Rational History

Author: (French) Chatelet / Jikeping / Qianhan
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2000-04-01
Features: If you have never read the history of philosophy, this book will be very enlightening. From Plato to today, philosophy is fundamentally the exploration of reason. Reason is so deeply embedded in all our ways of thinking that we almost forget it has a history. In an era where technical reason has triumphed, the renowned philosopher of the history of philosophy, Chatelet, uses a small book with concise and clear language to help people understand the essence of a thought—Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, and other important philosophers. Until the 19th century, Hegel took reason to its extreme and connected it to human historical changes. Nietzsche shook the edifice of reason. The reliability and rationality of the possible afterlife faced the power of life, and the invented perceptiveness disappeared. Freud later affirmed instincts with the unconscious: nothing is certain anymore. Faced with the loss of meaning, humans should find a new meaning.