Exu's philosophy thread

EXU · 10-07-2007

I have some very rare philosophy lectures to share with you from some of the very best lecturers from around the world.

Lets start with...

No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life
by Robert C. Solomon

If you believe that life should be a quest for values, reasons, and purpose—filled with passion and governed by individual responsibility—then yours is the sort of mind to which the Existentialist philosophers were speaking.

More than a half-century after it burst upon the intellectual scene, Existentialism has continued to exert a profound attraction for individuals driven to re-examine life's most fundamental questions of individual responsibility, morality, and personal freedom.

What is life?
What is my place in it?
What choices does this obligate me to make?

If you want to enrich your own understanding of this unique philosophical movement, the visionary thinkers it brought together to ponder these questions, and the prominent role it still plays in contemporary thought, you now have an opportunity to do so with this 24-lecture course.

Professor Solomon is Quincy Lee Centennial Professor of Business and Philosophy at The University of Texas at Austin. He has written several books on a variety of philosophical topics that have been translated into more than a dozen languages.
He is the recipient of teaching awards and honors, including the Standard Oil Outstanding Teaching Award, The University of Texas Presidential Associates' Teaching Award (twice), a Fulbright Lecture Award, University Research and National Endowment for the Humanities grants, and the Chad Oliver Plan II Teaching Award. He is also a member of the Academy of Distinguished Teachers.

What is Existentialism?

Existentialism is a movement, a "sensibility" that can be traced throughout the history of Western philosophy. Its central themes are:

Significance of the individual
Importance of passion
Irrational aspects of life
Importance of human freedom.

"Existentialism is, in my view, the most exciting and important philosophical movement of the past century and a half," states Professor Solomon.

"Fifty years after the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre gave it its identity, and 150 years after the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard gave it its initial impetus, Existentialism continues to win new enthusiasts and, in keeping with its still exciting and revolutionary message, vehement critics."

The Great Existentialist Writers

Albert Camus, Lectures 1–6. After an introduction to Existentialism, the course begins with a discussion of the 20th-century writer and philosopher Camus (1913-60). Chronologically, Camus is late in the game (you trace Existentialist ideas as far back as Kierkegaard and Nietzsche in the mid-19th century).

You start with his most famous novel, The Stranger, published in the early 1940s. You also examine The Myth of Sisyphus, in which he introduces his infamous concept of "The Absurd"; The Plague; and The Fall.

Professor Solomon's aim in opening with Camus is to "set a certain mood for the rest of the course, a rebellious, restless, yet thoroughly conscientious mood, which I believe Camus exemplifies both in his writings and in his life."

Søren Kierkegaard, Lectures 7–9. Danish philosopher Kierkegaard (1813-55) was a deeply religious philosopher—a pious Christian—and his Existentialist thought was devoted to the question, "What does it mean to be—or rather, what does it mean to become—a Christian?"

"We should thus be advised that, contrary to some popular misunderstandings, Existentialism is by no means an antireligious or unspiritual philosophy. It can and often does embrace God, as well as a host of visions of the world that we can, without apology, call spiritual," notes Dr. Solomon.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Lectures 10–13 . Nietzsche (1844–1900) is perhaps best known for his bold declaration "God is dead." He is also well known as a self-proclaimed "immoralist."

In fact, both of these phrases are misleading, argues Dr. Solomon. Nietzsche was by no means the first person to say that God is dead (Martin Luther had said it three centuries before), and Nietzsche himself was anything but an immoral person.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Franz Ka**a, Hermann Hesse, Lecture 14. Professor Solomon turns briefly to three diverse figures from literature who display Existentialist themes and temperaments in their works: Dostoevsky (1821–81), the great Russian novelist; Ka**a (1883–1924), the brilliant Czech novelist and story writer; and Hermann Hesse (1877–1962), a 20th-century Swiss writer who combined a fascination with Asian philosophy with a profoundly Nietzschean interest and temperament.

Edmund Husserl, Lecture 15. The German-Czech philosopher Husserl (1859–1938) invented a philosophical technique called "phenomenology." Husserl is not an Existentialist, but you study him because of his influence on Heidegger and Sartre, both of whom, at the beginning of their careers, considered themselves phenomenologists.

