Jean Paul Mongin Book order (chronological)

“Tell us, Delphic Oracle, who is the wisest man in all of Greece?” So begins The Death of Socrates . No mortal man is wiser than Socrates, who, on his daily walks through Athens, talks to all the people he meets. When the person he talks to takes himself to be very wise, Socrates asks so many questions that the person ends up admitting he knows nothing. When he runs into people who know little, Socrates sets them on the way to wisdom. But not everyone shares Socrates’s love for the truth. When the people of Athens put him on trial for his ceaseless questioning, how will he find the courage to continue to speak the truth?

On a long, cold winter night, more than three hundred years ago, Mister Descartes is suddenly beset by profound doubts: Can I trust my senses, or am I fooled by illusions? Is there an Evil Genius behind all things? What if the outside world is only a dream? Is my own existence nothing but the product of my imagination?

What can I know? What should I do? What may I hope? What’s for dinner? More than two hundred years ago, on a day that takes quite a peculiar course, Professor Kant is working hard to give an answer to all these questions. Not only the morning papers, but also a slightly perfumed letter get in his way however. As a result, he even forgets to go out on his regular digestive walk – and everything goes off the rails…