Download or read book A Defence of Philosophy written by Ralph Barton Perry and published by . This book was released on 1959 with total page 78 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Defence of Nihilism written by James Tartaglia and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-21 with total page 78 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a philosophical defence of nihilism. The authors argue that the concept of nihilism has been employed pejoratively by almost all philosophers and religious leaders to indicate a widespread cultural crisis of truth, meaning, or morals. Many religious believers think atheism leads to moral chaos (because it leads to nihilism), and atheists typically insist that we can make life meaningful through our own actions (thereby avoiding nihilism). In this way, both sides conflate the cosmic sense of meaning at stake with a social sense of meaning. This book charts a third course between extremist and alarmist views of nihilism. It casts doubt on the assumption that nihilism is something to fear, or a problem which human culture should overcome by way of seeking, discovering, or making meaning. In this way, the authors believe that a revised understanding of nihilism can help remove a significant barrier of misunderstanding between religious believers and atheists. A Defence of Nihilism will be of interest to scholars and students in philosophy, religion, and other disciplines who are interested in questions surrounding the meaning of life.
Download or read book Philosophical Progress written by Daniel Stoljar and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many people believe that philosophy makes no progress. Members of the general public often find it amazing that philosophers exist in universities at all, at least in research positions. Academics who are not philosophers often think of philosophy either as a scholarly or interpretative enterprise, or else as a sort of pre-scientific speculation. And - amazingly - many well-known philosophers argue that there is little genuine progress in philosophy. Daniel Stoljar arguesargues that this is all a big mistake. When you think through exactly what philosophical problems are, and what it takes to solve them, the pattern of success and failure in philosophy is similar to that in other fields. In philosophy, as elsewhere, there is a series of overlapping topics that determine what the subject is about. In philosophy, as elsewhere, different people in different historical epochs and different cultures ask different big questions about these topics. And in philosophy, as elsewhere, big questions asked in the past have often been solved: Stoljar provides examples. Philosophical Progress presents a strikingly optimistic picture of philosophy - not a radical optimism that says that there is some key that unlocks all philosophical problems, and not the kind of pessimism that dominates both professional and non-professional thinking about philosophy, but a reasonable optimism that views philosophy as akin to other fields.
Download or read book In Defence of Wonder and Other Philosophical Reflections written by Raymond Tallis and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-09-03 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In these lively and provocative essays, philosopher, polymath and all-round intellectual heavyweight, Raymond Tallis debunks commonplace truths, exposes woolly thinking and pulls the rug from beneath a wide range of commentator whether scientist, theologian, philosopher or pundit. Tallis takes to task much of contemporary science and philosophy, arguing that they are guilty of taking us down ever narrowing conduits of problem solving that only invite ever more complex responses and in doing so have lost sight of "wonder" - the metaphysical intoxication that first gave birth to philosophy 2,500 years ago. Tallis tackles some meaty topics - memory, time, language, truth, fiction, consciousness - but always with his characteristic verve, insight and wit. These essays showcase Tallis's skill for getting to the heart of the matter and challenging us to see, and wonder, in different ways. Wonder is the proper state of humankind, and as these essays show it has no more forceful a champion than Raymond Tallis.
Download or read book When Words Are Called For written by Avner Baz and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-03-12 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new form of philosophizing known as ordinary language philosophy took root in England after the Second World War, promising a fresh start and a way out of long-standing dead-end philosophical debates. Pioneered by Wittgenstein, Austin, and others, OLP is now widely rumored, within mainstream analytic philosophy, to have been seriously discredited, and consequently its perspective is ignored. Avner Baz begs to differ. In When Words Are Called For, he shows how the prevailing arguments against OLP collapse under close scrutiny. All of them, he claims, presuppose one version or another of the very conception of word-meaning that OLP calls into question and takes to be responsible for many traditional philosophical difficulties. Worse, analytic philosophy itself has suffered as a result of its failure to take OLP’s perspective seriously. Baz blames a neglect of OLP’s insights for seemingly irresolvable disputes over the methodological relevance of “intuitions” in philosophy and for misunderstandings between contextualists and anti-contextualists (or “invariantists”) in epistemology. Baz goes on to explore the deep affinities between Kant’s work and OLP and suggests ways that OLP could be applied to other philosophically troublesome concepts. When Words Are Called For defends OLP not as a doctrine but as a form of practice that might provide a viable alternative to work currently carried out within mainstream analytic philosophy. Accordingly, Baz does not merely argue for OLP but, all the more convincingly, practices it in this eye-opening book.
Download or read book A Philosophical Defense of Culture written by Shuchen Xiang and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2021-06-01 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In A Philosophical Defense of Culture, Shuchen Xiang draws on the Confucian philosophy of "culture" and Ernst Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms to argue for the importance of "culture" as a philosophic paradigm. A defining ideal of Confucian-Chinese civilization, culture (wen) spans everything from natural patterns and the individual units that make up Chinese writing to literature and other refining vocations of the human being. Wen is thus the soul of Confucian-Chinese philosophy. Similarly, as a philosopher who bridged the classical age of German humanism and postwar modernity, Cassirer implored his and future generations to think of humankind in terms of their culture and to think of the human being as a "symbolic animal." The philosophies of culture of these two traditions, very much compatible, are of urgent relevance to our contemporary epoch. Xiang describes the similarity of their projects by way of their conception of the human being, her relationship to nature, the relationship of human culture to nature, the importance of cultural pluralism, and the role of the arts in human life, as well as the metaphysical frameworks that gave rise to such conceptions. Combining textual exegesis in classical Chinese texts and an exposition of Cassirer's most important insights against the backdrop of post-Kantian philosophy, this book is philosophy written in a cosmopolitan mode, arguing for the contemporary philosophical relevance of "culture" by drawing on and bringing together two different but strikingly similar streams in our world tradition.
