The Latest Answers to the Oldest Questions: A Philosophical Adventure with the World's Greatest Thinkers

by Nicholas Fearn

Overview

The work of the classic philosophers is well known. But what do contemporary thinkers say about what it is to be a human being? In his serious, challenging, and remarkably accessible new book, Nicholas Fearn turns to contemporary philosophers to ask the age old questions: Who am I? What do I know? What should I do? In his search for higher meaning, Fearn consults with thinkers from around the world (including John Searle, Martha Nussbaum, Peter Singer, Richard Rorty, Daniel Dennett, Noam Chomsky, Derek Parfit, Nick Bostrom, among many others) to create an impressive survey of recent thought. Variously, they believe that free will, identity, and consciousness are not what they seem; that the difference between virtue and wickedness can be a matter of sheer luck; and that, one day, we will all be vegetarians. Fearn discovers that the topics haven’t changed, though our world has. Or has it? Moving deftly from pop culture to the writings of Plato, Philosophy is a brilliant and entertaining guide to the current state of the philosophical thought.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802143471
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	12/21/2007
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x (d)

Editorial Reviews

From Plato to Colin McGinn, thinkers have addressed the same set of core questions, making philosophy an enduring human science through imagination and debate. This book concisely organized into three parts titled "Who Am I?" "What Do I Know?" and "What Should I Do?" reviews not just the latest work on these age-old questions, but also the journey between ancient and modern philosophy. But where the title promises adventure, the broad overview obscures the quirky characters and theories that give life to today's great ideas. Further, Fearn seems unable to decide what kind of narrator he wants to be: he'll appear suddenly out of synthetic prose to interview or to fail to interview one of his more than 30 subjects. One of his stranger encounters is with Jacques Derrida: "Although he is renowned for his charm, I am unable to give a personal account of Derrida since he declined to be interviewed, and woke me up with a phone call at 7:30 a.m. to tell me so." In this way, the book certainly has its moments, especially in the later chapters, but too often loses momentum. (Jan.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Philosophers have struggled for 2500 years in the West and longer elsewhere to discover what counts as knowledge, whether human beings are free, how bodies are related to souls, and the meaning of life and death. Now Fearn, a philosophy graduate of King's College, London, offers answers to all the old questions and a few newer ones about minds and machines and how language meshes with thought-without much trouble. His answers are of two sorts, arguing that some questions dissolve when we analyze the language and logic in which they are expressed and turning others over to science. Similar answers are often given by analytic philosophers in the English-speaking world (perhaps Simon Blackburn does it best for popular consumption in books like Think Oxford), but their responses tend to be less dogmatic and more nuanced, sophisticated, and witty. Fearn may dampen your enthusiasm for the great old systems (not that he seems to know much about them), but if you suspect there's more to philosophy, he likely won't satisfy you either. Fearn assures us that genius does not have much place in contemporary philosophy. Readers will find nothing in this book to prove him wrong.-Leslie Armour, Dominican Univ. Coll., Ottawa Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

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