Philosopher Biography

Nearly a hundred years after its publication, Kurt Gödel's famous proof that every mathematical system must contain propositions that are true - yet never provable - continues to unsettle mathematics, philosophy, and computer science. Yet unlike Einstein, with whom he formed a warm and abiding friendship, Gödel has long escaped all but the most casual scrutiny of his life. 

Paris, 1933: Three contemporaries meet over apricot cocktails at the Bec-de-Gaz bar on the rue Montparnasse. They are the young Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and longtime friend Raymond Aron, a fellow philosopher who raves to them about a new conceptual framework from Berlin called phenomenology. "You see," he says, "if you are a phenomenologist, you can talk about this cocktail and make philosophy out of it!"

Con este libro, Nietzsche se adentra en el estilo aforístico que llegaría a dominar sus escritos, discutiendo una variedad de conceptos en párrafos cortos. En sus páginas se encuentra la apertura a conceptos cruciales para la filosofía posterior de Nietzsche, como la voluntad de poder y la necesidad de trascender la moral cristiana convencional. El resultado es una de las piedras angulares de la obra de su vida.

The Greek word sumposion means a drinking party (a fact shamefully ignored by the organizers of modern symposia), and the party described in Plato's Symposium is one supposedly given in the year 416 BC by the playwright Agathon to celebrate his victory in the dramatic festival of the Lenaea. He has already given one party, the previous evening; this second party is for a select group of friends, and host and guests alike are feeling a little frail.

Too smart to believe in God? The twelve philosophers in this book are too smart not to, and their finely honed reasoning skills and advanced educations are on display as they explain their reasons for believing in Christianity and entering the Roman Catholic Church. Among the twelve converts are well-known professors and writers including Peter Kreeft, Edward Feser, J. Budziszewski, Candace Vogler, and Robert Koons. Each story is unique; yet each one details the various perceptible ways God drew these lovers of wisdom to himself and to the Church. In every case, reason played a primary role.

Johnny Cash might have been the Man in Black, but he was also the man right up front and center. And it didn't matter if you were a country music fan, a rock fan, a rap fan, or an avant-garde researcher from another planet. Once you heard Johnny--your attention was his to command. He took a song and turned every note into a thought provoking expression of the human experience. Who else could Walk the Line straight to Folsom Prison only to go down the Gospel Road with Billy Graham? That old Johnny Cash Machine certainly pushed limits. He dared to be different. He even dared to cover a Nine ...

Among the most famous visionaries of our times, J. Krishnamurti (1895-1986) continues to transform thought, lifestyles and education across continents more than three decades after his death. In this new biography, tracing the nine long decades of his life, from his growing-up years, his relationships to his writings and talks, Roshen Dalal provides a much-needed corrective–an objective and balanced view of his legacy.

Marcus Aurelius: The Two Lives of a Stoic Emperor A Biography of War, Meditations and the Making of Rome’s Philosopher-King Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher-emperor who governed the Roman Empire from AD 161 to 180, remains one of antiquity's most thoroughly documented individuals. He is often revered for his profound wisdom encapsulated in the Meditations. However, many readers struggle to reconcile this image of serene contemplation with the historical reality of an emperor constantly embroiled in war, plague, and political turmoil. This biography addresses the pain point of an ...

This audiobook is narrated by an AI Voice. Almost everything we know about the ancient philosophers comes from one compiler, and he is the writer scholars trust least. All ten books, complete...

Returning Marx to the Victorian confines of the 19th century, Jonathan Sperber, one of the United States' leading European historians, challenges many of our misconceptions of this political firebrand turned London journalist. In this deeply humanizing portrait, Marx no longer is the Olympian soothsayer, divining the dialectical imperatives of human history, but a scholar-activist whose revolutionary Weltanschauung was closer to Robespierre's than to those of 20th-century Marxists.

Diogenes Laërtius was a biographer of the Greek philosophers. His work Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers is a principal source for the history of ancient Greek philosophy. Book I includes, among others, Thales, Solon, Chilon of Sparta, Pittacus of Mytilene, and Epimenides.

Søren Kierkegaard is one of the most passionate and challenging of all modern philosophers, and is often regarded as the founder of existentialism. Over about a decade in the 1840s and 1850s, writings poured from his pen pursuing the question of existence - how to be a human being in the world? - while exploring the possibilities of Christianity and confronting the failures of its institutional manifestation around him. 

What if the ground beneath your certainty was never as solid as it seemed? Nearly eighteen centuries ago, the Buddhist philosopher Nāgārjuna asked a question that still unsettles the mind: what, if anything, exists entirely on its own? His answer became one of the most influential ideas in the history of Asian philosophy. Nothing stands alone. The self, the objects around us, our beliefs, our suffering, even the concepts we use to understand reality arise through causes, conditions, relationships, and names. Nāgārjuna called this emptiness — not a doctrine of nothingness, but a ...

One of the most influential philosophers and theologians in the history of Western thought, St Thomas Aquinas established the foundations for much of modern philosophy of religion, and is famous for his arguments for the existence of God. In this cogent and multifaceted introduction to the great saint's work, Edward Feser argues that you cannot fully understand Aquinas' philosophy without his theology, and vice-versa. He covers Aquinas' thoughts on the soul, natural law, metaphysics, and more.

Yoga, in its deepest sense, is not merely a discipline for the body but a science of inner transformation. The same energy that creates suffering can also become the source of freedom, love, meditation, and enlightenment. Nothing within us needs to be rejected—only understood and transformed. In the series of talks titled Yoga – The Science of the Soul, Osho explores Patanjali's original Yoga Sutras, revealing their timeless relevance for modern seekers.

“A marvelous book. It’s gossipy and personal and completely fascinating...cafe gossip with the footnotes left in.”— New York Times “A superbly engrossing adventure of ideas...this will surely be my philosophy book of the year.” —Sarah Bakewell, New York Times bestselling author of...

Herbert Spencer was once one of the most famous thinkers in the world. Today, he is often remembered for only three words: “survival of the fittest.” That shorthand hides one of the most ambitious intellectual careers of the Victorian age. Born into a dissenting Derby family, trained as a railway engineer and largely self-educated, Spencer never followed the conventional path through university or academic life. Instead, he attempted something extraordinary: to construct a single philosophical system capable of explaining evolution, biology, psychology, sociology, politics, education, ...

This novel biography brings Marcus Aurelius (121-180 CE) to life for a new generation by exploring the emperor’s fascinating psychological journey. Donald J. Robertson examines Marcus’s relationships with key figures in his life, such as his mother, Domitia Lucilla, and the emperor Hadrian, as well as his Stoic tutors. He draws extensively on Marcus’s own Meditations and correspondence, and he examines the emperor’s actions as detailed in the Augustan History and other ancient texts.

Transcendence for Beginners examines life writing and philosophy across certain European and Indian traditions, exploring questions of childhood and mortality, art and religion, beauty and loss. Informed by her experience as a biographer of Søren Kierkegaard and George Eliot as well as her own life, Clare Carlisle asks what one human existence can reveal, and how writing can transmit its truth.

The author Sri "M" is an extraordinary individual. His uniqueness lies not only in the fact that at the young age of 19 and a half, he travelled to snow-clad Himalayas from Kerala, and there he met and lived for several years with a "real-time" yogi, Babaji, but also that he should undertake such an unusual and adventurous exploration, given his non-Hindu birth and antecedents. The metamorphosis of Mumtaz Ali Khan into Sri "M", a yogi with profound knowledge of the Upanishads and deep personal insights, is born of first-hand experiences with higher levels of consciousness....