Jean-Paul Sartre, Lectures 18–23. Professor Solomon suggests that much of what is best in Postmodernism is taken more or less directly from Sartre (1905–80), despite the fact that he is typically attacked as the very antithesis of Postmodernism.

http://rapidshare.com/files/16113610...Life.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/16116185...Life.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/16119001...Life.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/16111164...Life.part4.rar

password:

Code:

www.docs4you.org

NOTE: this is not just a lecture, this is an entire course on existentialism.

EXU · 10-07-2007

The Philosophy of Mind
by John R. Searle

“What is the nature of the human mind?” “How does the mind fit in as part of the physical world?” “Can the mind understand the mind?”

Until we can answer questions such as these, we do not understand ourselves. In a way, these are the most important questions in contemporary intellectual life, because they naturally expand into questions such as “How do human beings fit into the physical universe?” “What is the relation of the social sciences and the natural sciences?” “Do we have freedom of the will?”

Any discussion of these matters has to begin with the French philosopher Ren Descartes, who divided the world into two parts, mind and body. Much of the philosophy of the mind since Descartes has been an effort to put the two parts of the world back together again.

Professor John Searle, one of the world’s most respected contemporary philosophers, takes us on a journey of philosophical wonder, difficulty, and understanding to try to explain the many issues raised in this field of philosophical inquiry.

One of the most controversial questions discussed by Professor Searle is whether computers can think. This question is not as clear as it appears on the surface and Professor Searle clarifies it in such a way as to give us the possibility of a clear-cut answer.

The issues raised by this course are the most central the mind can ask. It is a joy to have them explained and explored with so capable a guide.

Course Lecture Titles:

Lecture 1: Dualism—Descartes' Legacy

Lecture 2: Alternatives to Dualism—Materialism and Its Contents

Lecture 3: Strong Artificial Intelligence

Lecture 4: The Chinese Room Argument and Its Critics

Lecture 5: Can a Machine Think?

Lecture 6: Is the Brain a Digital Computer?

Lecture 7: Some Solutions to Descartes' Problems

Lecture 8: The Structure of Consciousness

Lecture 9: How to Study Consciousness Scientifically

Lecture 10: How the Mind Works—An Introduction to Intentionality

Lecture 11: The Structure of Action and Perception

Lecture 12: The Construction of Social Reality

http://rapidshare.de/files/30790947/...Mind.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.de/files/30794596/...Mind.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.de/files/30787337/...Mind.part3.rar

password: wordhaven.net

EXU · 10-07-2007

Philosophy of Religion
by James Hall

Can humans know whether the claim "God exists" is true or not?
If so, how?
If not, why not?
Are these first three questions actually useful?

These questions have perplexed us since the first moment we were capable of asking them. Philosophy of Religion invites you to explore the questions of divine existence with the tools of epistemology, the branch of philosophy that concerns itself with what we can know.

In Professor James Hall, Chair of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Richmond, you have an unusually qualified teacher. The son of a Baptist minister (who himself later became a university professor), Professor Hall first trained at a seminary before taking his doctorate in philosophy and embarking on a teaching career nearly 40 years ago.

He announces early in the series where he stands on these issues; this is not a course with a hidden agenda, or an exercise in polemic. (And, no, we won't let the cat out of the bag here. The story of Professor Hall's own background and philosophical journey, which he shares with you in Lecture 3, is far too interesting for us to divulge.)
AudioFile magazine's review of this course reports that "[Professor Hall] is amiable, humorous, clear, and interesting, and, thankfully, never pedantic."

Make no mistake about it: This is a rigorous course in the most positive sense of the word. One of the great joys of intellect is using it, and you do so in every lecture.
At the same time, philosophy can sometimes be needlessly abstract, and Professor Hall's ability to avoid this hazard makes this course consistently engaging. For example, he uses a memorable antacid commercial to illustrate the loss of relevance in a non sequitur argument and a classic Garry Trudeau cartoon to illustrate equivocation in language.

Clarity about Tools and Terms
The first eight lectures of the course are foundational. You establish a clear understanding of the terms "philosophy," "religion," "God," and "knowledge."

