This book is a wonderful breath of fresh air and a book for the general reader as much as for philosophers. Mary Midgley (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Midgely) explores the relation between men and other animals in an original but common sense way. The book has garnered more relevance to bioethical controversies today than it had on publication in […]
Beast and Man by Mary Midgley Read More »
Sub-titled ‘An Essay on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason‘, this book is an illuminating analysis of Kant’s main line of thought in the Critique, and it goes beyond Kant in its marvellously perceptive discussion of the relation between language and the world as we perceive it. Kant was perhaps the first truly professional philosopher. He
The Bounds of Sense by P.F. Strawson Read More »
What first prompted prehistoric man, sheltering in the shadows of deep caves, to call upon the realm of the spirits? And why has belief thrived since, shaping millennia of civilizations, thousands of generations of shamans, pharaohs, Aztec priests and Mayan rulers, Jews, Buddhists, Christians, Muslims and Scientologists? As our dreams and nightmares have changed over the
An Atheist’s History of Belief by Matthew Kneale Read More »
Contemporaries called Spinoza ‘Satan incarnate’ and ‘the most impious atheist who ever lived upon face of the earth’. But he is now revered as one of the greatest philosophers since Plato, as the political theorist who first enunciated the general principles for a secular democratic society, and in many ways a modern saint. Baruch, later
Betraying Spinoza by Rebecca Goldstein Read More »
Simon Blackburn (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Blackburn andhttp://www2.phil.cam.ac.uk/~swb24/) puts forward a compelling and original philosophy of human motivation and morality. Why do we behave as we do? Can we improve? Is our ethics at war with our passions, or is it an upshot of those passions? Blackburn seeks the answers to such questions in an exploration of the nature of
Ruling Passions by Simon Blackburn Read More »
If a man supports Celtic one day and Rangers the next then he is fickle but not necessarily illogical. From this starting point, and assuming no previous knowledge of the subject, Wilfrid Hodges (http://wilfridhodges.co.uk/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilfrid_Hodges) takes the reader through the whole gamut of logical expressions in a simple and lively way. Readers who are more mathematically adventurous
Logic by Wilfred Hodges Read More »
Treat yourself to this engrossing narrative history which reveals the roots of modern science in the medieval world. The adjective ‘medieval’ has almost become a synonym for backwardness and uncivilized behaviour. Yet without the work of medieval scholars there could have been no Galileo, no Newton and no Scientific Revolution. In God’s Philosophers, James Hannam (http://jameshannam.com/) debunks
God’s Philosophers by James Hannam Read More »
The problem of the ultimate causes of evil, especially human strife and suffering, has agitated people’s minds from the beginning of history. The problem was particularly acute for the Christian tradition, with its faith in an all-loving and all-powerful God. A whole branch of theology, ‘theodicy’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodicy), developed to deal with this problem. Good recommendations
The Evolution of Evil by Timothy Anders Read More »
John Leslie Mackie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._L._Mackie) gives a carefully considered account of the arguments for and against the existence of God. His view is that, in the light of these arguments, it is a miracle that theism persists. The book has two main parts. In the first we get a discussion of the traditional arguments for the existence
The Miracle of Theism by J.L. Mackie Read More »
