We cannot choose to avoid philosophy, we can only choose whether we understand it or not. Stefan Molyneux, host of Freedomain Radio – the largest and most popular philosophy show in the world, with over 600 million views and downloads – takes you on a spectacular journey through the most foundational philosophical questions of the ages, clearing up and clarifying the most thorny problems posed by philosophers throughout history: -How do we know what is real? -How do we know what is true? -How do we know what is right? -How do we know what is good? -How do we know we even have a choice? -How do we convince others? These are all questions that we – as individuals and societies – wrestle with every day. These questions have challenged, motivated and plagued mankind for thousands of years. “Essential Philosophy” answers these questions with rigourous, illuminating and entertaining logic, reasoning from deep first principles to spectacular final conclusions. There is no need for confusion, there is no need for despair, there is no need for fear – pick up this book now, absorb the true power of philosophy, and live a rational moral life to the fullest. And then, give “Essential Philosophy” to others, so that the world may one day live in reason and peace.

    This work demonstrates Popper's importance across the whole range of philosophy and provides an introduction to the main themes of philosophy itself.

    It furnishes us with a key to his main work, The Critique of Pure Reason; in fact, it is an extract containing all the salient ideas of Kant's system. It approaches the subject in the simplest and most direct way, and is therefore best adapted as an introduction into his philosophy.

    But their enterprise was by no means limited to this proto-scientific task. Through, for instance, Heraclitus' enigmatic sayings, the poetry of Parmenides and Empedocles, and Zeno's paradoxes, the Western world was introduced to metaphysics, rationalist theology, ethics, and logic, by thinkers who often seem to be mystics or shamans as much as philosophers or scientists in the modern mould. And out of the Sophists' reflections on human beings and their place in the world arose and interest in language, and in political, moral, and social philosophy.This volume contains a translation of all the most important fragments of the Presocratics and Sophists, and of the most informative testimonia from ancient sources, supplemented by lucid commentary.

    Richard Rorty, a Princeton professor who had contributed to the analytic tradition in philosophy, was now attempting to shrug off all the central problems with which it had long been preoccupied. After publication, the Press was barely able to keep up with demand, and the book has since gone on to become one of its all-time best-sellers in philosophy. Rorty argued that, beginning in the seventeenth century, philosophers developed an unhealthy obsession with the notion of representation. They compared the mind to a mirror that reflects reality. In their view, knowledge is concerned with the accuracy of these reflections, and the strategy employed to obtain this knowledge--that of inspecting, repairing, and polishing the mirror--belongs to philosophy. Rorty's book was a powerful critique of this imagery and the tradition of thought that it spawned. He argued that the questions about truth posed by Descartes, Kant, Hegel, and modern epistemologists and philosophers of language simply couldn't be answered and were, in any case, irrelevant to serious social and cultural inquiry. This stance provoked a barrage of criticism, but whatever the strengths of Rorty's specific claims, the book had a therapeutic effect on philosophy. It reenergized pragmatism as an intellectual force, steered philosophy back to its roots in the humanities, and helped to make alternatives to analytic philosophy a serious choice for young graduate students. Twenty-five years later, the book remains a must-read for anyone seriously concerned about the nature of philosophical inquiry and what philosophers can and cannot do to help us understand and improve the world.

    Jones and Fogelin weave key passages from classic philosophy works into their comments and criticisms, giving A HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY the combined advantages of a source book and textbook. The text concentrates on major figures in each historical period, combining exposition with direct quotations from the philosophers themselves. The text places philosophers in appropriate cultural context and shows how their theories reflect the concerns of their times.

    It is suitable for both A Level and HE philosophy students. historical context; a section by section guide to Existentialism and Humanism including key quotes; tasks and activities to help you understand and evaluate Sartre's philosophy; and a critical analysis of the philosophical implications of Sartre's ideas. It also offers summaries of key points needed for exam questions about Sartre and existentialism plus an extensive glossary of key words and ideas focused coverage of AS and A2 Philosophy

    PrefaceIntroductionEarly Religious ThoughtThe Scientist-philosophers of MiletusHeraclitusThe Eleatic SchoolQualitative PluralismAtomismPythagoreanismThe SophistsHippocratic Medical PhilosophyNotesGlossaryIndex

