A Little History of Philosophy

Over forty short chapters, Nigel Warburton takes a chronological tour of Western philosophy, framed by its oldest questions: what reality is and how people ought to live. Such questions drove Socrates, who passed his days in the Athenian marketplace unsettling people by exposing how little they understood. Warburton introduces the major thinkers and their central ideas, among them Aristotle, Augustine, John Locke and Karl Marx, and tells often quirky stories about their lives and deaths. The tour runs from Socrates, who drank hemlock rather than give up his freedom to think, to Peter Singer and the ethical questions he raises today.

Joan Boixados, founder of everydayCheck, recommended it for giving three pages to each of the most relevant philosophers and schools of thought.