The Inner Philosopher

The Inner Philosopher PDF

Author: Lou Marinoff

Publisher:

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781887917094

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In the 16 spirited conversations comprising this volume, authors Lou Marinoff and Daisaku Ikeda revive and celebrate philosophy as an accessible source of wisdom and courage for everyone. For Marinoff and Ikeda, the philosophies of Shakyamuni Buddha, Lao Tzu, Confucius, Aristotle, and Socrates are as relevant now as when first articulated more than 2,000 years ago. They are motivated by the conviction that philosophy should do nothing less than help draw forth an inner strength to face and surpass life’s inevitable hardships and challenges—showing here that wisdom is never out of reach and opportunities for positive transformation are many.

Philosophical Practice

Philosophical Practice PDF

Author: Lou Marinoff

Publisher: Elsevier

Published: 2001-11-08

Total Pages: 411

ISBN-13: 008051376X

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This book provides a look at philosophical practice from the viewpoint of the practitioner or prospective practitioner. It answers the questions: What is philosophical practice? What are its aims and methods? How does philosophical counseling differ from psychological counseling and other forms of psychotherapy. How are philosophical practitioners educated and trained? How do philosophical practitioners relate to other professions? What are the politics of philosophical practice? How does one become a practitioner? What is APPA Certification? What are the prospects for philosophical practice in the USA and elsewhere? Handbook of Philosophical Practice provides an account of philosophy's current renaissance as a discipline of applied practice while critiquing the historical, social, and cultural forces which have contributed to its earlier descent into obscurity.

The Inner Citadel

The Inner Citadel PDF

Author: Pierre Hadot

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 9780674461710

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The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius are treasured today--as they have been over the centuries--as an inexhaustible source of wisdom. And as one of the three most important expressions of Stoicism, this is an essential text for everyone interested in ancient religion and philosophy. Yet the clarity and ease of the work's style are deceptive. Pierre Hadot, eminent historian of ancient thought, uncovers new levels of meaning and expands our understanding of its underlying philosophy. Written by the Roman emperor for his own private guidance and self-admonition, the Meditations set forth principles for living a good and just life. Hadot probes Marcus Aurelius's guidelines and convictions and discerns the hitherto unperceived conceptual system that grounds them. Abundantly quoting the Meditations to illustrate his analysis, the author allows Marcus Aurelius to speak directly to the reader. And Hadot unfolds for us the philosophical context of the Meditations, commenting on the philosophers Marcus Aurelius read and giving special attention to the teachings of Epictetus, whose disciple he was. The soul, the guiding principle within us, is in Marcus Aurelius's Stoic philosophy an inviolable stronghold of freedom, the "inner citadel." This spirited and engaging study of his thought offers a fresh picture of the fascinating philosopher-emperor, a fuller understanding of the tradition and doctrines of Stoicism, and rich insight on the culture of the Roman empire in the second century. Pierre Hadot has been working on Marcus Aurelius for more than twenty years; in this book he distills his analysis and conclusions with extraordinary lucidity for the general reader.

The Philosopher's Book of Questions & Answers

The Philosopher's Book of Questions & Answers PDF

Author: D.E. Wittkower

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2013-04-18

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1440558876

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Your life through the lens of the world's greatest thinkers! 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.

Describing Inner Experience?

Describing Inner Experience? PDF

Author: Russell Hurlburt

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2011-08-19

Total Pages: 333

ISBN-13: 0262516497

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A psychologist and a philosopher with opposing viewpoints discuss the extent to which it is possible to report accurately on our own conscious experience, considering both the reliability of introspection in general and the particular self-reported inner experiences of "Melanie," a subject interviewed using the Descriptive Experience Sampling method. Can conscious experience be described accurately? Can we give reliable accounts of our sensory experiences and pains, our inner speech and imagery, our felt emotions? The question is central not only to our humanistic understanding of who we are but also to the burgeoning scientific field of consciousness studies. The two authors of Describing Inner Experience disagree on the answer: Russell Hurlburt, a psychologist, argues that improved methods of introspective reporting make accurate accounts of inner experience possible; Eric Schwitzgebel, a philosopher, believes that any introspective reporting is inevitably prone to error. In this book the two discuss to what extent it is possible to describe our inner experience accurately. Hurlburt and Schwitzgebel recruited a subject, "Melanie," to report on her conscious experience using Hurlburt's Descriptive Experience Sampling method (in which the subject is cued by random beeps to describe her conscious experience). The heart of the book is Melanie's accounts, Hurlburt and Schwitzgebel's interviews with her, and their subsequent discussions while studying the transcripts of the interviews. In this way the authors' dispute about the general reliability of introspective reporting is steadily tempered by specific debates about the extent to which Melanie's particular reports are believable. Transcripts and audio files of the interviews will be available on the MIT Press website. Describing Inner Experience? is not so much a debate as it is a collaboration, with each author seeking to refine his position and to replace partisanship with balanced critical judgment. The result is an illumination of major issues in the study of consciousness—from two sides at once.

