Exploring issues that range from faith to prayer to evil to immortality, and far beyond, Garnder challenges the discerning reader with fundamental questions of classical philosophy and life's greater meanings.Recalling such philosophers was Wittgenstein and Arendt, The Whys of Philosophical Scrivener embodies Martin Garner's unceasing interest and joy in the impenetrable mysteries of life.

    Travel back to ancient Greece with Professor Emeritus of Philosophy Donald R. Moor and author Robert M. Pirsig ("Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance") to meet this legendary thinker. In addition to expanding upon his famous allegory of the cave, Plato talks about learning through dialogue, the primacy of good and the price of wrong doing, democracy, freedom and censorship, women's equality, love, and mathematics, and the search for truth.

    World History

    An exploration of technology used by ancient civilizations and the support it provides for certain biblical interpretations.

    500 B.C.), are translated, and the pattern of his thought is reconstructed by the author.

    Each section also includes quizzes, games, and mental exercises.

    Originally titled The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Conservatism, this little book was essentially a popular version of The Conservative Mind.   Now, a century after its author’s birth, this neglected gem has been recovered. It remains what Kirk intended it to be: an accessible introduction to conservative ideas, especially for the young. With a new title and an introduction by the eminent intellectual historian Wilfred M. McClay, Russell Kirk’s Concise Guide to Conservatism arrives with uncanny timing. The movement that Kirk defined in 1953 is today so contested and fragmented that no one seems able to say with confidence what conservatism means.  This book, as fresh and prophetic as the day it was published sixty years ago, is a reminder that no one can match Russell Kirk in engaging people’s minds and imaginations—an indispensable task in reviving our civilization.

    If not modern, he asked, what have we been, and what values should we inherit? Over the last twenty-five years, Latour has developed a research protocol different from the actor-network theory with which his name is now associated—a research protocol that follows the different types of connectors that provide specific truth conditions. These are the connectors that prompt a climate scientist challenged by a captain of industry to appeal to the institution of science, with its army of researchers and mountains of data, rather than to “capital-S Science” as a higher authority. Such modes of extension—or modes of existence, Latour argues here—account for the many differences between law, science, politics, and other domains of knowledge.Though scientific knowledge corresponds to only one of the many possible modes of existence Latour describes, an unrealistic vision of science has become the arbiter of reality and truth, seducing us into judging all values by a single standard. Latour implores us to recover other modes of existence in order to do justice to the plurality of truth conditions that Moderns have discovered throughout their history. This systematic effort of building a new philosophical anthropology presents a completely different view of what Moderns have been, and provides a new basis for opening diplomatic encounters with other societies at a time when all societies are coping with ecological crisis.

    This is as true of scientific empiricism as it is of poststructualism.The Houses of History provides a comprehensive introduction to the twelve schools of thought which have had the greatest influence on the study of history in the twentieth century. Ranging from Empiricism to Postcolonialism, Marxism to the Ethnohistorians, each chapter begins with an introduction to the particular school, the main protagonists, the critics, and is followed by a useful section of further readings. From the classic, such as G. R. Elton's England Under the Tudors and E. P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class, to the recent, such as Henrietta Whiteman's White Buffalo Woman and Judith Walkowitz's City of Dreadful Delight, the diverse selections collected here bring together the leading historians and theorists of the century.Comprehensive and accessible to undergraduates, The Houses of History is ideally suited to classroom use.

    Right? Wrong, says Alex Rosenberg in How History Gets Things Wrong. Feeling especially well-informed after reading a book of popular history on the best-seller list? Don't. Narrative history is always, always wrong. It's not just incomplete or inaccurate but deeply wrong, as wrong as Ptolemaic astronomy. We no longer believe that the earth is the center of the universe. Why do we still believe in historical narrative? Our attachment to history as a vehicle for understanding has a long Darwinian pedigree and a genetic basis. Our love of stories is hard-wired. Neuroscience reveals that human evolution shaped a tool useful for survival into a defective theory of human nature.Stories historians tell, Rosenberg continues, are not only wrong but harmful. Israel and Palestine, for example, have dueling narratives of dispossession that prevent one side from compromising with the other. Henry Kissinger applied lessons drawn from the Congress of Vienna to American foreign policy with disastrous results. Human evolution improved primate mind reading—the ability to anticipate the behavior of others, whether predators, prey, or cooperators—to get us to the top of the African food chain. Now, however, this hard-wired capacity makes us think we can understand history—what the Kaiser was thinking in 1914, why Hitler declared war on the United States—by uncovering the narratives of what happened and why. In fact, Rosenberg argues, we will only understand history if we don't make it into a story.