    This viewpoint seems quite simple at first, but becomes exceedingly complex and involves intricate distinctions when attempts are made to apply it to actual problems. Therefore, it may be well to attempt a short statement of this position in order to note the general problems with which it is dealing as well as the method of solution which it proposes. I shall emphasize the elements of phenomenology which seem most relevant to E. Stein's work. Husserl deals with two traditional philosophical questions, and in answering them, develops the method of phenomenological reduction which he maintains is the basis of all science. These questions are, "What is it that can be known without doubt?" and "How is this knowledge possible in the most general sense?" In the tradition of idealism he takes consciousness as the area to be investigated. He posits nothing about the natural world. He puts it in "brackets," as a portion of an algebraic formula is put in brackets, and makes no use of the material within these brackets. This does not mean that the "real" wor!d does not exist, he says emphatically; it only means that this existence is a presupposition must be suspended to achieve pure description.

    E. Moore's defense of common sense, this much discussed volume collects Wittgenstein's reflections on knowledge and certainty, on what it is to know a proposition for sure.

    Written toward the end of his life in order to support a metaphysics of simple substances, it's thus about formal atoms which aren't physical but metaphysical. The Monadology is written in 90 logical paragraphs, each generally following from the previous. Its name is due to the fact that Leibniz, imitating Marsilio Ficino, Giordano Bruno & Viscountess Anne Conway, wanted to keep together the meanings of monas (Greek, unity) & logos (treatise/science/word/reason). Therefore, the Monadology came to be the science of the unity. The text is dialectically reasoned, facing questions & problems helping readers to advance. For instance, it can be accepted that composed bodies are something derived, extended, phenomenal or repeated according to simple substances (later expressed by Kant's phenomena-noumena dichotomy). Is the soul a monad? If affirmative, then the soul is a simple substance. If it's an aggregate of matter, then it cannot be a monad. Leibniz, 1st using the term in 1696, ties almost all ancient & early modern meanings of "monad" together in his metaphysical hypothesis of infinitely many simple substances. Monads are everywhere in matter & are either noticeably active (awake), when they form the central or governing monad, which is the center of activity & of perception within an organism, or they are only weakly active (asleep), when they belong to the countless subordinate monads w/in or outside of an organic body. Monads are the sources of any spontaneous action unexplainable in mechanical terms. They constitute the unity of any individual. All monads are living mirrors representing the whole universe, because of the lack of any vacuum they have an irrecognizably obscure recognition of every body in the world; & they appetite, which means they strive from one perception to the next. Nevertheless all monads differ in the degree of clarity & distinction with which they perceive the surrounding world according to the organic body in which they're incorporated. The most fundamental level in the hierarchy of monads are the entelechies, which are genuine centers of a non-physical force, namely a spontaneous activity in organisms. If these centers are capable of sentiment & memory, as in animals, they're called souls. The highest level of monads are souls endowed with reason, or spirits, reflectively self-conscious. Leibniz characterizes monads as metaphysical points, animate points or metaphysical atoms. In contrast to those physical atoms postulated by classic atomism they aren't extended & thus aren't bodies. As he explains in letters to Burchard de Volder & Bartholomew des Bosses, this doesn't imply that monads are immaterial. They rather consist of two inseparable principles constituting together a complete substance or monad: the innermost center of a monad, i.e. the mathematical point, where the entelechy, soul or spirit is located, is the monad's inner form. This form has no existence in itself, but is incarnated in a physical point or an infinitesimally small sphere, the "vehicle of the soul". This hull consists of a special matter, called primary matter (materia prima-matière primitive). The problem that monads are supposed to have some kind of matter on the one hand, but to have neither any parts nor extension on the other, may be explained by the dynamic nature of primary matter. Leibniz conceives primary matter in contrast to the 2nd matter (materia secunda), i.e. extended & purely phenomenal bodies. Primary matter is a very fine, fluid & elastic matter, which he identifies in his early "Hypothesis physica nova" (1671) with aether, spiritus or matter of light, flowing anywhere thru every body. Strictly taken, this primary matter or matter of light doesn't consist in "extension, but in the desire to extension": "The nature of light strives to extend itself". The animate centre of a monad cannot exist w/out the encasing coating fluid of light, because 1stly monads w/out this passive principle couldn't perceive any impressions from the exterior world, & because 2ndly they'd have no limitation of power. "It follows that God can never strip any created substance bare of its primary matter, even tho by his absolute power he can take off her 2ndary matter; otherwise he would make it become pure activity, which can only be himself." Only God is free from any matter, he's the creating 1st monad, out of which all created monads derive by continuous effulgurations. The punch-line of the monad or metaphysical point is its dynamical unity of the mathematical centre & the encasing physical point: The fluid ethereal sphere of the monad is extended, has parts & can be destroyed, but in every deformation or division of the sphere the mathematical point in which the soul is incarnated shall outlive within the smallest remaining fluid. Indestructible therefore isn't the whole sphere consisting in matter of light, but only the dynamic point within the monad. Leibniz understands monads as the intellectual answer to the mind-body problem, radically exposed by Descartes. Because he conceives soul (not the monad) as an immaterial centre, he denies any direct interaction or physical influence (influxus physicus) between body & soul. He allocates the causal connection between both w/in the monad, because its fluid ethereal matter is the substantial bond (vinculum substantiale) between body & mind. The circulation of the aether or matter of light thru visible worldly bodies is the preestablished divine artifice, which constitutes the exact correspondence & harmony between the perceptions of the soul & the bodies' movements. Preestablished harmony doesn't only govern the relation between body & soul, but also between monads. According to Leibniz’ slogan, monads have "no windows" or portals, thru which something could enter from the outside or could escape from the inside since the monad's center in which the soul is incarnated is always encased by its own primary matter. Despite that, the monad represents in a spontaneous act the surrounding world with an individual perspective, constituted by its punctual structure of centre, radius & circumference. The Monadology tried to put an end from a monist point of view to the main question of what is reality & particularly to the problem of communication of substances, both studied by Descartes. Leibniz offered a new solution to mind/matter interaction by means of a preestablished harmony expressed as the Best of all possible worlds form of optimism; in other words, he drew the relationship between “the kingdom of final causes”, or teleological ones, & “the kingdom of efficient causes”, or mechanical ones, which wasn't causal, but synchronous. Monads & matter are only apparently linked. There isn't even any communication between different monads, as far as they act according to their degree of distinction only, as they were influenced by bodies & vice versa. Leibniz fought against Cartesian dualism in his Monadology & tried to surpass it thru a metaphysical system considered at the same time monist (since only the unextended is substantial) & pluralist (as substances are disseminated in the world in infinite number). For that reason the monad is an irreducible force, which makes it possible for the bodies to have the characteristics of inertia & impenetrability, & which contains in itself the source of all its actions. Monads are the 1st elements of every composed thing.

