Existentialism exerts a continuing fascination on students of philosophy and general readers. As a philosophical phenomenon, though, it is often poorly understood, as a form of radical subjectivism that turns its back on reason and argumentation and possesses all the liabilities of philosophical idealism but without any idealistic conceptual clarity.
Philosophical Propositions is a fresh, up to date, and reliable introduction to philosophical problems. It takes seriously the need for philosophy to deal with definitive and statable propositions, such as God, certainty, time, personal identity, the mind/body problem, free will and determinism, and the meaning of life.
Have you ever lain awake at night fretting over how we can be sure of the reality of the external world? Perhaps we are in fact disembodied brains, floating in vats at the whim of some deranged puppet-master? If so, you are not alone - and what's more, you are in exalted company. For this question and other ones like it have been the stuff of philosophical rumination from Plato to Popper.
Admired by philosophers such as Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Freud, Benjamin, and Wittgenstein, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742 1799) is known to the English-speaking world mostly as a satirist. An eminent experimental physicist and mathematician, Lichtenberg was knowledgeable about the philosophical views of his time, and interested in uncovering the philosophical commitments that underlie our common beliefs. In his notebooks (which he called his Waste Books) he often reflects on, challenges, and critiques these philosophical commitments and the dominant views of the Enlightenment, German idealism, and British empiricism.
This book demonstrates the value of approaching education from a sociological and philosophical perspective. Specifically, it addresses current and long-standing educational issues in the Asia-Pacific region, integrating sociological and philosophical insights with practical applications in four key areas: educational aims, moral education, educational policy, and the East-West dichotomy.
