Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent condition. Hardcover. English. See images for condition.

About the book >.>.> ASK A QUESTION and it is reasonable to expect an answer or a confession of ignorance. But a philosopher may defy expectations. Confront-ed by a standard question arising from a nor mal way of viewing the world a philosopher may reply that the question is misguided that to continue asking it is at the extreme to get trapped in a delusive hall of mirrors. Accord-ing to Raymond Geuss this attempt to bypass or undercut conventional ways of thinking to escape from the hall of mirrors represents philosophy at its best and most characteristic. To illustrate Geuss explores the ideas of twelve philosophers who broke dramatical-ly with prevailing wisdom from Socrates and Plato in the ancient world to Wittgenstein and Adorno in our own. The result is a striking account of some of the most innovative and important philosophers in Western history and an indirect manifesto for how to pursue philosophy today. Geuss cautions that philos-ophers’ attempts to break from convention do not necessarily make the world a better place. Montaigne’s ideas may have been benign but the fate of the views developed by for instance Augustine Hobbes and Nietzsche has been more varied. But in the act of provoking people to think differently philosophers make clear that we are not fated to live within the often stifling systems of thought that we inherit. We can change the subject. (SP)