Download or read book In Defence of War written by Nigel Biggar and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-09-12 with total page 1573 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pacifism is popular. Many hold that war is unnecessary, since peaceful means of resolving conflict are always available, if only we had the will to look for them. Or they believe that war is wicked, essentially involving hatred of the enemy and carelessness of human life. Or they posit the absolute right of innocent individuals not to be deliberately killed, making it impossible to justify war in practice. Peace, however, is not simple. Peace for some can leave others at peace to perpetrate mass atrocity. What was peace for the West in 1994 was not peace for the Tutsis of Rwanda. Therefore, against the virus of wishful thinking, anti-military caricature, and the domination of moral deliberation by rights-talk In Defence of War asserts that belligerency can be morally justified, even though tragic and morally flawed.
Download or read book From Valuing to Value written by David Sobel and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David Sobel defends subjectivism about well-being and reasons for action: the idea that normativity flows from what an agent cares about, that something is valuable because it is valued. In these essays Sobel explores the tensions between subjective views of reasons and morality, and concludes that they do not undermine subjectivism.
Download or read book The Philosophical Defence of Psychiatry written by Lawrie Reznek and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-07-08 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By first analysing the arguments of psychiatry's critics and the philosophical ideas of such thinkers as Freud, Eysenck, Laing, Szasz, Sedgwick and Foucault and by then providing answers to the many contentious and diverse questions raised, Dr. Reznek aims to establish a philosophical defence of the theory and practice of psychiatry. As both a qualified philosopher and psychiatrist, the author is exceptionally p[laced to undertake the examination of a subject which has hitherto remained untackled. It will be easily accessible to a wide variety of non-specialists as well. It will be of specific interest to those involved in the practice of philosophy, psychiatry, clinical psychology, social work and psychiatric nursing.
Download or read book In Defense of Pure Reason written by Laurence BonJour and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive defence of the rationalist view that insight independent of experience is a genuine basis for knowledge.
Download or read book Literature Against Philosophy Plato to Derrida written by Mark Edmundson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1995-06-15 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This timely book argues that the institutionalisation of literary theory, particularly within American and British academic circles, has led to a sterility of thought which ignores the special character of literary art. Mark Edmundson traces the origins of this tendency to the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry, in which Plato took the side of philosophy; and he shows how the work of modern theorists - Foucault, Derrida, de Man and Bloom - exhibits similar drives to subsume poetic art into some 'higher' kind of thought. Challenging and controversial, this book should be read by all teachers of literature and of theory, and by anyone concerned about the future of institutionalised literary studies.
Download or read book Return to Philosophy written by Cyril Edwin Mitchinson Joad and published by . This book was released on 1958 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Moral Realism written by Russ Shafer-Landau and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2003-06-19 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moral Realism is a systematic defence of the idea that there are objective moral standards. In the tradition of Plato and G. E. Moore, Russ Shafer-Landau argues that there are moral principles that are true independently of what anyone, anywhere, happens to think of them. These principles are a fundamental aspect of reality, just as much as those that govern mathematics or the natural world. They may be true regardless of our ability to grasp them, and their truth is not a matter of their being ratified from any ideal standpoint, nor of being the object of actual or hypothetical consensus, nor of being an expression of our rational nature. Shafer-Landau accepts Plato's and Moore's contention that moral truths are sui generis. He rejects the currently popular efforts to conceive of ethics as a kind of science, and insists that moral truths and properties occupy a distinctive area in our ontology. Unlike scientific truths, the fundamental moral principles are knowable a priori. And unlike mathematical truths, they are essentially normative: intrinsically action-guiding, and supplying a justification for all who follow their counsel. Moral Realism is the first comprehensive treatise defending non-naturalistic moral realism in over a generation. It ranges over all of the central issues in contemporary metaethics, and will be an important source of discussion for philosophers and their students interested in issues concerning the foundations of ethics.
Download or read book Return to Philosophy written by Cyril Edwin Mitchinson Joad and published by . This book was released on 1935 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Free Will and Epistemology written by Robert Lockie and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-01-11 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the first in-depth study of the transcendental argument for decades, Free Will and Epistemology defends a modern version of the famous transcendental argument for free will: that we could not be justified in undermining a strong notion of free will, as a strong notion of free will is required for any such process of undermining to be itself epistemically justified. By arguing for a conception of internalism that goes back to the early days of the internalist-externalist debates, it draws on work by Richard Foley, William Alston and Alvin Plantinga to explain the importance of epistemic deontology and its role in the transcendental argument. It expands on the principle that 'ought' implies 'can' and presents a strong case for a form of self-determination. With references to cases in the neuroscientific and cognitive-psychological literature, Free Will and Epistemology provides an original contribution to work on epistemic justification and the free will debate.
Download or read book Return to Philosophy written by Cyril Edwin Mitchinson Joad and published by . This book was released on 1937 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book In Defense of Anarchism written by Robert Paul Wolff and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1998-09-28 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With a new preface, Robert Paul Wolff's classic analysis of the foundations of the authority of the state and the problems of political authority and moral autonomy in a democracy.
