From Plato to Nietzsche

"The reader who finds Aristotle and Kant no easy country to explore may take heart from the fact that even experts sometimes confess themselves lost." E. L. Allen Greek Philosophy: Philosophical writings, assumed to be at the core of western thought, evolve from a concrete historical setting with origins in Greece, Rome, and Jerusalem. The Greek intellectual power, which still amazes us, was lacking the material we have stacked today to practically exercise it. Socrates, whose dedication was to careful reasoning, is the prime intellectual and influential thinker in the entire Western enterprise. Socrates employed the Sophists logical reason for the pursuit of truth. Athens put Socrates on trial, for undermining tradition, in his venture of genuine knowledge. Plato's views of truth proceeded from Socrates moral vision and the sophists' relativism, endorsing them with the study of mathematics. Pondering Western Thought? The thought epoques progress as four connected links From Plato to Nietzsche: Plato/Aristotle, Augustine/aquinas/Luther, Decartes/Kant/Rousseau, and Marx/Nietzche. The coaching author advice is always valid, if you really intend to teach yourself, "pass over at the first reading any sections that prove reluctant to yield up their meaning and to return to them later..." Since these thinkers progress within a tradition, they are often directly related to each other. Within the reading of a particular philosopher, it is interesting to notice the logic in which the knowledge proceeds and thought in one era links up with material from a preceding one. Conflicting Trends: In his final appraisal review, Allen seemed uncertain on the outcome of the conflicting trends and which will prevail. He thinks; 'we are back where Kant stood,' with a far reaching science, that abandoned the claim of final truth, like the contour lines which do not reproduce the features of the landscape. He concludes that readiness to admit that ethical and aesthetic, religious and metaphysical statements should be considered on their respective merits. Kierkegaard iterated that life often mocks at logic, a lesson logical analysts admit, calling us back to wonder, the root of all philosophizing! The Lay Introduced: In a Teach Yourself serial thought building books, the author, Dr. E. L. Allen of King's College, meticulously attempts to introduce the British 'lay reader,' to western thought, that he develops as a chain reaction from Greek intellect, just a decade after the W.W.II came to an end. Thirty years later, still fundamental reading, the basic guide was reissued under its new more expressing title: From Plato to Nietzsche.