Kenny, A., Longuet-Higgins, H. C., Lucas, J. R., Waddington, C. H. (1973), The Development of Mind, Edinburgh University Press (Gifford Lectures, online) ISBN 0-85224-263-8 The reviewer would like to use the space to jot some of his thoughts on where the next generation of philosophers could be headed. Progress in the fields of logic, inductive and deductive, was along a specific path with the Western Philosophers until relativity and quantum physics. The new sciences upstaged axiomatic foundations like the principle of bivalence or the law of excluded middle. They created the need for a far more nuanced approach than the one followed for millennia.

This one by Grayling is certainly a lot of fun. And /long/! (28 hours on audible) It is well written (stylistically) and manages to convey something of the depth, breadth and variety of the philosophical tradition. Unexpectedly interesting were two later sections on Indian and Chinese philosophy which, though they were presented as rather primitive and Grayling emphasizes his non-expert status with regards to them, are able to put a thought-provoking spin on ideas that resemble those of the west through subtle differences in vocabulary.present. Throughout, the six contributors--an internationally renowned team of philosophers including Roger Scruton, Anthony Quinton, and Anthony Kenny--bring the astonishingly diverse, wide-ranging landscape of intellectual history into sharp focus, emphasizing how notions seen today as part of an The history of philosophy usually tells us how one set of ideas gave birth to another. What it tends to overlook are the political forces and social upheavals that shaped them. Witcraft, by contrast, sees philosophy itself as a historical practice. For much of its career, it was never easy to distinguish from political conflict, religious strife and scientific controversy. For some 17th-century Puritans, philosophy was a satanic pursuit, an impious meddling with sacred truths. There was a battle between the church and the universities on the one hand, with their reverence for Aristotle and the schoolmen, and on the other the humanists, scientists, atheists and radicals. It is the stuffy old university of Wittenberg versus the humanistic Hamlet and his sceptical friend Horatio. The history of philosophy is one of those subjects that is such of flood of ideas that after such a book you end up only clinging to a few scraps of insight while most of flows over the rim of your overwhelmed mind... it's just too much to file neatly away. And so I think it's worth wading through it repeatedly over the course of your life, hopefully accumulating a little more wisdom each time. Kenny’s intellectual history is a little better than ‘who’s who’ in philosophy. He briefly described the lives of the philosophers, and then outlined their ideas. Historical, cultural, social, scientific and a host of other factors are absent from the discussions. This section merely serves to provide a very short summary of the ideas that will be elaborated in the later thematic chapters. Kenny should learn from other masterpieces to learn how to write intellectual history better. Over time, as programming developments have shown, the descriptive power of languages continues to improve while always staying grossly inadequate. With the higher ability to detail the surround, past conclusions always appear simplistic. Some old queries get answered, but one feels like the list of the unanswered keeps getting bigger. The language complexities compound and intricate self-referentiality make path dependence important as well.

Originally published in 2007, this part covers the post-Hegelian period up to the present day, including: Kenny, A. & Kenny C. (2006) Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Utility. Imprint Academic. ISBN 978-1-84540-052-1To consider the first of these: Kenny seems to regard these recent, but deep divisions as standing features of the philosophical landscape, since he claims that "well-meaning attempts to bring together proponents of the different styles of philosophizing met with only limited success in the second half of the century" (p. 72). This last claim is open to dispute, if one considers the extent to which prominent Anglophone philosophers -- Richard Rorty, Hilary Putnam, Stanley Cavell, John McDowell, and Robert Brandom, to name a few -- have in recent decades variously incorporated or appropriated ideas from both sides of the analytic-continental divide. Kenny's verdict similarly overlooks or downplays the amount of scholarly and philosophical work devoted to continental figures by more analytically trained philosophers. The latter work -- exemplified most prominently by Hubert Dreyfus' work on Heidegger -- is typically keen to demonstrate the relevance of continental ideas to ongoing concerns in the analytic tradition. Though one can dispute the success of any particular approach in philosophy, it strikes me as unfair and inaccurate to deem all of this to be merely "well-meaning." Portraits of Kenny hang in the British Academy, London, and at Balliol College and Rhodes House, Oxford. [13] [14] [15] Published works [ edit ] The themes explored by Kenny include the following: logic, epistemology, physics, metaphysics, soul and mind, and ethics and theology. Each of Kenny’s thematic chapters is lucid and well-organized, as well as reasonably comprehensive. Some offer valuable insights into the ideas raised by particular philosophers. The only thematic chapter that was somewhat difficult, if not tedious to read, was the one on logic - not an easy topic to write or read about in any case.

The story of philosophy is an epic tale: an exploration of the ideas, views and teachings of some of the most creative minds known to humanity. But since the long-popular classic Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy, first published in 1945, there has been no comprehensive and entertaining, single-volume history of this great intellectual journey.Avevo bisogno però di un testo di riferimento, soprattutto per confrontare la terminologia specifica in quanto i due corsi sono in inglese e anche perché, mi piace attingere a fonti diverse. Let's understand the contradictions in two diversionary forces: a whole world must be abstractionally split by the being to be understood and manipulated better. The way a length of a non-linear shore depends on the minimum on the scale used to measure (with no upper bound), the finer the ability to sieve the reality, the more is a being's ability to comprehend and manipulate. And yet, the finer the splits into categories/names/analytical relationships, the more are the doubts and unanswered questions (like the way linear equations squeeze out less and less utility with every lesser degree of freedom). Stupidly, a language that uses only two words to describe human emotions is likely to have the underlying humans with far fewer psychological, social, economic, or philosophical issues.