Download or read book Knowledge in a Nutshell Enlightenment Philosophy written by Jane O'Grady and published by Arcturus Publishing. This book was released on 2019-01-15 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "...there is nothing elementary about O'Grady's primer. She pulls off the feat of writing a reliable and accessible introduction to modern philosophy that is also a meaningful contribution to the subject." - Times Literary Supplement From Descartes' famous line 'I think therefore I am' to Kant's fascinating discussions of morality, the thinkers of the Enlightenment have helped to shape the modern world. Addressing such important subjects as the foundations of knowledge and the role of ethics, the theories of these philosophers continue to have great relevance to our lives. Ranging across Enlightenment thinking from Berkeley to Rousseau, Enlightenment Philosophy in a Nutshell explains important ideas such as Locke's ideas of primary and secondary qualities, Kant's moral rationalism, and Hume's inductive reasoning. Filled with helpful diagrams and simple summaries of complex theories, this essential introduction brings the great ideas of the past to everyone. ABOUT THE SERIES: The 'Knowledge in a Nutshell' series by Arcturus Publishing provides engaging introductions to many fields of knowledge, including philosophy, psychology and physics, and the ways in which human kind has sought to make sense of our world.

Download or read book Enlightenment Philosophy in a Nutshell written by Jane O'Grady and published by Knowledge in a Nutshell. This book was released on 2018 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "...there is nothing elementary about O'Grady's primer. She pulls off the feat of writing a reliable and accessible introduction to modern philosophy that is also a meaningful contribution to the subject." - London Times Literary Supplement From Descartes' famous line 'I think therefore I am' to Kant's fascinating discussions of morality, the thinkers of the Enlightenment have helped to shape the modern world. Addressing such important subjects as the foundations of knowledge and the role of ethics, the theories of these philosophers continue to have great relevance to our lives. Ranging across Enlightenment thinking from Berkeley to Rousseau, Enlightenment Philosophy in a Nutshell explains important ideas such as Locke's ideas of primary and secondary qualities, Kant's moral rationalism, and Hume's inductive reasoning. Filled with helpful diagrams and simple summaries of complex theories, this essential introduction brings the great ideas of the past to everyone.

Download or read book What Is Enlightenment written by J. M. Beach and published by Createspace Independent Pub. This book was released on 2012-12-20 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a historical, philosophical, and sociological inquiry into knowledge. For thousands of years we have thought that we were divinely enabled to know and control our destiny. Only relatively recently, over the past half century, have we begun to realize that we are deeply flawed organic organisms with the unique capacity for conscious thought and constrained agency. This book seeks to take a historical and functionalist approach of the phenomenon of knowledge. I want to explain what it is, how it is created, and what it can and cannot do. I hope this book can help enlighten a new generation about the possibilities and constraints of human progress, which depend on our flawed, but useful tool of knowledge. The fate of our species rests on our continued daring to know.

Download or read book Jonathan Edwards and the Limits of Enlightenment Philosophy written by Leon Chai and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1998-04-23 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jonathan Edwards has most often been considered in the context of the Puritanism of New England. In many ways, however, he was closer to the thinkers of the European Enlightenment. In this book. Leon Chai explores that connection, analyzing Edwards' thought in light of a number of the issues that preoccupied such Enlightenment figures as Locke, Descartes, Malebranche, and Leibniz. The book comprises three parts, each of which begins with a detailed analysis of a crucial passage from a classic Enlightenment text, and then turns to a major theological work of Jonathan Edwards' in which the same issue is explored.

Download or read book Knowledge in a Nutshell Classical Philosophy written by Michael Moore and published by Arcturus Publishing. This book was released on 2019-01-15 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Socrates' fascinating discussions of morality and virtue to Pythagoras' attempts to understand the arrangement of the cosmos, the thinkers of the ancient world provided us with an astonishing array of ideas that has helped to shape the modern world. Ranging across Ancient Greek and Roman philosophy from Anaximander to Plotinus, Classical Philosophy in a Nutshell explains important ideas such as Plato's Theory of Forms, Zeno's Paradox, and the Stoicism of Marcus Aurelius. Filled with helpful diagrams and simple summaries of complex theories, this essential introduction brings the great ideas of antiquity to everyone.

