The Presuppositions of Survival

Philosophy ◽  
1987 ◽  
Vol 62 (239) ◽  
pp. 17-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antony Flew
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
External World ◽  
Bertrand Russell ◽  
Human Interest ◽  
Special Sciences ◽  
Scientific Philosophy ◽  
The Times ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Human Destiny

1. Nowadays, I am told, many popular novels have anti-heroes not heroes. So perhaps it accords with the spirit of the times for my sermon to have not a text but an anti-text. This is taken from the first chapter of Our Knowledge of the External World by Bertrand Russell. It reads: ‘All the questions which have what is called a human interest—such, for example, as the question of a future life—belong, at least in theory, to special sciences and are capable, at least in theory, of being decided by empirical evidence … a genuinely scientific philosophy cannot hope to appeal to any except those who have the wish to understand, to escape from intellectual bewilderment … it does not offer, or attempt to offer, a solution to the problem of human destiny, or of the destiny of the Universe’..

scholarly journals REKONTRUKSI ECORELIGIUS ORANG MELAYU Solusi Penyelamatan Lingkungan

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 99
Author(s):  
Husni Thamrin, M.Si
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous People ◽  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Deep Ecology ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
Human Being ◽  
The People ◽  
Traditional Societies ◽  
The Times ◽  
The Universe

Anthropocentric paradigm has distanced humans from nature, as well as causing the humans themselves become exploitative in attitude and do not really care about the nature. In relation, ecological crisis also can be seen as caused by mechanistic-reductionistic-dualistic of Cartesian science. The perspective of anthropocentric is corrected by biocentrism and ecocentrism ethics, particularly Deep Ecology, to re-look at the nature as an ethical community. The concept of ecoculture is already practiced from the beginning by indigenous or traditional societies in elsewhere. The perspective of the human being as an integral part of the nature, and  the behaviour of full of resposibility, full of respect and care about the sustainability of all life in the universe have become perspectives and behaviours of various traditional people. The majority of local wisdom in the maintenance of the environment is still surviving in the midst of shifting currents waves by a pressure of anthropocentric perspective. There is also in a crisis because a pressure of the  influences of a modernization. While others, drifting and eroding in the modernization and the anthropocentric perspective.In that context, ecoculture, particularly Deep Ecology, support for leaving the anthropocentric perspective, and when a holistic life perspective asks for leaving the anthropocentric perspective, the humans are invited to go back to thelocal wisdom, the old wisdom of the indigenous people. in other words, environmental ethics is to urge and invite the people to go back to the ethics of the indigenous people that are still relevant with the times. The essence of this perspective is back to the nature, back to his true identity as an ecological human in the ecoreligion  perspective.

Emerson and the Virtues

1985 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 135-152
Author(s):  
Ellen Kappy Suckiel
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Times ◽  
The Universe ◽  
American Thought

Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose life spanned most of the nineteenth century, is widely regarded as one of the greatest sages in the history of American thought. Among educated American citizenry, Emerson is probably the most commonly read indigenous philosopher—and for good reason. Emerson presents a vision of human beings and their place in the universe which gives meaning and stature to the human condition. His profound, even religious, optimism, gives structure and import to even the smallest and apparently least significant of human activities. The inspirational quality of Emerson's, prose, his willingness to travel far and wide to lecture, his ability to help people transcend the difficulties of the times, all led to his very great national as well as international significance.

Emerson and the Virtues

1985 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 135-152
Author(s):  
Ellen Kappy Suckiel
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Times ◽  
The Universe ◽  
American Thought

Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose life spanned most of the nineteenth century, is widely regarded as one of the greatest sages in the history of American thought. Among educated American citizenry, Emerson is probably the most commonly read indigenous philosopher—and for good reason. Emerson presents a vision of human beings and their place in the universe which gives meaning and stature to the human condition. His profound, even religious, optimism, gives structure and import to even the smallest and apparently least significant of human activities. The inspirational quality of Emerson's, prose, his willingness to travel far and wide to lecture, his ability to help people transcend the difficulties of the times, all led to his very great national as well as international significance.

Truth and the Diversity of Religions

1990 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Ward
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
The World ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Human Destiny

I will be concerned with only one problem about truth which is raised by the diversity of religions which exist in the world. The problem is this: many religions claim to state truths about the nature of the universe and human destiny which are important or even necessary for human salvation and ultimate well-being. Many of these truths seem to he incompatible; yet there is no agreed method for deciding which are to he accepted; and equally intelligent, informed, virtuous and holy people belong to different faiths. It seems, therefore, that a believing member of any one tradition is compelled to regard all other traditions as holding false beliefs and therefore as not leading to salvation. Since each faith forms a minority of the world's population, all religious believers thus seem committed to saying that most intelligent, virtuous and spiritually devoted people cannot know the truth or attain salvation. This is a problem, because it is in tension with the belief, held by many traditions, that the supremely real being is concerned for the salvation of all rational creatures. How can this he so if, through no fault of their own, most creatures cannot come to know the truth and thereby attain salvation?

