A journey through philosophy in 101 anecdotes

"The first comprehensive chronology of philosophical anecdotes, from antiquity to the current era. Rescher introduces the major thinkers, texts, and historical periods of Western philosophy, recounting many of the stories philosophers have used over time to engage with issues of philosophical concern: questions of meaning, truth, knowledge, value, action, and ethics. Rescher's anecdotes touch on a wide range of themes--from logic to epistemology, ethics to metaphysics"--

Antiquity to 500 AD. The Tower of Babel ; Aesop's donkey ; Xenophanes's animal theologians ; Pythagoras's numbers ; Heraclitus's river ; Anaximander's earth ; Zeno's races ; The atomists' nature ; The atomists' worlds ; Socrates's disappointment ; Eubulides's riddle and Epimendes's lie ; Plato's Republic ; Plato's ring of Gyges ; Plato's demiurge ; Plato's knowledge ; Aristotle's sea battle ; Aristotle's precept on precision ; Aristotle's golden mean ; Pilate's truth ; Archimedes's lever ; The ship of Theseus ; Tertullian's absurdity ; St. Augustine's time -- The Middle Ages, 500-1500. Avicenna's plank ; Buridan's ass ; Omar Khayyám's finger ; King Alfonso's boast ; Scholasticism's omnipotence perplex ; Aquinas's proofs ; Averroes's truth ; Machiavelli's Prince -- Early modernity, 1500-1800. The Valladolid debate ; More's Utopia ; Dr. Faustus's bargain ; Hobbes's Leviathan ; Descartes's deceiver ; Descartes's ergo ; Descartes's firm foundation ; Calderon's dream ; Pascal's wager ; Spinoza's worm and Leibniz's leap ; Huygens's planetarians ; Locke's locked room ; Leibniz's textual limit ; Leibniz's windmill ; Leibniz's mythic goddess ; Aldrich's box paradoxes ; Mandeville's bees ; …