Elements of philosophy \ An introduction \ Samuel Enoch Stumpf
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- 505 p.
I. What should i do and why should i do it? - Fulfilling human purpose - What can we control? - The modes of love - A sense of duty - Pleasure versus pain - Turning values upside down - Is there a charachteristically feminine voice defining morality? - II. Why should i obey? - The nature basis for society - Political consequences of bioogical differences - Natural law - The social contract - Individualism and liberty - Class conflict - Justice as fairness III. What can i know? - Opinion versus knowledge - Power of reason - Limits of knowledge - How knowldge is possible - Thinking and doing - Words and the world IV. Religious knowledge and the existence of god. What can i believe? - The nature of religious knowlgedge - Proving the existence of god - V. Metaphysics - Causes of being - Atoms and space - Mind the true reality - VI. What i am? - The separation of mind and body - Descartes category msitake - Do minds survive death of the body - The mind body problem VII. Freedom of the will - Human beings as controlled puppets - The impact of our past on our present - A personal exemption grom complete determinism - How can we explain judgements of regret - Minds, brains and science VIII. The question of destiny - The deliberate limitations of philosophy - The inevitability of the question what is the aimof life - The stages on lifes way - The human condition
This introductory philosophy text takes a historical approach to important philosophical problems and includes primary source readings. This third edition includes the addition of more 20th-century thinkers such as Richard Rorty, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Simone deBeauvoir and Joyce Tribilcot, among others. The Eastern philosophy of Radhakrishnan is included and Carol Gilligan and Annette Baier contribute their feminist voices to the study of philosophy.