The Dream of Reason: A History of Western Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance

Anthony Gottlieb

W. W. Norton & Company, 2000 - 468 pages

Philosophy is a subject with a long history and a short memory. In this landmark new study of Western thought, Anthony Gottlieb looks afresh at the writings of the great thinkers, questions many pieces of conventional wisdom and explains his findings with unbridled brilliance and clarity. From the pre-Socratic philosophers such as Empedocles, whose account of the cosmos seems "a mixture of the physics of Stephen Hawking and the romantic novels of Barbara Cartland," through the celebrated days of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, up to Renaissance visionaries like Erasmus and Bacon, "philosophy" emerges here as a phenomenon unconfined by any one discipline. Indeed, as Gottlieb explains, its most revolutionary breakthroughs in the natural and social sciences have repeatedly been co-opted by other branches of knowledge, leading to the illusion that philosophers never make any progress.

Table des matières

• IV: 3
• V: 21
• VII: 41
• VIII: 52
• IX: 65
• X: 73
• XI: 84
• XIII: 94
• XIV: 109
• XV: 129
• XVI: 131
• XVII: 169
• XVIII: 220
• XX: 281
• XXI: 283
• XXII: 346
• XXIII: 432
• XXIV: 457

À propos de l'auteur

Anthony Gottlieb is a former executive editor of The Economist and has held visiting fellowships at Harvard University and All Souls College, Oxford. His work has appeared in The New Yorker and the New York Times. He lives in New York.

Informations bibliographiques

• Titre: The Dream of Reason: A History of Western Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance
• Auteur: Anthony Gottlieb
• Édition: réimprimée
• Éditeur: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000
• ISBN: 0393049515, 9780393049510
• Longueur: 468 pages