Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction
Edward Craig
Language: English
Pages: 144
ISBN: 0192854216
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
How ought we to live? What really exists? How do we know? This book introduces important themes in ethics, knowledge, and the self, via readings from Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hegel, Darwin, and Buddhist writers. It emphasizes throughout the point of studying philosophy, explains how different areas of philosophy are related, and explores the contexts in which philosophy was and is studied.
About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.
instance: are we to think of the king as just getting confused, and losing track of what has been said? Or is it that he simply can’t believe that there is no such person, and therefore thought that Nagasena was bound to answer ‘Yes’ to at least one of his questions; since he answered ‘No’ to all of them, at least one answer must have been false, and that is the falsehood the king means when he says ‘You, revered sir, . . . have spoken a falsehood’? Of those two (perhaps you can think of
together, and are the best model for co-operation and allegiance. (Some readers may find that idea out of date – but perhaps that is so because, and in places where, times are easier.) In Plato’s prescription for an ideal state ( The Republic) he in effect abolishes the family – no doubt he had seen much family-centred intrigue and corruption. A plurality of cohesive units within it must be dangerous to the power of the State and its capacity to preserve peace. If there is to be a family it
European continent. The Genealogy of Morals, first published in 1887, consists of a preface Som and three essays, all conveniently divided into numbered sections. e Don’t skip the preface. And don’t miss the first sentence: ‘how much more we know nowadays, but how little we know about ourselves’. A huge high change in European thought is under way. The tendency had long been spots to suppose that, however bewildering and opaque the rest of reality may be to us, at least we could tell
imagine.) lo Phi Mill also believes that men are damaged as individuals, often in ways they are not likely to notice (which is itself part of the damage). For it is not good for anyone to be brought up to believe themselves superior to others, especially when it happens, as it frequently does, to be others whose faculties are in fact superior to theirs. On the other hand, harsh though it may sound, living one’s life around a close relationship with someone of inferior ‘ability and
their expertise, which tends to cluster around current (sometimes also local) academic fashion – it must do, since it is normally they who make it. Besides, undergraduate courses are, for obvious reasons, quite short, and therefore have to be selective on pain Phi l of gross superficiality. So the natural assumption that philosophy is osop what university philosophy departments teach, though I certainly hy wouldn’t call it false, is restrictive and misleading, and ought to be avoided.