The dream of reason

a history of western philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance

By Gottlieb, Anthony

Publishers Summary:
"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.

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ISBN
978-0-39304-951-0
Publisher
New York : W.W. Norton, 2000.


REVIEWS

Library Journal

Reviewed on January 1, 2001

This is a most interesting book, mainly because its author is not a "professional" philosopher but is instead executive editor of The Economist. As a result, he approaches his subject somewhat differently than would a formally trained philosopher. In his introduction, Gottlieb rightly points out that "the history of philosophy is more the history of a sharply inquisitive cast of mind than t...Log In or Sign Up to Read More

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