| The
Bluffer's Guide to Philosophy |
| By
Jim Hankinson |
| |
| Extracts
from the book | |
| |
| Historical
forces |
| No-one
knows why philosophy started when it did: ambitious bluffers of a Marxist bent
could try to account for it in terms of an inexorable dialectic of historical
forces, but we wouldn't recommend it. |
| |
| This
and that |
| Of
course, any sensible theory is neither one thing nor the other; and it's generally
safe to say something to that effect without fear of having to say just how much
of one, or the exact proportion of the other. |
| |
| The
pleasure principal |
| The
Epicureans, named after their founder Epicurus (342-270), held that pleasure was
the End and that this consisted in the satisfaction of desires, which was a good
start. But then they had to foul things up by arguing that this didn't mean a
lot of pleasure was a good thing: rather, one should limit the number of desires
one had, so you didn't get left with as many unsatisfied ones... |
| |
|
Kant or can't |
| One
should be very careful about committing oneself in regard to Kant, or indeed any
other German philosopher. |
| |
| Contemplation |
| It
is never out of order to remark, with an air of deep seriousness, that you will
have to give the matter more thought. This is a doubly effective technique, in
that it both does away with the obligation to say anything that might commit you
to something, and also in that it tends to make your adversary feel intellectually
inferior. |
| |
| Reviews |
|
| |
| The
Bluffer's Guide to Philosophy (my main reference book) put it rather neatly
when discussing Existentialism: 'Analytic philosophers are inclined to despise
Existentialism for not being sufficiently analytic: Existentialists are inclined
to despise Anglo-Saxon analytic philosophers for simply not being sufficiently.' |
| The
Editor, Philosophy Now |
| |
| The
word 'philosophy' may turn you off immediately. Take heart - and arm yourself
with a copy of this book. Behind all the quips is a firm grounding in the subject.
|
| The
Keswick Reminder |
| |
| Bluffer's
Guides are a quick read and chock full of the basic information on any subject
that's needed to pass yourself off as knowledgeable. |
| Toronto
Globe and Mail |
| |
| Table
of Contents | |
| |
|
What Philosophy
Is Lives
of the Philosophers Deaths
of the Philosophers The
Basic Questions of Philosophy
Levels and Meta-levels
Metaphysics
Ethics
Logic
Epistemology
Philosophy of Religion
Philosophy of
Science The
Contemporary Scene
The Anglo-Saxon Philosophers
The Continentals
Some Useful
Techniques What
Philosophy IsnÍt Glossary
Index
to Philosophers Anaximander
Anaximenes
Anselm
Aquinas
Aristotle
Augustine
Austin
Averroes
Ayer
Bacon
Barthes
Bentham
Bergson
Berkeley
Carnap
Chrysippus
Crinis
Davidson
Democritus
Derrida
de Sade
Descartes
Dewey
Diderot
Diogenes
Duns
Scotus
Empedocles
Epicurus
Feyerabend
Foucault
Frege
Hare
Hegel
Hempel
Heidegger
Heraclitus
Hume
Husserl
James
Jaspers
Kant
Kierkegaard
Kripke
Kuhn
Lakatos
Leibniz
Leucippus
Lévi-Strauss
Lewis
Locke
Maimonides
Melissus
Mill
Moore
Nietzsche
Nozick
Owen
Parmenides
Plantinga
Plato
Popper
Pyrrho
Pythagoras
Putnam
Quine
Rawls
Rousseau
Russell
Ryle
Saussure
Sartre
Schopenhauer
Socrates
Speusippus
Spinoza
Tarski
Thales
Voltaire
Whitehead
William
of Ockham
Wittgenstein
Zeno |
|
|
Fortune
Telling
