A lucid guide to humankind’s greatest thinkers, from Aristotle to Peter Singer

“A primer in human existence: philosophy has rarely seemed so lucid, so important, so worth doing and so easy to enter into. . . . A wonderful introduction for anyone who’s ever felt curious about almost anything.”―Sarah Bakewell, author of How To Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

Philosophy begins with the nature of reality and how we should live. These were the concerns of Socrates, who spent his days in the ancient Athenian marketplace asking awkward questions, disconcerting the people he met by showing them just how little they genuinely understood.

This engaging Little History introduces the great thinkers in Western philosophy and explores their most compelling ideas about the universe and our place in it. Nigel Warburton guides us on a tour of the lives and work of thought-provoking philosophers – from the certainty of Descartes (‘I think, therefore I am’) to Hannah Arendt who examined crimes against humanity and taught us ‘the banality of evil’.