Philosopher Biography

Author Jeremy Gray provides a comprehensive and intellectually stimulating introduction to Bernhard Riemann’s life and paradigm-defining work. Beginning with his early influences - in particular, his relationship with his renowned predecessor Carl Friedrich Gauss - Gray goes on to explore Riemann’s specific contributions to geometry, functions of a complex variable, prime numbers, and functions of a real variable, which opened the way to discovering the limits of the calculus.

With characteristic lucidity and style, Steiner makes Heidegger's immensely difficult body of work accessible to the general reader. In a new introduction, Steiner addresses language and philosophy and the rise of Nazism. "It would be hard to imagine a better introduction to the work of philosopher Martin Heidegger." (George Kateb, The New Republic)

After the publication of Atlas Shrugged in 1957, Ayn Rand occasionally lectured in order to bring her philosophy of Objectivism to a wider audience and apply it to current cultural and political issues. These taped lectures and the question-and-answer sessions that followed added not only an eloquent new dimension to Ayn Rand's ideas and beliefs, but a fresh and spontaneous insight into Ayn Rand herself.

This Very Short Introduction explores the philosophical ideas and political theories belonging to one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century. As a survivor of the Holocaust, Arendt's life informed her work exploring the meaning and construction of power, evil, totalitarianism, and direct democracy. Dana Villa explains how Arendt gained world-wide fame with the publication of The Origins of Totalitarianism, and went on to have a distinguished career as a political theorist and public intellectual.

When Pliny the Elder perished at Stabiae during the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, he left behind an enormous compendium of knowledge, his 37-volume Natural History, and a teenaged nephew who revered him as a father. Grieving his loss, Pliny the Younger inherited the Elder's notebooks - filled with pearls of wisdom - and his legacy. At its heart, The Shadow of Vesuvius is a literary biography of the younger man, who would grow up to become a lawyer, senator, poet, collector of villas, and chronicler of the Roman Empire.

This audiobook contains biographies on five prominent Stoics: Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus, Cato, and Zeno. Get an inside look at the lives of the men who made Stoicism famous.

This lively and accessible introduction to Plato focuses on the philosophy and argument of his writings, drawing the listener into Plato's way of doing philosophy, and the general themes of his thinking. It looks at Plato as a thinker grappling with philosophical problems in a variety of ways, rather than a philosopher with a fully worked-out system. It includes a brief account of Plato's life and the various interpretations that have been drawn from the sparse remains of information.

Ian Buruma explores the life and death of Baruch Spinoza, the Enlightenment thinker whose belief in freedom of thought and speech resonates in our own time

The first definitive biography of Moses Maimonides, one of the most influential intellects in all of human history, illuminates his life as a philosopher, physician, and lawgiver. Recalling such bestsellers as David McCullough's John Adams and Walter Isaacson's Einstein, Maimonides is a biography on a grand scale, brilliantly explicating one man's life against the background of his time.

The father of modern philosophy, Descartes is still one of the most widely discussed philosophers today. Putting rationalism above all else, he sought to base all knowledge of the world on a single idea: "I think, therefore I am." This introduction expertly summarises his thoughts on the dualism of mind and body, his proofs for God’s existence, and his responses to scepticism. Explaining how his life informed his philosophy, Bracken demonstrates the philosopher’s enduring significance.

Hannah Arendt was a polarizing cultural theorist—extolled by her peers as a visionary and berated by her critics as a poseur and a fraud. Born in Prussia to assimilated Jewish parents, she escaped from Hitler’s Germany in 1933. Arendt is now best remembered for the storm of controversy that surrounded her 1963 New Yorker series on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a kidnapped Nazi war criminal. In this comprehensive biography, Anne C. Heller tracks the source of Arendt’s contradictions and achievements to her sense of being a “conscious pariah”.

"The others form the human being, I depict him; and here I present an individual who is quite poorly formed and whom I would certainly make largely differently if I had to reshape him. But now that's the way he is." This phrase from the famous essays of Michel de Montaigne outlines the character of the author and his work. Montaigne wrote his essays not from a position of certainty but from an awareness of his inadequacy. He thus reveals a level of critical self-reflection that, before his time, was rarely put on paper.

World-renowned Christian philosopher. Beloved professor. Author of the classic Lament for a Son. Nicholas Wolterstorff is all of these and more. His memoir In This World of Wonders opens a remarkable new window into the life and thoughts of this remarkable man. In This World of Wonders is the story of a thoughtful and grateful Christian whose life has been shaped by many loves - love of philosophy, love of family, love of art and architecture, love of nature and gardening, and more. It’s a lovely, wonderful story.

In this biography of Maimonides, the medieval philosopher, physician, and religious thinker, Alberto Manguel examines the question of his universal appeal. Moses ben Maimon, or Maimonides (1138–1204), was born in Córdoba, Spain. The gifted son of a judge and mathematician, Maimonides fled Córdoba with his family when he was thirteen due to Almohad persecution of all non-Islamic faiths. Forced into a long exile, the family spent a decade in Spain before settling in Morocco. From there, Maimonides traveled to Palestine and Egypt, where he died at Saladin’s court.

In How to Think Like a Woman, Penaluna blends memoir, biography, and criticism to tell the stories of four women, weaving throughout an alternative history of philosophy. Funny, honest, and wickedly intelligent, this is a moving meditation on what philosophy could look like if women were treated equally.

Em A vida dos estoicos, Ryan Holiday e Stephen Hanselman apresentam histórias fascinantes de homens e mulheres que se esforçaram para seguir as virtudes estoicas atemporais da coragem, da justiça, da temperança e da sabedoria. Organizado em breves biografias que abordam desde os estoicos mais estudados aos menos conhecidos, este livro lança luz sobre os hábitos de pessoas que viveram essa filosofia e as lições que devem ser aprendidas de suas dificuldades e de seus sucessos.

Ecoutez ce livre audio, c'est cheminer auprès de Rudolf Steiner pendant ses 35 premières années. Vous allez y découvrir son enfance et son adolescence en famille puis ses hautes études qui le conduiront à de multiples rencontres qui forgeront en lui sa pensée et ses investigations. Très tôt Rudolf Steiner est en contact avec des réalités spirituelles qui échappent à ses congénères.

To say Edith Stein lived a remarkable life would be a dramatic understatement. Born in Breslau (then part of Germany) at the end of the 19th century, Edith was raised as an observant jew, only to turn her back on religion right around the time World War I devastated the continent. In the wake of the war, during which she earned a doctorate and began working as an assistant at the University of Freiburg, she began reading the works of the legendary St. Teresa of Ávila, one of the most influential Catholic saints in history.

Lou Andres Salomé es una mujer que siempre ha intrigado por su capacidad de inspiración sobre 3 grandes hombres: Nietzche, Rilke y Freud. Lou fue amante de Rilke, amiga íntima de Nietzche y alumna y confidente de Freud.

Kierkegaard wasn't really a philosopher in the academic sense. Yet he produced what many people expect of philosophy. His subject was the individual and his or her existence, the "existing being." In Kierkegaard's view, this purely subjective entity lay beyond the reach of reason, logic, philosophical systems, theology, or even "the pretenses of psychology." Nonetheless, it was the source of all these subjects. The branch of philosophy to which Kierkegaard gave birth has come to be known as existentialism.