Twenty Questions: An Introduction to Philosophy

TWENTY QUESTIONS, one of the best selling introductory anthologies available today, presents a proven, well-acclaimed forum for introducing students to the rich variety of philosophical reflection. Animated by some of philosophy's more concrete questions-questions that students are likely to have pondered long before signing up for their first philosophy classes-TWENTY QUESTIONS fosters the creative exploration of many renowned classical and contemporary thinkers' responses to the very same questions.

G. Lee Bowie received a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Stanford University and has taught at University of Michigan, University of Mass, Amherst College, and Hampshire College. Currently he is Professor of Philosophy at Mount Holyoke College.Meredith W. Michaels received a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Massachusetts. She has taught at Mount Holyoke College, Hampshire College, and is currently a Lecturer/Research Associate at Smith College.Robert C. Solomon, who received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, is Quincy Lee Centennial Professor of Philosophy and Business and Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He has published more than thirty books and over one hundred and fifty articles focusing on ethics, business ethics, the emotions, and the history of philosophy (most notably, Post-Kantian Continental philosophy). He is the author or (co-)editor of numerous textbooks and anthologies used in college classrooms throughout the world. Among these titles are SINCE SOCRATES, ON ETHICS AND LIVING WELL, TWENTY QUESTIONS: AN INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY, BIG QUESTIONS: A SHORT INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY, and ABOVE THE BOTTOM LINE, all published by Wadsworth. Before assuming his current post, he taught at Princeton, University of California Los Angeles, and the University of Pittsburgh. He is a yearly visitor at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He regularly consults and provides programs in business ethics for corporations and organizations around the world.