What Do We Mean When We Say "God"?
Professor Hall narrows the definition of "God" as used in this course to the God of ethical monotheism: the God of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This is a single God deserving of worship. One by one, each characteristic of the God of ethical monotheism is put into place:

Omnipotence: There are no limits on God's powers.

Omniscience: There are no limits on God's knowledge.

Omnipresence: There are no limits of distance or separation that affect God.

Omniperfection: God must be totally without moral flaw.

Aseity: God is not limited by anything external to itself—being, itself, the limit of everything else.

Arguments for God's Existence: Ontology, Cosmology, Teleology, and Divine Encounters
The course then explores the major arguments for the existence of God, testing each with the techniques of philosophical thought.

The Ontological Argument. For this argument, famously advanced by St. Anselm and René Descartes, divine existence is entailed by the very concept of Godhood.

The Cosmological Argument. This argument, famously advanced by St. Thomas Aquinas, holds that the very existence of the world proves the existence of God, without whom there could be no first cause for all of being.

The Teleological Argument. This argument, articulated variously by the psalmist, St. Paul, and William Paley, claims that the magnificent design of the world necessarily implies the existence of a designer. Paley argued that if we walk along a beach and find a clock, we assume that a clockmaker created it.

Divine Encounter. This argument points to individuals who are said to have had direct communication with God. If their reports are true, then the other arguments are a sinful waste of time because we would have direct evidence of God.

The review and testing of these four arguments yields a "Scottish verdict": not proved.

Arguments against God's Existence: The Problem of Evil
After testing the arguments for God's existence, Professor Hall reverses the burden of proof and asks: "Can humans know that God does not exist?"

You study the argument that God cannot exist because nature or wicked humans cause innocents to suffer.

And you learn the replies (theodicies) that the major religious traditions have marshaled:

There is no problem of evil because the world is perfect.
Evil is simply the absence of good.
Apparent evil exists to serve a larger good: God's purposes are inscrutable to us, and evil is only an apparition caused by our ignorance.
Evil done by humans is a necessary consequence of free will, and autonomy given us by God. Without the opportunity for evil, there could also be no opportunity for virtue. An associated argument is that demonic forces cause evil (and this, too, may be a consequence of their freedom). In either case, God is not the cause of evil.
Those who suffer do so because they are being punished or elevated by suffering.

This portion of the course also invites a hung jury. Atheism is no more an obvious candidate for knowledge than theism is.

Tipping over the Chessboard: Faith and Transcendence
You also study approaches that dispense with logical or empirical "proof" of God.

Two lectures explore religious agnosticism: faith without (or against) evidence. You examine the arguments that proof is irrelevant to faith (and the argument that the demand for proof is a barrier to faith) and their consequences.
You also explore transcendentalist claims that God transcends the world and everything in it, and the consequences of this argument.

Playing a Different Game: Causes versus Intentions
Logical and empirical explanations, in general, search for causes and effects. A "caused effect" is not "free" to happen and, therefore, does not have "motives" or "intentions."

But religious discourse is profoundly concerned with intentions as an explanation of life and the world.

You examine two other approaches to understanding religious claims:

Paradigms. Three lectures examine religious claims and stories as part of a form of life operating under an alternative paradigm that includes intentionality as one of its basic categories of description and explanation.
Language Games. Four lectures examine religious claims and stories as moves in one or another, possibly nondescriptive, language games, especially a game that consists of stories-told-for-a-purpose. These are stories that are not to be assessed as true or false, but as functional or dysfunctional, in terms of their life impact.

In the last lecture, you retrace the conceptual problems in ethical monotheism that urged its philosophical examination in the first place and the discoveries along the way that have led to characterizing it as we have. But, given that philosophy is an ongoing reflective enterprise, the very last point is an invitation to all who have worked through this series to carry on the reflection themselves.

http://rapidshare.de/files/31011018/...gion.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.de/files/31013043/...gion.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.de/files/31015318/...gion.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.de/files/31008316/...gion.part4.rar
http://rapidshare.de/files/30958740/...gion.part5.rar

password: wordhaven.net

again note that this is not just a lecture but an entire course.