    ReevePreserved by Arabic mathematicians and canonized by Christian scholars, Aristotle's works have shaped Western thought, science, and religion for nearly two thousand years. Richard McKeon's The Basic Works of Aristotle--constituted out of the definitive Oxford translation and in print as a Random House hardcover for sixty years--has long been considered the best available one-volume Aristotle. Appearing in paperback at long last, this edition includes selections from the Organon, On the Heavens, The Short Physical Treatises, Rhetoric, among others, and On the Soul, On Generation and Corruption, Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, and Poetics in their entirety.

    But it has been the terror of the capitalist rulers against which an outraged majority eventually rises. Trotsky explains why the working class is the only social force capable of leading the toiling majority in overthrowing the capitalist exploiters and beginning the construction of a new society and why individual terrorism -- whatever its intention -- relegates the workers to the role of spectators and opens the workers movement to provocation and victimization.

    His major works--the translation, his commentary, and Logique et existence (1953)--coincided with an upsurge of interest in Hegel following World War II. Yet Hyppolite's influence was as much due to his role as a teacher as it was to his translation or commentary: Foucault and Deleuze were introduced to Hegel in Hyppolite's classes, and Derrida studied under him. More than fifty years after its original publication, Hyppolite's analysis of Hegel continues to offer fresh insights to the reader.

    Discourse ethics attempts to reconstruct a moral point of view from which normative claims can be impartially judged. The theory of justice it develops replaces Kant's categorical imperative with a procedure of justification based on reasoned agreement among participants in practical discourse. Habermas connects communicative ethics to the theory of social action via an examination of research in the social psychology of moral and interpersonal development. He aims to show that our basic moral intuitions spring from something deeper and more universal than contingent features of our tradition, namely from normative presuppositions of social interaction that belong to the repertoire of competent agents in any society.