First published over thirty years ago, "Classic Philosophical Questions" has presented decades of students with the most compelling classic and contemporary readings on the most enduring and abiding questions in philosophy. The anthology, topically arranged, uses debate and argument as vehicles to teach students the fundamentals of philosophy while also demonstrating that philosophy is a discourse spanning centuries. "James A. Gould" and "Robert J. Mulvaney" continue to provide students with interesting, intriguing essays from major philosophers in a distinctive presentation, often (...) involving a pro/con format, to ensure that both the apparent and subtle points of argument are both meaningful and clear. Features of this new edition: Sections on epistemology and metaphysics introduced earlier in this edition New readings from Martha Nussbaum and Martin Luther King, Jr. Concise, student-friendly introductions to each philosopher and reading Helpful study and reflection questions focus students' reading and improve comprehension. (shrink)

Plato and the trial of Socrates -- What is philosophy? -- Euthyphro : defining philosophical terms -- The apology, Phaedo, and Crito : the trial, immortality, and death of Socrates -- Philosophy of religion -- Can we prove that God exists? -- St. Anselm : the ontological argument -- St. Thomas Aquinas : the cosmological argument -- William Paley : the teleological argument -- Blaisepascal : it is better to believe in God's existence than to deny it -- William James (...) : free choice is the basis of belief -- Does the idea of a good God exclude evil? -- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz : God can allow some evil -- David Hume : a good God would exclude evil -- Ethics -- Are ethics relative? -- Ruth Benedict : ethics are relative -- W.T. Stace : ethics are not relative -- Are humans always selfish? -- Humans are always selfish : Glaucon's challenge to Socrates -- James Rachels : humans are not always selfish -- Which is basic in ethics : happiness or obligation? -- Aristotle : happiness is living virtuously -- Jeremy Bentham : happiness is seeking the greatest pleasure for the greatest number of people -- Immanuel Kant : duty is prior to happiness -- Friedrich Nietzsche : happiness is having power -- Jean-Paul Sartre : existentialist ethics -- Rosemarie Tong : feminist ethics are different -- Contemporary moral problems : abortion, homosexuality, animal rights -- Jane English : are most abortions moral? -- Peter Singer : do animals have rights? -- Knowledge -- What is knowledge? -- Plato : knowledge is warranted, true belief -- What method is best for acquiring knowledge? -- Charles Sanders Peirce : four approaches to philosophy -- How do we acquire knowledge? -- René Descartes : knowledge is not ultimately sense knowledge -- John Locke : knowledge is ultimately sensed -- Immanuel Kant : knowledge is both rational and empirical -- How is truth established? -- Bertrand Russell : truth is established by correspondence -- Francis H. Bradley : truth is established by coherence -- William James : truth is established on pragmatic grounds -- Can we know the nature of causal relations? -- David Hume : cause means regular association -- David Hume : there are no possible grounds for induction -- Metaphysics -- Why is there something rather than nothing? -- Parmenides : being is uncaused -- Lao-Tzu : non-being is the source of being -- Is reality general or particular? -- Plato : universals are real -- David Hume : particulars are real -- Of what does reality consist? -- René Descartes : reality consists of mind and matter -- Paul Churchland : reality consists of matter -- George Berkeley : reality consists of ideas -- John Dewey : reality consists of mental and physical qualities -- Are humans free? -- Holbach : humans are determined -- Robert Kane : humans are free -- Social and political philosophy -- What is liberty? -- Fyodor Dostoevski : liberty and authority -- John Stuart Mill : liberty is independence from the majority's tyranny -- Martin Luther King, Jr. : liberty and racial prejudice -- Which government is best? -- Thomas Hobbes : monarchy is best -- John Locke : democracy is best -- Karl Marx : communism and nonalienated labor is best -- Alexis de Tocqueville : democracy can have serious problems -- Karl Popper : utopias lead to violence -- Aesthetics -- What constitutes the experience of beauty? -- Plotinus : beauty, sensuous, and ideal -- What is the function of art? -- Aristotle : the nature of tragedy -- Henri Bergson : the nature of comedy -- Philosophy and the good life -- Classic views of the good life -- Epicurus : Epicurus and the pleasant life -- Epictetus : Epictetus and the life of self-control -- What gives life meaning? -- Leo Tolstoy : faith provides life's meaning -- Albert Camus : each person determines his or her life's meaning -- What is the value of philosophy? -- Bertrand Russell : the value of philosophy. (shrink)

