Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing? PDF Download

Author: Leszek Kolakowski
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465010385
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 242

View

Book Description
Do we have free will? How can we know anything? What is justice? Why is there evil in the world? What is the source of truth? Is it possible for God not to exist? Can we really believe what we see? These are some of the questions that have intrigued the world's greatest thinkers over the ages. They are questions that make us think about the way we live, work, relate to each other, and see the world. In elegant and accessible prose, the eminent philosopher Leszek Kolakowski explores the essence of these ideas and their ongoing relevance as he introduces us to the great figures of Western thought: from Socrates to St. Augustine, Descartes to Nietzsche, and beyond. Reflecting on the great issues that animate our lives -- good and evil, truth and beauty, faith and the soul, free will and consciousness -- Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing? offers a guided tour of Western philosophy by one of the world's greatest living experts.

Author: Jim Holt
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0871404095
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 321

View

Book Description
In this astonishing and profound work, an irreverent sleuth traces the riddleof existence from the ancient world to modern times.

Author: Lawrence Maxwell Krauss
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 145162445X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 226

View

Book Description
This is a provocative account of the astounding new answers to the most basic philosophical question: Where did the universe come from and how will it end?

Author: Tyron Goldschmidt
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136249222
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 324

View

Book Description
This groundbreaking volume investigates the most fundamental question of all: Why is there something rather than nothing? The question is explored from diverse and radical perspectives: religious, naturalistic, platonistic and skeptical. Does science answer the question? Or does theology? Does everything need an explanation? Or can there be brute, inexplicable facts? Could there have been nothing whatsoever? Or is there any being that could not have failed to exist? Is the question meaningful after all? The volume advances cutting-edge debates in metaphysics, philosophy of cosmology and philosophy of religion, and will intrigue and challenge readers interested in any of these subjects.

Author: Bede Rundle
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199270503
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 217

View

Book Description
This work offers an explanation of fundamental facts of existence in purely philosophical terms, without appeal either to theology or cosmology. It will provoke and intrigue anyone who wonders about these questions.

Author: John F. Wippel
Publisher: CUA Press
ISBN: 0813218632
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 274

View

Book Description
This volume gathers studies by prominent scholars and philosophers about the question how have major figures from the history of philosophy, and some contemporary philosophers, addressed "the ultimate why question": why is there anything at all rather than nothing whatsoever?

Author: Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Von Schelling
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791444177
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 200

View

Book Description
Schelling's never completed "masterpiece", translated here with an introduction covering Schelling's life, other works, and a brief analysis of The Ages of the World by Wirth (philosophy, Ogelthorpe U.), explores the question of time as the relationship between poetry and philosophy. Contemporary philosophers herald this work as a predecessor to the modern debates about post-modernity and the limits of dialectical thinking.

Author: John Leslie
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470673559
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 336

View

Book Description
This compelling study of the origins of all that exists, including explanations of the entire material world, traces the responses of philosophers and scientists to the most elemental and haunting question of all: why is anything here—or anything anywhere? Why is there something rather than nothing? Why not nothing? It includes the thoughts of dozens of luminaries from Plato and Aristotle to Aquinas and Leibniz to modern thinkers such as physicists Stephen Hawking and Steven Weinberg, philosophers Robert Nozick and Derek Parfit, philosophers of religion Alvin Plantinga and Richard Swinburne, and the Dalai Lama. The first accessible volume to cover a wide range of possible reasons for the existence of all reality, from over 50 renowned thinkers, including Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Leibniz, Hume, Bertrand Russell, Stephen Hawking, Steven Weinberg, Robert Nozick, Derek Parfit, Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne, John Polkinghorne, Paul Davies, and the Dalai Lama Features insights by scientists, philosophers, and theologians Includes informative and helpful editorial introductions to each section Provides a wealth of suggestions for further reading and research Presents material that is both comprehensive and comprehensible

Author: Quentin Smith
Publisher: Purdue University Press
ISBN: 9780911198768
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 376

View

Book Description
In a critical dialogue with the metaphysical tradition from Plato to Hegel to contemporary schools of thought, the author convincingly argues that traditional rationalist metaphysics has failed to accomplish its goal of demonstrating the existence of a divine cause and moral purpose of the world. To replace the defective rationalist metaphysics, the author builds a new metaphysics on the idea that moods and affects make manifest the world's felt meanings; he argues that each feature of the world is a felt meaning in the sense that each feature is a source of a feeling-response if and when it appears. The author asserts that we must synthesize our two ways of knowing-poetic evocations and exact analyses-in order to decide which mood or affect is the appropriate appreciation of any given feature of the world. Smith gives evocative and exact explications of such features as the world's temporality, appearance, and mind-independency, as these features appear in the appropriate recitations.

Author: Paul Copan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501330799
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 337

View

Book Description
Did the universe begin to exist? If so, did it have a cause? Or could it have come into existence uncaused, from nothing? These questions are taken up by the medieval-though recently-revived-kalam cosmological argument, which has arguably been the most discussed philosophical argument for God's existence in recent decades. The kalam's line of reasoning maintains that the series of past events cannot be infinite but rather is finite. Since the universe could not have come into being uncaused, there must be a transcendent cause of the universe's beginning, a conclusion supportive of theism. This anthology on the philosophical arguments for the finitude of the past asks: Is an infinite series of past events metaphysically possible? Should actual infinites be restricted to theoretical mathematics, or can an actual infinite exist in the concrete world? These essays by kalam proponents and detractors engage in lively debate about the nature of infinity and its conundrums; about frequently-used kalam argument paradoxes of Tristram Shandy, the Grim Reaper, and Hilbert's Hotel; and about the infinity of the future.