A Little History of Philosophy

a

A LITTLE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

N I G E L WA R B U RT O N

A LITTLE HISTORY of

PHILOSOPHY

YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS

NEW HAVEN AND LONDON

Copyright ? 2011 Nigel Warburton

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press) without written permission from the publishers.

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Set in Minion Pro by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd Printed in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Warburton, Nigel, 1962? ?... A little history of philosophy/Nigel Warburton. ?...?... p. cm ?... ISBN 978?0?300?15208?1 (cl:alk. paper) ?... 1. Philosophy--History. 2. Philosophers. I. Title. ?... B72.W365 2011

?... 190--dc22

2011013537

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

1 The Man Who Asked Questions

1

Socrates and Plato

2 True Happiness

9

Aristotle

3 We Know Nothing

15

Pyrrho

4 The Garden Path

22

Epicurus

5 Learning Not to Care

28

Epictetus, Cicero, Seneca

6 Who Is Pulling Our Strings?

34

Augustine

7 The Consolation of Philosophy

40

Boethius

8 The Perfect Island

46

Anselm and Aquinas

vi

contents

? 9 The Fox and the Lion

51

Niccol? Machiavelli

10 Nasty, Brutish, and Short

57

Thomas Hobbes

11 Could You Be Dreaming?

62

Ren? Descartes

12 Place Your Bets

69

Blaise Pascal

13 The Lens Grinder

76

Baruch Spinoza

14 The Prince and the Cobbler

81

John Locke and Thomas Reid

15 The Elephant in the Room

87

George Berkeley (and John Locke)

16 The Best of All Possible Worlds?

93

Voltaire and Gottfried Leibniz

17 The Imaginary Watchmaker

99

David Hume

18 Born Free

105

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

19 Rose-Tinted Reality

110

Immanuel Kant (1)

20 What if Everyone Did That?

115

Immanuel Kant (2)

21 Practical Bliss

121

Jeremy Bentham

contents

vii

22 The Owl of Minerva

126

Georg W.F. Hegel

23 Glimpses of Reality

132

Arthur Schopenhauer

24 Space to Grow

138

John Stuart Mill

25 Unintelligent Design

145

Charles Darwin

26 Life's Sacrifices

152

S?ren Kierkegaard

27 Workers of the World Unite

158

Karl Marx

28 So What?

164

C.S. Peirce and William James

29 The Death of God

171

Friedrich Nietzsche

30 Thoughts in Disguise

176

Sigmund Freud

31 Is the Present King of France Bald?

183

Bertrand Russell

32 Boo!/Hooray!

190

A.J. Ayer

33 The Anguish of Freedom

196

Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and

Albert Camus

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