Based on the author's nearly 30 years' of teaching introductory philosophy -- and his observations of where beginning readers run into difficulty -- this compact "primer" gives readers the basic tools they need to explore philosophical reading and writing for the first time. Provides insights and strategies for helping readers get started with reading, thinking about, and discussing philosophical concepts and writing short philosophical essays about what they've been reading and thinking; includes a new chapter that illustrates techniques for probing beneath the expository surface of a given question to uncover the inevitable structure of presuppositions and problems underlying it.
This daring and bold book is the first to create a textual space where African American and Latin American philosophers voice the complex range of their philosophical and meta-philosophical concerns, approaches, and visions. The voices within this book protest and theorize from their own standpoints, delineating the specific existential, philosophical, and professional problems they face as minority philosophical voices.
In his best-selling book You Must Change Your Life, Peter Sloterdijk argued exercise and practice were crucial to the human condition. In The Art of Philosophy, he extends this critique to academic science and scholarship, casting the training processes of academic study as key to the production of sophisticated thought. Infused with humor and provocative insight, The Art of Philosophy further integrates philosophy and human existence, richly detailing the foundations of this relationship and its transformative role in making the postmodern self. Sloterdijk begins with Plato's description of Socrates, whose internal monologues were so absorbing they often rooted the philosopher in place. The original academy, Sloterdijk argues, taught scholars to lose themselves in thought, and today's universities continue this tradition by offering scope for Plato's "accommodations for absences." By training scholars to practice thinking as an occupation transcending daily time and space, universities create the environment in which thought makes wisdom possible. Traversing the history of asceticism, the concept of suspended animation, and the theory of the neutral observer, Sloterdijk traces the evolution of philosophical practice from ancient times to today, showing how scholars can remain true to the tradition of "the examined life" even when the temporal dimension no longer corresponds to the eternal. Building on the work of Husserl, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Arendt, and other practitioners of the life of theory, Sloterdijk launches a posthumanist defense of philosophical inquiry and its everyday, therapeutic value.
In recent years, developments in experimental philosophy have led many thinkers to reconsider their central assumptions and methods. It is not enough to speculate and introspect from the armchair—philosophers must subject their claims to scientific scrutiny, looking at evidence and in some cases conducting new empirical research. The Theory and Practice of Experimental Philosophy is an introduction and guide to the systematic collection and analysis of empirical data in academic philosophy. This book serves two purposes: first, it examines the theory behind “x-phi,” including its underlying motivations and the objections that have been leveled against it. Second, the book offers a practical guide for those interested in doing experimental philosophy, detailing how to design, implement, and analyze empirical studies. Thus, the book explains the reasoning behind x-phi and provides tools to help readers become experimental philosophers.
Philosophy in Practice is a completely new kind of introductory philosophy textbook, focusing on philosophy as an activity, rather than as a doctrine. Thoroughly revised edition of a popular introductory philosophy textbook. Contains new discussions of philosophy of religion, freedom, The Matrix, and the epistemology of the internet. Offers a wealth of pedagogical features to guide students through the text, including discussion plans at the beginning of each section, questions, chapter summaries, annotated guides to further reading, and a glossary. Classic passages from the history of philosophy are used throughout, and each part ends with a one-page historical summary. Includes an on-line teacher's guide with teaching suggestions, tests, and essay topics at: www.blackwellpublishing.com/pip
How do you know the world around you isn't just an elaborate dream, or the creation of an evil neuroscientist? If all you have to go on are various lights, sounds, smells, tastes and tickles, how can you know what the world is really like, or even whether there is a world beyond your own mind? Questions like these -- familiar from science fiction and dorm room debates -- lie at the core of venerable philosophical arguments for radical skepticism: the stark contention that we in fact know nothing at all about the world, that we have no more reason to believe any claim -- that there are trees, that we have hands -- than we have to disbelieve it. Like non-philosophers in their sober moments, philosophers, too, find this skeptical conclusion preposterous, but they're faced with those famous arguments: the Dream Argument, the Argument from Illusion, the Infinite Regress of Justification, the more recent Closure Argument. If these can't be met, they raise a serious challenge not just to philosophers, but to anyone responsible enough to expect her beliefs to square with her evidence. What Do Philosophers Do? takes up the skeptical arguments from this everyday point of view, and ultimately concludes that they don't undermine our ordinary beliefs or our ordinary ways of finding out about the world. In the process, Maddy examines and evaluates a range of philosophical methods -- common sense, scientific naturalism, ordinary language, conceptual analysis, therapeutic approaches -- as employed by such philosophers as Thomas Reid, G. E. Moore, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and J. L. Austin. The result is a revealing portrait of what philosophers do, and perhaps a quiet suggestion for what they should do, for what they do best.
An extended essay in contemplative philosophy, the meeting of mystical and philosophical theology, Partakers of the Divine shows that Christian philosophical and contemplative practices arose together and that throughout much of Christian history philosophy, theology and contemplation remained internal to one another. Further, the relation of philosophy, theology, and contemplation to one another is of more than antiquarian interest, for it provides theologians and philosophers of religion today with a way forward beyond many of the stalemates that have beset discussions about faith and reason, the role of religion in contemporary culture, and the challenges of modernity and postmodernity.
Humanistic theory for more than the past 100 years is marked by extensive attention to practice and practices. Two prominent streams of thought sharing this focus are pragmatism and theories of practice. This volume brings together internationally prominent theorists to explore key dimensions of practice and practices on the background of parallels and points of contact between these two traditions. The contributors all are steeped in one or both of these streams and well-known for their work on practice. The collected essays explore three important themes: what practice and practices are, normativity, and transformation. The volume deepens understanding of these three practice themes while strengthening appreciation of the parallels between and complementariness of pragmatism and practice theory.
This volume presents the state of the art of philosophical practice worldwide from the perspectives of leading philosophical practitioners, both counselors and institutional consultants. Philosophical practice has developed in different directions in different parts of the world, with the focus in Europe and North America being mostly on client counseling and corporate consultancy, while in Asia it is more community-based and more closely aligned with psychotherapy. In all cases, philosophical practitioners strive to transcend the boundaries of academic philosophy and reach out to the public, to corporations, to the policy makers, to the medical, legal and many other professions. The chapters of this book illustrate both the breadth of philosophical practice and its various methodological directions, while, at the same time, showing how philosophy can be relevant to everyday life, not just for individuals, but for the economy, the government, international organizations, the helping and therapeutic professions, and the educational system. The volume is primarily a companion for students of applied philosophy on all levels, as well as for modern psychotherapists, educational professionals and academics. It is designed to support a variety of undergraduate and postgraduate courses in philosophy and applied psychology, ranging from ancient ethics to philosophical practice sui generis, or to the philosophy of psychology.
