巴黎，1933年…… 三位朋友正坐在蒙帕纳斯大道上的煤气灯酒吧里喝着杏子鸡尾酒。其中一个叫雷蒙·阿隆的年轻哲学家，正在向同为哲学家的让-保罗·萨特和西蒙娜·德·波伏娃盛赞一种他在德国发现的新鲜哲学——现象学。“你看，”他说，“如果你是一个现象学家，你可以谈论这杯鸡尾酒，然后从中研究出哲学来！” 就这样，20世纪影响最广泛也最深远的哲学运动发端了。受到启发的萨特，将现象学与他那种法式的人文主义情感结合在一起，创立了一门全新的哲学思想——现代存在主义。 在本书中，英国著名作家莎拉·贝克韦尔将历史、传记与哲学结合在一起，以史诗般恢弘的视角，激情地讲述了一个充满了斗争、爱情、反抗与背叛的存在主义故事，深入探讨了在今天这个纷争不断、技术驱动的世界里，当我们每个人再次面对有关绝对自由、全球责任与人类真实性的问题时，曾经也受过它们困扰的存在主义者能告诉我们什么。

Philosophy begins with questions about the nature of reality and how we should live. These were the concerns of Socrates, who spent his days in the ancient Athenian marketplace asking awkward questions, disconcerting the people he met by showing them how little they genuinely understood. This engaging book introduces the great thinkers in Western philosophy and explores their most compelling ideas about the world and how best to live in it. In forty brief chapters, Nigel Warburton takes us on a chronological tour of the major ideas in the history of philosophy. He provides interesting and often quirky stories of the lives and deaths of thought-provoking philosophers from Socrates, who chose to die by hemlock poisoning rather than live on without the freedom to think for himself, to Peter Singer, who asks the disquieting philosophical and ethical questions that haunt our own times. Warburton not only makes philosophy accessible, he offers inspiration to think, argue, reason, and question in the tradition of Socrates. "A Little History of Philosophy" presents the grand sweep of humanity's search for philosophical understanding and invites all to join in the discussion.