Цитаты из книги Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction

Whilst developing your own powers of discrimination, stick to the good old classics. For no such doubts need arise about any of the philosophers I have tried to introduce you to. We know that they were writing from the heart as well as from the head. Alongside their enormous merits they may have their faults, to be sure:…

So on the very last page comes a sentence which, whilst completely characteristic of Beauvoir, could almost have been written by Mill: ‘when we abolish the slavery of half of humanity, together with the whole system of hypocrisy that it implies, then the “division” of humanity will reveal its genuine significance and the…

Thinking about philosophy is hard work – you may have noticed, though if you've got this far at least it hasn't put you off. Writing the stuff is even harder. (Take it from me.) So why have people done either? Well, for one or more of a whole catalogue of reasons. In the hope of learning to control nature, or of learning…

Such is Nietzsche's analysis. Whatever else we may think of it, it is certainly unflinching. These are no more than a few of the main thoughts, crudely compressed. Nietzsche's style, its musicality, its energy, its variety, its biting wit, is something one can only experience for oneself. And the text is full of…

The nineteenth-century enthusiasm for progress, to which the philosophy of Hegel gave such momentum, predisposed many to understand Darwin as part of the same progressivist movement. His younger contemporary Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), a man of a much more metaphysical, even somewhat Hegelian turn of mind, really was…

In one sense The Origin of Species does much more than ‘imply’ the startling thesis: it builds a very carefully constructed case for it, backed by a wealth of thoughtfully assessed evidence. Darwin was not the first person to propose the theory of natural selection (he tells you a little of the history of the idea in his…

The first thing we can learn from this fascinating book is not to bother too much about drawing a neat sharp line between philosophy and science. The point is not that the line isn't sharp, although I believe that to be true. The point is that the line (if it exists) is not of much importance for philosophy. On any…

Charles Darwin: The Origin of Species The first thing we can learn from this fascinating book is not to bother too much about drawing a neat sharp line between philosophy and science. The point is not that the line isn't sharp, although I believe that to be true. The point is that the line (if it exists) is not of much…

The Idea, as you will find if you ever read Hegel's Logic (but be warned, it is desperately hard work), always develops through the conflict of opposed concepts followed by their resolution, which itself turns out to harbour another opposition, upon which a further resolution follows, and so on until the entire system is…

So is there an external force, like the ancient Fates, looking down on us and manipulating our lives? No, Hegel's view is subtler and less superstitious than that. Remember that our minds, in Hegel's grand plan, do embody the Idea, but not yet with any clear consciousness of it. (Think of the way a gene – Hegel much…