In this classic in the philosophy of history, Karl Popper (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper) attacks those who believe in the ‘iron laws’ of history. In other words that there is some kind of fixed destiny or inevitability about how things must work out. For example, the ascendancy of the ‘pure blooded’ races (Fascism). Or the victory of the […]
The Poverty of Historicism by Karl Popper Read More »
Have you ever wondered what could possibly be meant by the epigrams ‘The limits of my language are the limits of my world‘, or ‘Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent’. These are just two of a large number of utterances (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein) from celebrated Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (Ludwig Wittgenstein (Stanford Encyclopedia of
Insight and Illusion by Peter Hacker Read More »
We normally take it for granted that other people will live on after we ourselves have died. Even if we do not believe in a personal afterlife in which we survive our own deaths, we assume that there will be a ‘collective afterlife’ in which humanity survives long after we are gone. Samuel Scheffler (http://as.nyu.edu/faculty/samuel-scheffler.html) maintains
Death and the Afterlife by Samuel Scheffler Read More »
Our subjective experience of time is that the future advances towards us into the present moment and then recedes into the past. It is a kind of ‘flow’, ‘the river of time’. Many thinkers are troubled, though, by questions about the relation between past, present and future. Is time travel possible? If so could you
Real Time II by David Mellor Read More »
This is the best short introduction to Humanism I’ve read. Part of the ‘Thinking in Action’ series from Routledge, it is systematic, clear and cool headed. People often ask me ‘What is Humanism?’ The short answer is ‘An ethical life without superstition’ Richard Norman (Professor of Philosophy at Kent, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Norman) covers all the main points
On Humanism by Richard Norman Read More »
Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Protagoras (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protagoras) declares in the dialogue of the same name by Plato that ‘Man is the Measure of all Things’. If there is an objective reality ‘out there’ how can we know it except through our human point of view? David E. Cooper, (Professor of Philosophy at Durham, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_E._Cooper) takes up this challenge.
The Measure of Things by David E. Cooper Read More »
Donald E. Brown (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_E._Brown) offered this thesis in 1991. His own summary of human universals is that they “comprise those features of culture, society, language, behavior, and psyche for which there are no known exception.” We are all tiresomely familiar with the banal falsity that ‘everything is relative’. In the field of anthropology at least, Brown
Human Universals by David E. Brown Read More »
In Shakespeare’s As You Like It, the melancholy Jaques declares: “All the world’s a stage/And all the men and women merely players.” This is a celebrated use of metaphor, a figure of speech in which one thing is used to describe another. As one of the central structural elements in human thought it is the habit,
Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson Read More »
This volume allows Bryan Magee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryan_Magee) the length to set out the arguments of the great German pessimist. He is largely sympathetic to Schopenhauer. Firstly he takes over 100 pages to explain how Schopenhauer’s starting point is very much the ‘transcendental idealism’ of Immanuel Kant. Briefly put this is a stance that Kant arrived at
The Philosophy of Schopenhauer by Bryan Magee Read More »
