Pleasures of Philosophy

by Will Durant

Book Overview

PhilosophyReligion/Philosophy This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0671581104
• ISBN13: 9780671581107
• Release Date: December 1999
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Weight: 1.32 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A Joy of Understanding of Human Life and Destiny

"There is a pleasure in philosophy, a lure even in the mirages of metaphysics. We strive with the chaos about and within, but we should believe all the while that there is something vital and significant in us, could we but decipher our own souls." Will Durant Joy of understanding: Logic, Aesthetics, Ethics, Politics , and finally, metaphysics are the five parts of philosophy, Durant perceived that so dismembered philosophy loses its beauty and its joy. We should seek it not in its shriveled abstractness and formality, argued Will Durant, but clothed in the living form of genius. He advocated with Ariel, his wife and partner, that we should study not merely philosophies, but also philosophers. We should spend our time with the saints and martyrs of thought, letting their radiant spirits play about us until perhaps we too, in some measure, shall partake of what Da-Vinci called 'the noblest pleasure, a joy of understanding.' In his Pleasure of Philosophy: Epicurus of Samos died in 270 B.C., and his philosophy had been controversial since then. One reason is our tendency to reject pleasure as morally good. Durant has let down Freud theory of the 'pleasure principle' and Nietzsche glorification of the instincts, associated with evil and perversion, based on their unsound anti-Epicurian tendencies. Pleasure inclusive usages, according to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, are most important in moral psychology, ethical theory, and the studies of the mind, including all joy and gladness, feeling good, or happy. Pleasure, as both intellectual and physical stimulation, promote happier philosophy fans. Intellectual pleasure, argues Roger Scruton, arise in contemplation, during the senses feast on favored subjects, when we rise above our purpose and begin to enjoy what we are doing for its own sake. Science without Philosophy: Science wishes to resolve the whole into parts, the organism into organs, the obscure into the known. Science tell us how to heal and how to kill. It reduces the death rate in retail and then kills us wholesale in war. But only wisdom, desire coordinated in the light of all experience, can tell us when to heal and when to kill. To observe processes and to construct means is science. To criticize and coordinate ends is philosophy. Science is analytical description; philosophy is synthetic interpretation. But, because in these days our means and instruments have multiplied beyond our interpretation and synthesis of ideals and ends, our life is 'full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.' For a fact is nothing except in relation to desire. It is not complete except in relation to a purpose and a whole. Science without philosophy, facts without perspective and valuation, cannot save us from despair. Author's review: Twenty years after its first publication in 1929 as, 'the mansions of philosophy,' 'and inquiries for it have mounted to the point where a new edition seemed forgivable, in the authors own words, he gave this c

One of the best on the subject. especially for beginners.

A real pleasure to read. This is the book which can open new vistas for any reader and is written in Mr.Durrants inimitable style. Only if philosophy could be made as pleasurable as this!The chapter on how he & Ariel raised their daughter can be an ideal marriage gift for newly weds.