Best Philosophy History & Survey Books
Here you will get Best Philosophy History & Survey Books For you.This is an up-to-date list of recommended books.
1. The End Is Always Near: Apocalyptic Moments from the Bronze Age Collapse to Nuclear Near Misses
Author: by Dan Carlin
English
288 pages
0062868055
Now a New York Times Bestseller. The creator of the wildly popular award-winning podcast Hardcore History looks at some of the apocalyptic moments from the past as a way to frame the challenges of the future. Do tough times create tougher people?
Can humanity handle the power of its weapons without destroying itself? Will human technology or capabilities ever peak or regress? No one knows the answers to such questions, but no one asks them in a more interesting way than Dan Carlin.
In The End is Always Near, Dan Carlin looks at questions and historical events that force us to consider what sounds like fantasy; that we might suffer the same fate that all previous eras did. Will our world ever become a ruin for future archaeologists to dig up and explore?
The questions themselves are both philosophical and like something out of The Twilight Zone. Combining his trademark mix of storytelling, history and weirdness Dan Carlin connects the past and future in fascinating and colorful ways. At the same time the questions he asks us to consider involve the most important issue imaginable: human survival.
2. Sophie's World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy (Fsg Classics)
Author: by Jostein Gaarder
0374530718
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
English
A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Sophie’s World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print. One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: “Who are you?” and “Where does the world come from?” From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village.
Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl.Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learningbut the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.
3. The Lessons of History
Author: by Will Durant
Simon & Schuster
English
128 pages
A concise survey of the culture and civilization of mankind, The Lessons of History is the result of a lifetime of research from Pulitzer Prizewinning historians Will and Ariel Durant. With their accessible compendium of philosophy and social progress, the Durants take us on a journey through history, exploring the possibilities and limitations of humanity over time.
Juxtaposing the great lives, ideas, and accomplishments with cycles of war and conquest, the Durants reveal the towering themes of history and give meaning to our own.
4. The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained
Author: by DK
DK
English
352 pages
For all the deep thinkers with questions about the world, this encyclopedia holds the answers you have been searching for. What is the meaning of life? What is the universe made of? Read what our eminent philosophers thought about the nature of reality and the fundamental questions we ask ourselves.
To help you understand the subject and what it is about, The Philosophy Book introduces you to ancient philosophers like Plato and Confucius. But it doesn’t stop there – read about our modern thinkers such as Chomsky and Derrida, too.
This book has short and sweet biographies of over a hundred philosophers and their profound questions. Work your way through the different branches of philosophy like metaphysics and ethics. Understand how philosophical questions have led to breakthroughs in math and science.
Figure out how the history of philosophy informs our modern lives, exploring topics like how science can predict the future and how language shapes our thoughts and decisions. Your Philosophical Questions ExplainedIf you thought philosophy was full of difficult concepts, The Philosophy Book presents the key ideas in an easy-to-follow layout.
5. A History of Western Philosophy
Author: by Bertrand Russell
English
895 pages
0671201581
Hailed as lucid and magisterial by The Observer, this book is universally acclaimed as the outstanding one-volume work on the subject of Western philosophy. Considered to be one of the most important philosophical works of all time, the History of Western Philosophy is a dazzlingly unique exploration of the ideologies of significant philosophers throughout the agesfrom Plato and Aristotle through to Spinoza, Kant and the twentieth century.
Written by a man who changed the history of philosophy himself, this is an account that has never been rivaled since its first publication over sixty years ago. Since its first publication in 1945, Lord Russell’s A History of Western Philosophy is still unparalleled in its comprehensiveness, its clarity, its erudition, its grace, and its wit.
In seventy-six chapters he traces philosophy from the rise of Greek civilization to the emergence of logical analysis in the twentieth century. Among the philosophers considered are: Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, the Atomists, Protagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Cynics, the Sceptics, the Epicureans, the Stoics, Plotinus, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, Benedict, Gregory the Great, John the Scot, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, William of Occam, Machiavelli, Erasmus, More, Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, the Utilitarians, Marx, Bergson, James, Dewey, and lastly the philosophers with whom Lord Russell himself is most closely associatedCantor, Frege, and Whitehead, coauthor with Russell of the monumental Principia Mathematica.
