The great philosophers

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Karl Jaspers died in 1969, leaving unfinished his universal history of philosophy, a history organized around those philosophers who have influenced the course of human thought. The first two volumes of this work appeared in Jaspers's lifetime; the third and fourth have been culled from the vast material of his posthumous papers. This is the third volume; the fourth is to be published in 1994. In the present volume, which follows his original plan of "promoting the happiness that comes of meeting great men and sharing in their thoughts, " Jaspers discusses the Metaphysicians: Xenophanes, Empedocles, Democritus, Bruno, Epicurus, Boehme, Schelling, and Leibniz. Then he turns to the Creative Orderers: Aristotle and Hegel. His method is personal, one of constant questioning and struggle, as he enters into dialogue with his "eternal contemporaries, " the thinkers of the past. For Jaspers believes that it is only through communication with others that we come to ourselves and to wisdom.