A short history of philosophy

Select an Action

Title:

A short history of philosophy

Author:

Solomon, Robert C.

ISBN:

9780195086478

9780195101966

Personal Author:

Solomon, Robert C.

Publication Information:

New York : Oxford University Press, 1996.

Physical Description:

xvii, 329 str. ; 25 cm.

Contents:

I. The search for world order : ancient philosophy -- The "Axial period" and the origins of philosophy -- The "miracle" of Greece -- Philosophy, myth, religion, and science -- Meaning and creation : cosmogony and the origins of philosophy -- Vedas and Vedanta : early philosophy in India -- The first (Greek) philosopher -- The pre-Socratic philosophers (I) : the stuff of the world -- The pre-Socratic philosophers (II) : the underlying order -- The pre-Socratic philosophers (III) : the pluralists -- Enter the Sophists -- Socrates -- Plato : metaphysician or sublime humorist? -- The philosopher's philosopher : Aristotle -- A footnote to Plate (and Aristotle) -- Tough times : stoicism, skepticism, and Epicureanism -- Mysticism and logic in ancient India : Nagarjuna and Nyaya -- II. God and the philosophers : religious and medieval philosophy -- Religion and spirituality : three philosophical themes -- The wisdom of the East (I) : Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism -- The wisdom of the East (II) : Confucius and Confucianism -- The wisdom of the East (III) : Lao-tzu, Chuang-tzu, and Taoism -- Deep in the heart of Persia : Zoroastrianism -- From Athens to Jerusalem : Judaism, Christianity, and Islam -- The Hebrew people and the origins of Judaism -- Greek Jew : Philo of Alexandria -- The birth of Christianity -- The opening of Christianity : St. Paul -- Neoplatonism and Christianity -- St. Augustine and the inner life of spirit -- The first great split within Christianity -- The rise of Islam -- Mysticism -- Persia and the peripatetic tradition -- Diaspora, dialectic, and mysticism in Judaism -- Thinking God : Anselm, Abelard, Aquinas, and scholasticism -- Late scholasticism : Duns Scotus and William of Ockham -- In search of essences : the alchemists -- Philosophical syntheses outside the West -- The reformation : Luther and his progeny -- The counter-reformation, Erasmus, and more -- After Aristotle : Bacon, Hobbes, Machiavelli, and the Renaissance -- Before the "discovery" : Africa and the Americas -- III. Between science and religion : modern philosophy and the enlightenment -- Science, religion, and the meaning of modernism -- Montaigne : the first modern philosopher? -- Descartes and the new science -- Spinoza, Leibniz, Pascal, and Newton -- The enlightenment, colonialism, and the eclipse of the Orient -- Locke, Hume, and empiricism -- Adam Smith, the moral sentiments, and the Protestant ethic -- Voltaire, Rousseau, and revolution -- Immanuel Kant : saving science -- Kant's moral philosophy and the third Critique -- The discovery of history : Hegel -- Philosophy and poetry : rationalism and romanticism -- Romantic West meets East : Schopenhauer -- After Hegel : Kierkegaard, Feuerbach, and Marx -- Mill, Darwin, and Nietzsche : consumerism, energy, and evolution -- Early philosophy in America -- IV. From modernism to postmodernism : the twentieth century -- The rejection of idealism : a century of horrors -- Frege, Russell, and Husserl : arithmetic, atomism, phenomenology -- Zarathustra in the trenches : the limits of rationality -- The American experience in philosophy : pragmatism -- Changing reality : philosophies of process -- Unamuno, Croce, and Heidegger : the tragic sense of life -- Hitler, the Holocaust, positivism, and existentialism -- No exit : the existentialism of Camus, Sartre, and Beauvoir -- From ideal to ordinary language : from Cambridge to Oxford -- Women and gender : the feminization of philosophy -- The return of the oppressed : Africa, Asia, and the Americas -- From postmodernism to the new age -- World philosophy : promise or pretense.

Subject Term:

Philosophy -- History.

Added Author:

Higgins, Kathleen Marie.

Copies:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Item Barcode	Shelf Number	Copy	Status
Searching... 1:IIEMSA	1:GEN-BOOK	33168025426384	109 S689S 1996	1	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

Philosophy is a singularly expansive enterprise, a fascinating outgrowth of a human nature that demands we question who and why we are. In A Short History of Philosophy, the most accessible concise portrait of philosophy in seventy years, Robert Solomon and Kathleen Higgins meet the challenge of accurately and engagingly describing it all, revelling in philosophy as "the art of wonder," the search for meaning, a gripping, dramatic endeavor. Here is the entire history of philosophy--ancient, medieval, and modern, from cultures both East and West--described in its historical and cultural context. "The concepts that lie at the heart of philosophy antedate history by thousands of years," the authors write in their introduction, noting that the ancient concept of immortality, prehistorical ideas about magic, and the complex set of beliefs implied by the practice of human sacrifice all exhibit philosophic underpinnings. Solomon and Higgins chart the profound development of philosophical thought around the world and through the centuries from the first stirrings of speculation and wonder to the rise of distinct (and often antithetical) philosophical traditions, moral constructs, and religious practices. From the early Greek and Asian philosophers and the mythological traditions that preceded them, to the great Greek, Indic, and Chinese philosophers, to the drama of the great religious philosophies, the authors have spun a marvelous tale that leads to the development and decline of modernity. Along with the major characters, such as Aristotle, Kant, and Confucius, Solomon and Higgins draw engaging portraits of less well-known alchemists, mystics, rebels, eccentrics of all sorts, including figures often ignored in philosophy--figures such as Teresa of Avila, who contributed to the mystical traditions of Catholicism; al-Razi, a contrarian Persian philosopher within the Arabic tradition who described the philosophical life as "godlike;" and Erasmus, the Dutch philosopher who parodied the foolishness of man in his praise of folly. With a clear, witty style and a flair for making complex ideas accessible, the authors also convincingly demonstrate the relevance of philosophy to our times, emphasizing the legacy of the revolutions wrought by science, industry, colonialism, and sectarian warfare, and the philosophical responses to the traumas of the twentieth century (including two world wars and the Holocaust): existentialism, positivism, postmodernism, feminism, and multiculturalism among them. But Solomon and Higgins go beyond merely retelling the rich history of philosophy; the authors provide their own twists and interpretations of events, resulting in a story that reveals the continuing complexity and diversity of a richly textured and nuanced intellectual tradition. All who are "lovers of wisdom" will find much to reward them in this book.