Philosophical Contemplation

Philosophical Contemplation
Author: Ran Lahav
Publisher:
Total Pages: 78
Release: 2018-04-24
Genre:
ISBN: 9781947515925

Philosophical contemplation means reflecting on fundamental life-issues from our inner depth. It takes us beyond our ordinary thought-patterns to new realms of understanding. When we contemplate on the writings of great philosophers of the past, we participate in the grand human choir and its encounter with the fundamental coordinates of human reality. This booklet is a practical and theoretical guide to philosophical contemplation, designed for beginning and experienced contemplators, philosophers and non-philosophers. It explains general principles, basic concepts, and a variety of practical techniques.

Aristotle on the Uses of Contemplation

Aristotle on the Uses of Contemplation
Author: Matthew D. Walker
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2018-05-31
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 1108421105

Provides an original, up-to-date, and systematic account of Aristotle's views on contemplation's place in the human good.

Action, Contemplation, and Happiness

Action, Contemplation, and Happiness
Author: C. D. C. Reeve
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2012-03-12
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0674065476

The notion of practical wisdom is one of Aristotle's greatest inventions. It has inspired philosophers as diverse as Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Elizabeth Anscombe, Michael Thompson, and John McDowell. Now a leading scholar of ancient philosophy offers a challenge to received accounts of practical wisdom by situating it in the larger context of Aristotle's views on knowledge and reality. That happiness is the end pursued by practical wisdom is commonly agreed. What is disputed is whether happiness is to be found in the practical life of political action, in which we exhibit courage, temperance, and other virtues of character, or in the contemplative life, where theoretical wisdom is the essential virtue. C. D. C. Reeve argues that the dichotomy is bogus, that these lives are in fact parts of a single life, which is the best human one. In support of this view, he develops innovative accounts of many of the central notions in Aristotle's metaphysics, epistemology, and psychology, including matter and form, scientific knowledge, dialectic, educatedness, perception, understanding, political science, practical truth, deliberation, and deliberate choice. These accounts are based directly on freshly translated passages from many of Aristotle's writings. Action, Contemplation, and Happiness is an accessible essay not just on practical wisdom but on Aristotle's philosophy as a whole.

Contemplation and Philosophy

Contemplation and Philosophy
Author: Roberto Hofmeister Pich
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018
Genre: Mysticism
ISBN: 9789004376281

This volume collects essays which are thematically connected through the work of Kent Emery Jr., to whom the volume is dedicated. A main focus lies on the attempts to bridge the gap between mysticism and a systematic approach to medieval philosophical thought. The essays address a wide range of topics concerning (a) the nature of the human soul (in philosophical and theological discourse); (b) medieval theories of cognition (natural and supernatural), self-knowledge and knowledge of God; (c) the human soul's contemplation of, and union with, God; (d) the tradition of "the modes of theology" in the Middle Ages; (e) the relation between philosophy and theology. Various articles are dedicated to major figures of the 13th and 14th century philosophy, others display new material based on critical editions. Contributors are Jan A. Aertsen, Stephen Brown, Bernardo Carlos Bazán, William J. Courtenay, Alfredo Santiago Culleton, Silvia Donati, Bernd Goehring, Guy Guldentops, Daniel Hobbins, Roberto Hofmeister Pich, Georgi Kapriev, Steven P. Marrone, Stephen M. Metzger, Timothy B. Noone, Mikolaj Olszewski, Alessandro Palazzo, Garrett R. Smith, Andreas Speer, Carlos Steel, Loris Sturlese, Chris Schabel, Christian Trottmann, and Gordon A. Wilson.

Death, Contemplation and Schopenhauer

Death, Contemplation and Schopenhauer
Author: R. Raj Singh
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 141
Release: 2016-05-13
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1317154428

The connections between death, contemplation and the contemplative life have been a recurrent theme in the canons of both western and eastern philosophical thought. This book examines the classical sources of this philosophical literature, in particular Plato's Phaedo and the Katha Upanishad and then proceeds to a sustained analysis and critical assessment of the sources and standpoints of a single thinker, Arthur Schopenhauer, whose work comprehensively pursues this problem. Going beyond the well examined western influences on Schopenhauer, Singh offers an in-depth account of Schopenhauer's references to eastern thought and a comprehensive examination of his eastern sources, particularly Vedanta and Buddhism. The book traces the pivotal issue of death through the whole range of Schopenhauer's writings uncovering the deeper connotations of his crucial notion of the will-to-live.