    He introduces us to the essence of Aristotle's philosophy and guides us through all the central Aristotelian texts--selected from the Physics, Metaphysics, Ethics, Politics and the biological and logical works. The book is written in a direct, lucid style that engages the reader with the themes in an active and participatory manner. It will prove a stimulating introduction for all students of Greek philosophy and for a wide range of others interested in Aristotle as a giant figure in Western intellectual history.

    Orphaned as a teenager, he came to America in search of an education, a home, and the war that would at last bring him fame and honor. As George Washington’s most trusted aide, Hamilton helped to win the American Revolution—but after the war, his enemies lost no time accusing him of trying to sell his country back to the British. He was the most powerful member of Washington’s presidential cabinet—so why did Adams and Jefferson hate him so much?In this book, you will learn how the author of the Federalist Papers and the first Secretary of the Treasury nearly ruined his career by fighting duels, seducing women, and getting involved in America’s first sex scandal. The duel that killed Alexander Hamilton is the most famous duel in American history, but you’ll have to come up with your own answer to its greatest mystery: who shot first, Hamilton or Burr?

    First appearing as an online series, the column quickly attracted millions of readers through its accessible examination of universal topics like the nature of science, consciousness and morality, while also probing more contemporary issues such as the morality of drones, gun control and the gender divide.Now collected for the first time in this handsomely designed volume, The Stone Reader presents 133 meaningful and influential essays from the series, placing nearly the entirety of modern philosophical discourse at a reader’s grasp. The book, divided into four broad sections—Philosophy, Science, Religion and Morals, and Society—opens with a series of questions about the scope, history and identity of philosophy: What are the practical uses of philosophy? Does the discipline, begun in the West in ancient Greece with Socrates, favor men and exclude women? Does the history and study of philosophy betray a racial bias against non-white thinkers, or geographical bias toward the West?These questions and others form a foundation for readers as the book moves to the second section, Science, where some of our most urgent contemporary philosophical debates are taking place. Will artificial intelligence compromise our morality? Does neuroscience undermine our free will? Is there is a legitimate place for the humanities in a world where science and technology appear to rule? Should the evidence for global warming change the way we live, or die?In the book’s third section, Religion and Morals, we find philosophy where it is often at its best, sharpest and most disturbing—working through the arguments provoked by competing moral theories in the face of real-life issues and rigorously addressing familiar ethical dilemmas in a new light. Can we have a true moral life without belief in God? What are the dangers of moral relativism?In its final part, Society, The Stone Reader returns to its origins as a forum to encourage philosophers who are willing to engage closely, critically and analytically with the affairs of the day, including economic inequality, technology and racial discrimination. In directly confronting events like the September 11 attacks, the killing of Trayvon Martin, the Sandy Hook School massacre, the essays here reveal the power of philosophy to help shape our viewpoints on nearly every issue we face today.With an introduction by Peter Catapano that details the column’s founding and distinct editorial process at The New York Times, and prefatory notes to each section by Simon Critchley, The Stone Reader promises to become not only an intellectual landmark but also a confirmation that philosophy is, indeed, for everyone.

    What emerges from this history is a general theory of intellectual life, one that avoids both the reduction of ideas to the influences of society at large and the purely contingent local construction of meanings. Instead, Collins focuses on the social locations where sophisticated ideas are formed: the patterns of intellectual networks and their inner divisions and conflicts. According to his theory, when the material bases of intellectual life shift with the rise and fall of religions, educational systems, and publishing markets, opportunities open for some networks to expand while others shrink and close down. It locates individuals -- among them celebrated thinkers like Socrates, Aristotle, Chu Hsi, Shankara, Wirt Henstein, and Heidegger -- within these networks and explains the emotional and symbolic processes that, by forming coalitions within the mind, ultimately bring about original and historically successful ideas.