Peter Kreeft imagines what would happen if Socrates woke up today and enrolled in divinity school. Kreeft's new introduction for this edition highlights the inspirations for the book and the key questions of truth and faith it addresses.

This is the 5th volume in the series of popular volumes by Peter Kreeft, in which the "Father of Philosophy", Socrates, cross-examines various other important philosophers and thinkers (in previous books he examined Marx, Sarte, Machiavelli, and Socrates himself.) Kreeft states that Socrates and Descartes are perhaps the two most important philosophers who have ever lived, because they are the two who made the most difference to all philosophy after them. These two fathers of philosophy stand at the beginning of the two basic philosophical options: the classical and the modern. Kreeft focuses on seven features that unite these two major philosophers and distinguish them from all others. So this dialog between Socrates and Descartes is a dialog between the fundamental stages in the history of philosophy, the history of consciousness, and the history of Western culture. Like his other works in this popular series, this book is profound and witty reading that makes for an entertaining and insightful exploration of modern philosophy. It will appeal to both the common reader as well as to those more philosophically inclined.

Peter Kreeft's Socrates probes the contemporary values of success, power and pleasure.

There is no better way to understand our present world than by exploring the Great Books written by the great minds that have made it. There is no better way to study the beginning of modern political philosophy than by studying its foundations in Machiavelli's The Prince. There is no better way to study the Great Books than with the aid of Socrates, the philosopher par excellence. What if we could overhear a conversation in the afterlife between Socrates and Machiavelli, in which Machiavelli has to submit to an Oxford tutorial style examination of his book conducted by Socrates using his famous "Socratic method" of cross-examination? How might the conversation go? This imaginative thought-experiment makes for both drama and a good lesson in logic, in moral and political philosophy, in "how to read a book," and in the history of early modern thought. Thus this book is for readers looking for a thought-stretching "good read" and for use in college classes in logic, philosophy, ethics, political science, literature, communication, rhetoric, anthropology, and history.

"No philosopher since Augustine had more strings to his bow than SK."

"Probably no single thinker since Jesus has influenced the thoughts and lives of more people living in the Western world today than Sigmund Freud. Even agnostics like William Barrett, in Irrational Man, and atheists like Nietzsche, agree that the single most radical change in the last thousand years of Western civilization has been the decline of religion. And the four most influential critics of religion have certainly been Nietzsche, Marx, Darwin, and Freud. Of the four, Freud is by far the most popular No name is more associated with, and in fact responsible for, "the sexual revolution" than Freud. And no revolution in history, at least none since the one around a cross and an empty tomb, and perhaps even none since the one around a snake and an apple, has been more life-changing, and has more potential to continue to be more radically life-changing in the future, than the sexual revolution. To see this, just read Huxley's Brave New World. (And remember that Huxley was far from being a theist.) Freud wore three hats. Freud was (1) a practicing psychoanalyst (indeed, the inventor of psychoanalysis), (2) a professional theoretical psychologist and sociologist, and (3) an amateur philosopher. This book explores only his philosophy, for that is the point of his intersection with Socrates. If Socrates is right in his deepest convictions about the power of reason and the importance of philosophy, Freud's philosophy is the ultimate source, foundation, explanation, and justification for his psychology"--