Overcoming all my anti-social tendencies, I asked in a philosophy subreddit – from real people! – to see what they would recommend, and that’s how I ended up with Think by Simon Blackburn, which, according to its subtitle, is a “compelling introduction to philosophy”. So there must have already been someone who’s written a comparison of these trends and with whose help I can perhaps get a more comprehensive picture more quickly.Īnd lo and behold, it exists. And most of them are not exactly fresh off the press. In its introspection it is just like Zen/Buddhism, its attitude to pleasure is exactly the opposite of hedonism, it agrees with Epicureanism in X and Y, but disagrees in Z… This immediately set the ball rolling for me: after all, every philosophical movement is trying to cover and explain the same reality. Rather, it was how much it was compared to other philosophical schools. That is not to say that there weren’t plenty of negatives to go with the positives, but interestingly enough, that was not the most interesting thing I found. Well, fortunately, I found no evidence of wrongful seduction this time. In such cases of “love at first sight”, however, my first reaction – let’s call it a safety net against gullibility – is usually to check out the counter-arguments and criticisms, so as not to be accidentally seduced in the wrong direction. As you might recall, we were elbow-deep in Stoic philosophy there, which… let’s just say it hit home for me. Written in a lively and approachable manner, this book is ideal for all those who want to learn how the basic techniques of thinking shape our existence.And we’re already on the second book… Things tend to progress when you do them, right? Anyway, let’s start with a little segue as to why this comes after Marcus Aurelius. The large range of topics covered range from scepticism, the self, mind and body, and freedom to ethics and the arguments surrounding the existence of God.
Each chapter explains a major issue, and gives the reader a self-contained guide through the problems that philosophers have studied. Simon Blackburn begins by putting forward a convincing case for the study of philosophy and goes on to give the reader a sense of how the great historical figures such as Plato, Hume, Kant, and Descartes have approached its central themes. Written by the author of the bestselling Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, Think sets out to explain what they are and why they are important. It is for anyone who believes there are big questions out there, but does not know how to approach them. This is a book about the big questions in life: knowledge, consciousness, fate, God, truth, goodness, justice. What am I? What is consciousness? What is the difference between past and future? Does the world presuppose a creator? Do we always act out of self-interest? Oxford Research Encyclopedias: Global Public Health.The European Society of Cardiology Series.Oxford Commentaries on International Law.
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