Questions for the Soul
Edition: 4
Copyright: 2021
Pages: 722
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$66.00 USD
"This book is intended as an introduction to philosophy. It is a thoughtful collection of writings on different philosophical discourses by different philosophers. The book presents philosophy as sustained reflection on the questions that most profoundly and deeply concern the life of a human being in the context of concrete life experiences. In addition, the collective writings in this book attempts to expand the possible answers to life's fundamental questions by locating the questions within the scope of world philosophies. Includes selections from writers of a broad spectrum of topics, times and places.
The approach to philosophy in this book is thematic. It looks at philosophy's value and then considers, in order, the basic questions of being, knowledge, truth, goodness, beauty, God, freedom, immortality, and meaning. Many classic philosophical texts are included in the book, as well as interesting and relevant recent non-philosophical writings. An index of the philosophers along with selected quotations has also been included in this text.
Questions for the Soul: Introduction to Philosophy sets out critical questions, key ideas, and important quotations within each selection have been set in boldface type, to help the reader more easily identify central philosophical problems, grasp the main point(s) of the various essays, and quickly be able to locate some of the most significant and oft quoted passages in the history of human thought."
Preface
Chapter I: Philosophy’s Value: Wisdom and Insight
Reading Philosophy at Night
Charles Simic
Wisdom
Alfred North Whitehead
Stories of Chuang Tzu and Hui Tzu
Arthur Waley
What Is Enlightenment?
Immanuel Kant
The Apology
Plato
Life in the Woods
Henry David Thoreau
Feminism, Feelings, and Philosophy
Morwenna Griffiths
Philosophical Thinking in India, China, and Japan
Michael C. Brannigan
Is There an African Philosophy?
Innocent Onyewuenyi
The Value of Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
Chapter II: Being
from Siddhartha
Hermann Hesse
Tao-Te Ching
Lao Tzu
The Pre-Socratic Philosophers
Thales
Anaximander
Anaximenes
Heraclitus
Parmenides
Zeno
Empedocles
Anaxagoras
Democritus
Pythagoras
Two Tables
Sir Arthur Eddington
Reality Consists of Ideas
George Berkeley
The Crest-Jewel of Discrimination
Shankara
Chapter III: Knowledge
Knowledge Is Recollection
Plato
The Divided Line
Plato
The Allegory of the Cave
Plato
from Meditations on First Philosophy
René Descartes
What Is Indubitable?
René Descartes
Scepticism
David Hume
An Empiricist Theory of Knowledge
John Locke
The Problem of Induction
David Hume
Is the Sex of the Knower Epistemologically Significant?
Lorraine Code
Practice and Contradiction
Mao Tse-Tung
Chapter IV: Truth
Truth as Correspondence
Bertrand Russell
Truth Is Established by Coherence
Francis H. Bradley
Pragmatism’s Conception of Truth
William James
The Subjective Truth
Sφren Kierkegaard
On the Essence of Truth
Martin Heidegger
from Cultural Gaps: Why Do We Misunderstand?
Isamu Nagami
Chapter V: Goodness
Story of a Good Brahman
Voltaire
Work, Nonattachment, and Wisdom
from Bhagavad Gita
from The Analects of Confucius
On Cultivation of Character
Yahya ibn cAdi
Human Nature Is Evil
Xunzi
Virtue and Happiness
Aristotle
Friendship
Aristotle
A Good Will
Immanuel Kant
from Utilitarianism
John Stuart Mill
The Idea of a Female Ethic
Jean Grimshaw
Ambition
J. Krishnamurti
Ethics Are Relative
Ruth Benedict
Chapter VI: Beauty
Letters to a Young Poet
Rainer Maria Rilke
The Form of Beauty
Plato
On Beauty and Ugliness
Friedrich Nietzsche
Apollo and Dionysus
Friedrich Nietzsche
What Is Art?
Leo Tolstoy
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Walter Benjamin
On Elegance in Japan
Barbara Sandrisser
Chinese Aesthetics
Kuang-Ming Wu
Chapter VII: God
The Ontological Argument
Saint Anselm and Gaunilon
The Teleological Argument
William Paley
The Five Ways
Saint Thomas Aquinas
The Wager
Blaise Pascal
The Leap of Faith
Sφren Kierkegaard
The Will to Believe
William James
Agnosticism
T. H. Huxley
The Problem of Evil
John Hick
Chapter VIII: Freedom
Fate
Richard Taylor
Determinism
Baron d’Holbach
Karma and Freedom
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
Absolute Freedom
Jean Paul Sartre
The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor
Feodor Dostoyevsky
Freedom and the Control of Men
B. F. Skinner
Choice and Human Dignity
Viktor Frankl
Freedom and Inner Strength
Rollo May
Chapter IX: Immortality
The Wine Is in the Glass
Daniel Kolak
The Law of the Spirits
Valerie Hansen
A Treatise on Death
Wang Chong
Is the Notion of Disembodied Existence Intelligible?
John Hospers
Phaedo
Plato
Letter to Menoeceus
Epicurus
from Scripture of the Pure Land
Death Is Swallowed Up in Victory
I Corinthians 15
The Dead in Christ Shall Rise First
I Thessalonians 4
Chapter X: Meaning
Night-Sea Journey
John Barth
Substance, Shadow, and Spirit
T’ao Ch’ien
My Confession
Leo Tolstoy
The Death of Ivan Ilych
Leo Tolstoy
The Myth of Sisyphus
Albert Camus
Response
Martin Buber
Three Passions
Bertrand Russell
Appendix
Truth and Validity
Irving M. Copi
Common Fallacies and Errors of Reasoning
Peter A. Facoine
Index of Philosophers’ Quotations
Professor of Philosophy at College of DuPage