Paul Strathern

Book DescriptionIn Dostoevsky in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of Dostoevsky?s life and ideas and explains their influence on literature and on man?s struggle to understand his place in the world. The book

Book DescriptionBuilding on his enormously successful series of Philosophers in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern now applies his witty and incisive prose to brief biographical studies of the world's greatest writers.

Book DescriptionPaul Strathern now applies his witty and incisive prose to brief biographical studies of the world's gret writers. He brings their lives and ideas to life in an entertaining and accessible fashion.

In the autumn of 1502 three giants of the Renaissance period - Cesare Borgia, Leonardo da Vinci and Niccolo Machiavelli - set out on one of the most treacherous military campaigns of the period. Cesare Borgia was a ferocious military leader whose name was synonymous with brutality and whose reputation was marred with the suspicion of incest. Niccolo Machiavelli was a witty and subversive intellect...

Philosophy for busy people. Read a succinct account of the philosophy of Neitzsche in just one hour.Philosophy has always been dangerous for philosophers; Friedrich Nietzsche made it dangerous for everyone. His ideas presaged a collective madness which was to ravage Europe throughout the first half of the twentieth century, drawing a chilling parallel with the insanity that gripped Nietzsche towar...

One of the two major philosophical traditions of the twentieth century was linguistic analysis, derived largely from Wittgenstein. The other, diametrically opposed, came from Heidegger, and its fundamental question was: ‘What is the meaning of existence?’ For Heidegger, this was not a query that could simply be ‘analysed away’ – it was beyond the reach of logic or reason. This was the primary ‘giv...

Philosophy for busy people. Read a succinct account of the philosophy of Plato in just one hour.Plato is still seen by many as the greatest of all philosophers, inspiring many of the finest thinkers through the ages. Indeed, many see all later philosophy as nothing but attempts to answer the questions he raised. He founded the Academy, the world’s first university, in 387 BC and taught that the ph...

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 world is indifferent to our fate it doesn’t thwart us deliberately – its façade is supported by what Schopenhauer calls the universal Will. He saw this a...

Philosophy for busy people. Read a succinct account of the philosophy of Kant in just one hour.Immanuel Kant taught and wrote prolifically about physical geography yet never travelled farther than forty miles from his home in Königsberg. Appropriately, his philosophy strenuously denies that all knowledge is derived from experience, insisting instead that all experience must conform to knowledge. K...

Philosophy for busy people. Read a succinct account of the philosophy of Hegel in just one hour.With Hegel philosophy became very difficult indeed – even the great man himself conceded that ‘only one man understands me, and even he does not.’ His dialectical method produced the most grandiose metaphysical system known to humanity, and included absolutely everything, its most vital element being th...