The Great Conversation: A Historical Introduction to Philosophy » (5th Edition)

Lehigh University (Emeritus)

This historically organized introductory text, which begins with Hesiod and goes up to Derrida and Quine, presents philosophy as an ongoing conversation about humankind's deepest and most persistent concerns. The Great Conversation traces the exchange of ideas between history's key philosophers, demonstrating that while constructing an argument or making a claim, one philosopher almost always has others in mind. The book is also available in two volumes: Volume I covers Hesiod through Descartes (Chapters 1-13); Volume II includes "Moving from Medieval to Modern" (Chapter 12), and coverage of Descartes through Derrida and Quine (Chapters 13-25).

A Word to Instructors     xiii
A Word to Students     xv
Acknowledgments     xix
Before Philosophy: Myth in Hesiod and Homer     1
Hesiod: War among the Gods     2
Homer: Heroes, Gods, and Excellence     4
Philosophy Before Socrates     10
Thales: The One as Water     11
Anaximander: The One as the Boundless     12
Xenophanes: The Gods as Fictions     14
Profile: Pythagoras     16
Heraclitus: Oneness in the Logos     19
Parmenides: Only the One     24
Zeno: The Paradoxes of Common Sense     29
Atomism: The One and the Many Reconciled     30
The Key: An Ambiguity     31
The World     32
The Soul     33
How to Live     35
The Sophists: Rhetoric and Relativism in Athens     37
Democracy     37
The Persian Wars     38
The Sophists     40
Rhetoric     42
Relativism     44
Physis and Nomos     45
Athens and Sparta at War     50
Aristophanes and Reaction     54
Socrates: To Know Oneself     59
Character     60
Is Socrates a Sophist?     63
What Socrates "Knows"     66
We Ought to Search for Truth     67
Human Excellence is Knowledge     67
All Wrongdoing is Due to Ignorance     68
The Most Important Thing of All is to Care for Your Soul     69
The Trial and Death of Socrates     71
Euthyphro     71
Translator's Introduction     71
The Dialogue     72
Commentary and Questions     80
Apology     85
Translator's Introduction     85
The Dialogue     86
Commentary and Questions     98
Crito     103
Translator's Introduction     103
The Dialogue     104
Commentary and Questions     110
Phaedo (Death Scene)     113
Translator's Introduction     113
The Dialogue (Selection)     113
Commentary and Questions     115
Plato: Knowing the Real and the Good     117
Knowledge and Opinion     118
Making the Distinction     118
We Do Know Certain Truths     120
The Objects of Knowledge     121
The Reality of the Forms     124
The World and the Forms     126
How Forms are Related to the World     126
Lower and Higher Forms     128
The Form of the Good     130
The Love of Wisdom     133
What Wisdom is     133
Love and Wisdom     137
The Soul     141
The Immortality of the Soul     141
The Structure of the Soul     143
Morality     145
The State     150
Problems with the Forms     153
Aristotle: The Reality of the World     156
Aristotle and Plato     156
Otherworldliness     157
The Objects of Knowledge     157
Human Nature     157
Relativism and Skepticism     158
Ethics     158
Logic and Knowledge     159
Terms and Statements     160
Truth     162
Reasons Why: The Syllogism     163
Knowing First Principles     166
The World     168
Nature     168
The Four "Becauses"     169
Is There Purpose in Nature?     171
Teleology     172
First Philosophy     173
Not Plato's Forms     174
What of Mathematics?     175
Substance and Form     175
Pure Actualities     177
God     177
The Soul     179
Levels of Soul     180
Soul and Body     181
Nous     183
The Good Life     185
Happiness     186
Virtue or Excellence (Arete)     189
The Role of Reason     191
Responsibility     193
The Highest Good     195
Epicureans, Stoics, and Skeptics: Happiness for the Many     198
The Epicureans     199
The Stoics     204
The Skeptics     209
The Christians: Sin, Salvation, and Love     216
Background     217
Jesus     219
The Meaning of Jesus     223
Augustine: God and the Soul     226
Wisdom, Happiness, and God     232
The Interior Teacher     236
God and the World     238
The Great Chain of Being     238
Evil     241
Time     242
Human Nature and Its Corruption      246
Human Nature and Its Restoration     252
Augustine on Relativism     255
The Two Cities     257
Christians and Philosophers     259
Reason and Authority     259
Intellect and Will     261
Augustine on Epicureans and Stoics     261
Anselm and Aquinas: Existence and Essence in God and the World     264
Anselm: On That, Than Which No Greater Can Be Conceived     264
Thomas Aquinas: Rethinking Aristotle     269
Profile: Avicenna (Ibn Sina)     270
Philosophy and Theology     271
Existence and Essence     272
Profile: Averroes (Ibn Rushd)     274
From Creation to God     275
The Nature of God     280
Profile: Maimonides (Moses Ben Maimon)     282
Humans: Their Souls     283
Humans: Their Knowledge     285
Humans: Their Good     287
Ockham and Skeptical Doubts-Again     292
Moving from Medieval to Modern     297
The World God Made for Us     298
The Humanists     302
Reforming the Church     304
Skeptical Thoughts Revived     309
Copernicus to Kepler to Galileo: The Great Triple Play     312
Rene Descartes: Doubting Our Way to Certainty     319
The Method     321
Meditations: Commentary and Questions     324
Meditations on First Philosophy     336
Meditation I     336
