The philosophers book of questions and answers pdf free download

A couple reviews from Amazon: Little did I know that there was a philosopher lurking within me! Thanks to D. Wittkower's "The Philosopher's Book of Questions & Answers- Questions to Open Your Mind", I've gotten to know my philosopher self and many of my peers in ways I'd not before. Several of us have been reading this excellent book and meeting monthly for informal discussions of the thought-provoking questions posed and then addressed within their historical, philosophical contexts-- usually 3 brief topics per gathering. Dr. Wittkower has beautifully organized a great collection of life's universal questions into an easy-to-read and digest format. He writes with clarity, insight and humor, making philosophy accessible and relevant to contemporary daily life, and, dare I say entertaining.. Who'd have thought a book of questions and answers could be a page turner? In this fast- paced, digital world, it's refreshing to find a book that encourages us to slow down and ponder the essence of life as did those a thousand years ago, those who came and went before I -Phones and Facebook! This book can be enjoyed equally by individuals, couples, discussion groups, book groups, dinner party attendees (!), students, or just as a great tool to have on hand for conversation starters. It would be equally at home at the kitchen table, the nightstand, in a classroom, or as a companion on a long train ride. I will be giving this book as a gift and I highly recommend it. Beth M., Oregon This book is an excellent and personalized introduction to philosophical concepts for the lay reader. You'll want your own copy of this book in order to literally fill-in-the-blanks, answering philosophical questions about your life and thoughts, and then reading the intro to concepts that relate to the subject to help you see where you stand on philosophical issues. It's a fantastic read for someone who would like to learn more about philosophy and have a guide to help you understand how you can make sense of your own life. This book is the guide. In this regard, the book fills a niche in philosophy that I've not seen from any other book. It's both self-directed learning (you can skip the topics that really don't interest you), part self-help (you can better understand yourself), and part general overview of key philosophical issues. It's obvious D.E. Wittkower wants to make philosophy accessible for all, and he does this beautifully. That said, I've been thinking about how to use this book in an intro philosophy course, and, while I think some of the exercises for self-reflection would be good, I would hesitate to use it in its entirety because, though the material gives and excellent overview, it doesn't delve deeply enough into any one issue with enough rigor for a college-level course. This book also spends a great deal of time on "continental" traditions in philosophy, which it does well, but I would want to integrate more "pragmatist" and "analytic" traditions in a course. If I were teaching intro philosophy to non-traditional and returning students, I might be more likely to use this as a text. That said, you should get a copy for your own use and enjoyment. It might not be a perfect college textbook - but that makes it all the better for most audiences, right?

224 pages ; 24 cm

"Do you ever wonder how important money really is in life or what you need to do to achieve happiness? With The Philosopher's Book of Questions and Answers, you will be one step closer to solving these uncertainties. Inside, you'll find the basics of philosophy, written in plain English, and thoughts for applying these important theories to your own life. You'll also be encouraged to dig deep into the philosophical reasoning behind your everyday actions with a series of fascinating prompts, such as: if you had ten times your wealth and ten times your income, what would you do then that you can't do now?; what's a version of that activity that you could do right now?; is it ten times less meaningful, important, or enjoyable than the activity you would do with more money? From Socrates and Epicurean to Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, The Philosopher's Book of Questions and Answers will not only help you grasp history's greatest thoughts, but will also unveil the world in a whole new light."--Publisher description

Includes index

Happiness and the meaning of life -- God -- Morals -- Political justice -- Economic justice -- Human nature -- Aspects of self -- Knowledge and reality -- Science -- Aesthetics -- Death

INTRODUCTION

Philosophy.

The word itself means love of wisdom, and this characterizes well what philosophy is and why it is of constant relevance to us. Philosophy doesn’t just seek knowledge; it tries to find the meaning and relevance of that knowledge. It seeks not just an understanding of what we are and what the world is, but an understanding of why things are the way they are, what difference it makes, and how we can know what is possible for us to know (and what is not). Philosophy is the mother of all other fields of knowledge—philosophy established the very idea of science, for example, and continues to ask the questions that science cannot answer: how science works, and what its limitations are. The same holds true for psychology, which can tell us a great deal about how the mind works, but stops short of asking what a mind is—here, psychology must return to the most fundamental questions, still within the realm of philosophy. Similarly, political science and economics can tell us many valuable things about the mechanics of governance and the management of social and natural resources, but we have to return to the open and boundless inquiry of philosophy to answer foundational questions about what is just and unjust, and about the moral and human values at stake in our treatment of one another, and of the environment.

