Augustine said that babies deserve to go to hell. Berkeley asserted that matter doesn’t exist. Bentham would have argued that Dan Brown is better than Shakespeare. All these statements stem from philosophy’s greatest minds. What were they thinking? Overflowing with compelling arguments for the downright strange – many of which are hugely influential today – popular philosopher Gary Hayden shows that just because something is odd, doesn’t mean that someone hasn’t argued for it. Spanning ethics, logic, politics, sex and religion, this unconventional introduction to philosophy will challenge your assumptions, expand your horizons, infuriate, entertain and amuse you. Gary Hayden is a journalist and popular philosopher. He has a master’s degree in philosophy and has written for The Times Educational Supplement. He is the author of This Book Does Not Exist: Adventures in the Paradoxical.

    Said to be the text closest to the Buddha’s actual words, it is a collection of short teachings memorized during his lifetime by his disciples. Easwaran presents the Dhammapada as a guide to spiritual perseverance, progress, and ultimately enlightenment — a heroic confrontation with life as it really is, with straight answers to our deepest questions. We witness the heartbreak of death, for instance — what does that mean for us? What is love? How does karma work? How do we follow the spiritual life in the midst of work and family? Does nirvana really exist, and if so, what is it like to be illumined?In his interpretation of Buddhist themes, illustrated with stories from the Buddha’s life, Easwaran offers a view of the concept of Right Understanding that is both exhilarating and instructive. He shares his experiences on the spiritual path, giving the advice that only an experienced teacher and practitioner can offer, and urges us to answer for ourselves the Buddha’s call to nirvana — that mysterious, enduring state of wisdom, joy, and peace.

    Written in Bob Frissell's warm, personal style with updated commentary, Something in This Book Is True is both an account of Frissell's journey to inner discovery and empowerment and a most unusual reader's guide. Delving into topics as eclectic as polarity consciousness, emotional body clearing, and higher selves, Frissell affirms that humanity is composed of spiritual beings having human experiences—not vice versa. This new edition incorporates photos and illustrations into Frissell's engaging text.

    He showed that, far from being an exotic novelty, Hinduism was an important, legitimate spiritual tradition with valuable lessons for the West. Pathways to Joy is a selection of 108 of his sacred teachings on Vedanta philosophy. In accessible and powerful prose, Vivekananda illuminates the four classical yoga paths — karma, bhakti, raja, and jnana — for the different natures of humankind. The messages focus on the oneness of existence; the divinity of the soul; the truth in all religions; and unifying with the Divine within. Invaluable and inspiring, the selections also explore karma, maya, rebirth, and other great revelations of Hinduism.

    It is a subject that he explores in the widest context but underpinning this examination is his belief that religion has given us many of the best stories and metaphors for the act. He proceeds to relate forgiveness to such events as September 11th, the Truth Commission in South Africa, and the ongoing conflicts in Palestine/Israel, Northern Ireland and Serbia. On Forgiveness is a discourse on how forgiveness works, where it came from and how the need to embrace it is greater than ever if we are to free ourselves from the binds of the past. Drawing on philosophers and writers of the caliber of George Steiner, Frederick Nietzsche, Jacques Derrida, Hannah Arendt, and Nelson Mandela, Holloway has written another fascinating and timely book.

     Free BONUS Inside! Voltaire, born François-Marie Arouet in Paris, France, was a writer and leading figure of the Enlightenment. His insistence that all authority could and must be questioned was so radical, he ended up in prison several times and was ultimately exiled. Voltaire’s writings were instrumental in influencing the American and French revolutions. Man as a being with natural rights was a radical concept at the time, but one which the American founding fathers embraced. Voltaire’s anger was specifically directed at the arbitrary powers of the state and the church. The French legal system treated aristocrats differently than ordinary citizens. The Catholic church, too, wielded its dictatorial power. Voltaire incurred the wrath of both kings and bishops with his unrelenting attacks on such abuses of freedom. Unwilling to be silenced, Voltaire continued his demand for individual freedom throughout the span of his entire life. Only after his death was he officially welcomed back to Paris, and Voltaire’s remains now rest in the Parisian Panthéon, the burial place for the country’s national heroes. Discover a plethora of topics such as Literary Success and Financial Failure Émilie: The Love of His Life Years in Exile Candide and Morality Voltaire’s Final Year and Death And much more! So if you want a quick and easy to read book on Voltaire, simply scroll up and click the "Buy now" button for instant access!

