Great Philosophers Volume 4: Descartes, Pascal, Lessing, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Marx, Weber, Einstein

The ``great awakeners,'' according to German existentialist philospher Karl Jaspers (1883-1969), are those thinkers who anticipated the crises of their age, exposing conventions as defunct in order to recall us to ourselves. The awakeners he probes in these challenging, highly personal essays-Blaise Pascal, Soren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Gotthold Lessing-all grew from the soil of Christianity (Nietzsche's negation of Christianity betrays his ties to Christian standards, Jaspers argues). In this fourth and final volume of his ambitious survey of philosophy, Jaspers attacks the scientific dogmatism of Descartes and the political dogmatism of Marx. He views Einstein as a revolutionary scientist but severely limited in his insights into social and political complexities. German sociologist Max Weber (who died in 1920), prescient analyst of bureaucracy and mass movements, emerges here as an exemplar of his age but, paradoxically, an ineffectual figure who hardly touched his time. (Nov.)