Just Thinking About Philosophy

Just Thinking About Philosophy PDF Author: Shell Abegglen
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1524600822
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 446

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Book Description
Washed up on warm beaches around the world is a creature called the Bluebottle Jellyfish, or Man O' War, a small harmless looking mass of blue jelly with a rather painful stinging response to human touch and curiosity. Having been warned about the Bluebottle Jellyfish, I have stayed away from it. However, I have ignored the warnings about the stinging response to the human mind from the jelly mass of philosophers and how their philosophical ideas will befuddle your thinking. Eventually my curiosity overcame my reluctance to go near it, and now after considerable study, I have put together a succinctly canned overall historical look at philosophy and the lives of the great philosophers. It is written as an introduction to philosophy, as opposed to being hit upside the head with a plethora of complex books on comprehensive philosophical knowledge designed for a much longer period of study. Therefore this introduction to Philosophy is a fun quick intellectual look for those who have been stung with a mild curiosity for this subject, but neither has the time nor the inclination to get deeply involved in the many complicated avenues of the esoteric discipline of philosophy.

Just Thinking About Philosophy

Just Thinking About Philosophy PDF Author: Shell Abegglen
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1524600822
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 446

Get Book Here

Book Description
Washed up on warm beaches around the world is a creature called the Bluebottle Jellyfish, or Man O' War, a small harmless looking mass of blue jelly with a rather painful stinging response to human touch and curiosity. Having been warned about the Bluebottle Jellyfish, I have stayed away from it. However, I have ignored the warnings about the stinging response to the human mind from the jelly mass of philosophers and how their philosophical ideas will befuddle your thinking. Eventually my curiosity overcame my reluctance to go near it, and now after considerable study, I have put together a succinctly canned overall historical look at philosophy and the lives of the great philosophers. It is written as an introduction to philosophy, as opposed to being hit upside the head with a plethora of complex books on comprehensive philosophical knowledge designed for a much longer period of study. Therefore this introduction to Philosophy is a fun quick intellectual look for those who have been stung with a mild curiosity for this subject, but neither has the time nor the inclination to get deeply involved in the many complicated avenues of the esoteric discipline of philosophy.

Empty Ideas

Empty Ideas PDF Author: Peter Unger
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019069601X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
During the middle of the twentieth century, philosophers generally agreed that, by contrast with science, philosophy should offer no substantial thoughts about the general nature of concrete reality. Instead, philosophers offered conceptual truths. It is widely assumed that, since 1970, things have changed greatly. This book argues that's an illusion that prevails because of the failure to differentiate between "concretely substantial" and "concretely empty" ideas.

The Power of Critical Thinking

The Power of Critical Thinking PDF Author: Lewis Vaughn
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780199018680
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 560

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Book Description
This comprehensive and engaging introduction to the essential components of critical analysis uses a multidisciplinary approach to examine how psychological and social factors can impede clear thinking and lead to faulty reasoning. Emphasizing the importance of critical thinking to personaldevelopment and success, The Power of Critical Thinking provides students with the skills they need to engage meaningfully with the world around them - both inside and outside of the classroom.

Witcraft

Witcraft PDF Author: Jonathan Rée
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300248806
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 761

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Book Description
An ambitious new history of philosophy in English that broadens the canon to include many lesser-known figures Ludwig Wittgenstein once wrote that “philosophy should be written like poetry.” But philosophy has often been presented more prosaically as a long trudge through canonical authors and great works. But what, Jonathan Rée asks, if we instead saw the history of philosophy as a haphazard series of unmapped forest paths, a mass of individual stories showing endurance, inventiveness, bewilderment, anxiety, impatience, and good humor? Here, Jonathan Rée brilliantly retells this history, covering such figures as Descartes, Locke, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Mill, James, Frege, Wittgenstein, and Sartre. But he also includes authors not usually associated with philosophy, such as William Hazlitt, George Eliot, Darwin, and W. H. Auden. Above all, he uncovers dozens of unremembered figures—puritans, revolutionaries, pantheists, feminists, nihilists, socialists, and scientists—who were passionate and active readers of philosophy, and often authors themselves. Breaking away from high-altitude narratives, he shows how philosophy finds its way into ordinary lives, enriching and transforming them in unexpected ways.

Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy

Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy PDF Author: John Rawls
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674042565
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 497

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Book Description
Constantly revised and refined over three decades, Rawls's lectures on various historical figures reflect his developing and changing views on the history of liberalism and democracy. With its careful analyses of the doctrine of the social contract, utilitarianism, and socialism, this volume has a critical place in the traditions it expounds.

