Sick Souls, Healthy Minds
Sick Souls, Healthy Minds

Author: John Kaag

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2020-03-17

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 0691192162

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James believed that philosophy was meant to articulate, and help answer, a single existential question, one which lent itself to the title of one of his most famous essays: "Is life worth living?" Through examination of an array of existentially loaded topics covered in his works-truth, God, evil, suffering, death, and the meaning of life-James concluded that it is up to us to make life worth living. He said that our beliefs, the truths that guide our lives, matter-their value and veracity turn on the way they play out practically for ourselves and our communities. For James, philosophy was about making life meaningful, and for some of us, liveable. This is the core of his "pragmatic maxim," that truth should be judged on the bases of its practical consequences. Kaag shows how James put this maxim into use in his philosophy and his life and how we can do so in our own. .

The Untethered Soul
The Untethered Soul

Author: Michael A. Singer

Publisher: New Harbinger Publications

Published: 2007-10-03

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13: 1608820491

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#1 New York Times bestseller What would it be like to free yourself from limitations and soar beyond your boundaries? What can you do each day to discover inner peace and serenity? The Untethered Soul offers simple yet profound answers to these questions. Whether this is your first exploration of inner space, or you’ve devoted your life to the inward journey, this book will transform your relationship with yourself and the world around you. You’ll discover what you can do to put an end to the habitual thoughts and emotions that limit your consciousness. By tapping into traditions of meditation and mindfulness, author and spiritual teacher Michael A. Singer shows how the development of consciousness can enable us all to dwell in the present moment and let go of painful thoughts and memories that keep us from achieving happiness and self-realization. Copublished with the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) The Untethered Soul begins by walking you through your relationship with your thoughts and emotions, helping you uncover the source and fluctuations of your inner energy. It then delves into what you can do to free yourself from the habitual thoughts, emotions, and energy patterns that limit your consciousness. Finally, with perfect clarity, this book opens the door to a life lived in the freedom of your innermost being. The Untethered Soul has already touched the lives of more than a million readers, and is available in a special hardcover gift edition with ribbon bookmark—the perfect gift for yourself, a loved one, or anyone who wants a keepsake edition of this remarkable book. Visit www.untetheredsoul.com for more information.

Philosophy of Nature
Philosophy of Nature

Author: Paul K. Feyerabend

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2016-09-26

Total Pages: 406

ISBN-13: 0745694764

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Philosopher, physicist, and anarchist Paul Feyerabend was one of the most unconventional scholars of his time. His book Against Method has become a modern classic. Yet it is not well known that Feyerabend spent many years working on a philosophy of nature that was intended to comprise three volumes covering the period from the earliest traces of stone age cave paintings to the atomic physics of the 20th century – a project that, as he conveyed in a letter to Imre Lakatos, almost drove him nuts: “Damn the ,Naturphilosophie.” The book’s manuscript was long believed to have been lost. Recently, however, a typescript constituting the first volume of the project was unexpectedly discovered at the University of Konstanz. In this volume Feyerabend explores the significance of myths for the early period of natural philosophy, as well as the transition from Homer’s “aggregate universe” to Parmenides’ uniform ontology. He focuses on the rise of rationalism in Greek antiquity, which he considers a disastrous development, and the associated separation of man from nature. Thus Feyerabend explores the prehistory of science in his familiar polemical and extraordinarily learned manner. The volume contains numerous pictures and drawings by Feyerabend himself. It also contains hitherto unpublished biographical material that will help to round up our overall image of one of the most influential radical philosophers of the twentieth century.

Mind and Cosmos
Mind and Cosmos

Author: Thomas Nagel

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2012-11-22

Total Pages: 141

ISBN-13: 0199919755

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The modern materialist approach to life has conspicuously failed to explain such central mind-related features of our world as consciousness, intentionality, meaning, and value. This failure to account for something so integral to nature as mind, argues philosopher Thomas Nagel, is a major problem, threatening to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology. Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete. And the cosmological history that led to the origin of life and the coming into existence of the conditions for evolution cannot be a merely materialist history, either. An adequate conception of nature would have to explain the appearance in the universe of materially irreducible conscious minds, as such. Nagel's skepticism is not based on religious belief or on a belief in any definite alternative. In Mind and Cosmos, he does suggest that if the materialist account is wrong, then principles of a different kind may also be at work in the history of nature, principles of the growth of order that are in their logical form teleological rather than mechanistic. In spite of the great achievements of the physical sciences, reductive materialism is a world view ripe for displacement. Nagel shows that to recognize its limits is the first step in looking for alternatives, or at least in being open to their possibility.

Towards a New Philosophy
Towards a New Philosophy

Author: Ashok Vohra

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-10-09

Total Pages: 100

ISBN-13: 1000954811

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K. Satchidananda Murty (1924-2011) was a vociferous writer and an iconoclast. This volume is a collection of his unpublished writings It presents Murty's unpublished keynote addresses, papers presented in seminars, and lectures which show his reflections and arguments in contrast to contemporary philosophers with regard to recent developments in philosophy. The writings reveal Murty's rejection of established theories by well-known eastern and western philosophers, as well as his arguments in their support, and present a new interpretation of their contention in the contemporary idiom. Murty critically evaluates the contemporary arguments of Malcolm, James Ross, Alvin Plantinga, Charles Hawthorne, Jean-Paul Sartre, Anthony Flew, E.H. Madden, and P.H. Hare. An important contribution, the book assesses K. Satchidananda Murty's contribution to philosophy during sixty-one years of his engagement with active writing and teaching. It will be of great interest to scholars, teachers, and students of Indian philosophy, Hindu philosophy, Vedāntic philosophy, Advaita Vedānta, comparative philosophy, religious studies, and South Asian studies.

William James
William James

Author: Robert D. Richardson

Publisher: HMH

Published: 2007-09-14

Total Pages: 638

ISBN-13: 0547526733

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The definitive biography of the fascinating William James, whose life and writing put an indelible stamp on psychology, philosophy, teaching, and religion—on modernism itself. Often cited as the “father of American psychology,” William James was an intellectual luminary who made significant contributions to at least five fields: psychology, philosophy, religious studies, teaching, and literature. A member of one of the most unusual and notable of American families, James struggled to achieve greatness amid the brilliance of his theologian father; his brother, the novelist Henry James; and his sister, Alice James. After studying medicine, he ultimately realized that his true interests lay in philosophy and psychology, a choice that guided his storied career at Harvard, where he taught some of America’s greatest minds. But it is James’s contributions to intellectual study that reveal the true complexity of man. In this biography that seeks to understand James’s life through his work—including Principles of Psychology, The Varieties of Religious Experience, and Pragmatism—Robert D. Richardson has crafted an exceptionally insightful work that explores the mind of a genius, resulting in “a gripping and often inspiring story of intellectual and spiritual adventure” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). “A magnificent biography.” —The Washington Post