The Value of Philosophy

The Value of Philosophy
Author: Bertrand Russell
Publisher:
Total Pages: 27
Release: 2017-10-05
Genre:
ISBN: 9781549905544

"The Value of Philosophy" is one of the most important chapters of Bertrand's Russell's magnum Opus, The Problems of Philosophy. As a whole, Russell focuses on problems he believes will provoke positive and constructive discussion, Russell concentrates on knowledge rather than metaphysics: If it is uncertain that external objects exist, how can we then have knowledge of them but by probability. There is no reason to doubt the existence of external objects simply because of sense data.

Contemplation and Philosophy: Scholastic and Mystical Modes of Medieval Philosophical Thought

Contemplation and Philosophy: Scholastic and Mystical Modes of Medieval Philosophical Thought
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 829
Release: 2018-08-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004379290

This volume collects essays which are thematically connected through the work of Kent Emery Jr., to whom the volume is dedicated. A main focus lies on the attempts to bridge the gap between mysticism and a systematic approach to medieval philosophical thought. The essays address a wide range of topics concerning (a) the nature of the human soul (in philosophical and theological discourse); (b) medieval theories of cognition (natural and supernatural), self-knowledge and knowledge of God; (c) the human soul’s contemplation of, and union with, God; (d) the tradition of “the modes of theology” in the Middle Ages; (e) the relation between philosophy and theology. Various articles are dedicated to major figures of the 13th and 14th century philosophy, others display new material based on critical editions. Contributors are Jan A. Aertsen, Stephen Brown, Bernardo Carlos Bazán, William J. Courtenay, Alfredo Santiago Culleton, Silvia Donati, Bernd Goehring, Guy Guldentops, Daniel Hobbins, Roberto Hofmeister Pich, Georgi Kapriev, Steven P. Marrone, Stephen M. Metzger, Timothy B. Noone, Mikolaj Olszewski, Alessandro Palazzo, Garrett R. Smith, Andreas Speer, Carlos Steel, Loris Sturlese, Chris Schabel, Christian Trottmann, and Gordon A. Wilson.

Coleridge's Contemplative Philosophy

Coleridge's Contemplative Philosophy
Author: Peter Cheyne
Publisher:
Total Pages: 393
Release: 2020
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0198851804

A study of the philosophical thought of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, with a focus on the central philosophical views and their underlying metaphysic that Coleridge strove to achieve and refine over the last three decades of his life.

Partakers of the Divine

Partakers of the Divine
Author: Jacob Holsinger Sherman
Publisher: Fortress Press
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2014-04-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1451480253

An extended essay in contemplative philosophy, the meeting of mystical and philosophical theology, Partakers of the Divine shows that Christian philosophical and contemplative practices arose together and that throughout much of Christian history philosophy, theology and contemplation remained internal to one another. Further, the relation of philosophy, theology, and contemplation to one another is of more than antiquarian interest, for it provides theologians and philosophers of religion today with a way forward beyond many of the stalemates that have beset discussions about faith and reason, the role of religion in contemporary culture, and the challenges of modernity and postmodernity.

The Good Life Method

The Good Life Method
Author: Meghan Sullivan
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2022-01-04
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1984880314

Two Philosophers Ask and Answer the Big Questions About the Search for Faith and Happiness For seekers of all stripes, philosophy is timeless self-care. Notre Dame philosophy professors Meghan Sullivan and Paul Blaschko have reinvigorated this tradition in their wildly popular and influential undergraduate course “God and the Good Life,” in which they wrestle with the big questions about how to live and what makes life meaningful. Now they invite us into the classroom to work through issues like what justifies our beliefs, whether we should practice a religion and what sacrifices we should make for others—as well as to investigate what figures such as Aristotle, Plato, Marcus Aurelius, Iris Murdoch, and W. E. B. Du Bois have to say about how to live well. Sullivan and Blaschko do the timeless work of philosophy using real-world case studies that explore love, finance, truth, and more. In so doing, they push us to escape our own caves, ask stronger questions, explain our deepest goals, and wrestle with suffering, the nature of death, and the existence of God. Philosophers know that our “good life plan” is one that we as individuals need to be constantly and actively writing to achieve some meaningful control and sense of purpose even if the world keeps throwing surprises our way. For at least the past 2,500 years, philosophers have taught that goal-seeking is an essential part of what it is to be human—and crucially that we could find our own good life by asking better questions of ourselves and of one another. This virtue ethics approach resonates profoundly in our own moment. The Good Life Method is a winning guide to tackling the big questions of being human with the wisdom of the ages.