Philosophical Conversations: A Concise Historical Introduction - Brossura

Melchert, Norman

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0195328469 ISBN 13: 9780195328462

Casa editrice: OUP USA, 2008

Riassunto

This brief and engaging introductory text treats philosophy as a dramatic and continuous story―a conversation about humankind's deepest and most persistent concerns, in which students are encouraged to participate. Tracing the exchange of ideas between history's key philosophers, Philosophical Conversations: A Concise Historical Introduction demonstrates that while constructing an argument or making a claim, one philosopher almost always has others in mind. The book addresses the fundamental questions of human life: Who are we? What can we know? How should we live? and What sort of reality do we inhabit? Throughout, author Norman Melchert provides a generous selection of excerpts from major philosophical works and makes them more easily understandable with his lucid explanations. Extensive cross-references highlight the organizing themes and show students how philosophers have responded to each other's arguments.

A more concise edition of Norman Melchert's The Great Conversation: A Historical Introduction to Philosophy, Fifth Edition, Philosophical Conversations is designed to be especially accessible and visually attractive to first- and second-year college students in introduction to philosophy courses. Enhanced by numerous pedagogical features, it offers:

* Shorter and/or simplified presentations of much of the material
* A second color that enlivens the text and makes it more visually interesting
* An expanded art program featuring more than 100 photographs, illustrations, and cartoons
* Classic art at the opening of each chapter
* Numerous brief quotations from poets, politicians, and thinkers that underscore philosophical points and stimulate thought
* Explanatory footnotes and basic study questions throughout
* "Questions for Further Thought" at the end of each chapter
* Key terms, boldfaced at their first appearance and collected at the end of each chapter and in a detailed glossary at the back of the book
* "Sketches"―which provide glimpses of the ideas of various philosophers not already discussed in detail in the narrative―and "Profiles," which offer more in-depth looks at several thinkers, philosophical schools, and movements including Taoism, Zen, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Iris Murdoch
* An Instructor's Manual and Test Bank on CD that highlights essential points and offers numerous exam questions

