Western Civ: Squashed Philosophers

Cliff Notes: "There is no taking-part in the 'Great Debate' of Western civilisation, the debate about who we are, how we should be governed, how we think and how we ought to behave, without some familiarity with the, remarkably few, thinkers in whose language and idiom the talk is conducted....Unfortunately, life is rather short, the little storeroom of the brain doesn't have extensible walls and the greatest of thinkers seem to also be among the worst, and the lengthiest, of writers....So, here are the most used, most quoted, the most given, sources of the West. The books that have defined the way the West thinks now, in their author's own words, but condensed and abridged into something readable." -- from the website. Plato and William James will take you an hour each, but you can knock off Boethius, Descartes, and Leibniz, for example, in less than ten minutes each. <http://www.btinternet.com/
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