The Philosophical Life - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Philosophical Life write by James Miller. This book was released on 2012-02-01. The Philosophical Life available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Learn How to Live from History's Greatest Thinkers Before the good life was reduced to a bottle of Prozac, it was philosophers who offered answers to the most fundamental questions about who we are and how to live well. In The Philosophical Life, James Miller returns to this vibrant tradition with short and spirited biographies of twelve famous thinkers, examining the interplay of their life and thought. From Plato, who risked his reputation to tutor a tyrant, to Kant, who wrestled with hypochondria while advocating arch-rationality in his writings, each thinker took their own unique approach to ‘the good life’, but often struggled to put their theories into practice. With a flair for rich anecdote, Miller provides a captivating insight into some of history’s greatest thinkers – and confirms the continuing relevance of philosophy today.
The Philosophical Life
The Philosophical Life - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Philosophical Life write by Arthur P. Urbano. This book was released on 2013-10-12. The Philosophical Life available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Ancient biographies were more than accounts of the deeds of past heroes and guides for moral living. They were also arenas for debating pressing philosophical questions and establishing intellectual credentials, as Arthur P. Urbano argues in this study of biographies composed in Late Antiquity
Maurice Blondel
Maurice Blondel - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Maurice Blondel write by Oliva Blanchette. This book was released on 2010-04-16. Maurice Blondel available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. French philosopher Maurice Blondel had a tremendous impact on both philosophy and religion over the first half of the twentieth century. He was at once a postmodern critical philosopher and a devout traditional Catholic, trying not only to reconcile these two seemingly disparate factors in his own mind, but also to prove to others that the two must go together. / In the first critical examination of the philosopher’s life Oliva Blanchette tells the story of Blondel’s stormy life confronting an Academy dismissive of religion and a Religion uncomfortable with rational philosophy. This book not only follows his biographical history, but also presents his systematic philosophy, from the beginning of his journey to the culmination found in Philosophical Exigencies of Christianity, the book for which he signed the publishing contract the day before he died. / Maurice Blondel is part of the Ressourcement: Retrieval and Renewal in Catholic Thought series, edited by David L. Schindler.
Pursuits of Wisdom
Pursuits of Wisdom - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Pursuits of Wisdom write by John M. Cooper. This book was released on 2013-08-25. Pursuits of Wisdom available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This is a major reinterpretation of ancient philosophy that recovers the long Greek and Roman tradition of philosophy as a complete way of life--and not simply an intellectual discipline. Distinguished philosopher John Cooper traces how, for many ancient thinkers, philosophy was not just to be studied or even used to solve particular practical problems. Rather, philosophy--not just ethics but even logic and physical theory--was literally to be lived. Yet there was great disagreement about how to live philosophically: philosophy was not one but many, mutually opposed, ways of life. Examining this tradition from its establishment by Socrates in the fifth century BCE through Plotinus in the third century CE and the eclipse of pagan philosophy by Christianity, Pursuits of Wisdom examines six central philosophies of living--Socratic, Aristotelian, Stoic, Epicurean, Skeptic, and the Platonist life of late antiquity. The book describes the shared assumptions that allowed these thinkers to conceive of their philosophies as ways of life, as well as the distinctive ideas that led them to widely different conclusions about the best human life. Clearing up many common misperceptions and simplifications, Cooper explains in detail the Socratic devotion to philosophical discussion about human nature, human life, and human good; the Aristotelian focus on the true place of humans within the total system of the natural world; the Stoic commitment to dutifully accepting Zeus's plans; the Epicurean pursuit of pleasure through tranquil activities that exercise perception, thought, and feeling; the Skeptical eschewal of all critical reasoning in forming their beliefs; and, finally, the late Platonist emphasis on spiritual concerns and the eternal realm of Being. Pursuits of Wisdom is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding what the great philosophers of antiquity thought was the true purpose of philosophy--and of life.
Foucault's Askesis
Foucault's Askesis - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Foucault's Askesis write by Edward F. McGushin. This book was released on 2007-04-03. Foucault's Askesis available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. In his renowned courses at the Collège de France from 1982 to 1984, Michel Foucault devoted his lectures to meticulous readings and interpretations of the works of Plato, Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius, among others. In this his aim was not, Edward F. McGushin contends, to develop a new knowledge of the history of philosophy; rather, it was to let himself be transformed by the very activity of thinking. Thus, this work shows us Foucault in the last phase of his life in the act of becoming a philosopher. Here we see how his encounter with ancient philosophy allowed him to experience the practice of philosophy as, to paraphrase Nietzsche, a way of becoming who one is: the work of self-formation that the Greeks called askēsis. Through a detailed study of Foucault's last courses, McGushin demonstrates that this new way of practicing philosophical askēsis evokes Foucault's ethical resistance to modern relations of power and knowledge. In order to understand Foucault's later project, then, it is necessary to see it within the context of his earlier work. If his earlier projects represented an attempt to bring to light the relations of power and knowledge that narrowed and limited freedom, then this last project represents his effort to take back that freedom by redefining it in terms of care of the self. Foucault always stressed that modern power functions by producing individual subjects. This book shows how his excavation of ancient philosophical practices gave him the tools to counter this function-with a practice of self-formation, an askēsis.