Download or read book An Answer to the Question What is Enlightenment written by Immanuel Kant and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2013-09-26 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Immanuel Kant was one of the most influential philosophers in the whole of Europe, who changed Western thought with his examinations of reason and the nature of reality. In these writings he investigates human progress, civilization, morality and why, to be truly enlightened, we must all have the freedom and courage to use our own intellect. Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.

Download or read book The Dream of Enlightenment The Rise of Modern Philosophy written by Anthony Gottlieb and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2016-08-30 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anthony Gottlieb’s landmark The Dream of Reason and its sequel challenge Bertrand Russell’s classic as the definitive history of Western philosophy. Western philosophy is now two and a half millennia old, but much of it came in just two staccato bursts, each lasting only about 150 years. In his landmark survey of Western philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance, The Dream of Reason, Anthony Gottlieb documented the first burst, which came in the Athens of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Now, in his sequel, The Dream of Enlightenment, Gottlieb expertly navigates a second great explosion of thought, taking us to northern Europe in the wake of its wars of religion and the rise of Galilean science. In a relatively short period—from the early 1640s to the eve of the French Revolution—Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, and Hume all made their mark. The Dream of Enlightenment tells their story and that of the birth of modern philosophy. As Gottlieb explains, all these men were amateurs: none had much to do with any university. They tried to fathom the implications of the new science and of religious upheaval, which led them to question traditional teachings and attitudes. What does the advance of science entail for our understanding of ourselves and for our ideas of God? How should a government deal with religious diversity—and what, actually, is government for? Such questions remain our questions, which is why Descartes, Hobbes, and the others are still pondered today. Yet it is because we still want to hear them that we can easily get these philosophers wrong. It is tempting to think they speak our language and live in our world; but to understand them properly, we must step back into their shoes. Gottlieb puts readers in the minds of these frequently misinterpreted figures, elucidating the history of their times and the development of scientific ideas while engagingly explaining their arguments and assessing their legacy in lively prose. With chapters focusing on Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Pierre Bayle, Leibniz, Hume, Rousseau, and Voltaire—and many walk-on parts—The Dream of Enlightenment creates a sweeping account of what the Enlightenment amounted to, and why we are still in its debt.

Download or read book The Wisdom of the Enlightenment written by Michael K. Kellogg and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-02-15 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Enlightenment—Aufklärung in German, Lumières in French—is more an idea than a period. But it is an idea that took hold in a particular historical context of revolutionary scientific advances, increasing economic and social freedom, rising literacy and prosperity, and a greater willingness to challenge the authoritarianism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In The Wisdom of the Enlightenment, author Michael K. Kellogg points to 1637, the year that gave us Rene Descartes’ landmark inquiry into truth, as the beginning of a period that radically changed individual human thought and collective societal action. From Descartes’ assertion of “I think, therefore I am,” to the philosophies of Enlightenment thinkers like Moliere, Spinoza, Voltaire, Hume, and Kant, this book charts the new and revolutionary philosophies at a time when progress seemed possible across the whole range of human knowledge and endeavor. In sweeping aside tired superstitions and applying a new scientific methodology, the Enlightenment ideas of progress through free exercise of reason ushered us into the modern world. This engaging and comprehensive survey of Enlightenment thoughts and thinkers is a celebration of the faith that all problems are solvable by human reason.

Download or read book The Enlightenment written by John Robertson and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This introduction explores the history of the 18th-century Enlightenment movement. Considering its intellectual commitments, Robertson then turns to their impact on society, and the ways in which Enlightenment thinkers sought to further the goal of human betterment, by promoting economic improvement and civil and political justice.

