<DIV>In its vast scope, this book presents the continuum of Western philosophy. Ranging from ancient Greece to nineteenth-century America, it traces the history of our civilization through the seminal works of its most influential thinkers. Each philosopher in this volume made intellectual history; each created a revolution in ideas; each reaffirmed man's view of himself as a sentient being capable of creating order out of the baffling contradictions of existence. And the most powerful reflections and speculations of each are represented here. <p> <b>Plato</b>: Apology, Crito and the Death of Socrates, from Phado<p> <b>Aristotle</b>: Poetics<p> <b>St. Ansem</b>: The ontological Proof of St. Ansem, from Proslogium<p> <b>St. Thomas Aquinas</b>: St. Thomas' Proofs of God's Existence, from the Summa Theologica<p> <b>René Descartes</b>: Meditations on the First Philosophy<p> <b>David Hume</b>: An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding<p> <b>Immanuel Kant</b>: Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics<p> <b>John Stuart Mill</b>: Utilitarianism<p> <b>William James</b>: The Will to Believe<p> </div>