The Joy of Philosophy: Thinking Thin versus the Passionate Life

by Robert C. Solomon

Overview

The Joy of Philosophy is a return to some of the perennial questions of philosophy--questions about the meaning of life; about death and tragedy; about the respective roles of rationality and passion in the good life; about love, compassion, and revenge; about honesty, deception, and betrayal; and about who we are and how we think about who we are. Recapturing the heart-felt confusion and excitement that originally brings us all to philosophy, internationally renowned teacher and lecturer Robert C. Solomon offers both a critique of contemporary philosophy and an invitation to engage in philosophy in a different way. He attempts to save philosophy from itself and its self-imposed diet of thin arguments and logical analysis to recover the richness and complexity of life in thought. Solomon defends the passionate life in contrast to the life of thoughtful contemplation idealized by so many philosophers, attempting to recapture the kind of philosophy that Nietzsche celebrated as a "joyful wisdom."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198023210
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	11/18/1999
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Lexile:	1440L (what's this?)
File size:	451 KB

About the Author

Robert C. Solomon is Quincy Lee Centennial Professor of Philosophy and a member of the Academy of Distinguished Teachers at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of more than thirty books, including The Passions, In the Spirit of Hegel, From Hegel to Existentialism, About Love, A Passion for Justice, A Short History of Philosophy (with Kathleen M. Higgins), and A Passion for Wisdom.

Table of Contents

	Introduction: Philosophy through Thick and Thin (Being, and Nothing Less)	3
	Portrait of a Philosopher	5
	On Philosophy as Criticism	7
	The Perennial Problems of Philosophy	10
	Celebrating Socrates	13
Chapter 1	The Passionate Life	17
	Love as a Virtue: Against the Kantian Paradigm	23
	The Virtue of Eros	27
	The Will to Power as Virtue	31
	On the Virtue of the Virtues	35
Chapter 2	The Politics of Emotion	38
	The Emotions Demeaned	39
	What Is an Emotion?	42
	Two Paradigms of Emotion	47
	Beyond the Cartesian Tradition	48
	The Purpose(s) of Emotions	51
	The Politics of Emotion	55
	The Politics of Emotion and Rationality	64
Chapter 3	Rationality and Its Vicissitudes	65
	Rationality in Perspective	68
	Some Reasons for Being Suspicious (of Reason)	71
	From Sums to Selfishness: Reason as an Essentially Contested Concept	74
	The Rationality of Emotions and the Emotional Grounding of Rationality	78
Chapter 4	Justice, Sympathy, Vengeance	88
	Justice and Vengeance: The Missing Paradigm	90
	Justice versus Vengeance: An Untenable Opposition	95
	The Kindly Side of Justice: Sympathy and the Moral Sentiments	98
	The Nasty Side of Justice: In Defense of Resentment	103
	Vengeance as Justice: The Rationality of Revenge	107
	How Justice Satisfies	113
Chapter 5	The Tragic Sense of Life	114
	Instead of Tragedy: Blame and Entitlement	118
	The Problem of Evil	122
	Blaming the Victim: The "Free Will" Solution	125
	Oedipus Redux: The Death of Tragedy	129
	Fate, McFate, and the Invisible Hand	132
	Good Luck, Bad Luck, and No Luck at All: A Plea for Gratitude	138
	The Meaning of Tragedy	143
Chapter 6	Thinking Death in the Face: Death Fetishism, Morbid Solipsism	145
	Thinking Death in the Face	147
	The Denial of Death: A Brief History	150
	From the Denial of Death to Death Fetishism	154
	The Bald Scenario: "Death Is Nothing"	159
	The Thin Reaper: Death as Paradox	163
	Fearing Death: What's to Be Afraid Of?	166
	Beyond Morbid Solipsism: The Social Dimension of Death	171
Chapter 7	Recovering Personal Identity	174
	The Puzzle's Progress	178
	Personal Identity and the Existential Social Self	181
	Personal Identity and Virtue Ethics	184
	Personal Identity and Multiculturalism	190
	Personal Identity in Love	193
	Recovering Personal Identity	196
Chapter 8	Deception, Self, and Self-Deception in Philosophy	198
	Why Truth?	198
	Truth and Lie in the Philosophical Sense	200
	Deception, Self-Deception, and the Self	204
	The Tangled Web: Duplicity as a Holistic Phenomenon	209
	The Duplicitous Self and the Self of Self-Deception	213
	Afterthought: Has "Analytic Philosophy" Ruined Philosophy?	218
	Notes	225
	Index	265