A joyful introduction to philosophical controversy

‘Plato and Aristotle… They are two giants, and in a way we are all their children. Even if they lived in antiquity, even if we have not read them, even if we do not know much about them, they still influence our everyday ways of reasoning, imagining, classifying or arguing. These two immense and different intelligences have built a foundation on which all Western philosophy has developed. Although they disagreed profoundly, the two of them nevertheless laid down the groundwork and established the rules of the game of thought as we have been playing it ever since.

But why spend time with these two philosophers who were just as wrong as the other scholars of their time? Because what we must share with Plato and Aristotle is not their ideas, but the rigorous approach with which they wanted to elaborate them. ‘

In this book, Luc de Brabandere takes us on a philosophical journey, a joyful initiation, demonstrating that Plato and Aristotle are today, and always have been, essential for thinking about the great questions of the world, and that their rigour can shed light on the problems that concern us today and will concern us tomorrow.

Contents:

• Introduction
• Chapter 1: One territory, many (many) maps
• Chapter 2: The spectacle of change
• Chapter 3: Plato vs Aristotle
• Chapter 4: The pendulum of philosophy
• Chapter 5: The inevitable chessboard
• Chapter 6: Learning to think for yourself
• Chapter 7: Learning to think today