Su questo libro

Contenuti

• A Word to Instructors:
• A Word to Students:
• Acknowledgments:
• 1. BEFORE PHILOSOPHY: Myth in Hesiod and Homer
• Hesiod: War among the Gods
• Homer: Heroes, Gods, and Excellence
• 2. PHILOSOPHY BEFORE SOCRATES
• Thales: The One as Water
• Anaximander: The One as the Boundless
• Xenophanes: The Gods as Fictions
• Sketches: Pythagoras
• Heraclitus: Oneness in the Logos
• Profile: The Tao
• Parmenides: Only the One
• Zeno: The Paradoxes of Common Sense
• Atomism: The One and the Many Reconciled
• The Key: An Ambiguity:
• The World:
• The Soul:
• How to Live:
• 3. SOCRATES AND THE SOPHISTS: Rhetoric, Relativism, and the Search for Truth
• The Sophists
• Rhetoric:
• Relativism:
• Physis and Nomos
• Athens and Sparta at War
• Socrates
• Character:
• Is Socrates a Sophist?:
• What Socrates Knows:
• 4. THE TRIAL AND DEATH OF SOCRATES
• Euthyphro:
• Apology:
• Translator's Introduction
• The Dialogue
• Commentary and Questions
• Crito's Visit
• Socrates' Death
• 5. PLATO: Knowing the Real and the Good
• Knowledge and Opinion
• Making the Distinction:
• We Do Know Certain Truths:
• The Objects of Knowledge:
• The Reality of the Forms:
• The World and the Forms
• How Forms are Related to the World:
• Lower and Higher Forms:
• The Form of the Good:
• The Love of Wisdom
• The Soul
• The Immortality of the Soul:
• The Structure of the Soul:
• Morality
• The State
• Problems with the Forms
• 6. ARISTOTLE: The Reality of the World
• Aristotle and Plato
• Otherworldliness:
• The Objects of Knowledge:
• Human Nature:
• Relativism and Skepticism:
• Ethics:
• Logic and Knowledge
• Terms and Statements:
• Truth:
• Reasons Why: The Syllogism:
• Knowing First Principles:
• The World
• Nature:
• The Four Becauses:
• Is There Purpose in Nature?:
• Teleology:
• First Philosophy
• Substance and Form:
• Pure Actualities:
• God:
• The Soul
• Levels of Soul:
• Soul and Body:
• Nous:
• The Good Life
• Happiness:
• Virtue or Excellence (Arete):
• The Role of Reason:
• Responsibility:
• The Highest Good:
• INTERLUDE 1: The Skeptics
• INTERLUDE 2: The Christians
• Background
• Jesus
• The Meaning of Jesus
• 7. AUGUSTINE: God and the Soul
• Wisdom, Happiness, and God
• God and the World
• The Great Chain of Being:
• Evil:
• Time:
• Human Nature and Its Corruption
• Human Nature and Its Restoration
• The Two Cities
• Christians and Philosophers
• Reason and Authority:
• Intellect and Will:
• 8. ANSELM AND AQUINAS: Arguing for the Existence of God
• Anselm: On That Than Which No Greater Can Be Conceived
• Thomas Aquinas: Rethinking Aristotle
• Philosophy and Theology:
• Sketches: Avicenna (Ibn Sinā)
• Existence and Essence:
• Sketches: Averroës (Ibn Rushd)
• From Creation to God:
• Sketches: Maimonides (Moses ben Maimon)
• INTERLUDE 3: MOVING FROM MEDIEVAL TO MODERN
• The World God Made for Us
• The Humanists
• Reforming the Church
• Skeptical Thoughts Revived
• Copernicus to Kepler to Galileo: The Great Triple Play
• 9. RENÉ DESCARTES: Doubting our Way to Certainty
• The Method
• Meditations: Commentary and Questions
• Meditation I:
• Meditation II:
• Meditation III:
• Meditations IV through VI:
• What Has Descartes Done?
• A New Ideal for Knowledge:
• A New Vision of Reality:
• Problems:
• The Preeminence of Epistemology:
• 10. JOHN LOCKE: The Beginnings of Empiricism
• Origin of Ideas:
• Idea of Substance:
• Idea of Soul:
• Idea of Personal Identity:
• Profile: Thomas Hobbes
• Language and Essence:
• The Extent of Knowledge:
• Of Representative Government:
• Of Toleration:
• Sketches: George Berkeley
• 11. DAVID HUME: Unmasking the Pretensions of Reason
• How Newton Did It
• To Be the Newton of Human Nature
• The Theory of Ideas
• The Association of Ideas
• Causation: The Very Idea
• The Disappearing Self
• Sketches: The Buddha
• Rescuing Human Freedom
• Is It Reasonable to Believe in God?
• Understanding Morality
• Reason Is Not a Motivator:
• The Origins of Moral Judgment:
• Is Hume a Skeptic?
• 12. IMMANUEL KANT: Rehabilitating Reason (Within Strict Limits)
• Critique
• Judgments
• Geometry, Mathematics, Space, and Time
• Common Sense, Science, and the A Priori Categories
• Sketches: Baruch Spinoza
• Phenomena and Noumena
• Sketches: Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz
• Reasoning and the Ideas of Metaphysics: God, World, and Soul
• The Soul:
• The World and Free Will:
• God:
• The Ontological Argument:
• Reason and Morality
• The Good Will:
• The Moral Law:
• Sketches: Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• Autonomy:
• Freedom:
• 13. HEGEL AND MARX: History and Revolution
• Hegel: Spirit, History, and Freedom
• Phenomenology:
• Sketches: Arthur Schopenhauer
• Reason and Reality: The Theory of Idealism:
• History and Freedom:
• Marx: Beyond Alienation and Exploitation
• Alienation, Exploitation, and Private Property:
• Communism:
• 14. KIERKEGAARD AND NIETZSCHE: Christian and Anti-Christian
• Søren Kierkegaard: On Individual Existence
• The Aesthetic:
• The Ethical:
• The Religious:
• The Individual:
• Friedrich Nietzsche: The Value of Existence
• Overcoming Pessimism:
• Good-bye Real World:
• Revaluation of Values:
• Profile: Iris Murdoch
• The Overman:
• Affirming Eternal Recurrence:
• 15. THE UTILITARIANS: Moral Rules and the Happiness of All (Including Women)
• The Classic Utilitarians
• The Rights of Women
• 16. THE PRAGMATISTS
• Charles Sanders Peirce
• Fixing Belief:
• Belief and Doubt:
• Truth and Reality:
• Meaning:
• Signs:
• John Dewey
• Naturalized Epistemology:
• Sketches: William James
• Nature and Natural Science:
• Value Naturalized:
• 17. LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN: Linguistic Analysis and Ordinary Language
• Language and Its Logic
• Sketches: Bertrand Russell
• Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus:
• Picturing:
• Thought and Language:
• Logical Truth:
• Saying and Showing:
• Setting the Limit to Thought:
• Value and the Self:
• Good and Evil, Happiness and Unhappiness:
• The Unsayable:
• Profile: The Logical Positivists
• Philosophical Investigations:
• Philosophical Illusion:
• Language Games:
• Naming and Meaning:
• Family Resemblances:
• The Continuity of Wittgenstein's Thought
• Profile: Zen
• Our Groundless Certainty
• 18. THE EXISTENTIALISTS: Heidegger, Sartre, de Beauvoir
• Martin Heidegger: The Meaning of Being
• What Is the Question?:
• The Clue:
• Phenomenology:
• Being-in-the-World:
• The "Who" of Dasein:
• Modes of Disclosure:
• Falling Away:
• Care:
• Death:
• Conscience, Guilt, and Resoluteness:
• Temporality as the Meaning of Care:
• Profile: Jean-Paul Sartre
• Simone de Beauvoir: The Priority of Freedom
• Ambiguity:
• Ethics:
• Woman:
• 19. POSTMODERNISM AND PHYSICAL REALISM: Derrida, Rorty, Quine, and Dennett
• Postmodernism
• Deconstruction: Jacques Derrida:
• Profile: Richard Rorty
• Physical Realism
• Science, Common Sense, and Metaphysics: Willard van Orman Quine:
• The Matter of Minds: Daniel Dennett:
• Afterword:
• Glossary:
• Credits:
• Index:

Product Description

Book by Melchert Norman

Dettagli dell'edizione

• Editore: OUP USA
• Data di pubblicazione: 2008
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0195328469
• ISBN 13: 9780195328462
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 624
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: Ufficio Anagrafiche Messaggerie; ufficio.anagrafiche@meli.it; ; Via Verdi, 8.; Assago Milano; 20090; Italia