1. What This Essay Aims At -- 2. The Reality Question, Science, or From Thales To Aristotle -- 3. Plato, or The Inebriant Answer to The Reality Question -- 4. Plotinus, Or The Meaning Of The Meaning Question -- 5. How Far Science Replaced Philosophy, or Descartes vs. Hobbes -- 6. Propositional Language and the Power Of Negation, Or Kant And The Scholastics -- 7. Morality, or Schopenhauer -- 8. Religion and Practical Metaphysics, or Kant, Feynman, and Hitler -- 9. Ideology, or Destutt de Tracy and Marx -- 10. Progress, or Weber -- 11. Applying Weber to Ideologies -- 12. Aesthetics, or Hegel.

This book presents philosophy as a historical series of answers to two questions: the meaning question (what does it all mean?) and the reality question (what is real rather than illusory?). Presenting philosophy as a historical series of answers to these two questions gives a new view of philosophy. It reveals a coherence between the disparate problems of philosophy which is not apparent when philosophy is approached in a systematic and timeless manner. On the basis of this historical approach, the book argues that philosophy was initially concerned primarily with the nature of reality but changed its focus when science was established as a separate discipline in the 17th century. Philosophy’s main concern is now the meaning question with a focus on questions of value as discussed in moral and political philosophy and in aesthetics. This book is essential reading for all scholars and researchers in philosophy and especially those interested in the history of philosophy. Ulrich Steinvorth is a Professor Emeritus of the University of Hamburg, Germany. He has published books and papers in German, English and French, in political philosophy, ethics, and metaphysics, and has taught philosophy at universities in Germany, France, Turkey, Japan and China.