Living Philosophy
A Historical Introduction to Philosophical Ideas
Third Edition
Lewis Vaughn
Table of Contents
*=New to this Edition
Each chapter ends with Writing and Reasoning, Review Notes, Key Terms, Notes, For Further Reading, and Online Resources.
Preface
CHAPTER 1. WHY PHILOSOPHY
1.1 Philosophy: The Quest for Understanding
The Good of Philosophy
Philosophical Terrain
Details: Your Philosophical Beliefs
Details: Main Divisions of Philosophy
1.2 Socrates and the Examined Life
Portrait: Plato
Then and Now: Socrates Café
1.3 Thinking Philosophically
Reasons and Arguments
Details: Valid and Invalid Argument Forms
Reading Philosophy
Portrait: Hypatia
Fallacious Reasoning
CHAPTER 2. THE PRE-SOCRATICS AND THE SOPHISTS
2.1 Thales and Anaximander
2.2 Heraclitus
Then and Now: The (Ancient) Theory of Evolution
Portrait: Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans
2.3 Parmenides
Details: Zeno's Paradoxes
2.4 Democritus
2.5 Protagoras and the Sophists
Then and Now: Moral Relativism and Tolerance
Readings
Aristotle: Metaphysics
Aristotle: On the Heavens
Heraclitus: Fragment
Parmenides: On Nature
Plato: "Theaetetus"
CHAPTER 3. SOCRATES: AN EXAMINED LIFE
3.1 The Philosophical Gadfly
3.2 The Socratic Method
Portrait: Early Women Philosophers: Themistoclea, Arignote, and Theano
3.3 Knowledge and Ignorance
Details: Socrates in the Clouds
3.4 Socrates' Trial and Death
Details: Socrates' Last Minutes
Then and Now: Your Examined/Unexamined Life
Readings
Xenophon: Symposium
Plato: Symposium
* Plato: Euthyphro
Plato: The Republic
Plato: Apology
CHAPTER 4. PLATO: THE REALLY REAL
4.1 Plato's Life and Times
Portrait: Diotima of Mantinea
4.2 Knowledge and Reality
Believing and Knowing
Reason and the Forms
Details: Critiques of the Forms
Plato's Rationalism
Then and Now: Modern Platonism
4.3 Allegory of the Cave
4.4 Immortality, Morality, and the Soul
The Immortal Soul
The Three-Part Soul
The Moral Soul
Details: The Ring of Gyges
4.5 The Individual and the State
Readings
Plato: Meno
Plato: Phaedo
Plato: The Republic
G.M.A. Grube: Plato's Thought
Julia Annas: An Introduction to Plato's Republic
CHAPTER 5. ARISTOTLE: REASON AND NATURE
5.1 The Life of Aristotle
Portrait: Aristotle and Alexander
5.2 Logic, Knowledge, and Truth
Then and Now: Aristotle and Modern Science
5.3 Physics and Metaphysics
Substance
Change
Cause
Purpose
Details: Aristotle's God
5.4 Happiness, Virtue, and the Good
Details: Aristotle's Soul
Readings
J.L. Ackrill, Aristotle the Philosopher
Diogenes Laertius: Lives of the Philosophers
Anthony Gottlieb: The Dream of Reason: A History of Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance
Aristotle: Metaphysics
Aristotle: Posterior Analytics
Aristotle: Physics
Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics
CHAPTER 6. EASTERN THOUGHT
6.1 Hinduism
Beginnings
The Vedas
Then and Now: The Caste System
After the Vedas
Hindu Philosophies
Details: Hinduism and Modernity
6.2 Buddhism
Buddhist Complexities
The Buddha's Teachings
Portrait: The Buddha
Then and Now: Buddhism and Science
Details: Buddhism and Violence
6.3 Daoism
6.4 Confucianism
Details: The Confucian Canon
Readings
Kalama Sutra
Ajahn Sumedho
Dhammacakapparattana Sutta
Walpola Rahula: What the Buddha Thought
The Chuang Tzu
Tao-te Ching
Analects
John B. Noss: A History of the World's Religions
CHAPTER 7. THE HELLENISTIC ERA
7.1 Epicurus
7.2 Epictetus
Portrait: Lucretius
7.3 Sextus Empiricus
Then and Now: Stoicism Today
Details: The Self-Destruction of Skepticism
Readings
Epicurus: Letter to Menoeceus
A.A. Long: Hellenistic Philosophers: Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics
Epictetus: Encheiridion
* Donald Robertson: Stoicism and the Art of Happiness
Sextus Empiricus: Outlines of Pyrrhonism
CHAPTER 8. THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD
8.1 Between Ancient and Modern
8.2 Augustine
Truth
The Hierarchy of Being
Good and Evil
8.3 Anselm and Aquinas
Anselm
Aquinas
Details: Science and the Uncaused Universe
8.4 Avicenna and Maimonides
Avicenna
Maimonides
Portrait: Averroës
8.5 Hildegard of Bingen
8.6 William of Ockham
Then and Now: Modern Realism about Universals
Readings
Augustine: Confessions
Augustine: On Free Will
Anselm: Proslogium
Immanuel Kant: Critique of Pure Reason
Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologica
Hildegard: Causae et Curae
Frederick Copleston: A History of Philosophy, Volume II: Medieval Philosophy: From Augustine to Duns Scotus
9. DESCARTES: DOUBT AND CERTAINTY
9.1 The Pursuit of Knowledge
Then and Now: The Scientific (and Philosophical) Revolution
9.2 Plato's Rationalism
Details: Innate Ideas
9.3 Descartes' Doubt
Details: Living in the Matrix
9.4 Descartes' Certainty
Portrait: René Descartes
Reading
René Descartes: Meditations on First Philosophy
CHAPTER 10. FROM HOBBES TO HUME
10.1 Hobbes
10.2 Locke
Then and Now: The Defeat of Relativism
10.3 Berkeley
10.4 Hume
Portrait: David Hume
10.5 Spinoza
Details: Russell on Spinoza
10.6 Leibniz
Readings
Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan
John Locke: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
George Berkeley: Of the Principles of Human Knowledge
David Hume: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Discourse on Metaphysics
CHAPTER 11. KANT'S REVOLUTION
11.1 The Small-Town Genius
11.2 The Knowledge Revolution
Portrait: Copernicus
Then and Now: Conceptualizing the World
11.3 The Moral Law
Ethics and Morality
Details: Moral Relativism
Kant's Theory
Readings
Immanuel Kant: Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics
Immanuel Kant: Critique of Pure Reason
Immanuel Kant: Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals
CHAPTER 12. JOHN STUART MILL AND UTILITARIANISM
12.1 The Philosopher-Reformer
12.2 Mill's Utilitarianism
Portrait: Jeremy Bentham
Details: Utilitarianism and the Golden Rule
Then and Now: Utilitarianism and the Death Penalty
12.3 Critiques of the Theory
Details: Mill's View of Personal Freedom
Readings
* Harriet Taylor: Champion of Liberty
John Stuart Mill: Utilitarianism
CHAPTER 13. HEGEL AND MARX
13.1 Hegel
Portrait: Hegel
13.2 Marx
Details: Einstein on Socialism
Then and Now: Is the United States a Socialist Country?
