The Many Faces Of Philosophy

This historically based collection of philosophers' reflections--the letters, journals and prefaces that reveals their hopes and hesitations, their triumphs and struggles, their deepest doubts and convictions--allows us to witness philosophical thought in process. Ranging from Plato to Hannah Arendt, with contributions from 44 philosophers (Augustine, Maimonides, AlGhazali, Descartes, Pascal, Leibniz, Voltaire, Rousseau, Hobbes, Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein, among others) this remarkable collection documents philosophers' claim that they change as well as understand the world. In her introductory essay, "Witnessing Philosophers," Amelie Rorty locates philosophers' reflections in the larger context of the many facets of their other activities and commitments.

Philosophy is a dangerous profession, risking censorship, prison, even death. And no wonder: philosophers have questioned traditional pieties and threatened the established political order. Some claimed to know what was thought unknowable; others doubted what was believed to be certain. Some attacked religion in the name of science; others attacked science in the name of mystical poetry; some served tyrants; others were radical revolutionaries. This historically based collection of philosophers' reflections--the letters, journals, prefaces that reveal their hopes and hesitations, their triumphs and struggles, their deepest doubts and convictions--allow us to witness philosophical thought-in-process. It sheds light on the many--and conflicting--aims of philosophy: to express skepticism or overcome it, to support theology or attack it, to develop an ethical system or reduce it to practical politics. As their audiences differed, philosophers experimented with distinctive rhetorical strategies, writing dialogues, meditations, treatises, aphorisms. Ranging from Plato to Hannah Arendt, with contributions from 44 philosophers (Augustine, Maimonides, AlGhazali, Descartes, Pascal, Leibniz, Voltaire, Rousseau, Hobbes, Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein, among others) this remarkable collection documents philosophers' claim that they change as well as understand the world. In her introductory essay, "Witnessing Philosophers," Amelie Rorty locates philosophers' reflections in the larger context of the many facets of their other activities and commitments.

This collection of original papers by an international group of distinguished philosophers of science impressively demonstrates the links among the philosophic points of view, areas of focus, and methods of treatment used in examining the many facets of scientific inquiry. It will be an indispensable collection for philosophers of science and scientists of various disciplines, including physicists, neuroscientists, and psychologists.

Sixteen original essays that discuss the question "what is philosophy." Each essay presents on great philosopher's unique vision of the nature of philosophy, and the collection illustrates the diversity of approaches that make philosophy perennially fascinating and that also make the great philosophers our contemporaries. Additional commentaries give readers a rich, multifaceted understanding of the meaning of philosophy. -- Publisher description

The first anthology to present the range of the forms of evil, from vice, sin, cruelty and crime to disobedience and wilfulness. The readings are drawn from an array of perspectives and each one is introduced and set in context by the author.

Although much has been said and written about coincidences, there is a marked absence when it comes to the development of a comprehensive model that incorporates the many different ways in which they can be understood and explained. One reason for this omission is undoubtedly the sharp divide that exists between those who find coincidences meaningful and those who do not, with the result that the conclusions of the many books and articles on the subject have tended to fall into distinct camps. The Many Faces of Coincidence attempts to remedy this impasse by proposing an inclusive categorisation for coincidences of all shapes and sizes. At the same time, some of the implications arising from the various explanations are explored, including the possibility of an underlying unity of mind and matter constituting the ground of being.

"The first two lectures place the alternative I defend -- a kind of pragmatic realism -- in a historical and metaphysical context. Part of that context is provided by Husserl's remark that the history of modern philosophy begins with Galileo -- that is, modern philosophy has been hypnotized by the idea that scientific facts are all the facts there are. Another part is provided by the analysis of a very simple example of what I call 'contextual relativity'. The position I defend holds that truth depends on conceptual scheme and it is nonetheless 'real truth'. "In my third lecture I turn to the Kantian antecedents of this view, explaining what I think should be retained of the Kantian idea of autonomy as the central theme of morality, and extracting from Kant's work a 'moral image of the world' that connects the ideals of equality and intellectual liberty. In this lecture I defend the idea that moral images are an indispensible part of our moral and cultural heritage. "In the final lecture I defend the idea of moral objectivity. I compare our epistemological positions in ethics, history, analysis of human character, and science, and I argue that in no area can we hope for a 'foundation' which is more ultimate than the beliefs that actually, at a given time, function as foundational in the area, the beliefs concerning which one has to say 'this is where my spade is turned'. In ethics such beliefs are represented in moral images of the world."

"The present book will address mainly philosophical dimensions in Maimonides' thought, focusing on a new reading of several issues in The Guide of the Perplexed"--