    Without knowledge, scientific enquiry is meaningless and we can’t begin to analyse the world around us. What is knowledge? How do you know you are not dreaming? Should we trust our senses? Presuming no prior experience of philosophy, this book covers everything in the topic from scepticism and possible worlds to Kant’s transcendentalism. Clear and readable, Epistemology: A Beginner’s Guide is essential reading for students and aspiring thinkers.

    But behind both works lay the assumption that the philosophy of language is in the end a branch of the philosophy of the mind: speech acts are forms of human action and represent just one example of the mind's capacity to relate the human organism to the world. The present book is concerned with these biologically fundamental capacities, and, though third in the sequence, in effect it provides the philosophical foundations for the other two. Intentionality is taken to be the crucial mental phenomenon, and its analysis involves wide-ranging discussions of perception, action, causation, meaning, and reference. In all these areas John Searle has original and stimulating views. He ends with a resolution of the 'mind-body' problem.

    He emphasizes the importance of a historical context to moral concepts and ideas. MacIntyre illustrates the relevance of philosophical queries on moral concepts enabling the reader to understand the importance of a historical account of ethics. ContentsPreface to the second editionPreface1. The Philosophical Point of the the History of Ethics 2. The Prephilosophical History of of "Good" and the Transition to Philosophy3. The Sophists and Socrates4. Plato: The Gorgias5. Plato: The Republic6. Postscript to Plato7. Aristotle's Ethics8. Postscript to Greek Ethics9. Christianity10. Luther, Machiavelli, Hobbes and Spinoza11. New Values12. The British Eighteenth-Century Argument13. The French Eighteenth-Century Argument14. Kant15. Hegel and Marx16. Kierkegaard to Nietzsche17. Reformers, Utopians, Idealists18. Modern Moral Philosophy

    

    In a new introduction, Steiner addresses language and philosophy and the rise of Nazism."It would be hard to imagine a better introduction to the work of philosopher Martin Heidegger."—George Kateb, The New Republic

    The contributors include A.J. Ayer, Bernard Williams, Martha Nussbaum, Peter Singer, and John Searle, so that the book is not only an introduction to the philosophers of the past, but gives an insight into the view and personalities of some of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century.

    The result is a remarkable synthesis, which reflects well the subtleties of experience and yet avoids the pitfalls of arbitrary classification and facile generalization. For these reasons, and for its general tone and erudition and humanism, this book will surely be one that will endure when the current flurry of academic interest in environmental experience abates.” Canadian Geographer

    Incorporating updated notations, selective answers to exercises, expanded treatment of natural deduction, and new discussions of predicate-functor logic and the affinities between higher set theory and the elementary logic of terms, W. V. Quine's new edition will serve admirably for both classroom and independent use.

    Violence is ubiquitous and incessant but protean, varying its outward form according to the social constellation at hand. In Topology of Violence, the philosopher Byung-Chul Han considers the shift in violence from the visible to the invisible, from the frontal to the viral to the self-inflicted, from brute force to mediated force, from the real to the virtual. Violence, Han tells us, has gone from the negative—explosive, massive, and martial—to the positive, wielded without enmity or domination. This, he says, creates the false impression that violence has disappeared. Anonymized, desubjectified, systemic, violence conceals itself because it has become one with society. Han first investigates the macro-physical manifestations of violence, which take the form of negativity—developing from the tension between self and other, interior and exterior, friend and enemy. These manifestations include the archaic violence of sacrifice and blood, the mythical violence of jealous and vengeful gods, the deadly violence of the sovereign, the merciless violence of torture, the bloodless violence of the gas chamber, the viral violence of terrorism, and the verbal violence of hurtful language. He then examines the violence of positivity—the expression of an excess of positivity—which manifests itself as over-achievement, over-production, over-communication, hyper-attention, and hyperactivity. The violence of positivity, Han warns, could be even more disastrous than that of negativity. Infection, invasion, and infiltration have given way to infarction.