The dream of reason
Subtitle: a history of western philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance
By: Anthony Gottlieb
Edition: 1st American ed
Publisher: W.W. Norton
Published: 2000
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 468
Subjects: Philosophy -- History
Description: "The Dream of Reason illustrates how the story of philosophy is more the history of a sharply inquisitive cast of mind than of a sharply defined discipline. We engage immediately with both the personalities and the arguments of every major philosopher from Ancient Greece to the birth of modern philosophy in the seventeenth century; the modern era will be addressed in a second volume. Among a large cast of curious individuals, we encounter Thales, perhaps the first philosopher, certainly the first of a long line of absent-minded professors; Empedocles, who in the fourth century BC invented a theory of matter which convinced nearly everybody until the Renaissance, despite the fact that Empedocles believed himself to be a reincarnated bush; Anaxagoras, who was convicted of impiety for believing that the heavenly bodies were not gods to be worshipped but red-hot rocks to be avoided; Diogenes, the cynic who lived in an earthenware tub; and Epicurus, no bon viveur, but a philosopher devoted to the simple life."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 432-456) and index
Table of contents: title: The archetypes : the Milesians; title: The harmony of the world : the Pythagoreans; title: The man who searched for himself : Heraclitus; title: The truth about nothing : Parmenides; title: The ways of paradox : Zeno; title: Love and strife : Empedocles; title: Mind and matter : Anaxagoras; title: He who laughs last : Democritus; title: Opening Pandora's box : the Sophists; title: Philosophy's martyr : Socrates and the Socratics; title: The republic of reason : Plato; title: The master of those who know : Aristotle; title: Three roads to tranquillity : Epicureans, Stoics, and Sceptics; title: The haven of piety : from late antiquity to the Renaissance