In its vast scope, this book presents the continuum of Western philosophy. Ranging from ancient Greece to nineteenth-century America, it traces the history of our civilization through the seminal works of its most influential thinkers. Each philosopher in this volume made intellectual history; each created a revolution in ideas; each reaffirmed man's view of himself as a sentient being capable of creating order out of the baffling contradictions of existence. And the most powerful reflections and speculations of each are represented here. * Plato Apology, Crito and the Death of Socrates, from Phado * Aristotle Poetics * St. Ansem The ontological Proof of St. Ansem, from Proslogium * St. Thomas Aquinas St. Thomas' Proofs of God's Existence, from the SummaTheologica * Ren Descartes Meditations on the First Philosophy * David Hume An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding * Immanuel Kant Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics * John Stuart Mill Utilitarianism * William James The Will to