Ben Jonson and the Illusion of Completeness

PMLA ◽  
1969 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. A. Beaturline
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Ben Jonson ◽  
External World ◽  
The Other ◽  
Bertrand Russell ◽  
Infinite Class ◽  
Literary Forms ◽  
Significant Distinction ◽  
Century Literature

IN Our Knowledge of the External World, Bertrand Russell makes a significant distinction between two kinds of infinity. One kind is illustrated by the progression from zero to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, on to infinity; Russell calls this an infinite progression, and it is unlimited. The other idea is illustrated by the division of an interval between, say, one and two; first divide it into halves, then divide each of those halves, and so on infinitely. This is a compact series or an infinite class, and it is limited. The infinite progression and the infinite class are quite different ideas, and they have different philosophical uses. I suggest that a similar distinction may be made concerning literary forms, and that this distinction helps us to understand what is new about Ben Jonson's dramatic method. The distinction reverberates through seventeenth-century literature, I believe, but Jonson is especially interesting because he is somewhat of a pioneer.

Person As Figure of Ambiguity and Resolution in Pascal

PMLA ◽  
1969 ◽  
Vol 84 (2) ◽  
pp. 312-320
Author(s):  
Joseph Weber
Keyword(s):  
Consistent Pattern ◽  
Scientific Philosophy ◽  
The Universe

Certain similarities of style and concept can be found in the majority of Pascalian texts. A tracing of the structure and use of these patterns in the three major phases of Pascal's writings (nonreligious, the Provinciales, the Apologie) shows that the configuration shared by the different modes gravitates constantly toward one type of rhetorical and conceptual figure, the figure of person. It is a dialogic movement with a consistent pattern of an animate image containing human characteristics in which there are correspondences and structures of meaning and expression. This underlying configuration clearly places Pascalian thought and style in the tradition of Renaissance cosmology where the animate image of man, nature, and the universe had not yet been replaced by Cartesian mechanistic scientific philosophy.

Statement Concerning the Supplementary Volume of the Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Philosophy ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 122-124
Author(s):  
PAUL EDWARDS
Keyword(s):  
Good Deal ◽  
Big Bang ◽  
Bertrand Russell ◽  
Front Page ◽  
Biological Research ◽  
Simone De Beauvoir ◽  
Alphabetical Order ◽  
Modern Physics ◽  
The Times ◽  
The Big Bang

The Macmillan Reference Company and Prentice Hall International recently released a volume entitled ‘Supplement of the Encyclopedia of Philosophy’. As the editor-in-chief of the original eight-volume Encyclopedia I wish to explain why I must disassociate from this Supplement.The Supplement does contain many valuable articles by recognized philosophers, but it violates the spirit of the original work in one important respect. An article in the Oxford Companion to Philosophy accurately describes the Encyclopedia as a ‘massive Enlightenment work’ and similar descriptions were offered in a front-page review in the Times Literary Supplement of London (September 14, 1967) by Anthony (now Lord) Quinton. My associates and I edited the Encyclopedia in the spirit of Voltaire and Diderot, of Hume and Bertrand Russell. We tried to be fair to religious and metaphysical philosophers, but a good deal of space was devoted to radical thinkers and movements that had been frequently neglected or mishandled in earlier reference works. Furthermore, philosophers whom we regarded as obscurantists, while their ideas were never misrepresented, received the kind of critical treatment we thought appropriate. This spirit has not been preserved in the Supplement. There are some interesting and balanced articles on religious topics, but the highly significant biological research, reported in the writings of Stephen J. Gould and Richard Dawkins, which undermines one major form of the design argument, is not even mentioned. The ‘big bang’ is briefly mentioned (p. 143), but there is no reference to the work of Adolf Grünbaum, Steven Weinberg and other scientists and philosophers showing that neither the big bang nor any other cosmological theory of modern physics support a First Cause. More seriously, a number of contemporary writers, mostly German and French, who are regarded with suspicion if not outright contempt by most analytic philosophers are given extensive and even enthusiastic coverage. In alphabetical order they are Hannah Arendt, Simone de Beauvoir, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Paul Ricoeur (five articles on Ricoeur). It may be argued that, whatever the defect of their work, these figures have achieved such prominence that articles about them are warranted. Perhaps so, but what we get are totally uncritical pieces.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document