GREAT PHILOSOPHERS – serie

'Judge a man by his questions, rather than by his answers.' VoltaireVoltaire was one of the first philosophers to be commercially successful internationally. Famous for his strong views on the importance of civil liberties, he was equally renowned for his wit. A prolific letter writer, he was also the author of over 2,000 books and pamphlets, including the novel Candide, which criticises and ridicules many of the events and philosophies of the time. It is widely recognised as one of the most glorious satires of the 18th century.John Gray's short account is the ideal introduction to one of the great thinkers of all time.

'Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all' Aristotle'Knowing yourself is the mark of all wisdom''You will never do anything in this world without courage'Aristotle was one of the greatest philosophers that has ever lived. Taught by Plato, he was the first genuine scientist in history, a true pioneer of both science and philosophy. Widely credited as the inventor of the field of formal logic, his ideas have remained relevant throughout the world down through the centuries. Whilst little is known about his life, he tutored Alexander the Great and established a library in the Lyceum. The poet Dante called him 'the master of those who know'.Kenneth Mcleish's short work is the perfect introduction to one of the most influential philosophers and scientists of all time.

'Courage is knowing what not to fear' Plato'One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors' Without the work of Plato, western thought is, quite literally, unthinkable. No single influence has been greater, in every age and in every philosophic field. Even those thinkers who have rejected Plato's views have found themselves working to an agenda he set.Yet between the neo-platonist interpretations and the anti-platonist reactions, the stuff of 'Platonism' proper has often been obscured. The philosopher himself has not necessarily helped in the matter: at times disconcertingly difficult, at other disarmingly simple, Plato can be an elusive thinker, his meanings hard to pin down. His dialogues are complex and often ironically constructed and do not simply expand his views - which in any case changed and developed over a long life.In this lucid and exciting introductory guide, Bernard Williams takes his reader back to first principles, re-reading the key texts to reveal what the philosopher actually said. The result is a rediscovered Plato: often unexpected, always fascinating and rewarding.

'The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts' Bertrand Russell'Science is what you know. Philosophy is what you don't know'Bertrand Russell discovered mathematics at the age of eleven. It was, he recalled, a transporting experience: 'as dazzling as first love'. From that moment on, he would pursue his passion with undying devotion and fervour. Mathematics might succeed, he felt, where philosophy had failed, reducing thought to its purest form, and freeing knowledge from doubt and contradiction. And for a time, so it seemed. Russell's mathematical investigations effortlessly resolved at a stroke some of philosophy's most intractable problems. Yet if mathematics could be a liberating mistress, she was also an unreliable one...Opening up the work of one of our age's undisputed giants, Ray Monk's exhilaratingly clear, readable guide tells a compelling human tale too: a moving story of love and loss, of ecstatic triumph and deep disillusion.

'What experience and history teaches us is that people and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it''What and how much I possess is a matter of indifference so far as rights are concerned''Education is the art of making man ethical'Without Hegel, modern thought is unthinkable - all those whose ideas have made the modern age have worked in his shadow. Hegel's preoccupations remain as relevant today as ever - not least the isolation of the individual adrift in society. Yet if his 'philosophy' seems as contemporary as ever, Hegel's 'religious' views have been dismissed as irrelevant anachronism. In this concise and illuminating guide, Raymond Plant demonstrates how the distinction is false, revealing that Hegel tackled the issues of interest to us all.

'If you put me to death,' Socrates warned his Athenian judges, 'you will not easily find anyone to take my place.' So indeed it would prove, a single cup of hemlock robbing the western philosophical tradition of its founding father. Yet Socrates' influence was not so easily to be done away with. His words were lovingly recorded by his devoted disciple Plato, and his teachings have survived for twenty-seven centuries. His sense of education as self-discovery and his view of philosophy as preparation for life have been the stuff of western thought at its best. So completely did Socrates embody these values, he was prepared to die in their defence.

'Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself' WittgensteinWittgenstein overturned centuries of philosophical reflection on the nature of 'the inner', of our subjective experience and of our knowledge of self and others. Traditional conceptions of 'the outer', of human behaviour, were equally distorted and so too was the relation between the inner and the outer.This highly accessible account offers an illuminating introduction to Wittgenstein's philosophy of mind and to his conception of philosophy, showing how Wittgenstein's examination of our use of words clarifies our notions of mind, body and behaviour.W&NNON-FICTIONPHILOSOPHYUK £3.99

From WW2 code-breaker to Artificial Intelligence - a fascinating account of the remarkable Alan Turing.Alan Turing's 1936 paper On Computable Numbers was a landmark of twentieth-century thought. It not only provided the principle of the post-war computer, but also gave an entirely new approach to the philosophy of the mind.Influenced by his crucial codebreaking work during the war, and by practical pioneering of the first electronic computers, Turing argued that all the operations of the mind could be performed by computers. His thesis is the cornerstone of modern Artificial Intelligence.Andrew Hodges gives a fresh analysis of Turing's work, relating it to his extraordinary life.