6. The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790
Author: by Ritchie Robertson
Harper (February 23, 2021)
English
1008 pages
A magisterial history that recasts the Enlightenment as a period not solely consumed with rationale and reason, but rather as a pursuit of practical means to achieve greater human happiness. One of the formative periods of European and world history, the Enlightenment is the fountainhead of modern secular Western values: religious tolerance, freedom of thought, speech and the press, of rationality and evidence-based argument.
Yet why, over three hundred years after it began, is the Enlightenment so profoundly misunderstood as controversial, the expression of soulless calculation? The answer may be that, to an extraordinary extent, we have accepted the account of the Enlightenment given by its conservative enemies: that enlightenment necessarily implied hostility to religion or support for an unfettered free market, or that this was the best of all possible worlds.
Ritchie Robertson goes back into the long eighteenth century, from approximately 1680 to 1790, to reveal what this much-debated period was really about. Robertson returns to the era’s original texts to show that above all, the Enlightenment was really about increasing human happiness in this world rather than the next by promoting scientific inquiry and reasoned argument.
7. The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
Author: by Stephen Greenblatt
English
356 pages
0393343405
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction Winner of the National Book Award New York Times Bestseller Renowned scholar Stephen Greenblatt brings the past to vivid life in what is at once a supreme work of scholarship, a literary page-turner, and a thrilling testament to the power of the written word.
In the winter of 1417, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late thirties plucked a very old manuscript off a dusty shelf in a remote monastery, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied.
He was Poggio Bracciolini, the greatest book hunter of the Renaissance. His discovery, Lucretius’ ancient poem On the Nature of Things, had been almost entirely lost to history for more than a thousand years. It was a beautiful poem of the most dangerous ideas: that the universe functions without the aid of gods, that religious fear is damaging to human life, that pleasure and virtue are not opposites but intertwined, and that matter is made up of very small material particles in eternal motion, randomly colliding and swerving in new directions.
8. Beyond Good & Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future
Author: by Friedrich Nietzsche
English
288 pages
0679724656
Represents Nietzsche’s attempt to sum up his philosophy. In nine parts the book is designed to give the reader a comprehensive idea of Nietzsche’s thought and style: they span “The Prejudices of Philsophers,” “The Free Spirit,” religion, morals, scholarship, “Our Virtues,” “Peoples and Fatherlands,” and “What Is Noble,” as well as epigrams and a concluding poem.
Beyond Good and Evil is one of the most remarkable and influential books of the nineteenth century. This translation by Walter Kaufmann has become the standard one, for accuracy and fidelity to the eccentricities and grace of the style of the original.
The translation is based on the only edition Nietzsche himself published, and all variant reading in later editions. This volume offers an inclusive index of subjects and persons, as well as a running footnote commentary on the text.
9. How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer
Author: by Sarah Bakewell
Other Press
English
416 pages
Winner of the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award for BiographyHow to get along with people, how to deal with violence, how to adjust to losing someone you lovesuch questions arise in most people’s lives. They are all versions of a bigger question: How do you live?
This question obsessed Renaissance writers, none more than Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, considered by many to be the first truly modern individual. He wrote free-roaming explorations of his thoughts and experience, unlike anything written before. More than four hundred years later, Montaigne’s honesty and charm still draw people to him.
Readers come to him in search of companionship, wisdom, and entertainment and in search of themselves. Just as they will to this spirited and singular biography.
10. Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea
Author: by Charles Seife
Penguin Books
English
272 pages
Popular math at its most entertaining and enlightening. “Zero is really something”-Washington PostA New York Times Notable Book. The Babylonians invented it, the Greeks banned it, the Hindus worshiped it, and the Church used it to fend off heretics.
Now it threatens the foundations of modern physics. For centuries the power of zero savored of the demonic; once harnessed, it became the most important tool in mathematics. For zero, infinity’s twin, is not like other numbers. It is both nothing and everything.
In Zero, Science Journalist Charles Seife follows this innocent-looking number from its birth as an Eastern philosophical concept to its struggle for acceptance in Europe, its rise and transcendence in the West, and its ever-present threat to modern physics. Here are the legendary thinkersfrom Pythagoras to Newton to Heisenberg, from the Kabalists to today’s astrophysicistswho have tried to understand it and whose clashes shook the foundations of philosophy, science, mathematics, and religion.
11. Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World
Author: by Carl T. Bergstrom
English
336 pages
0525509208
Bullshit isn’t what it used to be. Now, two science professors give us the tools to dismantle misinformation and think clearly in a world of fake news and bad data.A modern classic … A straight-talking survival guide to the mean streets of a dying democracy and a global pandemic.
