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Author: Stephen Gaukroger
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691241740
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
The first book to address the historical failures of philosophy—and what we can learn from them Philosophers are generally unaware of the failures of philosophy, recognizing only the failures of particular theories, which are then remedied with other theories. But, taking the long view, philosophy has actually collapsed several times, been abandoned, sometimes for centuries, and been replaced by something quite different. When it has been revived it has been with new aims that are often accompanied by implausible attempts to establish continuity with a perennial philosophical tradition. What do these failures tell us? The Failures of Philosophy presents a historical investigation of philosophy in the West, from the perspective of its most significant failures: attempts to provide an account of the good life, to establish philosophy as a discipline that can stand in judgment over other forms of thought, to set up philosophy as a theory of everything, and to construe it as a discipline that rationalizes the empirical and mathematical sciences. Stephen Gaukroger argues that these failures reveal more about philosophical inquiry and its ultimate point than its successes ever could. These failures illustrate how and why philosophical inquiry has been conceived and reconceived, why philosophy has been thought to bring distinctive skills to certain questions, and much more. An important and original account of philosophy’s serial breakdowns, The Failures of Philosophy ultimately shows how these shortcomings paradoxically reveal what matters most about the field.
Author: Stephen Gaukroger
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691241740
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
The first book to address the historical failures of philosophy—and what we can learn from them Philosophers are generally unaware of the failures of philosophy, recognizing only the failures of particular theories, which are then remedied with other theories. But, taking the long view, philosophy has actually collapsed several times, been abandoned, sometimes for centuries, and been replaced by something quite different. When it has been revived it has been with new aims that are often accompanied by implausible attempts to establish continuity with a perennial philosophical tradition. What do these failures tell us? The Failures of Philosophy presents a historical investigation of philosophy in the West, from the perspective of its most significant failures: attempts to provide an account of the good life, to establish philosophy as a discipline that can stand in judgment over other forms of thought, to set up philosophy as a theory of everything, and to construe it as a discipline that rationalizes the empirical and mathematical sciences. Stephen Gaukroger argues that these failures reveal more about philosophical inquiry and its ultimate point than its successes ever could. These failures illustrate how and why philosophical inquiry has been conceived and reconceived, why philosophy has been thought to bring distinctive skills to certain questions, and much more. An important and original account of philosophy’s serial breakdowns, The Failures of Philosophy ultimately shows how these shortcomings paradoxically reveal what matters most about the field.
Author: Costica Bradatan
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674287363
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 289
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Book Description
Squarely challenging a culture obsessed with success, an acclaimed philosopher argues that failure is vital to a life well lived, curing us of arrogance and self-deception and engendering humility instead. Our obsession with success is hard to overlook. Everywhere we compete, rank, and measure. Yet this relentless drive to be the best blinds us to something vitally important: the need to be humble in the face of life’s challenges. Costica Bradatan mounts his case for failure through the stories of four historical figures who led lives of impact and meaning—and assiduously courted failure. Their struggles show that engaging with our limitations can be not just therapeutic but transformative. In Praise of Failure explores several arenas of failure, from the social and political to the spiritual and biological. It begins by examining the defiant choices of the French mystic Simone Weil, who, in sympathy with exploited workers, took up factory jobs that her frail body could not sustain. From there we turn to Mahatma Gandhi, whose punishing quest for purity drove him to ever more extreme acts of self-abnegation. Next we meet the self-styled loser E. M. Cioran, who deliberately turned his back on social acceptability, and Yukio Mishima, who reveled in a distinctly Japanese preoccupation with the noble failure, before looking to Seneca to tease out the ingredients of a good life. Gleefully breaching the boundaries between argument and storytelling, scholarship and spiritual quest, Bradatan concludes that while success can make us shallow, our failures can lead us to humbler, more attentive, and better lived lives. We can do without success, but we are much poorer without the gifts of failure.
Author: Andrew Shaffer
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062036610
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 210
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Book Description
Few people have failed at love as spectacularly as the great philosophers. Although we admire their wisdom, history is littered with the romantic failures of the most sensible men and women of every age, including: Friedrich Nietzsche: "Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent." (Rejected by everyone he proposed to, even when he kept asking and asking.) Jean-Paul Sartre: "There are of course ugly women, but I prefer those who are pretty." (Adopted his mistress as his daughter.) Louis Althusser: "The trouble is there are bodies and, worse still, sexual organs." (Accidentally strangled his wife to death.) And dozens of other great thinkers whose words we revere—but whose romantic decisions we should avoid at all costs. Includes an excerpt from Andrew Shaffer's new book Literary Rogues.
Author: Wallace Matson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199912505
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 238
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Book Description
This unconventional book by a distinguished historian of philosophy tells the story of how humans became rational beings.
