Alain Renaut is a professor at the University of Paris IV, in the chair of moral and political philosophy. The author of numerous works and translator of Kant, he is a former member of the Higher Counsel on Education and of the committee that determines the official French school curriculum.


In five accessible volumes (the Subject, Culture, Reason and Reality, Politics, Ethics), here is a complete tool to discover and understand philosophy. The works of the greatest philosophers of all time from Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza and Kant to such contemporary thinkers as Foucault, Rorty and Derrida will hold no secrets for the attentive reader.
Each volume is made up of a series of lessons which can be read in any order depending on the reader’s interests, needs and choices. Originally conceived for students in the final year of French secondary schools, the lessons are thematically organised in accordance with the curriculum. Besides dealing with the history of philosophy, the lessons examine some major contemporary issues relating to biology, astronomy, ethics, anthropology and religion.


• The books offer a complete and accessible panorama of the great philosophical questions.
• This is a reprint of a series that has been popular with students.