Paul Strathern

Philosophy for busy people. Read a succinct account of the philosophy of Schopenhauer in just one hour.Arthur Schopenhauer, the ‘philosopher of pessimism,’ makes it clear that he regards the world and our life in it as a bad joke. However, if the wor…

Philosophy for busy people. Read a succinct account of the philosophy of Schopenhauer in just one hour.Arthur Schopenhauer, the ‘philosopher of pessimism,’ makes it clear that he regards the world and our life in it as a bad joke. However, if the wor…

Philosophy for busy people. Read a succinct account of the philosophy of St Augustine in just one hour.Augustine’s Confessions details his personal struggles with morality, his spiritual crisis and the conversion to Christianity that ultimately led h…

Philosophy for busy people. Read a succinct account of the philosophy of Aquinas in just one hour.Thomas Aquinas remains the unacknowledged maestro of Scholasticism – the static, cumulative philosophy of the medieval period. More a method of learning…

Philosophy for busy people. Read a succinct account of the philosophy of Rousseau in just one hour.In Rousseau we encounter a walking ego, a naked sensibility – his arguments are both deeply stirring and deeply inconsistent. Yet whilst his contempora…

Philosophy for busy people. Read a succinct account of the philosophy of Sartre in just one hour.Here is a concise, expert account of Jean-Paul Sartre’s life and philosophical ideas – entertainingly written and easy to understand. Also included are s…

Philosophy for busy people. Read a succinct account of the philosophy of Socrates in just one hour.Socrates is widely renowned as one of the founders of Western philosophy, despite the fact that his ideas survive largely through the work of his pupil…

Philosophy for busy people. Read a succinct account of the philosophy of Socrates in just one hour.Socrates is widely renowned as one of the founders of Western philosophy, despite the fact that his ideas survive largely through the work of his pupil…

Philosophy for busy people. Read a succinct account of the philosophy of Wittgenstein in just one hour.Ludwig Wittgenstein saw himself as ‘the last philosopher’. In his view, philosophy in the traditional sense was finished. A superb logician, Wittge…

Philosophy for busy people. Read a succinct account of the philosophy of Aristotle in just one hour.The philosophy of Aristotle dominated Western thought for over a thousand years. He had a mind that mastered all disciplines from mathematics to polit…

Philosophy for busy people. Read a succinct account of the philosophy of Berkeley in just one hour.Berkeley’s philosophy denies the existence of matter. According to his work, there is no material world, only our own experience. So when you don’t see…

Philosophy for busy people. Read a succinct account of the philosophy of Derrida in just one hour.Jacques Derrida’s ‘deconstructionism’ is nothing less than an effort to destroy all ‘writing’ by demonstrating its inevitable falsehood. The writer writ…

Philosophy for busy people. Read a succinct account of the philosophy of Descartes in just one hour.Descartes was the first modern philosopher. His scepticism led him to doubt all certainties, until finally he arrived at his famous maxim 'I think the…

Philosophy for busy people. Read a succinct account of the philosophy of Dewey in just one hour.In early twentieth-century America John Dewey was regarded as the foremost philosopher of his age – no mean feat when his colleagues included the likes of…

Philosophy for busy people. Read a succinct account of the philosophy of Foucault in just one hour.The French philosopher Michel Foucault set about his task rather like a historian. After painstaking research, he concluded that knowledge and power we…

Philosophy for busy people. Read a succinct account of the philosophy of Hume in just one hour.Hume reduced philosophy to ruins, denying the existence of everything except our actual perceptions themselves. The world is nothing more than part of my c…

Philosophy for busy people. Read a succinct account of the philosophy of J.S. Mill in just one hour.John Stuart Mill is remembered today as the leading exponent of Utilitarianism, arguing that our aim in life must be the attainment of pleasure and th…

Philosophy for busy people. Read a succinct account of the philosophy of Kierkegaard in just one hour.Although Kierkegaard was not a philosopher in the academic sense, he produced what many people expect of philosophy. He didn’t write about the world…

Leibniz was the first great German philosopher to produce an all-embracing philosophical system. He came to the remarkable conclusion that space and time do not exist – they are mere superstitious assumptions. Only things exist and only God is able t…

Philosophy for busy people. Read a succinct account of the philosophy of Locke in just one hour.Much of Locke’s thought we would now regard as common sense. One of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers; his philosophy was to lay the foundati…