Aristotle (384-322BC) is the philosopher who has most influence on the development of western culture, writing on a wide variety...

Human, All Too Human (1878) marks the point where Nietzsche abandons German romanticism for the French Enlightenment. At a moment...

John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) is perhaps the foremost economic thinker of the twentieth century. On economic theory, he ranks...

David Hume (1711-1776) was the most important philosopher ever to write in English, as well as a master stylist. This volume...

Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, published between 1776 and 1788, is the undisputed masterpiece of English...

Hector bidding farewell to his wife and baby son, Odysseus bound to the mast listening to the Sirens, Penelope at the loom,...

Herodotus (c480-c425) is 'The Father of History' and his Histories are the first piece of Western historical writing. They are...

Few writers have had a more demonstrable impact on the development of the modern world than has Karl Marx (1818-1883). Born in...

1348. The Black Death is sweeping through Europe. In Florence, plague has carried off one hundred thousand people. In their...

This astonishing series of aphorisms, put into the mouth of the Persian sage Zarathustra, or Zoroaster, contains the kernel of...

In Symposium, a group of Athenian aristocrats attend a party and talk about love, until the drunken Alcibiades bursts in and...

Since its first publication in 1651, Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan has been recognised as one of the most compelling, and most...

Sigmund Freud's controversial ideas have penetrated Western culture more deeply than those of any other psychologist. The...

The ideas of Plato (c429-347BC) have influenced Western philosophers for over two thousand years. Such is his importance that the...

More's Utopia is a complex, innovative and penetrating contribution to political thought, culminating in the famous 'description'...

Goethe's Faust is a classic of European literature. Based on the fable of the man who traded his soul for superhuman powers and...