Philosophy

Happy World Philosophy Day!

Answers for Aristotle: How Science and Philosophy Can Lead Us to a More Meaningful Life by Massimo Pigliucci - How should we live? According to philosopher and biologist Massimo Pigliucci, the greatest guidance to this essential question lies in combining the wisdom of 24 centuries of philosophy with the latest research from 21st century science. In Answers for Aristotle, Pigliucci argues that the combination of science and philosophy first pioneered by Aristotle offers us the best possible tool for understanding the world and ourselves. As Aristotle knew, each mode of thought has the power to clarify the other: science provides facts, and philosophy helps us reflect on the values with which to assess them. But over the centuries, the two have become uncoupled, leaving us with questions--about morality, love, friendship, justice, and politics--that neither field could fully answer on its own. Pigliucci argues that only by rejoining each other can modern science and philosophy reach their full potential, while we harness them to help us reach ours. Pigliucci discusses such essential issues as how to tell right from wrong, the nature of love and friendship, and whether we can really ever know ourselves--all in service of helping us find our path to the best possible life. Combining the two most powerful intellectual traditions in history, Answers for Aristotle is a remarkable guide to discovering what really matters and why.

The Deepest Human Life: An Introduction to Philosophy for Everyone by Scott Samuelson - Sometimes it seems like you need a PhD just to open a book of philosophy. We leave philosophical matters to the philosophers in the same way that we leave science to scientists. Scott Samuelson thinks this is tragic, for our lives as well as for philosophy. In The Deepest Human Life he takes philosophy back from the specialists and restores it to its proper place at the center of our humanity, rediscovering it as our most profound effort toward understanding, as a way of life that anyone can live. Exploring the works of some of history's most important thinkers in the context of the everyday struggles of his students, he guides us through the most vexing quandaries of our existence--and shows just how enriching the examined life can be.
           Samuelson begins at the beginning: with Socrates, working his most famous assertion--that wisdom is knowing that one knows nothing--into a method, a way of approaching our greatest mysteries. From there he springboards into a rich history of philosophy and the ways its journey is encoded in our own quests for meaning. He ruminates on Epicurus against the sonic backdrop of crickets and restaurant goers in Iowa City. He follows the Stoics into the cell where James Stockdale spent seven years as a prisoner of war. He spins with al-Ghazali first in doubt, then in the ecstasy of the divine. And he gets the philosophy education of his life when one of his students, who authorized a risky surgery for her son that inadvertently led to his death, asks with tears in her eyes if Kant was right, if it really is the motive that matters and not the consequences. Through heartbreaking stories, humanizing biographies, accessible theory, and evocative interludes like "On Wine and Bicycles" or "On Zombies and Superheroes ," he invests philosophy with the personal and vice versa. The result is a book that is at once a primer and a reassurance--that the most important questions endure, coming to life in each of us.

Heads Up Philosophy by Marcus Weeks - The second installment in DK's new Heads Up series, Heads Up Philosophy addresses the issues and theories that are most intriguing and relevant to the curious minds of teens -- making a difficult topic easier to comprehend. Questions such as "What is knowledge?" "What is reality?" "What is the mind?" and "What's right and wrong?" are all addressed, offering big ideas, simply explained. Written and designed specifically for the teen market, Heads Up Philosophy combines challenging but clear text with cool graphic illustrations that clarify and explain theories and arguments.
Biography spreads cover the famous quotes of great philosophers including Socrates, Aristotle, Friedrich Nietzsche, Epicurus, Plato, and Thomas Aquinas, while major theories and debates including epistemology, metaphysics, and ideologies are also explained. Heads Up Philosophy also includes case study panels, diagrams, and real world spreads to show how philosophical theories relate to everyday life.
Making a difficult subject more approachable, Heads Up Philosophy is designed to provoke, entertain, and stimulate young minds.

Ideas That Matter: The Concepts That Shape the Twenty-first Century by A. C. Grayling - Ideas can, and do, change the world. Just as Marxism, existentialism, and feminism shaped the last century, so fundamentalism, globalization, and bioethics are transforming our world now. In 'Ideas that Matter', renowned philosopher A.C. Grayling provides a personal dictionary of the ideas that will shape our world in the decades to come. With customary wit, fire, and erudition, Grayling ranges across the gamut of essential theories, movements, and philosophies-from animal rights to neurophilosophy to war crimes-provoking and elucidating throughout.Ideas are the cogs that drive history, and in explaining the most complex and influential ones in laymen's terms, 'Ideas that Matter' will help every engaged citizen better understand it.

Is God Happy?: Selected Essays by Leszek Kolakowski - The late Leszek Kolakowski was one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. A prominent anticommunist writer, Kolakowski was also a deeply humanistic thinker, and his meditations on society, religion, morality, and culture stand alongside his political writings as commentaries on intellectual - and everyday - life in the twentieth century.
Kolakowski's extraordinary empathy, humor, and erudition are on full display in Is God Happy?, the first collection of his work to be published since his death in 2009. Accessible and wide ranging, these essays - many of them translated into English for the first time - testify to the remarkable scope of Kolakowski's work. From a provocative and deeply felt critique of Marxist ideology to the witty and self-effacing In Praise of Unpunctuality" to a rigorous analysis of Erasmus' model of Christianity and the future of religion, these essays distill Kolakowski's lifelong engagement with the eternal problems of philosophy and some of the most vital questions of our age.

Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes by Thomas Cathcart & Daniel Klein - Here's a lively, hilarious, not-so-reverent crash course through the great philosophical traditions, schools, concepts, and thinkers. It's Philosophy 101 for everyone who knows not to take all this heavy stuff too seriously. Some of the Big Ideas are Existentialism (what do Hegel and Bette Midler have in common?), Philosophy of Language (how to express what it's like being stranded on a desert island with Halle Berry), Feminist Philosophy (why, in the end, a man is always a man), and much more. Finally it all makes sense!

Socrates in Love: Philosophy for a Passionate Heart by Christopher Phillips - Christopher Phillips goes to the heart of philosophy and Socratic discourse to discover what we're all looking for: the kind of love that makes life worthwhile. Love here is not defined only or even primarily as eros, but in all its classic varieties from love of family and love of neighbor to love of country, love of God, love of life, and love of wisdom. Phillips's explorations take us from New Orleans at Mardi Gras and the gambling dens of Las Vegas to the last evangelical revival presided over by Billy Graham. He talks with moms and dads about "parent love," with inmates of a maximum-security prison about "unconditional love," with Hurricane Katrina refugees and a family who took them in, and with Japanese seniors and schoolchildren in Hiroshima Peace Park. Throughout, he enriches his dialogues with commentary on the great philosophers of love from the ancients to Rumi to Ayn Rand and Anais Nin.

Soulpancake: Chew on Life's Big Questions by Rainn Wilson - CAUTION: To all the world's thinkers, artists, poets, and misfits: SoulPancake is a movement to chew on Life's Big Questions. Side effects may include change in the way you think about what it means to be human. Don't say we didn't warn you.
Somewhere over the course of history, chewing on Life's Big Questions lost its cool factor. Fortunately for mankind, Rainn Wilson (best known for playing Dwight Schrute on NBC's The Office) and a bunch of his friends are on a mission to change that.
CAN MEN AND WOMEN REALLY BE "JUST FRIENDS?
IF YOU ONLY HAD ONE HOUR LEFT TO LIVE, HOW WOULD YOU SPEND IT?
WHAT PARALYZES YOUR CREATIVITY? WHAT FUELS IT?
Based on the wildly successful website SoulPancake.com, this book urges you to explore philosophy, creativity, spirituality, love, truth, science, and so much more. With bold questions, intriguing challenges, and mind-bending art, SoulPancake creates a space for you to stimulate your brain stem, spark your soul, and figure out what it means to be human.

What Philosophy Can Do by Gary Gutting - How can we have meaningful debates with political opponents? How can we distinguish reliable science from over-hyped media reports? How can we talk sensibly about God?
In What Philosophy Can Do, Gary Gutting takes a philosopher's scalpel to modern life's biggest questions and the most powerful forces in our society--politics, science, religion, education, and capitalism--to show how we can improve our discussions of contentious contemporary issues.
Gutting introduces readers to powerful analytic tools in the philosopher's arsenal that they can use to make new sense of current debates. One such tool is a crucial distinction between inductive and deductive reasoning that explains why both sides on a disputed issue often are sure they have compelling cases for their views.
Another is the Principle of Charity, which requires opposing parties to present each other's arguments in their strongest forms--a tool that would make critiques both more respectful and more effective. Gutting also shows how concepts introduced by philosophers from Plato and Aristotle to Michel Foucault and John Rawls can clarify public discussions about morality, the economy, and medicine.
From informed assessments of scientific claims to careful analyses of arguments for and against religious belief, Gutting brings a calm, clear-headed approach to some of the most divisive issues on the table today. He scrutinizes our relationship to work and freedom in capitalism; our modern understanding of happiness and the good life; the value of liberal arts education and the humanities; the role of science and politics in shaping public policy today; and the value of art and popular culture. Perhaps most meaningfully, Gutting shows how we can talk about our own deepest beliefs clearly and directly, while listening to what others have to say to us.
What Philosophy Can Do makes a powerful case for philosophy's importance to public discussions, and shows us that this ancient tradition of inquiry may yet have much to say about our future.

When Einstein Walked With Gödel: Excursions to the Edge of Thought by Jim Holt - Does time exist? What is infinity? Why do mirrors reverse left and right but not up and down? In this scintillating collection, Holt explores the human mind, the cosmos, and the thinkers who've tried to encompass the latter with the former. With his trademark clarity and humor, Holt probes the mysteries of quantum mechanics, the quest for the foundations of mathematics, and the nature of logic and truth. Along the way, he offers intimate biographical sketches of celebrated and neglected thinkers, from the physicist Emmy Noether to the computing pioneer Alan Turing and the discoverer of fractals, Benoit Mandelbrot. Holt offers a painless and playful introduction to many of our most beautiful but least understood ideas, from Einsteinian relativity to string theory, and also invites us to consider why the greatest logician of the twentieth century believed the U.S. Constitution contained a terrible contradiction--and whether the universe truly has a future.