Kategoria BISAC: Biography & Autobiography >> Philosophers

Bertrand Russell s eminence of intellect and person has long been unassailable. Besides his distinction as mathematician and philosopher, and a vast output of books, articles, lectures and talks on most aspects of the human condition, there is his continuing concern for day-to-day political issues, his championing of individual freedom and his readiness to stand for a cause to the point of imprisonment. To have distilled the essence of his ninety-odd years into this little book is itself quite an achievement. Originally published in 1962, it has been called a pocket guide to greatness and...

Fascinating, brilliant, oddly moving, a warm human picture this biography was enthusiastically received when it came out in 1957. And no wonder. It is not only the lively story of a distinguished man but a lucid account of his work and its significance. The author, who was himself a philosopher and journalist, has followed the bright thread of Russell s personality with affectionate insight, from the three-day-old baby who looked about him in a very energetic way, and the boy who jibbed at taking Euclid on trust, through the many turns of his life, to the undimmed octogenarian, still...

Pioneering biblical critic, theorist of democracy, and legendary conflater of God and nature, Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) was excommunicated by the Sephardic Jews of Amsterdam in 1656 for his "horrible heresies" and "monstrous deeds." Yet, over the past three centuries, Spinoza's rupture with traditional Jewish beliefs and practices has elevated him to a prominent place in genealogies of Jewish modernity. The First Modern Jew provides a riveting look at how Spinoza went from being one of Judaism's most notorious outcasts to one of its most celebrated, if still...

Ecology or Catastrophe: The Life of Murray Bookchin is the first biography of this groundbreaking environmental and political thinker. Author Janet Biehl worked as his collaborator and copyeditor...

Throughout history, the thinking of Western Europe and America has often dominated scholarly conversation, even on objects of study outside of those cultures. Thus Western academic inquiry into Chinese philosophy, for example, from Confucius and Laozi to Mozi and Chen Liang, has rarely engaged with scholarly work from China itself. This has been the West's great loss. Penn State University Press is pleased to have entered into an agreement with Nanjing University Press to allow greater access to the critical work of Chinese scholars concerning prominent Chinese thinkers. These volumes, all...

In the Louvre museum hangs a portrait that is considered the iconic image of Rene Descartes, the great seventeenth-century French philosopher. And the painter of the work? The Dutch master Frans Hals--or so it was long believed, until the work was downgraded to a copy of an original. But where is the authentic version, and who painted it? Is the man in the painting--and in its original--really Descartes?

A unique combination of philosophy, biography, and art history, The Philosopher, the Priest, and the Painter investigates the remarkable individuals and circumstances...

Maimonides was the greatest Jewish philosopher and legal scholar of the medieval period, a towering figure who has had a profound and lasting influence on Jewish law, philosophy, and religious consciousness. This book provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to his life and work, revealing how his philosophical sensibility and outlook informed his interpretation of Jewish tradition.

Moshe Halbertal vividly describes Maimonides's childhood in Muslim Spain, his family's flight to North Africa to escape persecution, and their eventual resettling in Egypt. He draws on...

From dark yesterday to bright tomorrow...

When childhood is over, and adulthood tries to take hold, it all becomes too much for one overwhelmed young man. He sets out to find a place to give up once and for all, to lay his body down and let his wasted life drift away; instead he stumbles onto a whole new way of looking at the world.

His new teacher calls him 'Nobody', and he can't deny the truth in the name. A touching friendship unfolds as Nobody hears life and love being explained in a whole new way, and hope begins to burn in his heart as the poignant...

Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) was an English writer, physician, and philosopher whose work has inspired everyone from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Jorge Luis Borges, Virginia Woolf to Stephen Jay Gould. In an intellectual adventure like Sarah Bakewell's book about Montaigne, How to Live, Hugh Aldersey-Williams sets off not just to tell the story of Browne's life but to champion his skeptical nature and inquiring mind.

Mixing botany, etymology, medicine, and literary history, Aldersey-Williams journeys in his hero's footsteps to introduce us to witches, zealots, natural wonders,...