Readings
Hegel: Lectures on the History of Philosophy
Marx: The Communist Manifesto
CHAPTER 14. EXISTENTIALISM
14.1 The Existential Tone
14.2 Kierkegaard
14.3 Nietzsche
Details: Nietzsche: Myths and Rumors
Portrait: Schopenhauer
14.4 Heidegger
14.5 Sartre
Portrait: Sartre
Details: The Stir Caused by Sartre
14.6 Camus
Then and Now: Existentialism in Literature and Film
Readings
Patrick Gardiner: Kierkegaard: A Very Short Introduction
Søren Kierkegaard: Either/Or
Søren Kierkegaard: The Point of View
Søren Kierkegaard: Journal
Søren Kierkegaard: Concluding Unscientific Postscript
Friedrich Nietzsche: Thus Spake Zarathustra
Friedrich Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil
Friedrich Nietzsche: The Gay Science
Martin Heidegger: The Basic Problems of Phenomenology
Thomas R. Flynn: Existentialism: A Very Short Introduction
Jean-Paul Sartre: Existentialism
Albert Camus: The Myth of Sisyphus
CHAPTER 15. THE PRAGMATISTS: PEIRCE AND JAMES
15.1 The Pragmatist Way
15.2 Peirce
Details: Four Ways to Fix Belief
15.3 James
Portrait: William James
Then and Now: James and Indeterminism
Readings
William James: "Pragmatism"
Charles Sanders Peirce: "How to Make Our Ideas Clear"
William James: "The Will to Believe"
Michael Martin: Atheism: A Philosophical Justification
CHAPTER 16. FEMINIST PHILOSOPHERS
16.1 Mary Wollstonecraft
Portrait: Wollstonecraft
16.2 Simone de Beauvoir
Then and Now: Innate Gender Differences?
16.3 Feminist Ethics
Details: Ethics Terminology
16.4 Feminist Perspectives on Knowledge
Readings
Alison Ainley: "Feminist Philosophy"
Louis M. Antony: "Embodiment and Epistemology"
Mary Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights of Women
Judith Thurman: Introduction to The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
Simone de Beauvoir: The Second Sex
Alison Jaggar: "Feminist Ethics"
Jan Crosthwaite: "Gender and Bioethics"
Virginia Held: The Ethics of Care
Annette C. Baier: "The Need for More Than Justice"
Elizabeth Anderson: "Feminist Epistemology and Philosophy of Science"
Eve Browning Cole: Philosophy and Feminist Criticism
17. THE CONTEMPORARY PERIOD
* 17.1 Appiah: Cosmopolitanism
* 17.2 Nussbaum: Religious Tolerance
* 17.3 Blum: Racism
* 17.4 Martin Luther King, Jr.: Civil Rights
* 17.5 Chalmers: Consciousness and Zombies
* 17.6 Gardiner: Climate Change
* 17.7 Derrida and Cixous: Deconstruction
Readings
Kwame Anthony Appiah: Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers
Martha Nussbaum: The New Religious Intolerance
* Lawrence Blum: "I'm Not a Racist, But . . . "
Martin Luther King, Jr., in A Testament of Hope
Martin Luther King, Jr.: "Nonviolence and Racial Justice"
Martin Luther King, Jr.: "Letter from a Birmingham Jail"
* David Chalmer: The Conscious Mind
* Stephen Gardiner: A Perfect Moral Storm
Susan Sellers: The Hélène Cixous Reader
CHAPTER 18. THE MEANING OF LIFE
18.1 The Search for Meaning
18.2 Pessimism: Life Has No Meaning
18.3 Optimism: Life Can Have Meaning
Meaning from Above
Details: Is Religion Necessary for a Meaningful Life?
Meaning from Below
Details: What Can and Cannot Give Life Meaning
Readings
Leo Tolstoy: My Confession
Arthur Schopenhauer: On the Sufferings of the World
Julian Baggini: What's It All About?
Paul Edwards: The Encyclopedia of Philosophy
* Iddo Landau: Finding Meaning in an Imperfect World
APPENDIX A: How to Write a Philosophy Paper
APPENDIX B: Deductive and Inductive Arguments
Glossary
Credits
Index of Marginal Quotations
General Index
