Ideas Under Fire

Aristotle claimed that the speculative sciences grew out of a leisured class, and many readers have taken it for granted that thinking needs a settled society and free time. Yet some of the most forceful works in Western intellectual history were written in circumstances that worked against thought. Socrates defended the examined life in front of an Athenian jury that wanted him condemned. Boethius composed The Consolation of Philosophy while torture and execution loomed over him. Galileo developed central ideas of modern mechanics under house arrest, and Jean-Paul Sartre drafted parts of Being and Nothingness in his war diaries. These are only a few well-known examples of achievements that were begun, shaped or finished under adversity.

The thinkers in such cases had to find a way to stay creative and focused in conditions that were unfavourable, even dangerous, to thought. This book surveys several significant instances of philosophers and scientists doing their work under these pressures. Each chapter takes up one case or a group of related cases. For each, the contributors ask how the person at the centre of a moment of discovery overcame serious barriers to leisure and abstract reasoning, and how that adversity influenced their thinking.

Each chapter was written by a specialist in its subject, and together the chapters span every period of Western history. The book is written in an accessible style meant for both scholars and general readers.