Philosophers have played a declining role in our culture during the last century, and philosophers are not known and discussed figures like we have been in centuries past, but philosophical issues have become no less pressing and no less relevant. Too often today we turn to physicists to talk about the nature of reality and to sociologists and politicians to talk about morality—questions that they will gladly admit are not the kinds of things that their tools and techniques are able to answer. Many people, though, still turn to philosophy to answer these philosophical issues, even though philosophers rarely appear on television or in magazines to help work through fundamental concerns of knowledge, morality, and faith.

This book is a contribution to the process of bringing philosophy back into public dialogue and personal exploration. I want to show here how the wisdom of the ancients and the speculation of contemporary philosophers can support your own engagement with the kinds of questions uniquely proper to philosophy: questions for which there are no clear and unambiguous answers, but which are of such great importance that we cannot but attempt to answer them anyhow.

Each entry in the book has two parts: on the first page, a few questions, and on the next, some philosophical discussion of the issues at play in the questions. There are several ways to work through the book. One is to try a daily routine: Sit down with the questions in the morning over coffee, think about them during the day and make time to write about them, and then explore the philosophy in the evening. On the other hand, you may want to sit down to explore an entry at a single sitting, maybe in a coffee shop. (Either way, coffee is obviously recommended.)

Another possibility is a book club or Socrates Café approach. As indispensable as it is to try to get clarity for yourself in writing, philosophy is best done along with others. Do you have friends whom you like to explore ideas with, or do you enjoy talking through beliefs and perspectives with your partner? Discuss entries together, but be sure to set aside some time for individual writing as well; talking allows you to pass too quickly over complex problems, whereas writing can force you to confront the issues. You could also work through one of the eleven chapters by yourself and then get together with friends, maybe over drinks (besides coffee), to talk about your thoughts and reactions.

The ancient Greeks would get together over wine, present a philosophical issue, and each address it in turn—with some liquid stimulation. The Latin saying is in vino veritas—there is truth in wine—but I might say more modestly drink responsibly, but think with abandon.

No matter what approach you take, the book will work best if you go through the entries in order—they build from one to the next to develop different aspects of each topic.

A Note on Content

The topics here are extremely varied but not comprehensive. If you have some background in philosophy, you might notice an emphasis on Continental rather than Analytic or Pragmatic traditions—my own training is very broad, both historically and across these different traditions, but I do favor Continental philosophy and also often found that many exciting ideas in Analytic philosophy were too situated within technical concerns to be able to ask open and easy-to-discuss questions about. You might also notice, among the religious questions, an emphasis on Christianity. This reflects the history of Euro-American philosophy rather than any view of mine or any implied claim about what’s important to consider carefully, and I’ve tried to present things so that these questions are valuable to people of a variety of faiths, or of no faith.

The questions will sometimes be ambiguous. They will sometimes be frustrating, or leading. Some will have easy answers that are hard to explain, whereas some will be difficult to come to grips with. This is on purpose. This isn’t a class—there’s no right answer that you’re supposed to get—and philosophically valuable questions can be valuable precisely because of what you have to go through to get to an answer. In writing these questions, my goal has been to give you a challenge and a direction for thought and discovery. I am not always playing nice, or even playing fair.

The answers here are often not answers at all. I think that’s appropriate: These issues wouldn’t be philosophical issues at all if there were definitive answers. The perspectives I’ve included were not necessarily chosen because I think they are right, or because I think you’ll find them convincing, although that is certainly sometimes the case. They are chosen primarily because they’re significant, plausible, and challenging—in short, worth working with and working through.

Enough preliminaries. Have fun.

CHAPTER 1

Happiness and the Meaning of Life

The good life was a central concern to the ancient Greeks, and the question of what kind of life was best led them to considerations of virtue, freedom, pleasure, and happiness. In medieval philosophy, these concerns shifted to considerations of sin and salvation. In modern philosophy—and for philosophers the modern period starts in the 1600s, with René Descartes often used as a dividing line—the question becomes not How should one live? but How should one act? and the question of the good life becomes secondary to questions of moral behavior and ethical choices. Still later, especially along with the rise of religious skepticism, agnosticism, and atheism, the question of the meaning of life became pressing.

While that’s the shape of the general trend, these questions are obviously connected, and philosophers (and others) have had all of these concerns in all of these different periods. We won’t go through them in any historical order. As you’ll see, though, once we start pulling on a particular thread, the fabric will bunch up, showing how intertwined these concerns and questions are.

The Epicurean’s Wealth

If you had ten times your wealth and ten times your income, what would you do that you can’t do now?

What’s a version of that activity that you could do right now?

Is it ten times less meaningful, important, or enjoyable than the activity you would do with more money? Why or why not?

The Philosophy

What do we want money for? Maybe you wrote that you want to travel to marvelous places, climb Mount Everest, or help the poor. But can you achieve similar goals and have similar experiences with the resources available to you right now?