Leibniz' Bedeutung für die Entwicklung der amerikanischen Philosophie ist bisher wenig erforscht worden. In diesem Aufsatz untersuche ich den Beitrag zweier amerikanischer Idealisten der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts zur Leibniz-Forschung. Der erstere, Frederic Henry Hedge, ein enger Mitarbeiter Emersons und eine zentrale Figur der transcendentalist movement, legte die erste Übersetzung der Monadologie ins Englische vor und schrieb die erste wichtige wissenschaftliche Abhandlung über Leibniz in einer amerikanischen Zeitschrift. Der zweite, H. A. P. Torrey, von prägendem Einfluß auf die Gedanken John (...) Deweys, schrieb eine Reihe kritischer Essays zur Théodicée, die Auswirkungen auf Deweys Buch über Leibniz hatten. In diesem Aufsatz gebe ich eine Überblick der Arbeiten von Hedge und Torrey, bewerte ihre Arbeiten zu Leibniz und untersuche einige Aspekte ihres Einflusses auf das amerikanische Denken. Ich folgere, daß Leibniz' Einfluß auf die amerikanische Philosophie größer ist als allgemein angenommen und schlage weitere Forschungsmöglichkeiten vor. (shrink)

One of the most striking features of the rhetoric of philosophy in the West has been its wide-scale employment of the dialogue form. The dialogues of Plato are normative not only in the sense Whitehead gave them, that they constitute the text of which our philosophical history is a series of footnotes. But they also provide the ideal of philosophical discourse. Philosophy ought to be public and spoken. I take it that this choice of dialogue is not some mere dramatic (...) artifice, chosen for aesthetic reasons. Rather I think the medium here is part of the message and that dialogue says something about philosophy itself. That is, once we have learned to dialogue and to think dialogically, we have taken a philosophical position, in advance of whatever the dialogue may be said to contain. But otherwise, we are Platonists once we dialogue, whatever degree of adherence we may claim to his metaphysics or to his theory of knowledge. (shrink)

Papers from a symposium held at the University of South Carolina, Oct. 31-Nov. 1, 1975. Includes bibliographical references and index.

Descartes' dualism of mind and matter has long since lost its merely metaphysical and anthropological status. For many philosophers, particularly in our own century, it has taken on the character of metaphor, a metaphor covering all manner of division in human experience, especially various forms of economic, social, and cultural alienation. In the book under review, the author takes the "ghost in the machine" as a dominant defining metaphor for modern thought and life, and criticizes it with gusto, wit, wide (...) reading, and philosophical acumen. Although putatively concerned with a specific compartment of philosophical inquiry, namely social philosophy, the work is intended to be a large-scale examination of fundamental philosophical assumptions and the lived experience of modern humankind. As such the author's repertory includes a wide variety of philosophical and literary figures, which makes his work more interesting than typical academic philosophical critique. (shrink)

The ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry has a parallel in an equally ancient dispute between philosophy and history. Which is to be the great teacher, ideas, words, or deeds? In the education of the human race, particularly for political life, are we to think of the state as an ideal concept, as a work of art, or as an achievement of a person of action? These themes have exercised political thinkers as old as Plato and Aristotle and as modern (...) as Hobbes and Hegel, as well as perhaps the first modern, Niccolò Machiavelli. The issues of power, reason, and language, raised again and again in his masterpiece, The Prince, are equally central to the longer, less often read, but no less profound work, the Discourses on Livy, here given a loving and lucid translation, with a perceptive and helpful introduction, notes, glossary, and index. The Prince, usually taken as recommending absolute and ruthless individual sovereignty, is presumed to be the characteristic work of its author. The Discourses, with its recommendation of virtue and republicanism, on the other hand, is thought of as an inconsistent extravagation from the true Machiavellian position. However, as the translators make clear, this is textually and conceptually foreign to the facts. Machiavelli perhaps emphasizes the one set of values in the shorter book, and the other in the longer, but both are necessary to a full picture of his thought. The political problem for Machiavelli is balancing force with freedom. The unity of states is effected by force, their diversity by freedom. There is a problem of the one and the many in political theory as there is in other branches of philosophy. (shrink)

This is a welcome addition to the scant literature in English on the life of the great seventeenth-century German philosopher and polymath, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. No full-scale biography of Leibniz has appeared in English since John Milton Mackie devised a condensation of G. E. Guhrauer’s still standard work in 1845. Some material from unpublished papers was incorporated into J. T. Merz’s account. Since then virtually nothing has been attempted in this area of Leibniz scholarship, in spite of the fact that (...) much important work has been done, especially in German, culminating in the fine Leben und Werk von. G. W. Leibniz by Kurt Müller and Gisela Krönert. If for no other reason than the dearth of English treatments of the subject, Mr. Aiton’s biography would be a significant contribution. (shrink)

This is a welcome addition to the scant literature in English on the life of the great seventeenth-century German philosopher and polymath, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. No full-scale biography of Leibniz has appeared in English since John Milton Mackie devised a condensation of G. E. Guhrauer’s still standard work in 1845. Some material from unpublished papers was incorporated into J. T. Merz’s account. Since then virtually nothing has been attempted in this area of Leibniz scholarship, in spite of the fact that (...) much important work has been done, especially in German, culminating in the fine Leben und Werk von. G. W. Leibniz by Kurt Müller and Gisela Krönert. If for no other reason than the dearth of English treatments of the subject, Mr. Aiton’s biography would be a significant contribution. (shrink)