Aristotle on the Uses of Contemplation

Aristotle on the Uses of Contemplation PDF Author: Matthew D. Walker
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108421105
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Provides an original, up-to-date, and systematic account of Aristotle's views on contemplation's place in the human good.

Aristotle on the Uses of Contemplation

Aristotle on the Uses of Contemplation PDF Author: Matthew D. Walker
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108421105
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Get Book Here

Book Description
Provides an original, up-to-date, and systematic account of Aristotle's views on contemplation's place in the human good.

Coleridge's Contemplative Philosophy

Coleridge's Contemplative Philosophy PDF Author: Peter Cheyne
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198851804
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
A study of the philosophical thought of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, with a focus on the central philosophical views and their underlying metaphysic that Coleridge strove to achieve and refine over the last three decades of his life.

Action, Contemplation, and Happiness

Action, Contemplation, and Happiness PDF Author: C. D. C. Reeve
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674065476
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
The notion of practical wisdom is one of Aristotle's greatest inventions. It has inspired philosophers as diverse as Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Elizabeth Anscombe, Michael Thompson, and John McDowell. Now a leading scholar of ancient philosophy offers a challenge to received accounts of practical wisdom by situating it in the larger context of Aristotle's views on knowledge and reality. That happiness is the end pursued by practical wisdom is commonly agreed. What is disputed is whether happiness is to be found in the practical life of political action, in which we exhibit courage, temperance, and other virtues of character, or in the contemplative life, where theoretical wisdom is the essential virtue. C. D. C. Reeve argues that the dichotomy is bogus, that these lives are in fact parts of a single life, which is the best human one. In support of this view, he develops innovative accounts of many of the central notions in Aristotle's metaphysics, epistemology, and psychology, including matter and form, scientific knowledge, dialectic, educatedness, perception, understanding, political science, practical truth, deliberation, and deliberate choice. These accounts are based directly on freshly translated passages from many of Aristotle's writings. Action, Contemplation, and Happiness is an accessible essay not just on practical wisdom but on Aristotle's philosophy as a whole.

Philosophical Contemplation

Philosophical Contemplation PDF Author: Ran Lahav
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781947515925
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 78

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Book Description
Philosophical contemplation means reflecting on fundamental life-issues from our inner depth. It takes us beyond our ordinary thought-patterns to new realms of understanding. When we contemplate on the writings of great philosophers of the past, we participate in the grand human choir and its encounter with the fundamental coordinates of human reality. This booklet is a practical and theoretical guide to philosophical contemplation, designed for beginning and experienced contemplators, philosophers and non-philosophers. It explains general principles, basic concepts, and a variety of practical techniques.

The Contemplative Spirit

The Contemplative Spirit PDF Author: Ingolf U. Dalferth
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
To understand reality in terms of what is possible has methodological implications which a contemplative philosophy makes explicit. The goal is no longer to determine how things are or must be but rather to provide an overview of how they could be and the diversity with which they already appear. The function of philosophy is not the discovery of a single answer but rather a careful description of the diversity and the heterogeneity of possible answers in different contexts and practices. This approach, inspired by Wittgenstein, was applied to the philosophy of religion by Dewi Z. Phillips (1934-2006) in particular. This volume explores his contemplative philosophy of religion in an intense and lively discussion, showing how the description of religious faith and the access to its practice and language change unexpectedly and provocatively in this way of thinking.

Action Versus Contemplation

Action Versus Contemplation PDF Author: Jennifer Summit
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022603237X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone,” Blaise Pascal wrote in 1654. But then there’s Walt Whitman, in 1856: “Whoever you are, come forth! Or man or woman come forth! / You must not stay sleeping and dallying there in the house.” It is truly an ancient debate: Is it better to be active or contemplative? To do or to think? To make an impact, or to understand the world more deeply? Aristotle argued for contemplation as the highest state of human flourishing. But it was through action that his student Alexander the Great conquered the known world. Which should we aim at? Centuries later, this argument underlies a surprising number of the questions we face in contemporary life. Should students study the humanities, or train for a job? Should adults work for money or for meaning? And in tumultuous times, should any of us sit on the sidelines, pondering great books, or throw ourselves into protests and petition drives? With Action versus Contemplation, Jennifer Summit and Blakey Vermeule address the question in a refreshingly unexpected way: by refusing to take sides. Rather, they argue for a rethinking of the very opposition. The active and the contemplative can—and should—be vibrantly alive in each of us, fused rather than sundered. Writing in a personable, accessible style, Summit and Vermeule guide readers through the long history of this debate from Plato to Pixar, drawing compelling connections to the questions and problems of today. Rather than playing one against the other, they argue, we can discover how the two can nourish, invigorate, and give meaning to each other, as they have for the many writers, artists, and thinkers, past and present, whose examples give the book its rich, lively texture of interplay and reference. This is not a self-help book. It won’t give you instructions on how to live your life. Instead, it will do something better: it will remind you of the richness of a life that embraces action and contemplation, company and solitude, living in the moment and planning for the future. Which is better? Readers of this book will discover the answer: both.

