Living Biographies of Great Philosophers

By: Henry Thomas, Dana Lee Thomas

Narrated by: Edward Lewis

From the Introduction: "Every biography is a story of adventure. The energetic personalities of the world represent an adventure in living. The philosophical personalities, on the other hand, represent an adventure in thinking. And when we examine the lives of the philosophers we find that the procession of a man's thoughts can be as exciting a spectacle as the pageantry of a man's deeds."

Included are these great thinkers: Plato and Socrates, Aristotle, Epicurus, Marcus Aurelius, Thomas Aquinas, Francis Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Voltaire, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Emerson, Spencer, Nietzsche, William James, Henri-Louis Bergson, and Santayana.

©1941 Garden City Pub. Inc. (P)2001 Blackstone Audiobooks

Good, but all metaphysics

I enjoyed this book very much. It gives short biographies of many Western philosophers, and comments concisely about how they were perceived in their time and at the time of the book's writing (1941). I was hoping it would illustrate more about the subjects' philosophies, but unfortunately it focuses mainly on religion. The philosophic methods employed by the subjects are barely mentioned.

Still, along with heavy work in Wikipedia, I found this to be a great, if biased, historical review of Western philosophy.

GOOD, BUT BIASED

Nice overall review though quite biased towards theism. The author seems obsessed with trying to prove that all philosopher were, one way or the other, believers.

OK for 1941. Dated and inaccurate for 2016.