Readers eager to acquire a basic familiarity with the history of philosophy but intimidated by the task will find in A Passion for Wisdom a lively, accessible, and highly enjoyable tour of the world's great ideas. Here, Robert Solomon and Kathleen Higgins tell the story of philosophy's development with great clarity and refreshing wit.
The authors begin with the most ancient religious beliefs of the east and west and bring us right up to the feminist and multicultural philosophies of the present. Along the way, they highlight major philosophers, from Plato and the Buddha to William James...

Love - our hearts yearn for it, we fall into it or out of it, we'll do almost anything to attain and keep it. Those who have experienced the "power of love" whirl from its embrace. It is delicious anguish, gut-wrenching pain, and intoxicating allure. Nations go to war over it, crimes are committed to satisfy its demands, lives are often ruined because of it, and extraordinary feats of courage and sacrifice are performed in its name. But beyond the cliches and greeting card platitudes, do we really understand what love is, and how it alters the way we think, feel, and behave?

Should love...