Meditation II     338
Meditation III     341
Meditation IV     346
Meditation V     349
Meditation VI     351
What Has Descartes Done?     356
A New Ideal for Knowledge     357
A New Vision of Reality     357
Problems     358
The Preeminence of Epistemology     359
Hobbes, Locke, and Berkeley: Materialism and the Beginnings of Empiricism     360
Thomas Hobbes: Catching Persons in the Net of the New Science     360
Method     361
Minds and Motives     362
Profile: Francis Bacon     368
The Natural Foundation of Moral Rules     369
John Locke: Looking to Experience     372
Origin of Ideas     373
Idea of Substance     374
Idea of the Soul     376
Idea of Personal Identity     376
Language and Essence     378
The Extent of Knowledge      380
Of Representative Government     382
Of Toleration     384
George Berkeley: Ideas into Things     385
Abstract Ideas     386
Ideas and Things     388
God     393
David Hume: Unmasking the Pretensions of Reason     397
How Newton Did It     398
To Be the Newton of Human Nature     399
The Theory of Ideas     401
The Association of Ideas     402
Causation: The Very Idea     403
The Disappearing Self     409
Profile: The Buddha     412
Rescuing Human Freedom     412
Is It Reasonable to Believe in God?     415
Understanding Morality     419
Reason is Not a Motivator     419
The Origins of Moral Judgment     420
Is Hume a Skeptic?     423
Immanuel Kant: Rehabilitating Reason (Within Strict Limits)     426
Critique     428
Judgments     429
Geometry, Mathematics, Space, and Time     431
Common Sense, Science, and the A Priori Categories     434
Profile: Baruch Spinoza     438
Phenomena and Noumena     439
Profile: Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz     440
Reasoning and the Ideas of Metaphysics: God, World, and Soul     442
The Soul     443
The World and the Free Will     444
God     447
The Ontological Argument     448
Reason and Morality     450
The Good Will     451
The Moral Law     453
Profile: Jean-Jacques Rousseau     455
Autonomy     456
Freedom     458
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Taking History Seriously     461
Historical and Intellectual Context     462
The French Revolution     462
The Romantics     463
Epistemology Internalized     464
Profile: Arthur Schopenhauer     465
Self and Others     470
Stoic and Skeptical Consciousness     473
Hegel's Analysis of Christianity     474
Reason and Reality: The Theory of Idealism     476
Spirit Made Objective: The Social Character of Ethics     478
History and Freedom     484
Kierkegaard and Marx: Two Ways to "Correct" Hegel     488
Kierkegaard: On Individual Existence     488
The Aesthetic     489
The Ethical      492
The Religious     496
The Individual     503
Marx: Beyond Alienation and Exploitation     507
Alienation, Exploitation, and Private Property     509
Communism     511
The Utilitarians: Moral Rules and the Happiness of All (Including Women)     515
The Classic Utilitarians     515
The Rights of Women     525
Friedrich Nietzsche: The Value of Existence     533
Pessimism and Tragedy     534
Good-bye Real World     538
The Death of God     542
Revaluation of Values     546
Master Morality/Slave Morality     546
Our Morality     549
The Overman     552
Affirming Eternal Recurrence     560
The Pragmatists: Thought and Action     565
Charles Sanders Peirce     565
Fixing Belief     566
Belief and Doubt     568
Truth and Reality     570
Meaning     574
Signs     578
John Dewey     580
The Impact of Darwin     580
Naturalized Epistemology     582
Profile: William James     583
Nature and Natural Science      585
Value Naturalized     587
Analysis: Logical Atomism and the Logical Positivists     593
Language and Its Logic     594
Profile: Bertrand Russell     596
Ludwig Wittgenstein: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus     596
Picturing     599
Thought and Language     601
Logical Truth     603
Saying and Showing     605
Setting the Limit to Thought     606
Value and the Self     607
Good and Evil, Happiness and Unhappiness     610
The Unsayable     612
Logical Positivism     614
Ordinary Language: "This is Simply What I Do"     620
The Later Wittgenstein: Philosophical Investigations     622
Philosophical Illusion     623
Language-Games     626
Ostensive Definitions     628
Objects     629
Family Resemblances     630
The Continuity of Wittgenstein's Thought     633
Our Groundless Certainty     635
Martin Heidegger: The Meaning of Being     642
What Is the Question?     643
The Clue     644
Phenomenology     647
Profile: Jean-Paul Sartre      648
Being-in-the-World     649
The "Who" of Dasein     654
Modes of Disclosure     657
Attunement     658
Understanding     660
Discourse     663
Falling-Away     664
Idle Talk     664
Curiosity     665
Ambiguity     665
Care     666
Truth     667
Death     669
Conscience, Guilt, and Resoluteness     671
Temporality as the Meaning of Care     673
The Priority of Being     676
Simone De Beauvoir: Existentialist, Feminist     684
Ambiguity     684
Ethics     689
Woman     694
Postmodernism and Physical Realism: Derrida, Rorty, Quine, and Dennett     703
Postmodernism     703
Deconstruction: Jacques Derrida     704
Liberal Ironist: Richard Rorty     713
Physical Realism     724
Science, Common Sense, and Metaphysics: Willard Van Orman Quine     725
The Matter of Minds: Daniel Dennett     736
Afterword     745
Glossary     G-1
Credits     C-1
Index      I-1