EXU · 10-07-2007

something a bit different

Kahlil Gibran - The Prophet
Narrated by Richard Harris, 1974 (very rare recording)

01 - The Coming Of The Ship
02 - On Love
03 - On Marriage
04 - On Children
05 - Trilogy From 'The Prophet' (Love, Marriage, Children)
06 - On Giving
07 - On Eating And Drinking
08 - On Clothes
09 - On Work
10 - On Crime And Punishment
11 - On Laws
12 - On Teaching And Self-Knowledge
13 - On Friendship
14 - On Pleasure
15 - Theme From 'The Prophet' (Pleasure Is A Freedom Song)
16 - On Religion
17 - On Death
18 - The Farewell

Richard Harris doing a spoken word “dramatic interpretation” of The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. The music & spoken elements combine in a way that soothes while also challenging the heart & soul.

http://rapidshare.com/files/702859/RH_pro1.zip
http://rapidshare.com/files/703593/RH_pro2.zip

EXU · 10-07-2007

Giants of Philosophy - Jean Paul Sartre

JEAN-PAUL SARTRE (1905-1980) France - Sartre was a leading advocate of existentialism - the view that we must establish our own dignity, despite a meaningless life.

Sartre's existentialism faces the evil in human existence and sees that humans are responsible for it. He doubts man can make moral progress, yet he embraces the possibilities for human life.

Mankind is radically free and responsible. In every moment we choose ourselves; beyond this, we find no instructions for our lives. No external authority gives life meaning, so Sartre's existentialism is boldly atheistic.

For most objects, "essence precedes their existence." But humans must continually create what they are in every moment; human existence precedes essence.

"Existence" hides behind the way we see and talk about it. Conscious life is a type of "Nothingness"; we determine what we now are by the way we project the "not yet" of the future (we are not what we are, and we are what we are not.) Anguish before the future is one way we experience our radical freedom. We're not determined by outside forces; we constantly choose and re-choose ourselves with no assurance that we have a continuing identity or power. So we set up determinisms to ease our minds.

An unstable and unpredictable human condition afflicts all human relations. We can't escape our involvement with others; conflict is inevitable. Death is the ultimate limit; the end of consciousness is the end of meaning.

http://rapidshare.com/files/31963825/GOP_-_JPS.rar

pass: JPS

EXU · 10-07-2007

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

For those unfamiliar with CS Lewis, he is a pioneer in Christian Apologetics. He led JRR Tolkkien to Christ, and was very influential in his time. Good Book for anyone to listen to.

http://rapidshare.com/files/23604651...pe_letters.mp3

EXU · 10-07-2007

EXU · 10-07-2007

Black Holes and Baby Universes by Stephen Hawking

Hawking is quite probably the most admired and recognizable figure in science today. His A Brief History of Time ( LJ 4/15/88) was a surprise best seller that stimulated a public fascination with this man who, although stricken with a debilitating neurological disease, is widely regarded as the most brilliant theoretical physicist since Einstein. This new collection of essays and lectures will no doubt attract a large readership, but it is somewhat unbalanced. The biographical pieces are digressive and not particularly enlightening.

http://rapidshare.com/files/16684853..._Universes.rar
Password: ArmStrong

EXU · 10-07-2007

A Quantum User's Guide To Your Universe by Fread Alan Wolfe PHD

In this Audio Learning Set, Dr. Fred Alan Wolf takes the listener on a stirring intellectual ride through the realms of human consciousness and its relationship to quantum physics. He espouses his theories on the universe, relativity, quantum mechanics, and much more.

http://rapidshare.com/files/21965509...erse.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/21965804...erse.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/21963887...erse.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/21964088...erse.part4.rar

Password: ArmStrong

EXU · 10-07-2007

"Palestine, Zionism, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict"
Professor James Gelvin

This complete course was originally offered by the The Teaching Company but was pulled after it got too controversial and their website went into meltdown. This is the reason they have written on their website today: "This course is no longer offered from TTC because the topic was a bit more controversial than the company was willing to associate their name with."

I managed to snap it up before it disappeared.

