A collection on the historical introduction to human nature.

Who are we? How should we live? Professor James Miller introduces twelve great philosophers who dedicated their lives to answering these questions. From Plato, who risked his reputation to tutor a tyrant, to Seneca, the philosopher of temperance who accumulated one of the greatest fortunes in Rome, to Kant, who privately wrestled with hypochondria while publicly advocating arch-rationality, each had a unique approach to examining life. Here is a fascinating insight into the ideals that have guided us for centuries, and those who have fought passionately to live up to them.

This book is inspired by a single powerful question. What is it to be great as a philosopher? No single grand answer is presumed to be possible; instead, rewardingly close studies of philosophical greatness are developed. This is a scholarly yet accessible volume, blending metaphilosophy with the long history of philosophy and traversing centuries and continents. The result is a series of case studies by accomplished scholars, each chapter trying to understand and convey a particular philosopher's greatness: Lloyd P. Gerson on Plato, Karyn Lai on Zhuangzi, David Bronstein on Aristotle, Jonardon Ganeri on Buddhaghosa, Jeffrey Hause on Aquinas, Gary Hatfield on Descartes, Karen Detlefsen on du Châtelet, Don Garrett on Hume, Allen Wood on Kant (as a moral philosopher), Nicholas F. Stang on Kant (as a metaphysician), Ken Gemes on Nietzsche, Cheryl Misak on Peirce, and David Macarthur on Wittgenstein. This also serves a larger philosophical purpose. Might we gain increased clarity about what philosophy is in the first place? After all, in practice we individuate philosophy partly through its greatest practitioners' greatest contributions. The book does not discuss every philosopher who has been regarded as great. The point is not to offer a definitive list of The Great Philosophers, but, rather, to learn something about what great philosophy is and might be, from illuminated examples of past greatness -- Provided by publisher.

Featuring essays from leading philosophical scholars, 12 Modern Philosophers explores the works, origins, and influences of twelve of the most important late 20th Century philosophers working in the analytic tradition. Draws on essays from well-known scholars, including Thomas Baldwin, Catherine Wilson, Adrian Moore and Lori Gruen Locates the authors and their oeuvre within the context of the discipline as a whole Considers how contemporary philosophy both draws from, and contributes to, the broader intellectual and cultural milieu

This book is inspired by a single powerful question. What is it to be great as a philosopher? No single grand answer is presumed to be possible; instead, rewardingly close studies of philosophical greatness are developed. This is a scholarly yet accessible volume, blending metaphilosophy with the long history of philosophy and traversing centuries and continents. The result is a series of case studies by accomplished scholars, each chapter trying to understand and convey a particular philosopher’s greatness: Lloyd P. Gerson on Plato Karyn Lai on Zhuangzi David Bronstein on Aristotle Jonardon Ganeri on Buddhaghosa Jeffrey Hause on Aquinas Gary Hatfield on Descartes Karen Detlefsen on du Châtelet Don Garrett on Hume Allen Wood on Kant (as a moral philosopher) Nicholas F. Stang on Kant (as a metaphysician) Ken Gemes on Nietzsche Cheryl Misak on Peirce David Macarthur on Wittgenstein This also serves a larger philosophical purpose. Might we gain increased clarity about what philosophy is in the first place? After all, in practice we individuate philosophy partly through its greatest practitioners’ greatest contributions. The book does not discuss every philosopher who has been regarded as great. The point is not to offer a definitive list of The Great Philosophers, but, rather, to learn something about what great philosophy is and might be, from illuminated examples of past greatness.

'The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts' Bertrand Russell 'Science is what you know. Philosophy is what you don't know' Bertrand Russell discovered mathematics at the age of eleven. It was, he recalled, a transporting experience: 'as dazzling as first love'. From that moment on, he would pursue his passion with undying devotion and fervour. Mathematics might succeed, he felt, where philosophy had failed, reducing thought to its purest form, and freeing knowledge from doubt and contradiction. And for a time, so it seemed. Russell's mathematical investigations effortlessly resolved at a stroke some of philosophy's most intractable problems. Yet if mathematics could be a liberating mistress, she was also an unreliable one... Opening up the work of one of our age's undisputed giants, Ray Monk's exhilaratingly clear, readable guide tells a compelling human tale too: a moving story of love and loss, of ecstatic triumph and deep disillusion.

Almost every thoughtful person wonders at some time why morality says what it says and how, if at all, it speaks to us. David Wiggins surveys the answers most commonly proposed for such questions--and does so in a way that the thinking reader, increasingly perplexed by the everyday problem of moral philosophy, can follow. His work is thus an introduction to ethics that presupposes nothing more than the reader's willingness to read philosophical proposals closely and literally. Gathering insights from Hume, Kant, the utilitarians, and a twentieth-century assortment of post-utilitarian thinkers, and drawing on sources as diverse as Aristotle, Simone Weil, and Philippa Foot, Wiggins points to the special role of the sentiments of solidarity and reciprocity that human beings will find within themselves. After examining the part such sentiments play in sustaining our ordinary ideas of agency and responsibility, he searches the political sphere for a neo-Aristotelian account of justice that will cohere with such an account of morality. Finally, Wiggins turns to the standing of morality and the question of the objectivity or reality of ethical demands. As the need arises at various points in the book, he pursues a variety of related issues and engages additional thinkers--Plato, C. S. Peirce, Darwin, Schopenhauer, Leibniz, John Rawls, Montaigne and others--always emphasizing the words of the philosophers under discussion, and giving readers the resources to arrive at their own viewpoint of why and how ethics matters.