Author: Beverley Clack
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350030708
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 265
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Book Description
In consumer economies, success has increasingly been defined in terms of material attainment and the achievement of status. This model of 'the good life' and its formulas for success ignore the haunting possibility that one may not succeed and as a result be deemed 'a failure'. How to be a Failure and Still Live Well explores that often neglected theme of failure, not just as the opposite of achievement, but also, and more importantly, how it has been conflated with loss: that which haunts all transient, mortal human experience. Understanding loss as a form of failure affects our ability to cope with the everyday losses that permeate existence as a result of the natural processes of ageing, death, and decay. Engaging with loss and thinking about what it inevitability means for our lives and commitments, allows different values to emerge than those connected to success as attainment. Relationships, spontaneity, and generosity are explored as qualities that arise from taking seriously our vulnerability and that form the basis for richer accounts of what it might mean to 'live well'.
Author: Lisa Tessman
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199396140
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 297
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Book Description
Moral Failure: On the Impossible Demands of Morality asks what happens when the sense that "I must" collides with the realization that "I can't." Bringing together philosophical and empirical work in moral psychology, Lisa Tessman here examines moral requirements that are non-negotiable and that contravene the principle that "ought implies can." In some cases, it is because two non-negotiable requirements conflict that one of them becomes impossible to satisfy, and yet remains binding. In other cases, performing a particular action may be non-negotiably required -- even if it is impossible -- because not performing the action is unthinkable. After offering both conceptual and empirical explanations of the experience of impossible moral requirements and the ensuing failures to fulfill them, Tessman considers what to make of such experience, and in particular, what role such experience has in the construction of value and of moral authority. According to the constructivist account that the book proposes, some moral requirements can be authoritative even when they are impossible to fulfill. Tessman points out a tendency to not acknowledge the difficulties that impossible moral requirements and unavoidable moral failures create in moral life, and traces this tendency through several different literatures, from scholarship on Holocaust testimony to discussions of ideal and nonideal theory, from theories of supererogation to debates about moral demandingness and to feminist care ethics.
Author: Charles Griswold
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521703514
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 269
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Book Description
The first comprehensive philosophical book on forgiveness in both its interpersonal and political contexts.
Author: G. Howie
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1403990204
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 252
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Book Description
Expressionism, Deleuze's philosophical commentary on Spinoza, is a critically important work because its conclusions provide the foundations for Deleuze's later metaphysical speculations on the nature of power, the body, difference and singularities. Deleuze and Spinoza is the first book to examine Deleuze's philosophical assessment of Spinoza and appraise his arguments concerning the Absolute, the philosophy of mind, epistemology and moral and political philosophy. The author respects and disagrees with Deleuze the philosopher and suggests that his arguments not only lead to eliminativism and an Hobbesian politics but that they also cast a mystifying spell.
Author: Pavlos Kontos
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107161975
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 287
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Book Description
Provides the first full study of Aristotle's notion of evil and sheds light on its content, potential, and influence.
Author: Hans Reichenbach
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520341767
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 347
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Book Description
This book represents a new approach to philosophy. It treats philosophy as not a collection of systems, but as a study of problems. It recognizes in traditional philosophical systems the historical function of having asked questions rather than having given solutions. Professor Reichenbach traces the failures of the systems to psychological causes. Speculative philosophers offered answers at a time when science had not yet provided the means to give true answers. Their search for certainty and for moral directives led them to accept pseudo-solutions. Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, and many others are cited to illustrate the rationalist fallacy: reason, unaided by observation, was regarded as a source of knowledge, revealing the physical world and "moral truth." The empiricists could not disprove this thesis, for they could not give a valid account of mathematical knowledge. Mathematical discoveries in the early nineteenth century cleared the way for modern scientific philosophy. Its advance was furthered by discoveries in modern physics, chemistry, biology, and psychology. These findings have made possible a new conception of the universe and of the atom. The work of scientists thus altered philosophy completely and brought into being a philosopher with a new attitude and training. Instead of dictating so-called laws of reason to the scientist, this modern philosopher proceeds by analyzing scientific methods and results. He finds answers to the age-old questions of space, time, causality, and life; of the human observer and the external world. He tells us how to find our way through this world without resorting to unjustifiable beliefs or assuming a supernatural origin for moral standards. Philosophy thus is no longer a battleground of contradictory opinions, but a science discovering truth step by step. Professor Reichenbach, known for his many contributions to logic and the philosophy of science, addresses this book to a wider audience. He writes for those who do not have the leisure or preparation to read in the fields of mathematics, symbolic logic, or physics. Besides showing the principal foundations of the new philosophy, he has been careful to provide the necessary factual background. He has written a philosophical study, not a mere popularization. It contains within its chapters all the necessary scientific material in an understandable form—and, therefore, conveys all the information indispensable to a modern world-view. The late Hans Reichenbach was Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles. His previous books include
