Contents:
1. From Leibniz to Kant
Lewis White Beck, University of Rochester
2. Kant's copernican revolution
Daniel Bonevac, University of Texas at Austin
3. Kant's moral philosophy
Don Becker, University of Texas at Austin
4. Kant: Critique of Judgment
Patrick Gardiner, Magdalen College, Oxford
5. Fichte and Schelling: the jena period
Dan Breazeale, University of Kentucky
6. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit
Robert C.Solomon, University of Texas at Austin
7. Hegel's logic and philosophy of mind
Willem deVries, University of New Hampshire
8. Hegel, spirit, and politics
Leo Rauch, Babson College
9. The young Hegelians, Feuerbach and Marx
Robert Nola, University of Auckland
10. Arthur Schopenhauer
Kathleen M.Higgins, University of Texas at Austin
11. Kierkegaard's speculative despair
Judith Butler, Johns Hopkins University

This is a general history of philosophy, written in an accessible style. It focuses on Western philosophy but also discusses non-Western philosophical traditions. The authors cover major philosophers and movements as well as minor but interesting figures. They treat serious religious thought as philosophical, and include information about the Jewish, Christian and other religious traditions.

In the second edition of this groundbreaking text in non-Western philosophy, fifteen experts introduce some of the great philosophical traditions in the world. The dozen essays collected here unveil exciting, sophisticated philosophical traditions that are too often neglected in the western world. The contributors include the leading scholars in their fields, but they write for students coming to these concepts for the first time. Building on revisions and updates to the original essays on China, India, Japan, and the Americas, this new edition also considers three philosophical traditions for the first time Jewish, Buddhist, and South Pacific (Maori) philosophy."

_ When the ancient Greek philosopher, Pythagoras, was asked if he was a wise man, he humbly replied "No, I am only a lover of wisdom." This love of wisdom has been central to the philosophical enterprise for thousands of years, inspiring some of the most dazzling and daring achievements of the human intellect and providing the very basis for how we understand the world. Now, readers eager to acquire a basic familiarity with the history of philosophy but intimidated by the task will find in A Passion for Wisdom: Philosophy Through the Ages, a lively, accessible, and highly enjoyable tour of the world's great ideas.
Without simplifying their subject, editors Robert Solomon and Kathleen Higgins tell the story of philosophy's development with great clarity and refreshing wit. The brevity of their study, in fact, allows readers to see more clearly the connections and divergences between philosophers, as well as the way ideas change, reappear, and evolve over time. The authors begin with the most ancient religious beliefs and bring us right up to the feminist and multicultural philosophies of the present. Along the way, major philosophers are highlighted, from Plato and Aquinas to William James and Simone deBeauvoir, and major categories explored, from metaphysics and ethics to politics and logic. We also see the evolution of enduring ideas--how, for example, the value of subjective experience is treated in Augustine, Luther, Descartes, and Kirkegaard, how the idea of dynamic change appears in the work of Heraclitus, Darwin, Hegel, and Nietzsche, and how the recurring dichotomies between faith and reason, belief and skepticism, mysticism and empiricism occupy philosophers from one generation to the next. The authors make clear the many ways philosophers have argued with, borrowed from, and built on each other's ideas throughout the ages. We see Francis Bacon rejecting Aristotelian dogma, the impact of Buddhism on Schopenhauer, and the influence of Hume and Rousseau on the monumental philosophy of Imanuel Kant. The book is enlivened as well by telling anecdotes and sparkling quotations. We're treated to Thomas Hobbes' assessment--"Life is nasty, brutish, and short," Hegel's description of Napoleon as "world history on horseback," Schopenhauer's assertion that Art allows us a "Sabbath from the penal servitude of willing," and many other memorable and provocative observations.
Accessible, comprehensive, and delightfully written, A Passion for Wisdom is a splendid introduction to an intellectual tradition that reaches back over three thousand years. More than that, it is a much-needed reminder for the present of the power inherent in humanity's wonder before the world.

Addressing the issue of how to read Nietzsche, this book presents an accessible series of essays for students and general readers on Nietzsche's individual works, written by such distinguished Nietzsche scholars as Frithjof Bergmann, Arthur Danto, Bernd Magnus, Christopher Middleton, Eric Blondel, Lars Gustaffson, Alexander Nehamas, Richard Schacht, Gary Shapiro, Hugh Silverman, and Ivan Soll. Among the works discussed are On the Genealogy of Morals, Beyond Good and Evil, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Twilight of the Idols and The Will to Power.