism after witnessing the May 1968 student protests in France. From 1971 to 1992 he was a lecturer and professor of aesthetics at Birkbeck College, London. In the 1980s, he helped establish underground academic networks in Sovietcontrolled Eastern Europe, for which he was awarded the Czech Republic's Medal of Merit in 1998 He was knighted in the 2016 Birthday Honours for "services to philosophy, teaching and public education".

Also in This Series The Big Book of Moments The Big Book of Bands The Big Book of Singers The Big Book of Inventions The Big Book of Films The Big Book of Books

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