MEN OF IDEAS The lives and ideas of some of the world's best-known philosophers are presented. Why read philosohy? Because, says the author, all of our most cherished beliefs are born in it. Our goverment, our relgions, our freedoms, our science, our system of justice, all come form philosophy. The daily newspapers are teaming with phlosophical speculations: civil rights, the rights of poor and underprivileged, poltical freedoms, the enviroment. Philosophy is an attempt to understand what life means, it is a look for a reason for living, it is a search for reasonsfor why we live as we do or why we want to change life as we know it. It is an attempt to place ourselves in the world and in the universe and then find out what that world and universe are. Since veryearly times men have pondered the questions that philosophy raises. many questions and answers that people talk about today were first discussed long ago. This book is an attempt to show what people ver aperiod of 2,500 years and from many parts of the world have said about ideas that are as important now as they ever were. The author has condensed the biographies and thoughts of men like Aristotle, Augustine, Confucius and Kierkegaard into easy-to-read, concise and thuought-provoking chapters.>