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Cover

The Great Conversation

Volume II: Descartes through Derrida and Quine

Eighth Edition

Norman Melchert and David R. Morrow

Publication Date - 17 September 2018

ISBN: 9780190670634

464 pages
Paperback
7-1/2 x 9-1/4 inches

In Stock

This historically organized introduction treats philosophy as a dramatic and continuous story: a Great Conversation

Description

Tracing the exchange of ideas among history's key philosophers, The Great Conversation: A Historical Introduction to Philosophy, Eighth Edition, provides a generous selection of excerpts from major philosophical works and makes them more easily understandable to students with lucid and engaging explanations. Extensive cross-referencing shows students how philosophers respond appreciatively or critically to the thoughts of other philosophers.

The Great Conversation, Eighth Edition, is also available in two separate volumes to suit your course needs:

The Great Conversation: Volume I: Pre-Socratics through Descartes, Eighth Edition

The Great Conversation: Volume II: Descartes through Derrida and Quine, Eighth Edition

New to this Edition

  • Streamlined chapters that provide more accessible and focused content
  • Three new chapters on the beginnings of philosophical conversations in India and China: Chapter 3, "Appearance and Reality in Ancient India"; Chapter 5, "Reason and Relativism in China"; and Chapter 10, "Confucius, Mencius, and Xunzi: Virtue in Ancient China"
  • A new chapter devoted entirely to philosophy in the Islamic world: Chapter 14, "Philosophy in the Islamic World: The Great Conversation Spreads Out"
  • A section on Hildegard of Bingen in a chapter on medieval thought, new Sketches of Hypatia and Margaret Cavendish, and a Profile of Émilie du Chåtelet

Features

  • Presents philosophy as an ongoing conversation among philosophers about people's deepest concerns and questions
  • Provides historical and cultural context for the philosophical ideas being presented throughout, especially in Chapter 1, Before Philosophy: Myth in Hesiod and Homer; Chapter 14, Philosophy in the Islamic World: The Great Conversation Spreads Out; and Chapter 16, From Medieval to Modern Europe
  • Cross-referencing enables students to see how various thinkers built off of one another's ideas and diverged or agreed on particular topics
  • Includes a generous, well-selected array of excerpts from major philosophical works
  • The excerpts and the authors' discussion complement each other to provide historical and cultural context for the philosophical ideas
  • Review questions follow key passages and facilitate classroom discussions
  • Each chapter ends with two types of exercises--"Basic Questions" and "For Further Thought"--for use in small group discussions or papers
  • A "How to Read Philosophy" section in the preface lets students know what to expect
  • A "Writing a Philosophy Paper" section in the appendix offers much-needed pointers for writing in this genre
  • A free, open-access Companion Website provides students with essential points and self-quizzes

About the Author(s)

Norman Melchert is Selfridge Professor of Philosophy Emeritus and a former Acting Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Lehigh University. He is the author of Who's to Say? A Dialogue on Relativism (1994) and numerous journal articles.

David R. Morrow is a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at George Mason University. College. He is the coauthor of A Workbook for Arguments, Second Edition (2015) and numerous papers in applied ethics.

Reviews

"The Great Conversation is the best introductory text I have come across in twenty-five years of teaching. It's an extremely useful and insightful book with a particularly appropriate balance of depth and breadth. The writing style is easily accessible without sacrificing clarity and specificity."--Douglas Howie, North Lake College

"Both my students and I enjoy the integration of philosophy outside of typical Western thought. The writing is easily understood by introductory students who normally don't have a background in the material."--Susan M. Mullican, University of Southern Mississippi, Gulf Coast Campus

"The Great Conversation is a solid introduction. More than other texts, it takes the time in plain English to flesh out important concepts. It also tells a tight story, with the chapters building on one another, which is useful for introducing students to philosophical thinking."--Eric Boynton, Allegheny College

"The chapters on classical Chinese philosophy, with selections from numerous texts and figures, are a welcome addition. Giving students exposure to non-Western traditions of thought at the introductory level provides them with a more expansive sense of the range and possibility of philosophical thought."--Hagop Sarkissian, Baruch College and The City University of New York Graduate Center

