Doubt, a History: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson

Jennifer Michael Hecht

ISBN 10: 0060097728 / ISBN 13: 9780060097721

Published by HarperCollins, New York, 2003

About this Item

Book condition: VG/Fine with push to spine ends. Jacket: VG/Fine with light handling wear. A bright copy. **Heavy book. Shipping cost may be higher than stated for buyers outside of the UK.**. Seller Inventory # 016717

Bibliographic Details

Title: Doubt, a History: The Great Doubters and ...

Publisher: HarperCollins, New York

Publication Date: 2003

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Very Good

Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good

Edition: 1st Edition

About this title

Synopsis:

In the tradition of grand sweeping histories such as From Dawn To Decadence, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and A History of God, Hecht champions doubt and questioning as one of the great and noble, if unheralded, intellectual traditions that distinguish the Western mind especially-from Socrates to Galileo and Darwin to Wittgenstein and Hawking. This is an account of the world's greatest ‘intellectual virtuosos,' who are also humanity's greatest doubters and disbelievers, from the ancient Greek philosophers, Jesus, and the Eastern religions, to modern secular equivalents Marx, Freud and Darwin—and their attempts to reconcile the seeming meaninglessness of the universe with the human need for meaning,

This remarkable book ranges from the early Greeks, Hebrew figures such as Job and Ecclesiastes, Eastern critical wisdom, Roman stoicism, Jesus as a man of doubt, Gnosticism and Christian mystics, medieval Islamic, Jewish and Christian skeptics, secularism, the rise of science, modern and contemporary critical thinkers such as Schopenhauer, Darwin, Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, the existentialists.

About the Author:

Jennifer Michael Hecht is a philosopher, historian, and award-winning poet. She is the author of Doubt: A History and The End of the Soul; the latter won the Phi Beta Kappa Society's 2004 Ralph Waldo Emerson Award. Hecht's books of poetry include The Next Ancient World and Funny. She earned her Ph.D. in history from Columbia University and teaches at The New School in New York City.