Bob Dylan and Philosophy

Bob Dylan and Philosophy PDF Author: Carl J. Porter
Publisher: Open Court
ISBN: 081269760X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
The legions of Bob Dylan fans know that Dylan is not just a great composer, writer, and performer, but a great thinker as well. In Bob Dylan and Philosophy, eighteen philosophers analyze Dylan’s ethical positions, political commitments, views on gender and sexuality, and his complicated and controversial attitudes toward religion. All phases of Dylan’s output are covered, from his early acoustic folk ballads and anthem-like protest songs to his controversial switch to electric guitar to his sometimes puzzling, often profound music of the 1970s and beyond. The book examines different aspects of Dylan’s creative thought through a philosophical lens, including personal identity, negative and positive freedom, enlightenment and postmodernism in his social criticism, and the morality of bootlegging. An engaging introduction to deep philosophical truths, the book provides Dylan fans with an opportunity to learn about philosophy while impressing fans of philosophy with the deeper implications of his intellectual achievements.

Ultimate Questions

Ultimate Questions PDF Author: Nils Ch Rauhut
Publisher: Longman Publishing Group
ISBN: 9780321412980
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Part of the Penguin Academic Series, this inexpensive ($25.00 net) and brief text examines the main problems in contemporary philosophy and uses more than 100 "Food for Thought" exercises that promote learning by helping students become true active learners of philosophy. Vivid and engaging examples further enhance this up-to-date examination of the main problems in contemporary philosophy. It is written for professors teaching a problems-oriented course.

Evil in Modern Thought

Evil in Modern Thought PDF Author: Susan Neiman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691168504
Category : Ethics & Moral Philosophy; Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
Whether expressed in theological or secular terms, evil poses a problem about the world's intelligibility. It confronts philosophy with fundamental questions: Can there be meaning in a world where innocents suffer? Can belief in divine power or human progress survive a cataloging of evil? Is evil profound or banal? Neiman argues that these questions impelled modern philosophy. Traditional philosophers from Leibniz to Hegel sought to defend the Creator of a world containing evil. Inevitably, their efforts--combined with those of more literary figures like Pope, Voltaire, and the Marquis de Sade--eroded belief in God's benevolence, power, and relevance, until Nietzsche claimed He had been murdered. They also yielded the distinction between natural and moral evil that we now take for granted. Neiman turns to consider philosophy's response to the Holocaust as a final moral evil, concluding that two basic stances run through modern thought. One, from Rousseau to Arendt, insists that morality demands we make evil intelligible. The other, from Voltaire to Adorno, insists that morality demands that we don't.

The Good Life Method

The Good Life Method PDF Author: Meghan Sullivan
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1984880314
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Two Philosophers Ask and Answer the Big Questions About the Search for Faith and Happiness For seekers of all stripes, philosophy is timeless self-care. Notre Dame philosophy professors Meghan Sullivan and Paul Blaschko have reinvigorated this tradition in their wildly popular and influential undergraduate course “God and the Good Life,” in which they wrestle with the big questions about how to live and what makes life meaningful. Now they invite us into the classroom to work through issues like what justifies our beliefs, whether we should practice a religion and what sacrifices we should make for others—as well as to investigate what figures such as Aristotle, Plato, Marcus Aurelius, Iris Murdoch, and W. E. B. Du Bois have to say about how to live well. Sullivan and Blaschko do the timeless work of philosophy using real-world case studies that explore love, finance, truth, and more. In so doing, they push us to escape our own caves, ask stronger questions, explain our deepest goals, and wrestle with suffering, the nature of death, and the existence of God. Philosophers know that our “good life plan” is one that we as individuals need to be constantly and actively writing to achieve some meaningful control and sense of purpose even if the world keeps throwing surprises our way. For at least the past 2,500 years, philosophers have taught that goal-seeking is an essential part of what it is to be human—and crucially that we could find our own good life by asking better questions of ourselves and of one another. This virtue ethics approach resonates profoundly in our own moment. The Good Life Method is a winning guide to tackling the big questions of being human with the wisdom of the ages.

Thinking to Some Purpose

Thinking to Some Purpose PDF Author: Susan Stebbing
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000597474
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
"I am convinced of the urgent need for a democratic people to think clearly without the distortions due to unconscious bias and unrecognized ignorance. Our failures in thinking are in part due to faults which we could to some extent overcome were we to see clearly how these faults arise. It is the aim of this book to make a small effort in this direction." - Susan Stebbing, from the Preface Despite huge advances in education, knowledge and communication, it can often seem we are neither well-trained nor well practised in the art of clear thinking. Our powers of reasoning and argument are less confident that they should be, we frequently ignore evidence and we are all too often swayed by rhetoric rather than reason. But what can you do to think and argue better? First published in 1939 but unavailable for many years, Susan Stebbing's Thinking to Some Purpose is a classic first-aid manual of how to think clearly, and remains astonishingly fresh and insightful. Written against a background of the rise of dictatorships and the collapse of democracy in Europe, it is packed with useful tips and insights. Stebbing offers shrewd advice on how to think critically and clearly, how to spot illogical statements and slipshod thinking, and how to rely on reason rather than emotion. At a time when we are again faced with serious threats to democracy and freedom of thought, Stebbing’s advice remains as urgent and important as ever. This Routledge edition of Thinking to Some Purpose includes a new Foreword by Nigel Warburton and a helpful Introduction by Peter West, who places Susan Stebbing’s classic book in historical and philosophical context.