Watching Baseball, Seeing Philosophy

Watching Baseball, Seeing Philosophy PDF Author: Raymond Angelo Belliotti
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476606684
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
There are uncanny connections between nine baseball greats and the great thinkers of the West. This book offers a very practical application of Western philosophy by examining these icons of American sport and culture. The intensity and single-mindedness of Ted Williams breathes life into Camus' Sisyphus; Billy Martin's maniacal competitiveness recalls Niccolo Machiavelli's take on politics, which he characterized as a zero-sum game; the homespun philosophy of Satchel Paige echoes the wisdom of Marcus Aurelius; and the many facets of Joe DiMaggio's personality cry out for the resolution that Nietzsche's doctrine of perspectivism might have given. Also covered are the connections between Joe Torre and Aristotle; Jackie Robinson and Antonio Gramsci; Mickey Mantle and St. Thomas Aquinas; John Franco and William James; and Jose Canseco and Immanuel Kant.

Watching Baseball, Seeing Philosophy

Watching Baseball, Seeing Philosophy PDF Author: Raymond Angelo Belliotti
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476606684
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 198

Get Book Here

Book Description
There are uncanny connections between nine baseball greats and the great thinkers of the West. This book offers a very practical application of Western philosophy by examining these icons of American sport and culture. The intensity and single-mindedness of Ted Williams breathes life into Camus' Sisyphus; Billy Martin's maniacal competitiveness recalls Niccolo Machiavelli's take on politics, which he characterized as a zero-sum game; the homespun philosophy of Satchel Paige echoes the wisdom of Marcus Aurelius; and the many facets of Joe DiMaggio's personality cry out for the resolution that Nietzsche's doctrine of perspectivism might have given. Also covered are the connections between Joe Torre and Aristotle; Jackie Robinson and Antonio Gramsci; Mickey Mantle and St. Thomas Aquinas; John Franco and William James; and Jose Canseco and Immanuel Kant.

Baseball as a Road to God

Baseball as a Road to God PDF Author: John Sexton
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101609737
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
The president of New York University offers a love letter to America’s most beloved sport and a tribute to its underlying spirituality. For more than a decade, John Sexton has taught a wildly popular New York University course about two seemingly very different things: religion and baseball. Yet Sexton argues that one is actually a pathway to the other. Baseball as a Road to God is about touching that something that lies beyond logical understanding. Sexton illuminates the surprisingly large number of mutual concepts shared between baseball and religion: faith, doubt, conversion, miracles, and even sacredness among many others. Structured like a game and filled with riveting accounts of baseball’s most historic moments, Baseball as Road to God will enthrall baseball fans whatever their religious beliefs may be. In thought-provoking, beautifully rendered prose, Sexton elegantly demonstrates that baseball is more than a game, or even a national pastime: It can be a road to enlightenment.

501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read Before They Die

501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read Before They Die PDF Author: Ron Kaplan
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496209885
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 567

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Book Description
Propounding his "small ball theory" of sports literature, George Plimpton proposed that "the smaller the ball, the more formidable the literature." Of course he had the relatively small baseball in mind, because its literature is formidable--vast and varied, instructive, often wildly entertaining, and occasionally brilliant. From this bewildering array of baseball books, Ron Kaplan has chosen 501 of the best, making it easier for fans to find just the books to suit them (or to know what they're missing). From biography, history, fiction, and instruction to books about ballparks, business, and rules, anyone who loves to read about baseball will find in this book a companionable guide, far more fun than a reference work has any right to be.

Shakespeare and Philosophy

Shakespeare and Philosophy PDF Author: Raymond Angelo Belliotti
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9401208727
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
This book is an interdisciplinary work that weaves literary interpretation, legal theory, and philosophical doctrine about sex and love into a coherent mosaic in the context of two of Shakespeare’s plays: The Merchant of Venice and Measure for Measure. In the process, the work advances literary interpretations of the plays including character studies of some of the main protagonists. The aim is partly theoretical but mostly practical: to demonstrate what we can learn about living a robustly meaningful and significant human life by taking Shakespeare’s work seriously from contemporary philosophical and legal vantage points. Shakespeare does not reveal a tightly defined moral system that he is trying to urge upon his audience. Instead, Shakespeare challenges his audience to struggle with moral complexity as they confront conflicting elements surrounding legal and moral issues presented in his work and within the souls of his characters. His issues and their conflicts are also ours. Much of Shakespeare’s work consists of raising weighty questions inextricably connected to the human condition and inviting his audience to ponder possible answers. The philosophical lessons about living our lives meaningfully and significantly that we can derive from Shakespeare are simple yet powerful.

Infinite Baseball

Infinite Baseball PDF Author: Alva Noë
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190928190
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
Baseball is a strange sport: it consists of long periods in which little seems to be happening, punctuated by high-energy outbursts of rapid fire activity. Because of this, despite ever greater profits, Major League Baseball is bent on finding ways to shorten games, and to tailor baseball to today's shorter attention spans. But for the true fan, baseball is always compelling to watch -and intellectually fascinating. It's superficially slow-pace is an opportunity to participate in the distinctive thinking practice that defines the game. If baseball is boring, it's boring the way philosophy is boring: not because there isn't a lot going on, but because the challenge baseball poses is making sense of it all. In this deeply entertaining book, philosopher and baseball fan Alva Noë explores the many unexpected ways in which baseball is truly a philosophical kind of game. For example, he ponders how observers of baseball are less interested in what happens, than in who is responsible for what happens; every action receives praise or blame. To put it another way, in baseball - as in the law - we decide what happened based on who is responsible for what happened. Noe also explains the curious activity of keeping score: a score card is not merely a record of the game, like a video recording; it is an account of the game. Baseball requires that true fans try to tell the story of the game, in real time, as it unfolds, and thus actively participate in its creation. Some argue that baseball is fundamentally a game about numbers. Noe's wide-ranging, thoughtful observations show that, to the contrary, baseball is not only a window on language, culture, and the nature of human action, but is intertwined with deep and fundamental human truths. The book ranges from the nature of umpiring and the role of instant replay, to the nature of the strike zone, from the rampant use of surgery to controversy surrounding performance enhancing drugs. Throughout, Noe's observations are surprising and provocative. Infinite Baseball is a book for the true baseball fan.

