A Brief Guide to Philosophical Classics - Paperback
By James M. Russell

Big ideas sometimes come from the strangest places.In this wide ranging introduction, James M Russell takes the fear out of philosophy and selects seventy-six works - from Plato, Descartes and Wittgenstein to Philip K Dick and the Moomins as well as contemporary thinkers such as Peter Singer and John Rawls.Dividing into accessible sections - history, contemplation, happiness, and -isms, Russell gives us the lives as well as the lessons of the great thinkers, including a digest of their key ideas.A perfect antidote to the complex life.The topics and books covered include:Traditional Philosophy:The Republic, Plato;and The Confessions, St Augustine;and The Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes;and On Liberty, John Stuart Mill;and Philisophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein;and Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant.Outsiders:Fear and Trembling, Soren Kierkegaard;and Beyond Good and Evil, Frederick Nietzsche;and The Outsider, Albert Camus;and Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley.Contemplation as Philosophy:The Prophet, Kahil Gibran;and Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Richard Bach;and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig;and The Tao of Pooh, Benjamin Hoff.The Continental Tradition:The Prison Notebooks, Antonio Gramsci;and The History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault;and Symbolic Exchange and Death, Jean Baudrillard.How to Live Your Life:The Art of War, Sun Tzu;and Maxims,and La Rouchefoucauld;and Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Carl Jung;and On Sexuality, Sigmund Freud;and On Becoming a Person, Carl Rogers.Political and Personal Issues:Das Kapital, Karl Marx;and Being and Nothingness, Jean Paul Sartre;and Gaia, James Lovelock.Modern Philosophy:A Theory of Justice, John Rawls;and Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Daniel Dennett;and After the Terror, Ted Honderich.