Bergson’s optimistic vision of life and consciousness is a potent rejoinder to the narrow materialism suffocating Western thought, and far more likely to aim at anything resembling ‘truth.’

Today, Powys the thinker is even more neglected than Powys the novelist, but few other writers have articulated such a transcendent philosophy of life.

Wilson takes ideas first propounded by existentialism and hammers them into an altogether more life affirming doctrine, drawing on an impressive array of philosophical and artistic sources.

More a visionary than a philosopher, Sartre offers a compelling theory of human freedom which seeks to release us from submission to external concepts of value and take responsibility for ourselves

James understood that whilst most religion is merely ignorant superstition and dogma, at its core lies an experiential state which is undoubtedly real and probably valuable, whatever its explanation.

Modern philosophy may be suspicious of metaphysics but Whitehead is too often overlooked, despite providing a system which can accommodate both quantum theory and the reality of consciousness.

Merleau-Ponty refines Sartre’s doctrine of radical freedom by asserting that our being-in-the-world is the very condition of that freedom, thus circumventing Jean-Paul’s latent dualism.

A man of many talents, in addition to his unique and captivating design work, Morris expounded a profoundly humane socialist philosophy, advocating beauty for all.

Ostensibly a series of nature essays, but really the source of a potent Celtic mysticism and some of the most lyrical prose in modern English.

At last, a philosopher who understood that our being-in-the-world is fundamental, and that knowledge divorced from this is a derived mode of existence, neither definitive or especially valuable.

Before falling under Gurdjieff’s influence, Ouspensky propagated his own, more beguiling philosophy, which seeks to reawaken human knowledge to a reality beyond that given by naturalism.

Schopenhauer was amongst the first to introduce Eastern thought to the West and whilst his philosophy is unduly pessimistic, his asceticism is tempered by a faith in the liberating potential of art.

Barfield demonstrates how our use of increasingly detached language to impose artificial structure on the world threatens to divorce us from the visceral experience of reality.