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.

2. Plato Apology, Crito and the Death of Socrates, from Phado
3. Aristotle Poetics
4. St. Ansem The ontological Proof of St. Ansem, from Proslogium
5. St. Thomas Aquinas St. Thomas' Proofs of God's Existence, from the SummaTheologica
6. Ren Descartes Meditations on the First Philosophy
7. David Hume An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding
8. Immanuel Kant Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics
9. John Stuart Mill Utilitarianism
10. William James The Will to Believe