Great Ideas of Philosophy

Lerner, R., and Mahdi, M., eds. Medieval Political Philosophy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1963. Theselections leave no doubt but that the medieval age was rich and subtle in its political theories and its recognition ofthe challenges to ordered liberty.Levack, Brian. The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe. New York: Longman, 1995. Data, trials, theories andinforming commentary on a woeful chapter in political history.Lichtheim, G. Marxism: An Historical and Critical Study. New York: Praeger, 1961. This is a readable overview ofMarxism and its philosophical underpinnings.Long, A. A. Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, Skeptics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. Astandard work, featuring informing essays on the major figures in these schools of philosophy.Loux, Michael. Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction. London: Routledge, 2002. The book to read beforereading Aristotle on the same subject.Lloyd, G. ed. Hippocratic Writings. London: Penguin Books, 1978. Works of various authors, all presumably in the“Hippocratic” tradition, revealing the essentials of Hippocratic medicine.Luce, A. A. Berkeley’s Immaterialism. New York: Russell and Russell, 1968. Berkeley explained!Marx, Karl. Selected Writings. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994. Useful selections for those attempting to extract aphilosophical position from Marx’s critiques of society.McDonald, Forrest. Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution. Lawrence: University Pressof Kansas, 1985. Surely one of the best works on the American founding, its constitutional jurisprudence, andbackground philosophies on which major proposals were based.Mill, John Stuart. Autobiography. London: Penguin Books, 1989. Very informative, showing the progress of Mill’sthought to and then past Comte and Bentham.———. On Liberty. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996. The “classic” statement of political liberalism.Moore, G. E. Principia Ethica (1903). New York: Prometheus Books, 1988. A common sense and intuitionisttheory of morals.Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Portable Nietzsche. Walter Kaufmann, ed. New York: Penguin Books, 1976. Choicenuggets from the deeply thinking critique of modernity.Oates, W., ed. The Stoic and Epicurean Philosophers. New York: Random House, 1940. Here is a good sample ofthe works and wisdom of philosophical schools arising after the period in which Plato and Aristotle were mostinfluential.O’Daly, Gerard. Augustine’s Philosophy of Mind. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987. The book to readbefore reading Augustine’s Confessions.Paine, Thomas. The Rights of Man (downloadable). The reader today will probably be moved as irresistibly as werethose reading the work in the 18 th century.Perry, Ralph Barton. The Thought and Character of William James. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press,1996. Still the standard biography.Plantinga, A. God, Freedom and Evil. New York: Eardmann, 1974. One attempt to reconcile the traditionalconception of God and the problem of evil.Quinton, A. Francis Bacon. London: Hill and Wang, 1980. A most readable general account of Bacon’s life andscientific project.Robinson, D. An Intellectual History of Psychology (3 rd ed.). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995. Briefreview of major intellectual and scientific developments associated with the emergence of psychology as anindependent discipline.⎯⎯⎯. Aristotle’s Psychology. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983, chapter 1. This chapter outlines the“Socratic context” of Aristotle’s philosophical development, pointing to differences between the two approaches inmethod and perspective.Robinson, D. N. Philosophy of Psychology. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. Review of standardproblems of explanation, models of mind, the mind/body problem.⎯⎯⎯. The Enlightened Machine. New York: Columbia University Press, 1980. A general review of the historyand major concepts of the brain sciences, intended for the non-specialist.©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership 45