An ancient Greek philosopher, Epicurus (341–270 B.C.E.), held that the good life and happiness were found by pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain. Sounds like common sense—but Epicurus would have told us that we’re doing it all wrong.

The key to a pleasurable existence, according to Epicurus, is to have a peaceful and simple life, with friends. When we think of hedonism—living life for nothing but pleasure—we tend to think of a much more complicated kind of life. Rare and hard-to-obtain pleasures may be great, but think of everything you have to sacrifice to get them! With great wealth there are opportunities to enjoy great luxury, or to enjoy being a great benefactor, but we soon develop expensive tastes. Once our happiness is bound up in becoming and remaining wealthy, fear and uncertainty begin to dominate our lives. Life becomes more and more about securing the resources that we’ve made our happiness depend on, and less about doing things that actually make us happy.

To be happy and peaceful, Epicurus advocated living simply, and not getting too involved in wealth, politics, or even physical desires like those for sex or food. As often happens, his doctrine has become twisted over time, and today Epicurean refers to a taste for very sophisticated and refined foods. For a true sense of Epicurus’s view of the good life, cook a simple thick soup of water, lentils, turnips, and some salt. Eat it with crusty bread and butter in the company of a friend, and then go for a walk together. Try it, and then ask yourself what else you’ve made harder than it needs to be.

Aristotle’s Altruism

Was there a time recently when you went out of your way to do something nice for someone else? What did you do?

Were you glad you did? Why or why not?

What about a time when you put your own interests ahead of others—was it worth it? What made it so—or if it wasn’t, why not?

The Philosophy

Common sense would tell you that doing something for yourself should make you happy. It seems like a no-brainer. But it’s more complicated than it might seem.

Happiness is a confusing, fleeting thing. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.) was a pupil of Plato (429–347 B.C.E.), who eventually broke from the ideas of his mentor. He held that happiness was a matter of realizing human potential. When we do the right thing, we are following higher, distinctively human parts of ourselves, like reason, character, and virtue. When we act out of self-interest, we follow lower parts of ourselves that we have in common with other living things: pride, anger, desire, and simple hunger. According to Aristotle, someone who is purely self-interested can never be happy; only through virtuous action can we be happy.

That’s why when we do something out of self-interest, we often feel guilty or ashamed, and when we act altruistically and purely out of a concern for others, we feel good about ourselves. Happiness can only be reached indirectly; you end up happiest when you just try to do the right thing, and when you try to make yourself happy, you often enough end up feeling worse.

Aristotle was a harsh realist, though. Goods of fortune, like wealth and health, can’t make us happy, but their absence can prevent us from becoming happy, or even virtuous. How can you cultivate care and generosity when you have no resources? How can you learn temperance and how to moderate your desires, if you are always living paycheck to paycheck? Putting self-interest first might be worth it if you’re struggling just to get by. The problem is that once we start out this way, we develop selfish habits; we end up with goods of fortune, but little virtue.

Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and John Stuart Mill

What’s one of your guilty pleasures—a bad television program, secret romance novel habit, or something similar?

If you feel guilty about it, why do you keep doing it?

On the other hand, if it’s something you enjoy, and it’s not immoral, why do you feel guilty about it to begin with?

Everyone has guilty pleasures. What if we made them central to our lives instead of hiding them away? It’s hard to imagine. What would change? Would our world be a better place, or a worse one?

The Philosophy

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873), a British utilitarian and political philosopher, thought that the right action was always the one that provided the greatest good for the greatest number. But how do you figure out what is good for someone—or for anyone?

Mill said, first, that the only proof that something is worth valuing is that people, in fact, value it. By giving up on the idea that we should adopt some single conception of the good life, he was able to talk about how we ought to help as many people to be happy as we can, but without telling them how to be happy! But what about gluttons, scoundrels, and cretins? Can their happiness really be considered equal to the happiness of a decent person of refined taste who cares for others?

To fix the problem, Mill added a criterion to what counts as part of happiness. Not everyone is able to appreciate a quiet evening spent with a good book, but those who can tend to prefer it to watching trashy TV. That means that watching trashy TV is actually a lesser happiness, even though there may be many who can’t really appreciate a good book, and who think that trashy TV makes them happy.

As Mill put it in Utilitarianism: It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.

The Stoic’s Freedom

We usually regard freedom and self-determination to be central to a good life. When have you sacrificed something else in your life—perhaps in your work life, love life, or just your way of life—to ensure that you are able

What are the top 10 philosophical questions?

What are the 6 big philosophical questions?

What are the 3 philosophical questions?

What are the 4 questions of philosophy?