List of lectures:

01 - The Land and Its Lure
02 - Ottoman Background
03 - Palestine in the 19th Century
04 - European Jewry in the 19th Century
05 - Theodore Herzel and the Zionist Movement
06 - First Attempts at Jewish Colonization
07 - The Changing Face of Zionist Colonization
08 - World War I and the Middle East
09 - Palestine Under the Mandate
10 - Origins of Palestinian Nationalism
11 - Evolution of Palestinian Nationalism
12 - The Iconography of Zionism
13 - From the Great Revolt to VE Day and Beyond
14 - The 1948 War
15 - Results of the 1948 War
16 - The Experience of Exile
17 - Decades of Entrenchment
18 - The 1967 War and Its Diplomatic Effects
19 - Problem of the Conquered Territories
20 - Palestine Liberation Organization
21 - America and the Arab-Israeli Conflict
22 - The Intifada
23 - Rise and Fall of the Oslo Accord
24 - The Hundred Years War in Retrospect

http://rapidshare.com/files/6777889/...part1.rar.html
http://rapidshare.com/files/6817832/...part2.rar.html

pHi · 10-07-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by EXU

A Quantum User's Guide To Your Universe by Fread Alan Wolfe PHD

In this Audio Learning Set, Dr. Fred Alan Wolf takes the listener on a stirring intellectual ride through the realms of human consciousness and its relationship to quantum physics. He espouses his theories on the universe, relativity, quantum mechanics, and much more.

http://rapidshare.com/files/21965509...erse.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/21965804...erse.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/21963887...erse.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/21964088...erse.part4.rar

Password: ArmStrong

I'm reading "Quantum enigma: Physics encounters conciousness" by Bruce Rosenblum & Fred kuttner

fantastic read.
5 stars

EXU · 11-07-2007

Will to Power: The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche
by Robert C. Solomon & Kathleen M. Higgins

"The Superman."
"The Will to Power."
"The Eternal Recurrence."
Among shapers of contemporary thought—including Darwin, Marx, and Freud—Friedrich Nietzsche is perhaps the most mysterious and least understood. His aphorisms are widely quoted, but as both man and thinker he remains an enigmatic figure, "philosophizing with a hammer" and hurling unsettling challenges to some of our most cherished beliefs.
Who was this eccentric German genius? This lonely and chronically ill, yet passionate, daring, and complex seeker?

Was he a proto-Nazi, or would he have found Hitler despicable?
Who was this man who caustically attacked the Christianity of his day but who wept openly when he saw a horse mistreated in the street?
Why are his brilliant insights so relevant for today?
How did he become the most misinterpreted and unfairly maligned intellectual figure of the last two centuries?

Professor Robert Solomon is the Quincy Lee Centennial Professor of Business and Philosophy at The University of Texas at Austin and a member of the Academy of Distinguished Teachers.

He has received several awards for excellence in teaching, including a Fulbright Lecture Award and a Standard Oil Outstanding Teaching Award.
In his precise yet conversational style he weaves biographical detail, abstract analysis, and humor, constructing an engaging, well-rounded portrait of the most enigmatic, complex figure in all of philosophy. He is joined in many lectures by his wife and fellow Nietzsche scholar, Professor Kathleen Higgins, also of The University of Texas at Austin.

A Lonely Genius's Quest
Nietzsche's body of work has been enormously influential, but it consists of a hodgepodge of reflections, accusations, bits of psychoanalysis, church and secular history, advice to the lovelorn, moral reminders, and some forgeries created by Nietzsche's nefarious sister.

To provide shape to Nietzsche's thought, each lecture focuses on specific ideas that preoccupied Nietzsche while tracing the profound themes that give meaning to his work.

Lectures 1 through 3 provide a context within which we can better understand Nietzsche's life and work. These are essential and foundational introductions to him. Professors Solomon and Higgins:

Debunk the myths, rumors, and misunderstandings surrounding Nietzsche. (They show, for example, that he was not insane, misogynistic, power-mad, anti-Semitic, or amoral.)
Connect his thought to that of his predecessors Socrates, Plato, Jesus, and Schopenhauer and that of his near-contemporaries Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky, Marx, and Freud.
Investigate how Nietzsche's method of explaining human beliefs and practices in terms of personality and character (as opposed to justifying them through reason) enabled him to refute Socratic assumptions, English utilitarianism, Christian compassion, and Schopenhauer's pessimism.

