Don't Think for Yourself

Peter Adamson is professor of philosophy at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen. He is the author and co-author of a number of books, including A History of Philosophy without Any Gaps: Philosophy in the Islamic World.

Introduction 1. Taqlid: Authority and the Intellectual Elite in the Islamic World 2. Too High a Standard: Knowledge and Skepticism in Medieval Philosophy 3. Testing the Prophets: Reason and the Choice of Faiths 4. Using the Pagans: Reason in Interreligious Debate 5. Some Pagans are Better than Others: the Merits of Plato and Aristotle 6. Finding Their Voices: Women in Byzantine and Latin Christian Philosophy 7. The Rule of Reason: Human and Animal Nature

"Don't Think for Yourself is a timely intervention from the past into the present. And while it is up to the individual reader to decide who they think offers the best insight today, Peter Adamson offers us a chance to have a dialogue across the generations, cultures and geographies. . . . We may not agree with what our predecessors thought about expertise and our relationship to it, but reading them might trigger a new way of thinking about our problems. A thoughtful, engaging and erudite book that leaves one wanting more." -The New Arab "This is a highly original work in its combination of popular and scholarly themes. Adamson weaves together a number of disparate sources under the broad theme of the epistemic legitimacy of authority, many of them unexpected companions." -Deborah L. Black, author of Logic and Aristotle's "Rhetoric" and "Poetics" in Medieval Arabic Philosophy "Thoughtful, lucid, and concise... A book which can be read fruitfully not only by medievalists of all disciplines, but also by anyone interested in the philosophic contributions of the past." -The Medieval Review "As Don't Think for Yourself itself richly demonstrates, medieval attitudes towards questions of epistemic authority are much more complex and interesting than we might have initially supposed." -Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews