Collected Essays on Philosophers

Collected Essays on Philosophers PDF Author: Colin Wilson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781443889018
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Colin Wilsonâ (TM)s first book The Outsider was published to great critical acclaim in May 1956. It was the first of six philosophical books, known collectively as â ~The Outsider Cycleâ (TM), compiled by Wilson during the following decade. A summary volume, Introduction to the New Existentialism, appeared in 1966. During the 1970s, however, Wilsonâ (TM)s interests became, on the surface, more varied, publishing books on criminology, psychology and the occult. But he always maintained a philosophical stance, irrespective of subject matter, and continued to write purely philosophical essays for journals, magazines, and symposia. This volume brings together, for the first time, his essays on seventeen philosophers, including some of those he met personally to discuss their ideas. In his essay on Spinoza he wrote: â oePhilosophers are never so entertaining â " or so instructive â " as when they are beating one another over the head.â It is that statement, applied to this particular volume, that makes these essays, from Englandâ (TM)s only home-grown existential philosopher, so eminently readable, entertaining, instructive and, sometimes, controversial.

Collected Essays on Philosophers

Collected Essays on Philosophers PDF Author: Colin Wilson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781443889018
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book

Book Description
Colin Wilsonâ (TM)s first book The Outsider was published to great critical acclaim in May 1956. It was the first of six philosophical books, known collectively as â ~The Outsider Cycleâ (TM), compiled by Wilson during the following decade. A summary volume, Introduction to the New Existentialism, appeared in 1966. During the 1970s, however, Wilsonâ (TM)s interests became, on the surface, more varied, publishing books on criminology, psychology and the occult. But he always maintained a philosophical stance, irrespective of subject matter, and continued to write purely philosophical essays for journals, magazines, and symposia. This volume brings together, for the first time, his essays on seventeen philosophers, including some of those he met personally to discuss their ideas. In his essay on Spinoza he wrote: â oePhilosophers are never so entertaining â " or so instructive â " as when they are beating one another over the head.â It is that statement, applied to this particular volume, that makes these essays, from Englandâ (TM)s only home-grown existential philosopher, so eminently readable, entertaining, instructive and, sometimes, controversial.

The Importance of What We Care About

The Importance of What We Care About PDF Author: Harry G. Frankfurt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521336116
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
A collection of thirteen seminal essays on ethics, free will, and the philosophy of mind, first published in 1988.

Philosophical Essays

Philosophical Essays PDF Author: Hans Jonas
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780982706794
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
A pivotal volume in the collected works of Hans Jonas (1903-1993), one of most important German-American philosophers of the last half of the 20th century, this edition is the only one to include contributions from his three primary areas of achievement: philosophical reflection on gnosticism, on biology, and on technology.

Vagaries of Desire: A Collection of Philosophical Essays

Vagaries of Desire: A Collection of Philosophical Essays PDF Author: Timo Airaksinen
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004410309
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
In Vagaries of Desire, Timo Airaksinen develops a new philosophical account of desire understood as mental state that focuses on a desirable possible world. Literary and philosophical themes, including sexuality, are discussed in terms of their metaphoric and metonymic features.

Philosophy of Cruelty

Philosophy of Cruelty PDF Author: Giorgio Baruchello
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780993952753
Category : Cruelty
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
Baruchello's Philosophy of Cruelty, the second collection of his essays, turns a difficult and emotionally charged topic into a surprisingly informative and enlightening read. Covering the history of Western philosophy's treatment of cruelty as a topic, yet relating every point to present-day occasions of violence and injustice, this book is a touchstone for any discussion of cruelty as a philosophical theme. It pulls no punches, yet it leaves you standing taller.

Potentialities

Potentialities PDF Author: Giorgio Agamben
Publisher: Stanford Univ Press + ORM
ISBN: 0804764077
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 449

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Book Description
This book collects fifteen major philosophical essays spanning more than twenty years by acclaimed Italian philosopher and author of State of Exception. Giorgio Agamben is one of contemporary philosophy’s most influential thinkers on the subjects of language, power, society. This collection of essays opens with an enlightening introduction by the translator Daniel Heller-Roazen, who situates Agamben’s work with respect to both the history of philosophy and contemporary European thought. The essays that follow articulate a series of theoretical confrontations with privileged figures in the history of philosophy, politics, and criticism, from Plato to Spinoza, Aristotle to Deleuze, Carl Schmitt to Benjamin, Hegel to Aby Warburg, and Heidegger to Derrida. Three fundamental concepts organize the collection as a whole: the existence of language; the nature of history; and the problem of potentiality in metaphysics, ethics, and the philosophy of language. All these topics converge in the final part of the book, in which Agamben offers an extensive reading of Melville’s short story “Bartleby the Scrivener” as a work that puts potentiality and actuality, possibility and reality, in a new light.

Kurt Gödel

Kurt Gödel PDF Author: Francisco Rodriguez-Consuegra
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9783764353100
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
Kurt Gödel, together with Bertrand Russell, is the most important name in logic, and in the foundations and philosophy of mathematics of this century. However, unlike Russel, Gödel the mathematician published very little apart from his well-known writings in logic, metamathematics and set theory. Fortunately, Gödel the philosopher, who devoted more years of his life to philosophy than to technical investigation, wrote hundreds of pages on the philosophy of mathematics, as well as on other fields of philosophy. It was only possible to learn more about his philosophical works after the opening of his literary estate at Princeton a decade ago. The goal of this book is to make available to the scholarly public solid reconstructions and editions of two of the most important essays which Gödel wrote on the philosophy of mathematics. The book is divided into two parts. The first provides the reader with an incisive historico-philosophical introduction to Gödel's technical results and philosophical ideas. Written by the Editor, this introductory apparatus is not only devoted to the manuscripts themselves but also to the philosophical context in which they were written. The second contains two of Gödel's most important and fascinating unpublished essays: 1) the Gibbs Lecture ("Some basic theorems on the foundations of mathematics and their philosophical implications", 1951); and 2) two of the six versions of the essay which Gödel wrote for the Carnap volume of the Schilpp series The Library of Living Philosophers ("Is mathematics syntax of language?", 1953-1959).

Philosophy and Communication

Philosophy and Communication PDF Author: Bert Olivier
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9783039119028
Category : Communication
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
The essays assembled in this volume focus on philosophical questions regarding various aspects of communication. They are predicated on the author's conviction that communication between human beings, regardless of the many difficulties involved, is something of sufficient importance to justify a patient philosophical exploration such as that embarked upon here. Interwoven with philosophical considerations readers will find insights gained from psychoanalytical thinkers such as Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva. The essays address a wide range of themes. Sometimes they concern fundamental things, such as the question of the very possibility of communication or the indispensable function of communication in sexual relations. The communicational significance of a certain kind of architecture is scrutinized, as well as that of images in our media-saturated, postmodern world, together with the connection between the latter and the experience of identity today. Other essays concentrate on communicational phenomena such as seduction and Kristeva's notion of 'revolt', the difficulties surrounding communication in the age of 'Empire', and the reappearance of communicational sophistry as a theme in contemporary cinema.

Philosophical Provocations

Philosophical Provocations PDF Author: Colin McGinn
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262340100
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
Pithy, direct, and bold: essays that propose new ways to think about old problems, spanning a range of philosophical topics. In Philosophical Provocations, Colin McGinn offers a series of short, sharp essays that take on philosophical problems ranging from the concept of mind to paradox, altruism, and the relation between God and the Devil. Avoiding the usual scholarly apparatus and embracing a blunt pithiness, McGinn aims to achieve as much as possible in as short a space as possible while covering as many topics as possible. Much academic philosophical writing today is long, leaden, citation heavy, dense with qualifications, and painful to read. The essays in Philosophical Provocations are short, direct, and engaging, often challenging philosophical orthodoxy as they consider issues in mind, language, knowledge, metaphysics, biology, ethics, and religion. McGinn is looking for new ways to think about old problems. Thus he writes, about consciousness, “I think we have been all wrong,” and goes on to suggest that both consciousness and the unconscious are mysteries. Summing up his proposal on altruism, he remarks, “My suggestion can now be stated, somewhat brutally, as follows: human altruism is the result of parasitic manipulation.” He takes a moment to reflect: “I really don't know why it is good to be alive, though I am convinced that the standard suggestions don't work.” McGinn gets straight to the point and states his position with maximum clarity. These essays offer provocative invitations to think again.

The Time is Now. Essays on the Philosophy of Becoming

The Time is Now. Essays on the Philosophy of Becoming PDF Author: Douglas ALLEN
Publisher: Zeta Books
ISBN: 6066971301
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
The time for what? The title of Mihaela Gligor’s edited collection is wonderfully flexible, as anything having to do with time should be. There is something not only boundless about time, but also raw and untamed. In its pure form, time would be too much for us to handle. We would be crushed by the sheer immensity of it, or else we would lose our minds trying to make sense of such unmediated time. Luckily, for the most part we don’t experience time in its pure form. Time comes to us already processed: shaped, engineered, tamed. The volume does fine justice to the notion that we experience time as already shaped by religion, politics, and culture. Whether its contributions cover religious or political figures, philosophers or poets, mystics or physicists, they show – sometimes explicitly, sometimes more discreetly – how difficult it is to deal with time in a pure, unmediated form. The contributors’ cultural, religious, and intellectual rooting inform the way think about time, just as about anything else. Which, far from being a weakness, is something to be recognized and celebrated. (Costică Brădățan, Texas Tech University, U.S.A.)