The philosophic spirit has persisted as part of the human spirit and human culture for over
twenty-five centuries. This book presents examples of this spirit from its beginnings in Greek
thought through the modern age. Among these examples are an account of Empedocles jumping into
the volcano of Mt. Etna to join the gods Plato's quarrel with the poets St. Anselm's famous
argument for the existence of God Descartes's Archimedean proof of his own existence and
Kant's description of the perfect island of the Understanding. Attention is also given to
Cassirer's concept of symbolic forms and Whitehead's theory of actual entities. The volume
concludes with a discussion based on the thought of Giambattista Vico of a way to approach
philosophy through a balance between the Ancient and the Moderns.