WiredMisinformation, disinformation, and fake news abound and it’s increasingly difficult to know what’s true. Our media environment has become hyperpartisan. Science is conducted by press release. Startup culture elevates bullshit to high art. We are fairly well equipped to spot the sort of old-school bullshit that is based in fancy rhetoric and weasel words, but most of us don’t feel qualified to challenge the avalanche of new-school bullshit presented in the language of math, science, or statistics.
In Calling Bullshit, Professors Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West give us a set of powerful tools to cut through the most intimidating data. You don’t need a lot of technical expertise to call out problems with data. Are the numbers or results too good or too dramatic to be true?
12. The Consequences of Ideas (Redesign): Understanding the Concepts that Shaped Our World
Author: by R. C. Sproul
Crossway
English
224 pages
Plato.Aquinas.Descartes.Kant.Freud. These great thinkers are still impacting the culture todayfrom public-policy decisions to world events, theology, the arts, education, and even everyday conversations. In this classic book, the late R.C. Sproul expertly surveys history’s most influential streams of thought, proving that ideas are not just passing fadsthey have consequences for generations to come.
Helping readers better understand how many of these ideas have shaped their own thinking, this book will empower Christians to be a Christlike influence in the world.
13. Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, 4th Ed.
Author: by Rene Descartes
Hackett Publishing Company
English
128 pages
This edition contains Donald Cress’s completely revised translation of the Meditations (from the corrected Latin edition) and recent corrections to Discourse on Method, bringing this version even closer to Descartes’s original, while maintaining the clear and accessible style of a classic teaching edition.
14. A Secular Age
Author: by Charles Taylor
English
896 pages
0674986911
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year A Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year A Tablet Best Book of the Year Winner of a Christianity Today Book Award One finds big nuggets of insight, useful to almost anybody with an interest in the progress of human society.
The EconomistTaylor takes on the broad phenomenon of secularization in its full complexity[A] voluminous, impressively researched and often fascinating social and intellectual history. Jack Miles, Los Angeles TimesA Secular Age is a work of stupendous breadth and erudition. John Patrick Diggins, New York Times Book ReviewA culminating dispatch from the philosophical frontlines.
It is at once encyclopedic and incisive, a sweeping overview that is no less analytically rigorous for its breadth. Steven Hayward, Cleveland Plain Dealer[A] thumping great volume. Stuart Jeffries, The GuardianVery occasionally there appears a book destined to endure.
15. Fear and Trembling (Penguin Classics)
Author: by Soren Kierkegaard
Penguin Classics
English
160 pages
The infamous and controversial work that made a lasting impression on both modern Protestant theology and existentialist philosophers such as Sartre and CamusWriting under the pseudonym of “Johannes de silentio,” Kierkegaard expounds his personal view of religion through a discussion of the scene in Genesis in which Abraham prepares to sacrifice his son Isaac at God’s command.
Believing Abraham’s unreserved obedience to be the essential leap of faith needed to make a full commitment to his religion, Kierkegaard himself made great sacrifices in order to dedicate his life entirely to his philosophy and to God. The conviction shown in this religious polemicthat a man can have an exceptional mission in lifeinformed all Kierkegaard’s later writings.
His “teleological suspension of the ethical” challenged the contemporary views of Hegel’s universal moral system, and was also hugely influential for both protestant theology and the existentialist movement. Alastair Hannay’s introduction evaluates Kierkegaard’s philosophy and the ways in which it conflicted with more accepted contemporary views.
16. Philosophy 101: From Plato and Socrates to Ethics and Metaphysics, an Essential Primer on the History of Thought (Adams 101)
Author: by Paul Kleinman
1440567670
Adams Media
English
Discover the world’s greatest thinkers and their groundbreaking notions! Too often, textbooks turn the noteworthy theories, principles, and figures of philosophy into tedious discourse that even Plato would reject. Philosophy 101 cuts out the boring details and exhausting philosophical methodology, and instead, gives you a lesson in philosophy that keeps you engaged as you explore the fascinating history of human thought and inquisition.
From Aristotle and Heidegger to free will and metaphysics, Philosophy 101 is packed with hundreds of entertaining philosophical tidbits, illustrations, and thought puzzles that you won’t be able to find anywhere else. So whether you’re looking to unravel the mysteries of existentialism, or just want to find out what made Voltaire tick, Philosophy 101 has all the answers-even the ones you didn’t know you were looking for.
