Modern Challenges To Past Philosophy

Does philosophy have a timeless essence? Are the writings that have come down to us over the centuries from philosophers of genius mere souvenirs from a bygone era? Or are their thoughts still eminently worth examining with care? Modern Challenges to Past Philosophy argues pondering past philosophy with modern problems in mind is worth the effort, even though earlier works are uninformed by modern science and lack some of tools of modern analysis. The great texts defamiliarize our world and offer solutions to crucial questions often forgotten as we fixate on current philosophical trends. Modern Challenges is no appeal to a return to a golden past but a study designed to show how and why understanding earlier works of some of the most penetrating minds ever to ponder eternally valid questions can contribute to a renewal of our own culture.

Timely and very approachable, this book introduces today's readers to philosophy with readings of philosophical significance. It is one of the most successful philosophy books available for the last 20 years. Incorporates 15 new readings by authors such as Kai Nielsen, Jenny Teichman, Jonathan Harrison, and Sextus Empiricus. Features extensively revised Puzzles and Problems sections that offer unusual and provocative views to arouse reader response. Relates traditional philosophical issues to key contemporary problems, and follows the explanation of each issue with related readings and Puzzles and Problems. Challenges conventional thinking and presents opposing viewpoints on topics such as the existence of God and the limitation of immigration. MARKET For anyone interested in learning more about philosophy and applying its principles to everyday life.

This accessible new book provides a clear and wide-ranging introduction to the defining problems of contemporary philosophy. Its unique feature is to focus on problems that cut across the established divide between analytic and continental philosophical traditions. Instead of segregating the two traditions, as is usually done, the authors offer a critical orientation and guide for readers who are not exclusively affiliated with either approach and who want to understand the increasingly shared questions philosophers are asking and addressing today. Each chapter starts with a fundamental overarching question: (1) What and how can we know? (2) What is the structure of the world? (3) What goes beyond the physical world? (4) What is to be done? (5) What does it mean to orient oneself philosophically? Under these headings, the authors critically examine the discipline's most fundamental problems. Their approach reveals deep and unexpected connections across the analytic/continental divide, and opens up new ways of thinking about critique itself. No other book about contemporary philosophy is as comprehensive and cosmopolitan. The Problems of Contemporary Philosophy provides newcomers and seasoned philosophers alike with an entertaining, engaging, and far-reaching portrait of today's philosophical landscape. It is an exemplary instance of thinking across and beyond the analytic/continental divide.

Acclaimed philosopher and novelist Rebecca Newberger Goldstein provides a dazzlingly original plunge into the drama of philosophy, revealing its hidden role in today's debates on religion, morality, politics, and science.

Philosophy written in English is overwhelmingly analytic philosophy, and the techniques and predilections of analytic philosophy are not only unhistorical but anti-historical, and hostile to textual commentary. Analytic usually aspires to a very high degree of clarity and precision of formulation and argument, and it often seeks to be informed by, and consistent with, current natural science. In an earlier era, analytic philosophy aimed at agreement with ordinary linguistic intuitions or common sense beliefs, or both. All of these aspects of the subject sit uneasily with the use of historical texts for philosophical illumination. How, then, can substantial history of philosophy find a place in analytic philosophy? If history of philosophy includes the respectful, intelligent use of writings from the past to address problems that are being debated in the current philosophical journals, then history of philosophy may well belong to analytic philosophy. But if history of philosophy is more than this; if it is concerned with interpreting and reinterpreting a certain canon, or perhaps making a case for extending this canon, its connection with analytic philosophy is less clear. More obscure still is the connection between analytic philosophy and a kind of history of philosophy that is unapologetically antiquarian. This is the kind of history of philosophy that emphasises the status of a philosophical text as one document among others from a faraway intellectual world, and that tries to acquaint us with that world in order to produce understanding of the document. In this book, ten distinguished historians of philosophy, mostly trained in the analytic tradition, explore the tensions between, and the possibilities of reconciling, analytic philosophy and history of philosophy.

Excerpt from The Persistent Problems of Philosophy: An Introduction to Metaphysics, Through the Study of Modern Systems I must admit at the outset that this book is not written to lure students, guiltless of metaphysical aspirations, into pleasant paths of philosophical speculations. It is intended rather for students and readers who are seriously concerned with the problems of philosophy and genuinely anxious to study metaphysics under the guidance of the great thinkers. The book is, none the less, designed for beginners in philosophy, as well as for those more advanced, and I have tried to make it clear in statement and logical in order.I have audaciously attempted to combine, also, what seem to me the essential features of a systematic Introduction to Metaphysics with those of a History of Modern Philosophy. This I have done both because I believe that the problems of philosophy are, at the outset, best studied as formulated in the actual systems of great thinkers, and because the historical sequence of philosophies, from Descartes's to Hegel's, seems to coincide, roughly, with a logical order. I am well aware that in writing a book which seeks to combine two functions, often distinguished, and which attempts to meet the needs of two groups of students, I have run the risk of fulfilling neither purpose and of helping neither set of readers. I hope, however, that certain features of the book may prove useful; in particular, the plan on which it classifies metaphysical systems, the summaries it offers as well of the arguments as of the conclusions of modern philosophers, the exact quotations and multiplied text references of its expositions. If I have overloaded the book with quotations and references, it is because I have myself suffered greatly from my inability to find in the writings of the philosophers the doctrines attributed to them by the commentators. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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