Author Description

The title of this textbook -- Living Philosophy -- may already have suggested our objectives and our concerns. We have written the book to meet the widely recognized need for an introduction to philosophy that will speak to its readers' practical experience and engage their lively interest without compromising the discipline's integrity. Most of the textbooks and anthologies currently available err one way or the other: They are too technical and so too difficult, or they are too popular and so insufficiently rigorous. By stressing the contributions of modern and contemporary Western philosophers and by focusing on recent Western experience, we have tried to find the middle ground in content. By philosophically examining issues immediately concerning students and by preparing Inquiries that encourage active participation, we've also tried to find a middle ground in method. Living Philosophy is organized around themes rather than historical periods or academic specialties. Its style is informal. We have generally avoided using technical terms, but where we have introduced them, we have taken care to define them in context. Living Philosophy intends to introduce students to the philosophical life, not by teaching them magisterially, but by involving them actively in philosophical debate. Those students who go on to follow advanced courses in the discipline will have every opportunity to study the history of philosophy, to specialize, and to master the technical language; those students who do not will still emerge from their introductory course with a clear idea of what philosophy is and an informed opinion o its value. Most important, these students will come to appreciate the involvement of philosophical thought in everyday life: They will learn, many of them for the first time, what it is to evaluate philosophical arguments, and they will learn too to recognize what difference it makes if one view or another is right. -- The Authors.