Table of Contents

    *=New to this Edition
    A Word to Instructors
    A Word to Students
    Acknowledgments
    16. From Medieval to Modern Europe
    The World God Made for Us
    Reforming the Church
    Revolutions
    Humanism
    Skeptical Thoughts Revived
    Copernicus to Kepler to Galileo: The Great Triple Play
    The Counter-Reformation
    17. René Descartes: Doubting Our Way to Certainty
    The Method
    Meditations on First Philosophy (each Meditation is followed by Commentary and Questions)
    Meditation I
    Meditation II
    Meditation III
    Meditation IV
    Meditation V
    Meditation VI
    What Has Descartes Done?
    A New Ideal for Knowledge
    A New Vision of Reality
    Problems
    The Place of Humans in the World of Nature
    The Mind and the Body
    God and the Problem of Skepticism
    The Preeminence of Epistemology
    18. Hobbes, Locke, and Berkeley: Materialism and the Beginnings of Empiricism
    Thomas Hobbes: Catching Persons in the Net of the New Science
    Method
    Minds and Motives
    * Sketch: Margaret Cavendish
    Sketch: Francis Bacon
    The Natural Foundation of Moral Rules
    John Locke: Looking to Experience
    Origin of Ideas
    Idea of the Soul
    Idea of Personal Identity
    Language and Essence
    The Extent of Knowledge
    Of Representative Government
    Of Toleration
    George Berkeley: Ideas into Things
    Abstract Ideas
    Ideas and Things
    God
    19. David Hume: Unmasking the Pretensions of Reason
    How Newton Did It
    * Profile: Émilie du Chåtelet
    To Be the Newton of Human Nature
    The Theory of Ideas
    The Association of Ideas
    Causation: The Very Idea
    The Disappearing Self
    Rescuing Human Freedom
    Is It Reasonable to Believe in God?
    Understanding Morality
    Reason Is Not a Motivator
    The Origins of Moral Judgment
    Is Hume a Skeptic?
    20. Immanuel Kant: Rehabilitating Reason (within Strict Limits)
    Critique
    Judgments
    Geometry, Mathematics, Space, and Time
    Common Sense, Science, and the a Priori Categories
    Phenomena and Noumena
    Sketch: Baruch Spinoza
    Sketch: Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz
    Reasoning and the Ideas of Metaphysics: God, World, and Soul
    The Soul
    The World and the Free Will
    God
    The Ontological Argument
    Reason and Morality
    The Good Will
    The Moral Law
    Sketch: Jean-Jacques Rousseau
    Autonomy
    Freedom
    21. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Taking History Seriously
    Historical and Intellectual Context
    The French Revolution
    The Romantics
    Epistemology Internalized
    Sketch: Arthur Schopenhauer
    Self and Others
    Stoic and Skeptical Consciousness
    Hegel's Analysis of Christianity
    Reason and Reality: The Theory of Idealism
    Spirit Made Objective: The Social Character of Ethics
    History and Freedom
    22. Kierkegaard and Marx: Two Ways to "Correct" Hegel
    Kierkegaard: On Individual Existence
    The Aesthetic
    The Ethical
    The Religious
    The Individual
    Marx: Beyond Alienation and Exploitation
    Alienation, Exploitation, and Private Property
    Communism
    23. Moral and Political Reformers: The Happiness of All, including Women
    The Classic Utilitarians
    Profile: Peter Singer
    The Rights of Women
    24. Friedrich Nietzsche: The Value of Existence
    Pessimism and Tragedy
    Good-bye Real World
    The Death of God
    Revaluation of Values
    Master Morality/Slave Morality
    Profile: Iris Murdoch
    The Overman
    Affirming Eternal Recurrence
    25. The Pragmatists: Thought and Action
    Charles Sanders Peirce
    Fixing Belief
    Belief and Doubt
    Truth and Reality
    Meaning
    Signs
    John Dewey
    The Impact of Darwin
    Naturalized Epistemology
    Sketch: William James
    Nature and Natural Science
    Value Naturalized
    26. Ludwig Wittgenstein: Linguistic Analysis and Ordinary Language
    Language and Its Logic
    Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
    Sketch: Bertrand Russell
    Picturing
    Thought and Language
    Logical Truth
    Saying and Showing
    Setting the Limit to Thought
    Value and the Self
    Good and Evil, Happiness and Unhappiness
    The Unsayable
    Profile: The Logical Positivists
    Philosophical Investigations
    Philosophical Illusion
    Language-Games
    Naming and Meaning
    Family Resemblances
    The Continuity of Wittgenstein's Thought
    Profile: Zen
    Our Groundless Certainty
    27. Martin Heidegger: The Meaning of Being
    What Is the Question?
    The Clue
    Phenomenology
    Being-in-the-World
    The "Who" of Dasein
    Modes of Disclosure
    Attunement
    Understanding
    Discourse
    Falling-Away
    Idle Talk
    Curiosity
    Ambiguity
    Care
    Death
    Conscience, Guilt, and Resoluteness
    Temporality as the Meaning of Care
    28. Simone de Beauvoir: Existentialist, Feminist
    Ambiguity
    Profile: Jean-Paul Sartre
    Ethics
    Woman
    29. Postmodernism: Derrida, Foucault, and Rorty
    Deconstruction: Jacques Derrida
    Writing, Iterability, Différance
    Deconstructing a Text
    Knowledge and Power: Michel Foucault
    Archaeology of Knowledge
    Genealogy
    Liberal Irony: Richard Rorty
    Contingency, Truth, and Antiessentialism
    Liberalism and the Hope of Solidarity
    Relativism
    30. Physical Realism and the Mind: Quine, Dennett, Searle, Nagel, Jackson, and Chalmers
    Science, Common Sense, and Metaphysics: Willard van Orman Quine
    Holism
    Ontological Commitment
    Natural Knowing
    The Matter of Minds
    Intentionality
    Intentional Systems: Daniel Dennett
    The Chinese Room: John Searle
    Consciousness: Nagel, Jackson, Chalmers
    Afterword
    Appendix: Writing a Philosophy Paper
    Glossary
    Credits
    Index

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