Heretics!: The Wondrous (and Dangerous) Beginnings of Modern Philosophy

Description

An entertaining, enlightening, and humorous graphic narrative of the dangerous thinkers who laid the foundation of modern thought This entertaining and enlightening graphic narrative tells the exciting story of the seventeenth-century thinkers who challenged authority—sometimes risking excommunication, prison, and even death—to lay the foundations of modern philosophy and science and help usher in a new world. With masterful storytelling and color illustrations, Heretics! offers a unique introduction to the birth of modern thought in comics form—smart, charming, and often funny. These contentious and controversial philosophers—from Galileo and Descartes to Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, and Newton—fundamentally changed the way we look at the world, society, and ourselves, overturning everything from the idea that the Earth is the center of the cosmos to the notion that kings have a divine right to rule. More devoted to reason than to faith, these thinkers defended scandalous new views of nature, religion, politics, knowledge, and the human mind. Heretics! tells the story of their ideas, lives, and times in a vivid new way. Crisscrossing Europe as it follows them in their travels and exiles, the narrative describes their meetings and clashes with each other—as well as their confrontations with religious and royal authority. It recounts key moments in the history of modern philosophy, including the burning of Giordano Bruno for heresy, Galileo's house arrest for defending Copernicanism, Descartes's proclaiming cogito ergo sum , Hobbes's vision of the "nasty and brutish" state of nature, and Spinoza's shocking Theological-Political Treatise . A brilliant account of one of the most brilliant periods in philosophy, Heretics! is the story of how a group of brave thinkers used reason and evidence to triumph over the authority of religion, royalty, and antiquity. Review: Good pedagogical tool - Graphic novels are very efficient ways to convey information. I was able to work my way through early modern philosophy in less than two hours with a good deal of amusement helping my progress. Of course, reading the original texts by philosophers such as Descartes, Spinoza, and Locke is much more arduous. But if a teacher wanted to prep his students to be able to better grapple with those texts, a quick graphic novel introduction is a great way to give students some of the historical contexts that they may otherwise miss if they went straight to the text. The graphic novel's artwork is playful. The colorful noses and ears made me think everyone was either inebriated or suffering from a head cold, but I eventually accepted it as the illustrator's stylistic preference. I would have also enjoyed touching upon some of the eccentricities of thinkers like Newton, instead simply focusing on what has contributed to the simple narrative of modernity. Still, the presentation of the various thinkers' ideas and hints at their motivations was sufficient to add a good deal of wonder about how we have learned to understand our place in the world. Review: Delightful! - This book offers a light spirited look at some rather heavy philosophies. It can stand as a meaningful precursor to philosophical study or as a really cool review.