Three young friends meet over apricot cocktails at the Bec-de-Gaz bar on the rue Montparnasse. They are Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and their friend Raymond Aron, who opens their eyes to a radical new way of thinking...

Should we financially reward children for good marks? Is it ethical to pay people to donate organs? What about hiring mercenaries to fight our wars, outsourcing inmates to for-profit prisons or selling citizenship? In this title, the author asks: Isn't there something wrong with a world in which everything is for sale?

In this famous short book Einstein explains clearly, using the minimum amount of mathematical terms, the basic ideas and principles of the theory which has shaped the world we live in today.

Perhaps the most important work of philosophy written in the twentieth century, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was the only philosophical work that Ludwig Wittgenstein published during his lifetime. Written in short, carefully numbered paragraphs of extreme brilliance, it captured the imagination of a generation of philosophers. For Wittgenstein, logic was something we use to conquer a reality which is in itself both elusive and unobtainable.

In this classic introductory work, Scruton takes us on a fascinating tour of the subject, from founding father Descartes to the most important and famous philosopher of the twentieth century, Ludwig Wittgenstein.

First published in 1945 and never out of print, this is the second volume of one of the most famous and influential works of the twentieth century.

On the fiftieth anniversary of the first English edition, this Routledge Classics edition offers the English reader the complete text of this landmark work for the first time ever.

A remarkable work, What I Believe remains the best concise introduction to Russell's thought.

By examining the way we acquire knowledge of the world around us, Russell explores what separates scientific knowledge from our ‘seeming’ consciousness, and in doing so, significantly advances the discourse on the meaning and function of philosophy.

The very relevance and legitimacy of philosophy is examined in this explosive and controversial work which investigates the relationship between ‘individual’ and ‘scientific’ knowledge, and questions the means by which we come to understand the physical world.