How to Think Like a Philosopher aims to introduce you to some of the great themes of philosophical thought and the ideas of the individuals who have molded them.
The key principles for a more humane and balanced approach to thinking, to politics and to life, from the Sunday Times bestselling author of How the World Thinks.
The key principles for a more humane and balanced approach to thinking, to politics and to life, from the Sunday Times bestselling author of How the World Thinks.
How do we know what we 'know'? How did we - as individuals and as a society - come to accept certain knowledge as fact? This title questions the reliability of our assumptions on knowledge. It investigates the relationship between 'individual' and 'scientific' knowledge.
This stimulating reader addresses all aspects of human morality and sociality from an evolutionary and cognitive perspective. Authored by six leading researchers, it discusses both the 'good' and 'bad' sides of humanity and delves into the particular behaviours, social and moral practices, and underlying psychological processes that make us human.
Are our lives meaningless? Is death bad? Would immortality be better? Alternatively, should we hasten our deaths by acts of suicide? Many people are tempted to offer comforting optimistic answers to these big questions. The Human Predicament offers a less sanguine assessment, and defends a substantial, but not unmitigated, pessimism.
David Hume is arguably one of the most important philosophers ever to have written in English. This book is an account of Hume's philosophy, his major works and ideas, providing a guide to the important and complex thought of this key philosopher. It covers the whole range of Hume's work, offering examination of the key areas of his thought.
Written specifically for the beginner this book provides an overall perspective of Hume's work, dealing specifically with Hume's masterpieces, The Treatise on Human Nature and The Dialogues on Natural Religion.
A ground-breaking and stylish biography of one of the most misunderstood and yet towering figures in contemporary thought, destined to become a modern classic.
Consulted through the ages, in both China and the West, for answers to fundamental questions about the world and our place in it, this book deals with three thousand years to ancient shamanistic practices involving the ritual preparation of the shoulder bones of oxen.
Originally published almost 150 years ago, five parts of "The Idea of a University" - "University Teaching" and four selections from "University Subjects" - are reproduced here, along with five essays by contemporary scholars exploring the present day relevance of Newman's themes.
Covers perennial philosophical problems such as the connection between mind and body; life after death; the role of reason; free will and determinism; the relationship between the individual and society; and the problem of relativism. This book is suitable for those interested in the theories that have affected the course of human history.
Features 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction', 'The Task of the Translator' and 'Theses on the Philosophy of History', as well as essays on Kafka, storytelling, Baudelaire, Brecht's epic theatre, and Proust.
What does imagination do for our perception of the world? Why should reality be broken off from our imagining of it? It was not always thus, and in these essays, Tim Ingold sets out to heal the break between reality and imagination at the heart of modern thought and science.
Do we need religion to be good people? When Immanuel Kant tackled this question in 1793, he produced a book that remains a key text in the shaping of Western religious thought.
Timothy Sprigge was one of the leading exponents of philosophical idealism in the last fifty years. The idealist worldview, long unfashionable, has been coming back into favour, and Sprigge's work has found a new readership. These selected essays focus on the view of consciousness on which his unique system of metaphysics and ethics is based.
This book uses the writings of T. S. Eliot and Walter Benjamin to examine the fraught relationship between literary and historical form during the modernist period.