Theoria, Praxis, and the Contemplative Life after Plato and Aristotle

Theoria, Praxis, and the Contemplative Life after Plato and Aristotle PDF Author: Thomas Bénatouïl
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004230041
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
Studies of the notion of theoria and of the contemplative life have often been restricted to Plato and Aristotle. This volume shows that aspirations to contemplation and the life of the intellect survived long after the classical period, turning into topics of heated debates, powerful arguments and original applications throughout the Hellenistic, imperial, and late antique periods. The introduction attempts to reconstruct all the problems pertaining to the contemplative life in Antiquity, and the twelve papers, written by distinguished scholars, offer a thorough study of the appropriation, criticism and transformation of Plato’s and Aristotle’s positions on the contemplative life, including its epistemological and metaphysical foundation. The volume ranges from Theophrastus to the end of Antiquity, including Jewish and Christian authors, with a focus on Platonism from Cicero to Damascius.

D.Z. Phillips' Contemplative Philosophy of Religion

D.Z. Phillips' Contemplative Philosophy of Religion PDF Author: Andy F. Sanders
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317155025
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
This collection presents a critical discussion and exploration of the late D.Z. Phillips' contemplative approach in the philosophy of religion. What are the main characteristics of this ground-breaking approach, which is inspired by thinkers like Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein and meant as a serious, critical alternative to the mainstream way of doing philosophy of religion? What is its aim, if it is deliberately avoiding apology and defence of faith? How does Phillips' approach relate to systematic, historical and empirical theology and is it really as 'neutral' as he claims it to be? Or is he, perhaps, a certain kind of theologian? What are the implications of his contemplative philosophy for central issues of religious life today, such as petitionary prayer, the hope of 'eternal life' and radical religious diversity? The essays of six distinguished scholars from five different nations critically and sympathetically address these questions and are responded to by Phillips in essays of his own, written briefly before his sudden death in July 2006.

The Contemplative Foundations of Classical Daoism

The Contemplative Foundations of Classical Daoism PDF Author: Harold D. Roth
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438482728
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 481

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Book Description
In The Contemplative Foundations of Classical Daoism, Harold D. Roth explores the origins and nature of the Daoist tradition, arguing that its creators and innovators were not abstract philosophers but, rather, mystics engaged in self-exploration and self-cultivation, which in turn provided the insights embodied in such famed works as the Daodejing and Zhuangzi. In this compilation of essays and chapters representing nearly thirty years of scholarship, Roth examines the historical and intellectual origins of Daoism and demonstrates how this distinctive philosophy emerged directly from practices that were essentially contemplative in nature. In the first part of the book, Roth applies text-critical methods to derive the hidden contemplative dimensions of classical Daoism. In the second part, he applies a "contemplative hermeneutic" to explore the relationship between contemplative practices and classical Daoist philosophy and, in so doing, brings early Daoist writings into conversation with contemporary contemplative studies. To this he adds an introduction in which he reflects on the arc and influence on the field of early Chinese thought of this rich vein of scholarship and an afterword in which he applies both interpretive methods to the vexing question of the authorship of the Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi. The Contemplative Foundations of Classical Daoism brings to fruition the cumulative investigations and observations of a leading figure in the emerging field of contemplative studies as they pertain to a core component of early Chinese thought.

Death, Contemplation and Schopenhauer

Death, Contemplation and Schopenhauer PDF Author: R. Raj Singh
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317154428
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 141

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Book Description
The connections between death, contemplation and the contemplative life have been a recurrent theme in the canons of both western and eastern philosophical thought. This book examines the classical sources of this philosophical literature, in particular Plato's Phaedo and the Katha Upanishad and then proceeds to a sustained analysis and critical assessment of the sources and standpoints of a single thinker, Arthur Schopenhauer, whose work comprehensively pursues this problem. Going beyond the well examined western influences on Schopenhauer, Singh offers an in-depth account of Schopenhauer's references to eastern thought and a comprehensive examination of his eastern sources, particularly Vedanta and Buddhism. The book traces the pivotal issue of death through the whole range of Schopenhauer's writings uncovering the deeper connotations of his crucial notion of the will-to-live.