The Best Philosophers Biographies & Memoirs 2024

1. Machiavelli: Philosopher of Power (Eminent Lives), Pre-Owned (Paperback)

Pre-Owned - Part of the acclaimed Eminent Lives series, Machiavelli is a superb portrait of the brilliant and revolutionary political philosopher--history's most famous theorist of warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed--and the age he embodied. Ross King, the New York Times bestselling author of Brunelleschi's Dome, argues that the author of The Prince was a far more complex and sympathetic character than is often portrayed.

Machiavelli: Philosopher of Power (Eminent Lives), Pre-Owned (Paperback)

2. The Making of a Philosopher: My Journey Through Twentieth-Century Philosophy, Pre-Owned (Paperback)

Pre-Owned - Part memoir, part study, The Making of a Philosopher is the self-portrait of a deeply intelligent mind as it develops over a life on both sides of the Atlantic. The Making of a Philosopher follows Colin McGinn from his early years in England reading Descartes and Anselm, to his years in the states, first in Los Angeles, then New York. McGinn presents a contemporary academic take on the great philosophical figures of the twentieth century, including Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Noam Chomsky, alongside stories of the teachers who informed his ideas and often became friends and mentors, especially the colorful A.J. Ayer at Oxford. McGinn's prose is always elegant and probing; students of contemporary philosophy and the general reader alike will absorb every page.

The Making of a Philosopher: My Journey Through Twentieth-Century Philosophy, Pre-Owned (Paperback)

3. What Philosophers Think, Used [Paperback]

What does evolution mean today? Do we have free will? How is technology changing the way we understand life? Where is God? Does art have a value? Is science the new philosophy? What are the ethics of making war? How does language hold meaning? Is freedom possible? These are only some of the questions addressed in What Philosophers Think , a collection of interviews with some of the world's leading philosophers and intellectuals. The interviews cover a wide range of themes, including sex, religion, politics, language, consciousness, evil, feminism and art. They offer a unique insight into the minds behind the great ideas of today. Always lively, provocative and accessible, these interviews get to the heart of today's most vital questions.

What Philosophers Think, Used [Paperback]

4. Apollonius of Tyana, Volume I : Life of Apollonius of Tyana, Books 1-4, Used [Hardcover]

This biography of a first-century CE holy man has become one of the most widely discussed literary works of later antiquity. With an engaging style, Philostratus portrays a charismatic teacher and religious reformer from Tyana in Cappadocia (modern central Turkey) who travels across the known world, from the Atlantic to the Ganges. His miracles, which include extraordinary cures and mysterious disappearances, together with his apparent triumph over death, caused pagans to make Apollonius a rival to Jesus of Nazareth. In a new three-volume Loeb Classical Library edition of Philostratus's third-century work, Christopher Jones provides a freshly edited Greek text and a stylish translation with full explanatory notes. Apollonius of Tyana is by far the longest biography that survives from antiquity. Jones in his Introduction asks how far it is history and how far fiction, and discusses its survival from Late Antiquity to modern times.

Apollonius of Tyana, Volume I : Life of Apollonius of Tyana, Books 1-4, Used [Hardcover]

5. The American Philosopher: Conversations with Quine, Davidson, Putnam, Nozick, Danto, Rorty, Cavell, Macintyre, Kuhn [Paperback - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. In this lively look at current debates in American philosophy, leading philosophers talk candidly about the changing character of their discipline. In the spirit of Emerson's The American Scholar , this book explores the identity of the American philosopher. Through informal conversations, the participants discuss the rise of post-analytic philosophy in America and its relations to European thought and to the American pragmatist tradition. They comment on their own intellectual development as well as each others' work, charting the course of American philosophy over the past few decades. Giovanna Borradori, in her substantial introduction, explains the history of the analytic movement in America and the home-grown reaction against it. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, American philosophy was a socially engaged interdisciplinary enterprise. In transcendentalism and pragmatism, then the dominant currents in American thought, philosophy was connected to history, psychology, and public issues. But in the 1930s, the imported European movement of logical positivism redefined philosophical discourse in terms of mathematical logic and theory of language. Under the influence of this analytic view, American philosophy became a professionalized discipline, divorced from public debate and intellectual history and antagonistic to the other, more humanistic tradition of continental thought. The American Philosopher explores the opposition between analytic and continental thought and shows how recent American work has begun to bridge the gap between the two traditions. Through a reexamination of pragmatism, and through an attempt to understand philosophy in a more hermeneutical way, the participants narrow the distance between America's distinctly scientific philosophy and Europe's more literary approach. Moving beyond classical analytic philosophy, the participants confront each other on a number of topics. The logico-linguistic orientations of Quine and Davidson come up against the more discursive, interdisciplinary agendas of Rorty, Putnam, and Cavell. Nozick's theory of pluralist anarchism goes face-to-face with the aesthetic neo-foundationalism of Danto. And Kuhn's hypothesis of paradigm shifts is measured against MacIntyre's ethics of "virtues." Borradori's conversations offer an unconventional portrait of the way philosophers think about their work; scholars and students will not be its only beneficiaries, so will everyone who wonders about the current state of American philosophy.