The Philosopher's "I"

The Philosopher's

Author: J. Lenore Wright

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2012-02-01

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 0791480984

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This book examines philosophers' autobiographies as a genre of philosophical writing. Author J. Lenore Wright focuses her attention on five philosophical autobiographies: Augustine's Confessions, Descartes' Meditations, Rousseau's The Confessions, Nietzsche's Ecce Homo, and Hazel Barnes's The Story I Tell Myself. In the context of first-person narration, she shows how the philosophers in question turn their attention inward and unleash their analytical rigor on themselves. Wright argues that philosophical autobiography makes philosophical analysis necessary and that one cannot unfold without the other. Her distinction between the ontological and rhetorical dimensions of the self creates a rich middle ground in which questions of essence and identity bear upon existence.

Philosopher of the Heart

Philosopher of the Heart PDF

Author: Clare Carlisle

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2020-05-05

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 0374721696

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Philosopher of the Heart is the groundbreaking biography of renowned existentialist Søren Kierkegaard’s life and creativity, and a searching exploration of how to be a human being in the world. Søren Kierkegaard is one of the most passionate and challenging of all modern philosophers, and is often regarded as the founder of existentialism. Over about a decade in the 1840s and 1850s, writings poured from his pen pursuing the question of existence—how to be a human being in the world?—while exploring the possibilities of Christianity and confronting the failures of its institutional manifestation around him. Much of his creativity sprang from his relationship with the young woman whom he promised to marry, then left to devote himself to writing, a relationship which remained decisive for the rest of his life. He deliberately lived in the swim of human life in Copenhagen, but alone, and died exhausted in 1855 at the age of 42, bequeathing his remarkable writings to his erstwhile fiancée. Clare Carlisle’s innovative and moving biography writes Kierkegaard’s life as far as possible from his own perspective, to convey what it was like actually being this Socrates of Christendom—as he put it, living life forwards yet only understanding it backwards.

Therapy for the Sane

Therapy for the Sane PDF

Author: Lou Marinoff

Publisher: Argo-Navis

Published: 2013-12-10

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780786755721

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Professor Lou Marinoff's first book, the international bestseller Plato, Not Prozac!, drew on the wisdom of the great philosophers to solve everyday problems, launching a movement that made philosophy useful again. Now, in Therapy for the Sane, he takes the concept to the next level by applying philosophy and its literature to the central questions of modern existence. Urging us not to accept victimhood blindly, Dr. Marinoff uses specific case studies from his counseling practice to show how the great thinkers can help us define our own philosophy, and thereby reclaim our sense of well-being. How do we know what is right? How can we cope with change? How can we use centuries of wisdom to help us feel at ease in the world? Accessible, entertaining, and essential, Therapy for the Sane presents a shift in perspective that is truly life-changing. Lou Marinoff is a professor and chair of philosophy at the City College of New York. He is the founding president of the American Philosophical Practitioners Association and the author of Plato Not Prozac, The Middle Way, and The Inner Philosopher. He lives in Monroe, New York. Lou Marinoff is a fellow pilgrim, always ready to tell the story that hasn’t been told, always ready to take the risks that haven’t been taken. Paulo Coelho, author of The Alchemist Guiding the reader through the finest work of the human mind, Lou Marinoff shows that problems of relationship health and general dissatisfaction can be solved by realizing some of our latent human potentialities. Problem-solving then becomes an uplifting adventure. Laura Huxley, Founding President of Children: Our Ultimate Investment; author of You Are Not the Target and This Timeless Moment Lou Marinoff is a lively writer who boldly tramples on the constraints of political correctness. In an age filled with too many glib how-to books, Therapy for the Sane is instead a timely and thought-provoking exposition on how the wisdom of the great philosophers can help those wrestling with the big questions of life. This is therapy for the thoughtful. Arlene Getz, Newsweek

Philosophy as a Way of Life

Philosophy as a Way of Life PDF

Author: Pierre Hadot

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Published: 1995-08-03

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 9780631180333

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This book presents a history of spiritual exercises from Socrates to early Christianity, an account of their decline in modern philosophy, and a discussion of the different conceptions of philosophy that have accompanied the trajectory and fate of the theory and practice of spiritual exercises. Hadot's book demonstrates the extent to which philosophy has been, and still is, above all else a way of seeing and of being in the world.

Feline Philosophy

Feline Philosophy PDF

Author: John Gray

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2020-11-24

Total Pages: 99

ISBN-13: 0374718792

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The author of Straw Dogs, famous for his provocative critiques of scientific hubris and the delusions of progress and humanism, turns his attention to cats—and what they reveal about humans' torturous relationship to the world and to themselves. The history of philosophy has been a predictably tragic or comical succession of palliatives for human disquiet. Thinkers from Spinoza to Berdyaev have pursued the perennial questions of how to be happy, how to be good, how to be loved, and how to live in a world of change and loss. But perhaps we can learn more from cats--the animal that has most captured our imagination--than from the great thinkers of the world. In Feline Philosophy, the philosopher John Gray discovers in cats a way of living that is unburdened by anxiety and self-consciousness, showing how they embody answers to the big questions of love and attachment, mortality, morality, and the Self: Montaigne's house cat, whose un-examined life may have been the one worth living; Meo, the Vietnam War survivor with an unshakable capacity for "fearless joy"; and Colette's Saha, the feline heroine of her subversive short story "The Cat", a parable about the pitfalls of human jealousy. Exploring the nature of cats, and what we can learn from it, Gray offers a profound, thought-provoking meditation on the follies of human exceptionalism and our fundamentally vulnerable and lonely condition. He charts a path toward a life without illusions and delusions, revealing how we can endure both crisis and transformation, and adapt to a changed scene, as cats have always done.