The Death of God and The Birth of Tragedy
Lectures 4 through 8 explore Nietzsche's subtle and complex critique of both religious belief and Greek rationalism.

What did Nietzsche mean when he declared "God is dead"? We see that Nietzsche did not seek to condemn true spirituality but to question the mindset that insists on eternity, that is obsessed with unity and coherence, and that demands predictability and justice in a world that is neither predictable or just.
We examine Nietzsche's near-worship of pre-Socratic Greek culture and his championing of instinct, passion, and aestheticism.
We study Nietzsche's first work, The Birth of Tragedy (1872), famous for its brilliant analysis of the creative tension between the cults of rational Apollo and ecstatic Dionysus in pre-Socratic Greece.
We see how Nietzsche contrasts tragedy, which accepts suffering and makes something beautiful out of it, with Platonic, Socratic, and Christian thought, which he accuses of trying to deny the meaning of suffering by invoking a superior, otherworldly life.

Lectures 9 through 11 focus on Nietzsche's famous style, which deftly combines the majesty of the prophet, the force of the Homeric warrior, and the lyricism of the poet, but which nonetheless is rife with fallacies, inconsistencies, exaggerations, and scathing personal attacks.

Harsh but Insightful Criticisms
In lectures 12 through 15, Professor Solomon takes a closer look at Nietzsche's harsh but insightful criticisms of the intellectual currents of his time—Christian moralism, evolution, socialism, democracy, and nationalism. Here we meet Nietzsche the "moral psychologist," who revolutionized our understanding of the "human, all too human" motives that underlie our beliefs.

Is Nietzsche correct that "every philosophy is a personal confession and an unconscious memoir"?
Are pity and laughter just forms of dominance and power?
How much of morality is, in fact, a scheme to bring down one's superiors through guilt? How do repression, religion, and rationalization assist in this scheme?
How does Nietzsche criticize previous ideals of love?
Is Nietzsche a powerful anti-nihilist? Is he correct in rejecting the utilitarian's moral guideline "the greatest good for the greatest number" as a nihilistic rejection of life? (He says: "Man does not live for pleasure; only the Englishman does.")
How does Nietzsche's "morality of virtue" contrast with Judeo-Christian morality? And how does he argue that 2,000 years of Christianity enriches and spiritualizes "healthy" morality?

In Lectures 16 through 20, Professor Solomon pulls back and attempts to summarize Nietzsche's preoccupations. In a nod (and a wink) to our times, he compiles "top-ten lists" of both Nietzsche's favorites and his favorite targets. You will be intrigued to see who makes both lists! Also in this section, we encounter Nietzsche the historicist and Nietzsche the "immoralist," and discover the source of his vitriolic personal attacks.
The final four lectures examine Nietzsche's highly unorthodox "genealogy" of morality, as well as his most enduring image, that of the Ubermensch (super-man or over-man), and the notion of the will to power and "the eternal recurrence." Because these concepts have been misappropriated as rationalizations for monstrous behavior, they are usually misunderstood. You learn:

How the will to power explains our need for self-expression
How the Ubermensch is an expression of the innate human yearning for excellence
How Nietzsche characterizes the alternative to the Ubermensch—the "last man," who can quickly be sketched as the "ultimate couch potato" and the final fruit of utilitarian philosophy.

The "eternal recurrence" is Nietzsche's powerful, personal test. If you knew that you would live your life again and again for eternity, is it the life you would will? In short: do you in fact love your life? This is not a nihilist's question. It is a powerful call to full awareness and action in life.