The American Philosopher : Conversations with Quine, Davidson, Putnam, Nozick, Danto, Rorty, Cavell, MacIntyre, Kuhn, Used [Paperback]

6. Toward Awakening: An Approach to the Teaching Left By Gurdjieff [Paperback - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. Toward Awakening provides a clear, chapter-by-chapter summation of the major points of Gurdjieff's teachings. In accessible language, author Jean Vaysse first expresses the meaning and possibility of an inner life, then follows a logical exposition of the path to be traveled in order to move in that direction. That process, he explains, begins with an exposition of the key ideas of the structure of humans, the practices of self-observation and self-remembering, the concept of presence, and the dual roles of essence and personality in determining the overall nature of each individual. The author outlines the obstacles to awakening, as well as the first steps toward awakening. Missing in most books about the Gurdjieff teaching is the key role played by sensation, a topic that Vaysse covers with a clarity based on his personal experience."

Toward Awakening: An Approach to the Teaching Left By Gurdjieff, Used [Paperback]

7. Putting the Horse Before Descartes : My Life's Work on Behalf of Animals, Used [Hardcover]

When philosopher Bernard Rollin was six years old, he visited an animal shelter and was told about unwanted dogs being put to sleep. The event shaped his moral outlook and initiated his concern for how animals were treated. In his irreverent memoir, a"Putting the Horse before Descartes," Rollin provides an account of how he came to educate himself and others about the ethical treatment of animals and work toward improvements in animal welfare.Rollin describes, in witty, often disarming detail, how he became an outspoken critic of how animals were being treated in veterinary and medical schools as well as in research labs.a"Putting the Horse before Descartes"ashowcases the passionate animal advocate at his best. He recalls teaching veterinary students about ethical issues. He also recalls face-offs with ranchers and cowboys about branding methods and roping competitions in rodeos. In addition, he describes his work to legally mandate more humane conditions for agricultural and laboratory animals. As public concern about animal welfare and the safety of the food supply heighten, Rollin carries on this work all over the worldOCoin classrooms, lecture halls and legislatures, meetings of agricultural associations and industrial settings, as well as in print."Putting the Horse before Descartes," ultimately, is more than a memoir. Rollin offers a wide-ranging discussion of ethical issues in many settings and he testifies to the myriad ways that people of good conscience accept their ethical responsibility in regard to animals.

Putting the Horse Before Descartes : My Life's Work on Behalf of Animals, Used [Hardcover]

8. Voltaire in Love [Paperback - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. In 1733, the lovely, intelligent, and married Marquise du Chatelet commenced her romance with one Francois-Marie Arouet, a philosophe who had made a name for himself as "Voltaire." Mitford deftly and engagingly recounts their exemplary affair, whether in studious exile in the country, on the run from the censor, or in the "thoughtless circles of high society." Her portrayals of the "scamp" philosopher, his mistress who was "excessive in everything," and their "irregular century" are delightful portraits in themselves and as a group, a fascinating fresco of the French Enlightenment."

Voltaire in Love, Used [Paperback]

9. The Story of Abelard's Adversities [Paperback - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. An enthusiastic and daring thinker relates a spellbinding story of his philosophical and spiritual enlightenment -- and the tale of his tragic personal life as well. Peter Abelard paints an absorbing portrait of monastic and scholastic life in 12th-century Paris and recounts one of history's most famous love stories, his doomed romance with Heloise.

The Story of Abelard's Adversities, Used [Paperback]

10. The Great Philosophers: An Introduction to Western Philosophy, Used [Paperback]

Beginning with the death of Socrates in 399 BC, and following the story through the centuries to recent figures such as Bertrand Russell and Wittgenstein, Bryan Magee's conversations with fifteen contemporary writers and philosophers provide an accessible and exciting account of Westernphilosophy and its greatest thinkers. The contributors include A. J. Ayer, Bernard Williams, Martha Nussbaum, Peter Singer, and John Searle, so that the book is not only an introduction to the philosophers of the past, but gives an invaluable insight into the view and personalities of some of themost influential philosophers of the twentieth century.

The Great Philosophers : An Introduction to Western Philosophy, Used [Paperback]