Includes Part One of Candide; three stories; selections from The Philosophical Dictionary, The Lisbon Earthquake, and other works; and thirty-five letters.

A representative selection from Voltaire's work which includes excerpts from his plays, philosophical essays, poetry, and novels

The Age of Enlightenment of the 18th century, also called the Age of Reason, was so named for an intellectual movement that shook the foundations of Western civilization. In championing radical ideas such as individual liberty and an empirical appraisal of the universe through rational inquiry and natural experience, Enlightenment philosophers in Europe and America planted the seeds for modern liberalism, cultural humanism, science and technology, and laissez-faire Capitalism This volume brings together works from this era, with more than 100 selections from a range of sources. It includes examples by Kant, Diderot, Voltaire, Newton, Rousseau, Locke, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, and Paine that demonstrate the pervasive impact of Enlightenment views on philosophy and epistemology as well as on political, social, and economic institutions.

Challenging widespread misunderstandings, this book shows that central to key enlightenment texts was the practice of estranging taken-for-granted prejudices by adopting the perspective of Others. The enlightenment’s key progenitors, led by Montesquieu, Voltaire and Diderot, were more empiricist than rationalist, and more critical than utopian. Moreover, each was an artful exponent of the ‘proto-postmodernist’ practice of asking Europeans to review what they considered unquestionable through the eyes of Others: Persians, women, Tahitians, Londoners, natives and naïves, the blind, and even imaginary extra-terrestrials. This book aims to show that this self-estrangement, as a means to gain critical distance from one’s taken-for-granted assumptions, was central to the enlightenment, and remains vital for critical and constructive sociopolitical thinking today.

Critical excerpts about writers from 1500 to the present.

Since their first collaborative appearance in the mid-1840s, Marx and Engles have become central players in the western intellectual tradition. They have inspired two significant Communist revolutions of the 20th century--the Russian and Chinese. Marx in Context delineates the principal ideas of Marx and Engels as it pertains to such subjects as human exploitation, alienation, the sufferings of the 19 century working class in England and their human condition, imperialism, the women's question and religion. Marx's ideas are discussed in precise detail with other socialist and conservative thinkers, including classical English economist Adam Smith, Thomas Robert Malthus, David Ricardo; anarchists Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Michael Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin; also included are Max Weber, V.I. Lenin, Thorstein Veblen, Vilfredo Pareto, William Graham Sumner, Jean Paul Sartre, Simone Weil, Paul Tillich, Carl Barth, Walter Rauchenbusch, Gustavo Gutierriez, Harry Braverman and other significant thinkers who together help produce the necessary contrast that brings the ideas of Marx and Engels alive. Being the first work to depict the similarities and differences of Marx and Engles with other prominent thinkers, Marx in Contex seeks to reaffirm the purpose behind their vision.

With the extensive amount of information available online today, it is often difficult to determine the validity of facts presented and even more challenging to put them all into perspective. In Voyage without a Harbor, author David D. Peck seeks to provide both the validity and perspective from a historical standpoint. A professor of history at the college level for more than twenty years, Peck presents an accessible narrative overview of Western civilization from the Stone Age to the end of the Cold War in the late twentieth century. Voyage without a Harbor focuses primarily on providing fundamental guidance, information, and insight on how civilization developed, but also occasionally delves into deeper factual presentations combined with some examples drawn from the humanities. Geared toward high school seniors and college freshmen, this study offers a concise look into the history of Western civilization with lists of suggested resources and reading for those seeking more in-depth discussion. "...highly accessible and eminently readable." --John D. Young, PhD, Flagler College. "...well-balanced...with fascinating tidbits scattered throughout."--Ryan Patrick Crisp, PhD, BYU-Idaho.