Great Thinkers A-Z

by Julian Baggini (Editor), Jeremy Stangroom (Editor)

Great Thinkers, A-Z brings together 100 short, accessible snapshots of the people who have shaped Western thought from the ancient Greeks to today. The snapshots, written by the world's leading experts, describe a major thinker's life and work with suggestions for further reading on each one. Covering philosophers as well as cultural and scientific thinkers-such as Foucault, Darwin, Einstein and Freud-who have had a major impact on philosophy, Great Thinkers, A-Z is the ideal book for anyone interested in the history of ideas and in contemporary thought.

Entries include: Adorno, Arendt, Aquinas, Aristotle, Augustine, Avicenna, Ayer, Bacon, Baudrillard, de Beauvoir, Benjamin, Bentham, Bergson, Berkeley, Boethius, Brentano, Butler, Camus, Carnap, Chomsky, Churchland, Cixous, Collingwood, Comte, Craik, Croce, Darwin, Davidson, Deleuze, Dennett, Descartes, Derrida, Dewey, Dilthey, Duns Scotus, Einstein, Foucault, Frege, Freud, Gadamer, Godel, Habermas, Hayek, Hegel, Heidegger, Hobbes, Hume, Husserl, Irigaray, James, Kant, Kierkegaard, Kripke, Kristeva, Kuhn, Leibniz, Levinas, Lewis, Locke, Machiavelli, MacIntyre, Marx, Macmurray, Merleau-Ponty, Mill, Montaigne, Moore, Nagel, Negri, Nietzsche, Nozick, Nussbaum, Paine, Pascal, Peirce, Plato, Plotinus, Popper, Putnam, Pythagoras, Quine, Rawls, Rorty, Rousseau, Russell, Santayana, Sartre, Schopenhauer, Searle, Seneca, Sidgwick, Singer, Socrates, Spinoza, Taylor, Turing, Vico, Weil, Whitehead, Wittgenstein, Zeno

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Reference, History

284 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Julian Baggini is a British philosopher and the author of several books about philosophy written for a general audience. He is the author of The Pig that Wants to be Eaten and 99 other thought experiments (2005) and is co-founder and editor of The Philosophers' Magazine. He was awarded his Ph.D. in 1996 from University College London for a thesis on the philosophy of personal identity. In addition to his popular philosophy books, Baggini contributes to The Guardian, The Independent, The Observer, and the BBC. He has been a regular guest on BBC Radio 4's In Our Time.

Reviews

[David Mackey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great Thinkers consists of a number of brief introductions to various "great thinkers" throughout history. The articles are written by a wide variety of individuals, largely academics. If you have a deep knowledge of the thinkers there isn't much to see here but for most people this will be a fascinating introduction.

There are a few articles in which the explanation of the thinker's thought is not entirely clear but overall the contributors do a good job of making difficult concepts understandable.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book, well written mini essays by different contributors briefly touching on the minds of 'Great thinkers'. A great introduction for someone who wants to know about the famous philosopher but not be overwhelmed, I found some of the mini essays very thought provoking - and certainly made me keen to learn more about those that really interested me.

[Nicollette · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was good, easy to read and very helpful.

[Nativeabuse · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not good, the descriptions of each thinker are much too short and not very good. If you want to have an understanding of a wide array of thinkers, look elsewhere.

[Jamie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very good way to get introduced to some of the greats. If you find it sparks your interest In learning more about certain individuals, then the book is a success.