Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away
Autor Rebecca Goldsteinen Limba Engleză Paperback – 5 ian 2015
Is philosophy obsolete? Are the ancient questions still relevant in the age of cosmology and neuroscience, not to mention crowd-sourcing and cable news? The acclaimed philosopher and novelist Rebecca Newberger Goldstein provides a dazzlingly original plunge into the drama of philosophy, revealing its hidden role in today s debates on religion, morality, politics, and science.
At the origin of Western philosophy stands Plato, who got about as much wrong as one would expect from a thinker who lived 2,400 years ago. But Plato s role in shaping philosophy was pivotal. On her way to considering the place of philosophy in our ongoing intellectual life, Goldstein tells a new story of its origin, re-envisioning the extraordinary culture that produced the man who produced philosophy.
But it is primarily the fate of philosophy that concerns her. Is the discipline no more than a way of biding our time until the scientists arrive on the scene? Have they already arrived? Does philosophy itself ever make progress? And if it does, why is so ancient a figure as Plato of any continuing relevance?" Plato at the Googleplex" is Goldstein s startling investigation of these conundra. She interweaves her narrative with Plato s own choice for bringing ideas to life the dialogue.
Imagine that Plato came to life in the twenty-first century and embarked on a multicity speaking tour. How would he handle the host of a cable news program who denies there can be morality without religion? How would he mediate a debate between a Freudian psychoanalyst and a tiger mom on how to raise the perfect child? How would he answer a neuroscientist who, about to scan Plato s brain, argues that science has definitively answered the questions of free will and moral agency? What would Plato make of Google, and of the idea that knowledge can be crowd-sourced rather than reasoned out by experts? With a philosopher s depth and a novelist s imagination and wit, Goldstein probes the deepest issues confronting us by allowing us to eavesdrop on Plato as he takes on the modern world.
(With black-and-white photographs throughout.)"
Preț: 103.18 lei
Nou
19.75€ • 21.24$ • 16.46£
Carte disponibilă
Livrare economică 29 noiembrie-13 decembrie
Specificații
ISBN-10: 0307456722
Pagini: 480
Dimensiuni: 133 x 203 x 27 mm
Greutate: 0.41 kg
Editura: Vintage Publishing
Notă biografică
Rebecca Newberger Goldstein received her doctorate in philosophy from Princeton University. Her award-winning books include the novels The Mind-Body Problem, Properties of Light, and 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction and nonfiction studies of Kurt Gödel and Baruch Spinoza. She has received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, has been designated a Humanist of the Year and a Freethought Heroine, and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2015. She lives in Massachusetts.
Cuprins
α Man Walks into a Seminar Room
β Plato at the Googleplex
γ In the Shadow of the Acropolis
δ Plato at the 92nd Street Y
ε I Don’t Know How to Love Him
ς xxxPlato
ζ Socrates Must Die
η Plato on Cable News
θ Let the Sunshine In
ι Plato in the Magnet
Appendix A: Socratic Sources
Appendix B: The Two Speeches of Pericles from Thucydides’ The History of the Peloponnesian War
Glossary
Acknowledgments
Bibliographical Note
Index