The Philosophy book

The ancient world 700 BCE-250 CE -- Everything is made of water -- The dao that can be told is not the eternal dao -- Number is the ruler of forms and ideas -- Happy is he who has overcome his ego -- Hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles -- Everything is flux -- All is one -- Man is the measure of all things -- When one throws to me a peach, I return to him a plum -- Nothing exists except atoms and empty space -- The life which is unexamined is not worth living -- Earthly knowledge is but shadow -- Truth resides in the world around us -- Death is nothing to us -- He has the most who is most content with the least -- The goal of life is living in agreement with nature -- The medieval world 250-1500 -- God is not the parent of evils -- God foresees our free thoughts and actions -- The soul is distinct from the body -- Just by thinking about God we can know he exists -- Philosophy and religion are not incompatible -- God has no attributes -- Don't grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form -- The universe has not always existed -- God is the not-other -- To know nothing is the happiest life -- Renaissance and the age of reason 1500-1750 -- The end justifies the means -- Fame and tranquility can never be bedfellows -- Knowledge is power -- Man is a machine -- I think therefore I am -- Imagination decides everything -- God is the cause of all things, which are in him -- No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience -- There are two kinds of truths : truths of reasoning and truths of fact -- To be is to be perceived -- The age of revolution 1750-1900 -- Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainly is absurd -- Custom is the great guide of human life -- Man was born free yet everywhere he is in chains -- Man is an animal that makes bargains -- There are two worlds : our bodies and the external world -- Society is indeed a contract -- The greatest happiness for the greatest number -- Mind has no gender -- What sort of philosophy one chooses depends on what sort of person one is -- About no subject is there less philosophizing than about philosophy -- Reality is a historical process -- Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world -- Theology is anthropology -- Over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign -- Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom -- The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles -- Must the citizen ever resign his conscience to the legislator? -- Consider what effects things I have -- Act as if what you do makes a difference -- The modern world 1900-1950 -- Man is something to be surpassed -- Men with self-confidence come and see and conquer -- Every message is made of signs -- Experience by itself is not science -- Intuition goes in the very direction of life -- We only think when we are confronted with problems -- Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it -- It is only suffering that makes us persons -- Believe in life -- The road to happiness lies in an organized diminution of work -- Love is a bridge from poorer to richer knowledge -- Only as an individual can man become a philosopher -- Life is a series of collisions with the future -- To philosophize, first one must confess -- The limits of my language are the limits of my world -- We are ourselves the entities to be analyzed -- The individual's only true moral choice is through self-sacrifice for the community -- Logic is the last scientific ingredient of philosophy -- The only way of knowing a person is to love them without hope -- That which is cannot be true -- History does not belong to us but we belong to it -- In so far as a scientific statement speaks about reality, it must be falsifiable -- Intelligence is a moral category -- Existence precedes essence -- The banality of evil -- Reason live in language -- In order to see the world we must break with our familiar acceptance of it -- Man is defined as a human being and woman as a female -- Language is a social art -- The fundamental sense of freedom is freedom from chains -- Think like a mountain -- Life will be lived all the better if it has no meaning -- Contemporary philosophy 1950-present -- Language is a skin -- How would we manage without a culture? -- Normal science does not aim at novelties of fact or theory -- The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance -- Art is a form of life -- Anything goes -- Knowledge is produced to be sold -- For the black man, there is only one destiny and it is white -- Man is an invention of recent date -- If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion -- Society is dependent upon a criticism of its own traditions -- There is nothing outside of the text -- There is nothing deep down inside us excepts what we have put there ourselves -- Every desire has a reaction to madness -- Every empire tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires -- Thought has always worked by opposition -- Who plays God in present-day feminism? -- Philosophy is not only a written enterprise -- In suffering, the animals are our equals -- All the best Marxist analyses are always analyses of a failure

How did the universe begin? What is truth? How can we live good lives? Throughout history, humankind has asked these and other big questions about the nature of life and existence - and big thinkers have offered solutions that continue to shape our world. Written in plain English, The Philosophy Book is packed with short, pithy explanations that cut through the jargon, step-by-step diagrams that untangle knotty theories, classic quotes that make philosophy memorable, and witty illustrations that play with our ideas about ideas. Whether you're a complete beginner, an avid student, or an armchair expert, you'll find plenty of food for thought in this book.--COVER