Download or read book The Philosophy of the Enlightenment written by Ernst Cassirer and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-08-30 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this classic work of intellectual history, Ernst Cassirer provides both a cogent synthesis and a penetrating analysis of one of history's greatest intellectual epochs: the Enlightenment. Arguing that there was a common foundation beneath the diverse strands of thought of this period, he shows how Enlightenment philosophers drew upon the ideas of the preceding centuries even while radically transforming them to fit the modern world. In Cassirer's view, the Enlightenment liberated philosophy from the realm of pure thought and restored it to its true place as an active and creative force through which knowledge of the world is achieved. In a new foreword, Peter Gay considers The Philosophy of the Enlightenment in the context in which it was written--Germany in 1932, on the precipice of the Nazi seizure of power and one of the greatest assaults on the ideals of the Enlightenment. He also argues that Cassirer's work remains a trenchant defense against enemies of the Enlightenment in the twenty-first century.

Download or read book Dream of Reason A History of Western Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance New Edition written by Anthony Gottlieb and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2016-08-30 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "His book...supplant[s] all others, even the immensely successful History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell."—A. C. Grayling Already a classic, this landmark study of early Western thought now appears in a new edition with expanded coverage of the Middle Ages. This landmark study of Western thought takes a fresh look at the writings of the great thinkers of classic philosophy and questions many pieces of conventional wisdom. The book invites comparison with Bertrand Russell's monumental History of Western Philosophy, "but Gottlieb's book is less idiosyncratic and based on more recent scholarship" (Colin McGinn, Los Angeles Times). A New York Times Notable Book, a Los Angeles Times Best Book, and a Times Literary Supplement Best Book of 2001.

Download or read book The Authority of Experience written by John C. O'Neal and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2008-08-26 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sensationism, a philosophy that gained momentum in the French Enlightenment as a response to Lockean empiricism, was acclaimed by Hippolyte Taine as &"the doctrine of the most lucid, methodical, and French minds to have honored France.&" The first major general study in English of eighteenth-century French sensationism, The Authority of Experience presents the history of a complex set of ideas and explores their important ramifications for literature, education, and moral theory. The study begins by presenting the main ideas of sensationist philosophers Condillac, Bonnet, and Helv&étius, who held that all of our ideas come to us through the senses. The experience of the body in seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching enabled individuals, as John C. O'Neal points out, to challenge the sometimes arbitrary authority of institutions and people in positions of power. After a general introduction to sensationism, the author develops a theory of sensationist aesthetics that not only reveals the interconnections of the period's philosophy and literature but also enhances our awareness of the forces at work in the French novel. He goes on to examine the relations between sensationism and eighteenth-century French educational theory, materialism, and id&éologie. Ultimately, O'Neal opens a discussion of the implications of sensationist thought for issues of particular concern to society today.

Download or read book The World We Want written by Robert B. Louden and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-03-16 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The World We Want compares the future world that Enlightenment intellectuals had hoped for with our own world at present. In what respects do the two worlds differ, and why are they so different? To what extent is and isn't our world the world they wanted, and to what extent do we today still want their world? Unlike previous philosophical critiques and defenses of the Enlightenment, the present study focuses extensively on the relevant historical and empirical record first, by examining carefully what kind of future Enlightenment intellectuals actually hoped for; second, by tracking the different legacies of their central ideals over the past two centuries. But in addition to documenting the significant gap that still exists between Enlightenment ideals and current realities, the author also attempts to show why the ideals of the Enlightenment still elude us. What does our own experience tell us about the appropriateness of these ideals? Which Enlightenment ideals do not fit with human nature? Why is meaningful support for these ideals, particularly within the US, so weak at present? Which of the means that Enlightenment intellectuals advocated for realizing their ideals are inefficacious? Which of their ideals have devolved into distorted versions of themselves when attempts have been made to realize them? How and why, after more than two centuries, have we still failed to realize the most significant Enlightenment ideals? In short, what is dead and what is living in these ideals?

