Peter Kreeft, esteemed philosophy professor and author of over eighty books, has taught college philosophy for sixty years. Throughout those decades, he yearned for a beginner’s philosophy text that was clear, accessible, enjoyable, and exciting (perhaps even funny). Finding none that met those criteria, he eventually decided to write it himself.
In this four-volume series, Kreeft delivers, with his characteristic wit and clarity, an introduction to philosophy via the hundred greatest philosophers of all time. Socrates’ Children examines the big ideas of four major eras―ancient, medieval, modern, and contemporary―and immerses the reader in the “great conversation,” the ongoing dialogue among the great thinkers of history, including the most influential philosopher of all: Socrates, the father of Western philosophy.
Volume I: Ancient Philosophers investigates the foundations of philosophy laid by the ancient sages, Greeks, and Romans and introduces the philosophers who asked the first great philosophical questions―about good and evil; truth and falsehood; wisdom, beauty, and love; and the self, the world, and God.
Volume II: Medieval Philosophers studies the transformation of philosophy that came about due to an unprecedented figure―Jesus Christ―and considers the philosophers of the great monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as they sought to marry the Greek philosophical tradition with divine revelation.
Volume III: Modern Philosophers explores a philosophical world caught up in the spirit of the Enlightenment―a time of both scientific discovery and social upheaval―and examines the philosophers who sought above all to answer the great questions of epistemology and politics: What is knowledge? How can we be certain? What is society? What is its greatest good?
Volume IV: Contemporary Philosophers surveys the great philosophers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, an era of the splintering of philosophy into a variety of schools. Some, disconnected from the past, rebelled against the very endeavor of philosophy, but others, seeking to revitalize ancient conversations, returned to and renewed the deepest questions of meaning, happiness, and the human person.
