From ancient Greece to 19th-century America, this collection traces the history of civilization through the seminal works of its most influential thinkers including Plato, Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas, John Stuart Mill, and others.

In its vast scope, this book presents the continuum of Western philosophy. Ranging from ancient Greece to nineteenth-century America, it traces the history of our civilization through the seminal works of its most influential thinkers. Each philosopher in this volume made intellectual history; each created a revolution in ideas; each reaffirmed man's view of himself as a sentient being capable of creating order out of the baffling contradictions of existence. And the most powerful reflections and speculations of each are represented here.

Plato Apology, Crito and the Death of Socrates, from Phado

Aristotle Poetics

St. Ansem The ontological Proof of St. Ansem, from Proslogium

St. Thomas Aquinas St. Thomas' Proofs of God's Existence, from the SummaTheologica

Ren Descartes Meditations on the First Philosophy

David Hume An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Immanuel Kant Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics

John Stuart Mill Utilitarianism

William James The Will to Believe