Download or read book The Society for Useful Knowledge written by Jonathan Lyons and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2014-06-10 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A spellbinding, rich history of the American Enlightenment-think 1776 meets The Metaphysical Club.

Download or read book An Essay Concerning Human Understanding written by John Locke and published by Phoemixx Classics Ebooks. This book was released on 2021-10-31 with total page 755 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding John Locke - An Essay Concerning Human Understanding is a work by John Locke concerning the foundation of human knowledge and understanding. It first appeared in 1689 (although dated 1690) with the printed title An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. He describes the mind at birth as a blank slate (tabula rasa, although he did not use those actual words) filled later through experience. The essay was one of the principal sources of empiricism in modern philosophy, and influenced many enlightenment philosophers, such as David Hume and George Berkeley.Book I of the Essay is Locke's attempt to refute the rationalist notion of innate ideas. Book II sets out Locke's theory of ideas, including his distinction between passively acquired simple ideassuch as "red," "sweet," "round"and actively built complex ideas, such as numbers, causes and effects, abstract ideas, ideas of substances, identity, and diversity. Locke also distinguishes between the truly existing primary qualities of bodies, like shape, motion and the arrangement of minute particles, and the secondary qualities that are "powers to produce various sensations in us" such as "red" and "sweet." These secondary qualities, Locke claims, are dependent on the primary qualities. He also offers a theory of personal identity, offering a largely psychological criterion. Book III is concerned with language, and Book IV with knowledge, including intuition, mathematics, moral philosophy, natural philosophy ("science"), faith, and opinion.

Download or read book What is Enlightenment The Dialectic of Enlightenment written by Kristian Klett and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2008-11 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 1999 in the subject Philosophy - Philosophy of the Present, grade: Pass, University of Melbourne, course: Introduction to Critical Theory, language: English, abstract: While we live in a post-modern World - having the age of Enlightenment, the eighteenth century, far in our rear view mirror - the concept of Enlightenment is still a basic philosophical task. Its origin, its constitution and its goal are wildly disputed, unknown or undefined, whatever point of view might here be adequate. Still, Enlightenment is seen to be a determining part of human nature, of "what we are, what we think, what we do." (Foucault, p.32) We still live (and an interesting question here would be: will we always live?) within the 'shadow' of the eighteenth century Enlightenment, even though the new era of modernity or post-modernity has been introduced. Since Enlightenment "dissolve[d] the injustice of the old inequality" (Adorno, p.12) of church, nobility, Bourgeoisie and the people, of mastery and serfdom with reason as its mediator, we face the problem of its side effects and its results, and - most importantly - its limits. Must man define his border to experience freedom (which is still within limits though they are not consciously felt, if these limits are wide enough), or can he overcome a reasonable reason in some way? Alternatively has institutionalised knowledge (with the help of religion) established a "building" of ideologies1 that is of eternal character? This leads to the question of possible "exits" from Enlightenment which already happens to have been a "way out" (Foucault, p.34) from immaturity, but is now mutilated to a new "prison" of human beings in post-modernity. Is the human mind ever to reach a state of "nirvana" or its secular utopia, a never available dream world; liberty of universals, the ultimate freedom? Will man ever be able to come back to paradise, now that he has eaten from the "tree of knowledge"? (Kantos, p.239) This essay tri

Download or read book Carnap and Twentieth Century Thought written by A. W. Carus and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-12-13 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) is widely regarded as one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century. Born in Germany and later a US citizen, he was a founder of the philosophical movement known as Logical Empiricism. He was strongly influenced by a number of different philosophical traditions (including the legacies of both Kant and Husserl), and also by the German Youth Movement, the First World War (in which he was wounded and decorated), and radical socialism. This book places his central ideas in a broad cultural, political and intellectual context, showing how he synthesised many different currents of thought to achieve a philosophical perspective that remains strikingly relevant in the twenty-first century. Its rich account of a philosopher's response to his times will appeal to all who are interested in the development of philosophy in the twentieth century.