Living Philosophy

Description

Living Philosophy, Third Edition, is a historically organized, introductory hybrid text/reader that guides students through the story of philosophical thought from the Pre-Socratics to the present, providing cultural and intellectual background and explaining why key issues and arguments remain important and relevant today.

Featuring an exceptionally clear and accessible writing style, this unique volume brings philosophy to life with well-chosen excerpts from philosophers' works, abundant in-text learning aids, and compelling color photos and illustrations.

New to this Edition

• A completely revised chapter on the contemporary period (Chapter 17) takes on some of the most pressing, complex issues of twenty-first century life, addressed by many of the freshest voices: Kwame Anthony Appiah, cosmopolitanism; Martha Nussbaum, religious tolerance; Lawrence Blum, racism; Martin Luther King, Jr., civil rights; David Chalmers, consciousness and zombies; Stephen Gardiner, climate change; and Jacques Derrida and Hélène Cixous, deconstruction
• A revised chapter on the meaning of life (Chapter 18) discusses in more depth the views of both subjectivists and objectivists and critiques reasons often given for thinking that life is meaningless
• Additional online resources at the end of each chapter supplement the books and papers already listed in "For Further Reading"
• A new appendix on deductive and inductive arguments covers basic deductive argument patterns and explains how to evaluate enumerative inductions, analogical induction, and inference to the best explanation
• Additional readings include Plato's Euthyphro and selections from Donald Robertson, Lawrence Blum, David Chalmers, Stephen Gardiner and Iddo Landau

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