Table of Contents

*=NEW TO THIS EDITION; 1. BEFORE PHILOSOPHY: MYTH IN HESIOD AND HOMER; Hesiod: War among the Gods; Homer: Heroes, Gods, and Excellence; 2. PHILOSOPHY BEFORE SOCRATES; Thales: The One as Water; Anaximander: The One as the Boundless; Xenophanes: The Gods as Fictions; PROFILE: PYTHAGORAS; Heraclitus: Oneness in the Logos; Parmenides: Only the One; Zeno: The Paradoxes of Common Sense; Atomism: The One and the Many Reconciled; 3. THE SOPHISTS: RHETORIC AND RELATIVISM IN ATHENS; Democracy; The Persian Wars; The Sophists; Physis and Nomos; Athens and Sparta at War; Aristophanes and Reaction; 4. SOCRATES: TO KNOW ONESELF; Character; Is Socrates a Sophist?; What Socrates "Knows"; 5. THE TRIAL AND DEATH OF SOCRATES; Translator's Introduction; The Dialogue; Commentary and Questions; Translator's Introduction; The Dialogue; Commentary and Questions; Translator's Introduction; The Dialogue; Commentary and Questions; Phaedo (Death Scene); Translator's Introduction; The Dialogue (Selection); Commentary and Questions; 6. PLATO: KNOWING THE REAL AND THE GOOD; Knowledge and Opinion; The World and the Forms; The Love of Wisdom; The Soul; Morality; The State; Problems with the Forms; 7. ARISTOTLE: THE REALITY OF THE WORLD; Aristotle and Plato; Logic and Knowledge; The World; First Philosophy; The Soul; The Good Life; Virtue or Excellence (Arete); 8. EPICUREANS, STOICS, AND SKEPTICS: HAPPINESS FOR THE MANY; The Epicureans; The Stoics; The Skeptics; 9. THE CHRISTIANS: SIN, SALVATION, AND LOVE; Background; Jesus; The Meaning of Jesus; 10. AUGUSTINE: GOD AND THE SOUL; Wisdom, Happiness, and God; The Interior Teacher; God and the World; Human Nature and Its Corruption; Human Nature and Its Restoration; Augustine on Relativism; The Two Cities; Christians and Philosophers; 11. ANSELM AND AQUINAS: EXISTENCE AND ESSENCE IN GOD AND THE WORLD; Anselm: On That, Than Which No Greater Can Be Conceived; Thomas Aquinas: Rethinking Aristotle; * PROFILE: AVICENNA (IBN SIN=A); * PROFILE: AVERROES (IBN RUSHD); * PROFILE: MAIMONIDES (MOSES BEN MAIMON); Ockham and Skeptical Doubts--Again; 12. MOVING FROM MEDIEVAL TO MODERN; The World God Made for Us; The Humanists; Reforming the Church; Skeptical Thoughts Revived; Copernicus to Kepler to Galileo: The Great Triple Play; 13. RENE DESCARTES: DOUBTING OUR WAY TO CERTAINTY; The Method; Meditations: Commentary and Questions; Meditation I; Meditation II; Meditation III; Meditation IV; Meditation V; Meditation VI; What Has Descartes Done?; 14. HOBBES, LOCKE, AND BERKELEY: MATERIALISM AND THE BEGINNINGS OF EMPIRICISM; Thomas Hobbes: Catching Persons in the Net of the New Science; PROFILE: FRANCIS BACON; John Locke: Looking to Experience; George Berkeley: Ideas into Things; 15. DAVID HUME: UNMASKING THE PRETENSIONS OF REASON; How Newton Did It; To Be the Newton of Human Nature; The Theory of Ideas; The Association of Ideas; Causation: The Very Idea; The Disappearing Self; * PROFILE: THE BUDDHA; Rescuing Human Freedom; Is It Reasonable to Believe in God?; Understanding Morality; Is Hume a Skeptic?; 16. IMMANUEL KANT: REHABILITATING REASON (WITHIN STRICT LIMITS); Critique; Judgments; Geometry, Mathematics, Space, and Time; Common Sense, Science, and the A Priori Categories; PROFILE: BARUCH SPINOZA; Phenomena and Noumena; PROFILE: GOTTFRIED WILHELM VON LEIBNIZ; Reasoning and the Ideas of Metaphysics: God, World, and Soul; Reason and Morality; * PROFILE: JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU; 17. GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL: TAKING HISTORY SERIOUSLY; Historical and Intellectual Context; Epistemology Internalized; PROFILE: ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER; Self and Others; Stoic and Skeptical Consciousness; Hegel's Analysis of Christianity; Reason and Reality: The Theory of Idealism; Spirit Made Objective: The Social Character of Ethics; History and Freedom; 18. KIERKEGAARD AND MARX: TWO WAYS TO "CORRECT" HEGEL; Kierkegaard: On Individual Existence; Marx: Beyond Alienation and Exploitation; 19. THE UTILITARIANS: MORAL RULES AND THE HAPPINESS OF ALL (INCLUDING WOMEN); The Classic Utilitarians; The Rights of Women; 20. FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE: THE VALUE OF EXISTENCE; Pessimism and Tragedy; Good-bye Real World; The Death of God; Revaluation of Values; The Overman; Affirming Eternal Recurrence; 21. THE PRAGMATISTS: THOUGHT AND ACTION; Charles Sanders Peirce; John Dewey; PROFILE: WILLIAM JAMES; 22. ANALYSIS: LOGICAL ATOMISM AND THE LOGICAL POSITIVISTS; Language and Its Logic; PROFILE: BERTRAND RUSSELL; Ludwig Wittgenstein: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus; Logical Positivism; 23. ORDINARY LANGUAGE: "THIS IS SIMPLY WHAT I DO"; The Later Wittgenstein: Philosophical Investigations; The Continuity of Wittgenstein's Thought; Our Groundless Certainty; 24. MARTIN HEIDEGGER: THE MEANING OF BEING; What Is the Question?; The Clue; Phenomenology; PROFILE: JEAN-PAUL SARTRE; Being-in-the-World; The "Who" of Dasein; Modes of Disclosure; Falling-Away; Care; Truth; Death; Conscience, Guilt, and Resoluteness; Temporality as the Meaning of Care; The Priority of Being; * 25. SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR: EXISTENTIALIST, FEMINIST; * Ambiguity; * Ethics; * Woman; 26. POSTMODERNISM AND PHYSICAL REALISM: DERRIDA, RORTY, QUINE, AND DENNETT; Postmodernism; Physical Realism

Reviews

"The Great Conversation, Fifth Edition, is unquestionably the best philosophy textbook I have ever read. My students love the book. Melchert writes with utter clarity and his examples are superb. His careful choice of primary sources and brilliant use of them in his prose is nothing short of genius. I generally cringe at the wooden writing style of textbooks, and find some philosophy texts particularly deadly. Melchert's text shatters all of my textbook nightmares."--Thomas Bell, Brevard College