Tag: History of Philosophy

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‘Descartes in 90 Minutes’ by Paul Strathern, Ivan R. Dee

‘Descartes in 90 Minutes’ by Paul Strathern is an very very short introduction to Descartes. This book is a very easy, short, brief and amusing guide book to Descartes. The main content ‘Descartes’s Life & Works’ is a biographical description of Descartes’s life along with works and thoughts. It includes Descartes’s divided characteristics of ‘solitude and travel’, his personal and philosophical inclination, health weakness and refined fashion. And Strathern explains philosophical background of the era (influences of Scholasticism, Catholicism and Renaissance). Then he writes how Descartes changed and advanced the philosophical and scientific view in the Europe. ‘Afterword’ describes influences of, criticism to, failure of Descartes’s philosophy, especially his dichotomy of mind and matter, and mechanical view of universe. Even today, his argument and thinking are important and controversial in philosophy and science.

This book is an excellent interesting digest of Descartes’s total biography, but disappointingly philosophical commentary is few. But there are some right to point commentaries to Descartes’s philosophy. I’ll quote one of them. Descartes ‘had conceived of a universal science capable of embracing all human knowledge. This would arrive at truth by the use of reason. But this was much more than just a revolutionary new method. — Descartes had conceived of a system that would not only include all knowledge but also unite it. This system would be based on certainly alone. It would start from basic principles, which were themselves self-evident, and would build from there.’

Descartes in 90 Minutes (Philosophers in 90 Minutes Series)
Paul Strathern
Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, September 1 1996
91 pages $7.95
ISBN: 978-1-56663-129-7
Contents:
Introduction
Descartes’s Life and Works
Afterword
From Descartes’s Writing
Chronology of Significant Philosophical Dates
Chronology of Descartes’s Life
Chronology of Descartes’s Era
Recommended Reading
Index

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‘On Pierce (Wadsworth Philosophy Series)’ by Cornelis de Waal, Wadsworth Cengage Learning

‘On Pierce’ by Cornelis de Waal is a very short most plain introduction to philosophy and thought of Charles Sanders Pierce. This book explains from basic structure and definitions of Pierce’s philosophy and science, through his thinking about pragmatism, evolution and religion, to his semiotics and semiotic thought of man. The commentaries includes influences and differences of Pierce’s philosophy with Aristotle, Duns Scotus, British empiricism (John Locke, David Hume and George Barkley), Immanuel Kant, American pragmatism (William James and John Dewey) and Ferdinand de Saussure. More than half of description of this book is an explanation of basis, method and systems of Pierce’s entire philosophy and total science. Last two chapters are a commentary of Pierce’s semiotics and its view, are concise and very clear.

I want to quote description of chapter 10 in this book below, it’s great summary of Pierce’s philosophy and semiotic thought. ‘As we saw with his evolutional cosmology, for Pierce the whole universe is evolving mind; more specifically, the universe consists of mind that is increasingly bound by habit. Hence, the self too is mind bound by habit, just as everything else is. What distinguishes the self from material objects, including the human body, are the specific habits by which it is bound and the degree into which it has retained spontaneity. Recall that within Pierce’s evolutionary cosmology everything emerged out of a state of pure spontaneity through a process of habit formation.’

On Pierce (Wadsworth Philosophy Series)
Cornelis de Waal
Wadsworth Cengage Learning, Belmont, December 22 2000
96 pages $16.95
ISBN: 978-0-534-58376-7
Contents:
Preface
1. Who’s Charles Pierce
2. A New List of Categories
3. Phenomenology and the Normative Science
4. Pragmatism
5. The Scientific Method
6. Scientific Metaphysics
7. Evolutionary Cosmology
8. Philosophy of Religion
9. Semeiotic
10. A Semeiotic Theory of Man
Suggestions for Further Reading
Notes

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‘Aristotle (A Very Short Introduction)’ by Jonathan Barnes, Oxford University Press

‘Aristotle (A Very Short Introduction)’ by Jonathan Barnes is a little commentary to Aristotle and his Philosophy. 20 chapters of this book introduces Aristotle’s Philosophy, especially his thinking about science, knowledge, reality and (what is, aim of) Philosophy from ‘Physics’ and ‘Metaphysics’. This book consists of metaphysical abstract but detailed argument of them, such as his theories and thinkings of Philosophy (today’s total science), knowledge, logic, being, creature, causes, change, world, psuchê (soul), teleology, virtue, happiness and government. The first half of this book attentions comparison Aristotle’s thought about knowledge, science and Philosophy to Plato’s. Author emphasises Aristotle’s characteristic of philosopher-scientist differ from literary and poetic characteristic of Plato.

Barnes describe from objective and neutral viewpoint to Aristotle. He does not criticise and admire Aristotle’s Philosophy, and introduces Aristotle’s faults and differences to modern science. And he concluded ‘If we want to learn biology or logic, we no longer turn to Aristotle’s treatises: they are now of historical only. The same is not true of Aristotle’s more philosophical writings. The essays in the Physics, the Metaphysics, and the Ethics are less sure, less perfect, less scientific than the logic and the biology; but they are, paradoxically, more alive’, ‘But it an also be read as a contribution to a contemporary debate – or rather, to an eternal debate, Contemporary philosophers read Aristotle in this fashion, treating him as a brilliant colleague’.
The metaphysical and ontological commentary of this book is profound and packed, but biographical description and commentary of various genres of Aristotle’s Philosophy is very short. I recommend this book as the second or third introduction to Aristotle, especially who want to know Aristotle’s metaphysics and his thinking of what are knowledge, science and Philosophy.

Aristotle (A Very Short Introduction)
Jonathan Barnes
Oxford University Press, Oxford, January 18 2001
176 pages £ 6.99 $ 9.95
ISBN: 978-0-192-85408-7
Contents:
List of Illustrations
List of Maps
1. The Man and His Works
2. A Public Figure
3. Zoological Researchers
4. Collecting Facts
5. The Philosophical Background
6. The Structure of the Science
7. Logic
8. Knowledge
9. Ideal and Achievement
10. Reality
11. Change
12. Causes
13. Empiricism
14. Aristotle’s World-Picture
15. Psychology
16. Evidence and Theory
17. Teleology
18. Practical Philosophy
19. The Arts
20. Afterlige
References
Chronological Table
Further Reading
Index

Related Posts and Pages

‘Philosophy (A Very Short Introduction)’ by Edward Craig, Oxford University Press

‘Ancient Philosophy (A Very Short Introduction)’ by Julia Annas, Oxford University Press

‘Continental Philosophy (A Very Short Introduction)’ by Simon Critchley, Oxford University Press

‘Plato (A Very Short Introduction)’ by Julia Annas, Oxford University Press

‘Descartes (A Very Short Introduction)’ by Tom Sorell, Oxford University Press

‘Locke (A Very Short Introduction)’ by John Dunn, Oxford University Press

‘Marx (A Very Short Introduction)’ by Peter Singer, Oxford University Press

‘Barthes (A Very Short Introduction)’ by Jonathan Culler

‘The Meaning of Life (A Very Short Introduction)’ by Terry Eagleton, Oxford University Press

‘Love (A Very Short Introduction)’ by Ronald de Sousa, Oxford University Press