Roman Philosophy and the Good Life

Roman Philosophy and the Good Life PDF Author: Raymond A. Belliotti
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739139703
Category : Epicureans (Greek philosophy)
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Raymond Angelo Belliotti's Roman Philosophy and the Good Life provides an accessible picture of these major philosophical influences in Rome and details the crucial role they played during times of major social upheaval. Belliotti demonstrates the contemporary relevance of some of the philosophical issues faced by the Romans, and offers ways in which today's society can learn from the Romans in our attempt to create meaningful lives.

Is Human Life Absurd? A Philosophical Inquiry into Finitude, Value, and Meaning

Is Human Life Absurd? A Philosophical Inquiry into Finitude, Value, and Meaning PDF Author: Raymond Angelo Belliotti
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004408797
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 211

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Book Description
In this work, Belliotti unravels the paradoxes of human existence. The purpose of this philosophical journey is to reveal paths for forging meaningful, significant, valuable, even important lives. By examining notions of The Absurd expressed within Search for the Holy Grail, The Seventh Seal, and The Big Lebowski, the author crafts a working definition of “absurdity.” He then investigates the contributions of classical thinkers such as Shakespeare, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Tolstoy, Sartre, Camus, as well as philosophers such as Nagel, Feinberg, and Taylor. After arguing that human life is not inherently absurd, Belliotti examines the implications of mortality for human existence, the relationship between subjective and objective meaning, and the persuasiveness of several challenging contemporary renderings of meaningful human lives.

Dostoevsky’s Legal and Moral Philosophy

Dostoevsky’s Legal and Moral Philosophy PDF Author: Raymond Angelo Belliotti
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004325425
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
This work closely examines the trial of Dmitri Karamazov as the springboard to explaining and critically assessing Dostoevsky’s legal and moral philosophy. The author connects Dostoevsky’s objections to Russia’s acceptance of western juridical notions such as the rule of law and an adversary system of adjudication with his views on fundamental human nature, the principle of universal responsibility, and his invocation of unconditional love. Central to Dostoevsky’s vision is his understanding of the relationship between the dual human yearnings for individualism and community. In the process, the author related Dostoevsky’s conclusions to the thought of Plato, Augustine, Anselm, Dante, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Sartre. Throughout the work, the author compares, contrasts, and evaluates Dostoevsky’s analyses with contemporary discussions of the rule of law, the adversary system, and the relationship between individualism and communitarianism.

Why Philosophy Matters

Why Philosophy Matters PDF Author: Raymond Angelo Belliotti
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443883581
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
This book demonstrates that philosophy matters to everyday living and that people who ignore the enduring, fundamental questions of life thereby unwittingly relinquish part of their humanity. The question – “How should I live my life?” – along with cosmological inquiries about the nature of the world, animated Western philosophy during its earliest recorded years. Given that belief in the Greek and Roman gods failed to provide substantive guidelines for everyday living, philosophy arose in large measure as practical instruction in the art of living the good human life. Throughout history, philosophers have provided vastly different answers to the question of what constitutes such a life. By analyzing carefully their disparate definitions, recipes, and accounts of the good human life we can understand better who we are and who we might be. This work examines the answers provided by over thirty philosophers to aspects of building character, forging personal relations, promoting sound political strategies, living meaningfully, and dying gracefully. In so doing, over twenty lessons for living a worthy life emerge.

Nietzsche's Will to Power

Nietzsche's Will to Power PDF Author: Raymond Angelo Belliotti
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443855529
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
This book represents a unique contribution to Nietzschean scholarship in its analysis of the concept of power as preliminary to addressing Nietzsche’s psychological version of will to power. It advances a fresh interpretation of will to power that connects it explicitly to the meaning of human life, and, in so doing, the author addresses major questions such as: What does will to power designate? What does it presuppose? What effects does it engender? What is its status, epistemologically and metaphysically? How is will to power to be evaluated? How persuasive is will to power as an explanation of fundamental human instincts and as the lynchpin of a way of life? The volume argues that Nietzsche’s psychological notion of will to power cannot plausibly be understood as merely a first-order drive to attain and exert power. Moreover, despite some of the philosopher’s extravagant rhetoric, will to power is not an inherent instinct to oppress other people or things. Instead, will to power, understood generically, is a second-order desire to have, pursue and attain first-order desires; it bears a relationship to confronting and overcoming resistances and obstacles, and is related to the pursuit of excellence and personal transformation, as well as to experiences of feeling power. As, according to Nietzsche’s account, all human beings embody will to power, the book concludes that we should distinguish at least three varieties: robust, moderate, and attenuated will to power. Only by doing this, can we understand and evaluate will to power concretely.