Socrates’ Children: Contemporary philosophers

Peter Kreeft, esteemed philosophy professor and author of over eighty books, has taught college philosophy for sixty years. Throughout those decades, he yearned for a beginner’s philosophy text that was clear, accessible, enjoyable, and exciting (perhaps even funny). Finding none that met those criteria, he eventually decided to write it himself.

In this four-volume series, Kreeft delivers, with his characteristic wit and clarity, an introduction to philosophy via the hundred greatest philosophers of all time. Socrates’ Children examines the big ideas of four major eras―ancient, medieval, modern, and contemporary―and immerses the reader in the “great conversation,” the ongoing dialogue among the great thinkers of history, including the most influential philosopher of all: Socrates, the father of Western philosophy.

Volume IV: Contemporary Philosophers surveys the great philosophers of the last two hundred years and observes the splintering of philosophy into a wide array of philosophical enterprises. Some, unhinged from the past, rebel against the very endeavor of philosophy, but others, seeking to revitalize ancient conversations, return to and renew the deepest questions of meaning, happiness, and the human person.