Preface. Introduction. Part 1: RELIGION AND THE MEANING OF LIFE. 1. Does Religion Give My Life Meaning? Steven M. Cahn: Religion Reconsidered. John Powers: Some Important Buddhist Doctrines. Ramakrishna: Many Paths to the Same Summit. Keiji Nishitani: What Is Religion? Lao Tzu: A Taoist View of the Universe. Friedrich Nietzsche: God is Dead. Friedrich Nietzsche: The Anti-christ. bell hooks: Love as the Practice of Freedom. H. L. Mencken: Memorial Service. Albert Camus: The Absurd. Mary Daly: The Qualitative Leap Beyond Patriarchal Religion. 2. How Do I Know Whether God Exists? St. Augustine: Faith and Reason. Saint Anselm: The Ontological Argument. Saint Thomas Aquinas: Whether God Exists. William Paley: The Teleological Argument. David Hume: Why Does God Let People Suffer? Immanuel Kant: Proving the Existence of God by Way of Morality. Fyodor Dostoevsky: Rebellion. S?ren Kierkegaard: The Leap of Faith and the Limits of Reason. William James: The Will To Believe. Natalie Angier: I'm No Believer. John Wisdom: Gods. Rg Veda: Hymn of Creation. John Bishop: Alternatives to the Omni-God. Part 2: SCIENCE, MIND, AND NATURE. 3. What Does Science Tell Me About the World? Carl Hempel: The Deductive-Nomological Model of Science. Thomas Kuhn: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Karl Popper: Science: Conjectures and Refutations. Evelyn Fox Keller: Feminism and Science. Richard Feynman: Seeking New Laws of Nature. Sandra Harding: An Epistemological Problem for Feminism. 4. Which Should I Believe: Darwin or Genesis? The Bible: Genesis. Charles Darwin: The Descent of Man. Duane T. Gish: Creationist Science and Education. Philip Kitcher: Against Creationism. Michael Ruse: Is Evolutionary Theory a Secular Religion? Cory Juhl: The Fine-Tuning Argument. Daniel C. Dennett: Show Me the Science. 5. How Is My Mind Connected to My Body? Rene Descartes: Mind as Distinct From Body. Gilbert Ryle: The Concept of Mind. William Lycan: Robots and Minds. John R. Searle: The Myth of the Computer. Elizabeth V. Spelman: Woman as Body. Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch: The Embodied Mind. Part 3: THINKING AND KNOWING. 6. What Do I Know? Plato: The Myth of the Cave. Rene Descartes: Meditation. Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking Glass. Jorge Luis Borges: The Circular Ruins. Bertrand Russell: Appearance and Reality. John Locke: Where Our Ideas Come From. George Berkeley: To Be Is to Be Perceived. Lorraine Code: What Can She Know? 7. Does Language Make Me Think the Way I Do? Jonathan Swift: Getting Rid of Words. Ludwig Wittgenstein: Meaning as Use. Benjamin Whorf: Language, Thought, and Reality. George Orwell: Newspeak. Steven Pinker: The Language Instinct. Stephanie Ross: How Words Hurt. Lewis Carroll: Humpty Dumpty. Part 4: THE DILEMAS OF PERSONHOOD. 8. Who Am I? John Perry: The First Night. John Locke: Of Identity and Diversity. David Hume: Of Personal Identity. Meredith Michaels: Persons, Brains, and Bodies. Justin Lieber: How To Build a Person. Simone de Beauvoir: I Am a Woman. Robert Wachbroit: Genetic Encores: The Ethics of Human Cloning. 9. Why Are My Emotions Important to Me? Aristotle: On Anger. Rene Descartes: The Passions of the Soul. David Hume: On Pride. William James: What Is an Emotion? Annette Baier: Important Feelings. Jean-Paul Sartre: Emotions as Transformations of the World. Robert C. Solomon: Anger as a Way of Engaging the World. Plato: Two Speeches on Love. Robert C. Solomon: What Love Is. 10. How Should I Feel About Abortion and Embryo Research? Susan Tracy: The Abortion. Judith Jarvis Thompson: A Defense of Abortion. Alice Walker: Right to Life: What Can the White Man Say to the Black Woman? Sidney Callahan: The Moral Duty to the Unborn and Its Significance. Dena S. Davis: Stem Cells, Cloning, and Abortion: Making Careful Distinctions. The President's Council on Bioethics: The Moral Status of the Embryo. Daniel Callahan: The Puzzle of Profound Respect: Human Embryo Research. Mary B. Mahowald and Anthony P. Mahowald: Embryonic Stem Cell Retrieval and a Possible Ethical Bypass. Senator Sam Brownback: Can Fetuses Feel Pain? 11. What Is the Meaning of Death? Plato: The Death of Socrates. Chuang-Tzu: A Taoist on Death. Thomas Nagel: Death. James Rachels: Active and Passive Euthanasia. Bonnie Steinbock: The Intentional Termination of Life. Patricia Mann: Meanings of Death. 12. How Should I Respond to War or Terrorism? Saint Thomas Aquinas: Whether It Is Always Sinful to Wage War. Hannah Arendt: Power and Violence. George W. Bush: Address to the Nation, September 11, 2001. John Dear: The Experiments of Ghandi: Nonviolent in the Nuclear Age. Richard Falk: Defining a Just War. Richard Deats: In War Truth is the First Casualty. Claudia Card: Questions Regarding a War on Terrorism. Mumia Abu-Jamal: War Against Terror or War to Govern the World? 13. How Does Racism Affect My Life? Jean-Paul Sartre: Anti-Semite and Jew. Laurence Thomas: What Good Am I? W.E.B. DuBois: The Souls of Black Folk. Anthony Appiah: But Would That Still Be Me? Elizabeth V. Spelman: The Erasure of Black Women. 14. Why Shouldn't I Be Selfish? Ntozake Shange: get it and feel good. Plato: The Ring of Gyges. Epicurus: The Pursuit of Pleasure. Thomas Hobbes: People are Selfish. Adam Smith: Compassion. Richard Dawkins: The Selfish Gene. Stephen Jay Gould: So Cleverly Kind an Animal. Tara Smith: Individual Rights, Welfare Rights. James Rachels: Ethical Egoism. Jim Holt: The Life of the Saint. 15. Can There Be Sexual Equality? Plato: The Equality of Women. Aristotle: The Inequality of Women. Immanuel Kant: The Inequality of Women. John Stuart Mill: The Subjection of Women. Marilyn Frye: Sexism. Natalie Angier: Monogamy vs. Promiscuity: Putting Evolutionary Psychology on the Couch. Sarah McCarry: Selling Out. 16. What Is the Right Thing for Me to Do? The Bible: The Ten Commandments and The Sermon on the Mount. Confucius: The Analects. The Koran: The Unjust. Aristotle: Happiness and the Good Life. Immanuel Kant: Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. John Stuart Mill: Utilitarianism. Friedrich Nietzsche: The Natural History of Morals. A.J. Ayer: Emotivism. Simone de Beauvoir: Freedom and Morality. Jonathan Bennett: The Conscience of Huckleberry Finn. Claudia Card: One Feminist View of Ethics. Bob Kane: Through the Moral Maze. 17. I Like It, but Is It Art? Aristotle: The Nature of Tragedy. David Hume: Of the Standard Of Taste. Leo Tolstoy: What Is Art? The Hayes Commission: The Motion Picture Production Code. Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer: The Culture Industry. Arthur C. Danto: The Art World. Kathleen Higgins: from The Music of our Lives. Mary Deveraux: The Male Gaze. Part 6: JUSTICE AND RESPONSIBILITY. 18. Am I Free to Choose What I Do? Aristotle: Voluntary and Involuntary Action. Baron d'Holbach: Are We Cogs in the Universe? Friedrich Nietzsche: Twilight of an Error. John Hospers: Meaning and Free Will. Jean-Paul Sartre: Freedom and Responsibility. B.F. Skinner: Freedom and the Control of Men. Bob Kane: The Significance of Free Will: Old Dispute, New Themes. Iris Young: Oppression. 19. What Do I Justly Deserve? Plato: Does Might Make Right. Thomas Hobbes: Justice and the Social Contract. John Stuart Mill: A Utilitarian Theory of Justice. John Rawls: Justice as Fairness. Robert Nozick: The Principle of Fairness. David Brooks: Triumph of Hope over Self-Interest. Peter Singer: Rich and Poor. Iris Young: The Myth of Merit. Amartya Sen: Property and Hunger. Malcolm X: Human Rights, Civil Rights. Cheshire Calhoun: Justice, Care, and Gender Bias. 20. How Should I Make (and Spend) Money? Confucius: On Business. Adam Smith: Benefits of the Profit Motive. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: The Immorality of Capitalism. Milton Friedman: The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits. Ford Motor Company: The Ford Pinto Memo. Peter Singer: Ivan Boesky's Choice. William Greider: Crime in the Suites. Jim Hightower: SweatX is Chic. World Trade Organization: On Intellectual Property. Corey Bergstein: Downloading in Canada. Joanne Ciulla: Honest Work. Patricia H. Werhane: A Bill of Rights for Employees and Employers. Robert C. Solomon: Making Money and the Importance of the Virtues. Joseph Campbell: Follow Your Bliss. Credits.