Squashed Philosophers- Condensed Plato Aristotle Augustine Descartes Hume Marx Freud Copernicus Hobbes Sartre Ayer Sade Wittgenstein Einstein
I was a philoshophy major in college, and spent a great deal of time parsing Aristotle, Berkeley and other obtuse writers. Now their ideas were grand (which is why they are considered great philosophers), but their prose was not. David Hume was my favorite to read, mostly because he could write well.
One day I happened to find a cool book called Philosophy Made Simple, which had a page or two explaining the works and ideas of the great phillosphers of the age. That book got me and my friend Andy through numerous philosophy papers.
Now there is a web site that does the same thing. Glyn Hughes managed to condense the works of the great thinkers into bite-sized chunks by combining quotes from their various books.
It is bound to offend the purists -- but is wonderful for students or casual (meaning lazy) intellectual-types everywhere. I'm tempted to print it out and sell it at the campus bookstore!