Nietzsche's Love of Life
As you make your way through these lectures, you'll discover that Nietzsche, even at his most polemical and offensive, exudes an unmistakable enthusiasm and love of life. In fact, you'll see that his exhortation to learn to love and accept one's own life, to make it better by becoming who one really is, forms the project that is the true core of his work.

http://rapidshare.com/files/10392580...omon.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/10387810...omon.part2.rar

EXU · 18-07-2007

Giants of Philosophy - Plato

Plato was the first person to organize and record the issues and questions that define philosophy. As Socrates' student, Plato preserved the teachings of his great mentor in many famous "dialogues"; these deal with classic issues like law and justice, perception and reality, death and the soul, mind and body, reason and passion, and the nature of love. The dialogues also discuss the value of moral principle vs. the value of life itself; how to achieve virtue; and how each of us can fulfill our true nature.

The most famous of all Platonic doctrines is the "theory of forms." This theory that any object's true reality is found in its rational form or structure rather than in its material appearance. And Plato's Republic presents his distinctive (and much criticized) vision of the ideal state.

Plato believed that philosophy begins in the sense of wonder. With Socrates, he sees philosophy as reason, unhindered by feelings, emotions, and the senses. And from these two great thinkers we have received perhaps the most well known of all philosophical utterances: "the unexamined life is not worth living."

http://rapidshare.de/files/17773963/GOP_-_P.rar

rarpass: P

EXU · 18-07-2007

Giants of Philosophy - Immanuel K a n t
(1724-1804)
Germany

Narrated by Charlton Heston

Before ****, philosophers had debated for centuries whether knowledge is derived from experience or reason. **** says that both views are partly right and partly wrong, that they share the same error; both believe that the mind and the world, reason and nature are separated from one another. Building on an insight from Hume, **** says that our reason organizes our sense perception to produce knowledge. The mind is a creative force for understanding the manifold of new, unconceptualized sense impressions with which the world bombards us. And **** says we cannot know the "thing-in-itself" - the object apart from our conceptualization of it.

****'s "transcendental" philosophy transcends the question of "what" we know to ask "how" we know it. He seeks to discover the rules or laws of the understanding; he concludes that we can never transcend the limits of possible experience, declaring "I have had to limit reason to make room for faith." For ****, space and time are not external realities; they are tools of the mind in organizing experience. And we are unable to determine the ultimate nature of some things, such as whether humans have free will.

Kantian ethics asserts that we endure a perpetual struggle between duty and desire. The moral Law is universal and it speaks to us through our conscience. ****'s "categorical imperative" is to act only according to the maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law of nature.

Item # 30307 - 2 CDs

Item # 10307 - 2 Cassettes

On two audiotapes or CDs - about three hours in length.
Narrator: Charlton Heston
Author: Professor A.J. Mandt
Editor: Professor John Lachs

http://rapidshare.de/files/18024913/GoPKant.rar

rarpass: Iconclast

EXU · 18-07-2007

Giants of Philosophy - Hegel

complete audiobook - 32kbs.zip

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)
Germany
Narrated by Charlton Heston

Hegel created a vast speculative and idealistic philosophy, where truth is found not in the part but in the whole. Nature is an organic whole shot through with rationality akin to the reason in ourselves.

Hegel's famous "dialectic" is an organic process of growth and development in three stages: beginning, advance and resolution. It has two sides: the rational patterns that determine all growth in the world and the logical form of reason.

Each person is both a one and a many, a coexistence of opposites (unity and diversity). Self-consciousness (the self as subject knowing the self as object) requires mutuality - social interaction with others. And our minds have two functions: the understanding distinguishes between things, and reason synthesizes them.

There are three stages of mind: subjective (concerned with the individual), objective (including customs and beliefs of communities), and absolute (Spirit expressing itself through art, religion, and philosophy). All phases of the dialectical process are brought together in the final unity of Absolute mind.

For Hegel, history is a dynamic succession of novel and creative events, the gradual unfolding of reason. In Hegel's words, "what is rational is actual (real), and what is actual (real) is rational." Great men express the spirit of their age. And God is an absolute and living knower who apprehends the truth of all actuality.

Item # 30308 2 CDs

Item # 10308 2 Cassettes

On two audiotapes or CDs - about three hours in length.
Narrator: Charlton Heston
Author: Professor John E. Smith
Editor: Professor John Lachs

http://rapidshare.de/files/17856521/GOP_Hegel.rar

rarpass: Hegel