As a lifelong student with what I sometimes call “a multidisciplinary disorder,” I have been intrigued both about “the outer world,” or the “external environment of life on planet Earth, and “the mind that knows the world.” Hence, as a teenager in New York City, I read voraciously books in philosophy, history, and the social and natural sciences to learn what “great minds” have thought about “the world.” Much later, as an “academic” researcher and writer, I scoured the shelves of university libraries to examine what I considered the strengths and weaknesses of the academic disciplines that addressed our “knowledge of the world,” and their applications for “changing the world for the better.” My book The World as Idea is the first volume of a projected trilogy modestly entitled The Fate of This World and The Future of Humanity. I’m now working on the second volume, The Reality of This World.
In The World as Idea Charles P. Webel presents an intellectual history of one of the most influential concepts known to humanity—that of "the world."
Webel traces the development of "the world" through the past, depicting the history of the world as an intellectual construct from its roots in ancient creation myths of the cosmos, to contemporary speculations about multiverses. He simultaneously offers probing analyses and critiques of "the world as idea" from thinkers ranging from Plato, Aristotle, and St. Augustine in the Greco-Roman period to Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Merleau-Ponty, and Derrida in modern times. The World as Idea will be of great interest to those interested in the "world as idea," scholars and general-interest readers in fields ranging from philosophy and intellectual history to political and social theory.
Schopenhauer is one of the 19th century’s most important, and frequently overlooked, thinkers.
His multivolume work, translated as The World as Will and Representation, or The World as Will and Idea, has had the single greatest impact on my own thinking about “the world,” and as clearly written as a German philosopher can make it, this multi-volume, sometimes appearing as one-volume abridged edition, should be on every educated reader’s bucket list.
Arthur Schopenhauer's Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung is one of the most important philosophical works of the nineteenth century, the basic statement of one important stream of post-Kantian thought. It is without question Schopenhauer's greatest work. Conceived and published before the philosopher was 30 and expanded 25 years later, it is the summation of a lifetime of thought. For 70 years, the only unabridged English translation of this work was the Haldane-Kemp collaboration. In 1958, a new translation by E. F. J. Payne appeared that decisively supplanted the older one. Payne's translation is superior because it corrects nearly 1,000…
Kant is one the most important, and many, including myself, would argue the most seminal thinkers in the Western intellectual tradition.
His epistemological and metaphysical masterpiece, The Critique of Pure Reason, has had the single greatest impact on my own thinking about how we think and know “the world,” both in its “inner” and “outer” dimensions.
The Critique of Pure Reason (1781) is one of the most influential works in the history of philosophy. It is also referred to as Kant's "First Critique", being followed by the Critique of Practical Reason (1788) and the Critique of Judgment (1790). In the preface to the first edition Kant explains what he means by a critique of pure reason: "I do not mean by this a critique of books and systems, but of the faculty of reason in general, in respect of all knowledge after which it may strive independently of all experience." “There is no single philosopher of…
Merleau-Ponty is one of the 20th century’s most important, and frequently overlooked, thinkers.
His work The Phenomenology of Perception has had the single greatest impact on my own thinking about how we perceive both “the world” of our senses and body, and the incarnate subject—the “I”—who is in the world. It is one of the great philosophical masterpieces of the past century.
First published in 1945, Maurice Merleau-Ponty's monumental Phenomenologie de la perception signalled the arrival of a major new philosophical and intellectual voice in post-war Europe. Breaking with the prevailing picture of existentialism and phenomenology at the time, it has become one of the landmark works of twentieth-century thought. This new translation, the first for over fifty years, makes this classic work of philosophy available to a new generation of readers.
Phenomenology of Perception stands in the great phenomenological tradition of Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre. Yet Merleau-Ponty's contribution is decisive, as he brings this tradition and other philosophical predecessors, particularly Descartes…
Aristotle should need no introduction. But since you asked for a “recommendation,” clearly his Nicomachean Ethics is one of the greatest and most influential philosophical works of all time.
And his contribution to moral philosophy in general and the ethics of living in the world is probably unparalleled. For me, no other single work about how to live has influenced me more.
"The Nicomachean Ethics", along with its sequel, "the Politics", is Aristotle's most widely read and influential work. Ideas central to ethics - that happiness is the end of human endeavor, that moral virtue is formed through action and habituation, and that good action requires prudence - found their most powerful proponent in the person medieval scholars simply called 'the Philosopher'. Drawing on their intimate knowledge of Aristotle's thought, Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins have produced here an English-language translation of the Ethics that is as remarkably faithful to the original as it is graceful in its rendering. Aristotle…
Albert Einstein was, for a very good reason or three, Time magazine’s “Person of the Twentieth Century.”
Unfortunately, very few people are knowledgeable about his contributions to modern science, which are enormous and complex, and even fewer seem to know about his thinking on politics, war, and peace in particular, and the world in general.
In this book, readers have the opportunity to learn more about Einstein’s thoughts about the world of the 20th century, which are usually presented in a clear, accessible fashion.
The most advanced and celebrated mind of the 20th Century, without a doubt, is attributed to Albert Einstein. This interesting book allows us to explore his beliefs, philosophical ideas, and opinions on many subjects. Subjects include politics, religion, education, the meaning of life, Jewish issues, the world economy, peace and pacifism. Einstein believed in the possibility of a peaceful world and in the high mission of science to serve human well-being. As we near the end of a century in which science has come to seem more and more remote from human values, Einstein's perspective is indispensable.
The constellation we know as Taurus goes all the way back to cave paintings of aurochs at Lascaux. This book traces the story of the bull in the sky, a journey through the history of what has become known as the sacred bull.
Each of the sections is written from the perspective of the mythical Taurus, from the beginning at Lascaux to Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, and elsewhere. This is not just a history of the bull but also a view of ourselves through the eyes of the bull, illustrating our pre-literate use of myth, how the advent of writing and the urban revolution changed our view of ourselves, and how even bullfighting in Spain is a variation on the ancient sacrifice of the sacred bull.
The constellation we know as Taurus goes all the way back to cave paintings of aurochs at Lascaux. In I Am Taurus, author Stephen Palmer traces the story of the bull in the sky, starting from that point 19,000 years ago - a journey through the history of what has become known as the sacred bull. Each of the eleven sections is written from the perspective of the mythical Taurus, from the beginning at Lascaux to Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, Greece, Spain and elsewhere. This is not just a history of the bull but also an attempt to see ourselves through…
Interested in
philosophy,
Immanuel Kant,
and
Albert Einstein?
10,000+ authors have recommended their favorite books and what they love about them.
Browse their picks for the best books about
philosophy,
Immanuel Kant,
and
Albert Einstein.
