Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent condition. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> Part of the richness of philosophy is also its diversity. Universal human problems like breath blown into a bottle have varying sounds depending on what they strike. Different cultural contain- ers create unique voices and invite us to hear a symphony of responses. Just as travel changes the way we see new places and the home we’ve left behind this philosophical tour can open our minds to new possibilities variations on familiar themes. I have taken the Western philosophical tradition as my starting point and organized the readings around its usual structure and categories choosing selections from other cultures that speak its language. This helps all of us comfortable with Western culture hear these “foreign” voices more clearly. But we must always keep in mind that in most cases the writers and speakers did not have the Western tradition in mind. Their philosophical musings like ours arise out of and speak to specific social and historical contexts. We need to take them on their own terms as well as on ours. The organizational structure of the book is also a typically Western one. If you are using a text- book in addition to this reader chances are it follows this standard sequence. Although we in the West have found this order useful it is certainly not the only possible one and not necessarily the best one in all situations. It begins with metaphysics an investigation into what is real in the world and in the human person moves to epistemology the study of what we know and how we think we know and concludes with axiology an exploration of what we value and why. These three major divisions are all interrelated. Particularly in the West it is almost impossible to talk about what is real without at the same time deciding what means of knowing we will use to find out. If we decide knowing is a matter of reason and rational processes one model of reality emerges; if we insist knowing depends entirely on sense experience the picture of reality we con- struct may look quite different. In a similar way how we decide the morally right thing to do. (LL)