Book Description
Drawing on implications from ethics, theology, law, politics, and education, this book argues that we can decide what is right by describing particular cases in detail, without the aid of ethical theories and principles.
Author : Peter Levine
Publisher : SUNY Press
Page : 308 pages
File Size : 38,42 MB
Release : 1998-07-16
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780791438985
Drawing on implications from ethics, theology, law, politics, and education, this book argues that we can decide what is right by describing particular cases in detail, without the aid of ethical theories and principles.
Author : Peter Levine
Publisher : State University of New York Press
Page : 308 pages
File Size : 16,63 MB
Release : 1998-07-16
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 143841062X
Living Without Philosophy argues that we do not need ethical theories, rules, and principles to decide what is right. Instead, particular cases can be judged by a detailed description of the relevant circumstances. When our judgments differ, we can decide how to act by deliberating under fair conditions. The author provides both a philosophical argument for this position and readings of literary texts in which moral theorists are portrayed as concrete characters. These works include Plato's Protagoras, selections from the Gospels and Dante, Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, the debate between Erasmus and Luther, Erasmus's Praise of Folly, Shakespeare's King Lear, Nabokov's Lolita, and Martin Luther King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Thus, Levine offers essentially a moral argument for the humanities, discussing the implications not only for ethics, but also for theology, law, politics, and education.
Author : Derk Pereboom
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 257 pages
File Size : 45,64 MB
Release : 2006-11-02
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0521029961
Argues that morality, meaning and value remain intact even if we are not morally responsible for our actions.
Author : James Tartaglia
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 233 pages
File Size : 24,93 MB
Release : 2015-12-17
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 1474247687
This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Knowledge Unlatched. Philosophy in a Meaningless Life provides an account of the nature of philosophy which is rooted in the question of the meaning of life. It makes a powerful and vivid case for believing that this question is neither obscure nor obsolete, but reflects a quintessentially human concern to which other traditional philosophical problems can be readily related; allowing them to be reconnected with natural interest, and providing a diagnosis of the typical lines of opposition across philosophy's debates. James Tartaglia looks at the various ways philosophers have tried to avoid the conclusion that life is meaningless, and in the process have distanced philosophy from the concept of transcendence. Rejecting all of this, Tartaglia embraces nihilism ('we are here with nothing to do'), and uses transcendence both to provide a new solution to the problem of consciousness, and to explain away perplexities about time and universals. He concludes that with more self-awareness, philosophy can attain higher status within a culture increasingly in need of it.
Author : Robert Nozick
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 326 pages
File Size : 46,53 MB
Release : 1990-12-15
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0671725017
An exploration of topics of everyday importance in the Socratic tradition.
Author : Peter Adamson
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 369 pages
File Size : 32,4 MB
Release : 2014-06
Category : History
ISBN : 0199674531
Readership: Anyone interested in philosophy, the history of ideas, or the ancient Greek world
Author : William Irwin
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 214 pages
File Size : 40,74 MB
Release : 2015-11-02
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 1119121280
Incisive and engaging, The Free Market Existentialist proposes a new philosophy that is a synthesis of existentialism, amoralism, and libertarianism. Argues that Sartre’s existentialism fits better with capitalism than with Marxism Serves as a rallying cry for a new alternative, a minimal state funded by an equal tax Confronts the “final delusion” of metaphysical morality, and proposes that we have nothing to fear from an amoral world Begins an essential conversation for the 21st century for students, scholars, and armchair philosophers alike with clear, accessible discussions of a range of topics across philosophy including atheism, evolutionary theory, and ethics
Author : John M. Cooper
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 458 pages
File Size : 26,86 MB
Release : 2013-08-25
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 069115970X
This is a major reinterpretation of ancient philosophy that recovers the long Greek and Roman tradition of philosophy as a complete way of life--and not simply an intellectual discipline. Distinguished philosopher John Cooper traces how, for many ancient thinkers, philosophy was not just to be studied or even used to solve particular practical problems. Rather, philosophy--not just ethics but even logic and physical theory--was literally to be lived. Yet there was great disagreement about how to live philosophically: philosophy was not one but many, mutually opposed, ways of life. Examining this tradition from its establishment by Socrates in the fifth century BCE through Plotinus in the third century CE and the eclipse of pagan philosophy by Christianity, Pursuits of Wisdom examines six central philosophies of living--Socratic, Aristotelian, Stoic, Epicurean, Skeptic, and the Platonist life of late antiquity. The book describes the shared assumptions that allowed these thinkers to conceive of their philosophies as ways of life, as well as the distinctive ideas that led them to widely different conclusions about the best human life. Clearing up many common misperceptions and simplifications, Cooper explains in detail the Socratic devotion to philosophical discussion about human nature, human life, and human good; the Aristotelian focus on the true place of humans within the total system of the natural world; the Stoic commitment to dutifully accepting Zeus's plans; the Epicurean pursuit of pleasure through tranquil activities that exercise perception, thought, and feeling; the Skeptical eschewal of all critical reasoning in forming their beliefs; and, finally, the late Platonist emphasis on spiritual concerns and the eternal realm of Being. Pursuits of Wisdom is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding what the great philosophers of antiquity thought was the true purpose of philosophy--and of life.
Author : Roy Brand
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 162 pages
File Size : 26,92 MB
Release : 2013
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0231160445
Since its inception, philosophy has struggled to perfect individual understanding through discussion and dialogue based in personal, poetic, or dramatic investigation. The positions of such philosophers as Socrates, Spinoza, Rousseau, Nietzsche, Foucault, and Derrida differ in almost every respect, yet these thinkers all share a common method of practicing philosophy--not as a detached, intellectual discipline, but as a worldly art. What is the love that turns into knowledge and how is the knowledge we seek already a form of love? Reading key texts from Socrates to Derrida, this book addresses the fundamental tension between love and knowledge that informs the history of Western philosophy. LoveKnowledge returns to the long tradition of philosophy as an exercise not only of the mind but also of the soul, asking whether philosophy can shape and inform our lives and communities.
Author : Scott Samuelson
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 231 pages
File Size : 30,9 MB
Release : 2014-04-03
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 022613041X
This accessible and thought-provoking introduction to philosophy shows how the eternal questions can shed light on our lives and struggles. These days, we generally leave philosophical matters to professional philosophers. Scott Samuelson thinks this is tragic, for our lives as well as for philosophy. In The Deepest Human Life, he restores philosophy to its proper place at the center of our humanity, rediscovering it as our most profound effort toward understanding, as a way of life that anyone can live. Exploring the works of some of history’s most important thinkers in the context of the everyday struggles of his students, Samuelson guides readers through the most vexing quandaries of existence—and shows just how enriching the examined life can be. Samuelson begins at the beginning: with Socrates, and the method he developed for approaching our greatest mysteries. From there he embarks on a journey through the history of philosophy, demonstrating how it is encoded in our own personal quests for meaning. Through heartbreaking stories, humanizing biographies, accessible theory, and evocative interludes like “On Wine and Bicycles” or “On Zombies and Superheroes,” Samuelson invests philosophy with the personal and vice versa. The result is a book that is at once a primer and a reassurance—that the most important questions endure, coming to life in each of us. Winner of the 2015 Hiett Prize in the Humanities