Beginning once more in CoPhi with the late Robert Solomon’s rapid overview of the history of philosophy. I’ve been using Passion for Wisdom for a long time, and have yet to find anything of its kind I like better. Maybe next year? Nigel Warburton’s Little History of Philosophy (sample) might work. We’ll see.
Meanwhile, our plates are full with the first 17 pages of Passion for Wisdom, from Augustine to Brahma to Xenophanes to the Zeitgeist and Zoroaster.
PW preface, 3-18, H Introduction. Fate vs. logos, Early Indian philosophy, Hebrew philosophy, Zoroastrianism, problem of evil/suffering/pain. **RECOMMENDED: JMH ch 2, especially 62-74
The biggest topic here, for my money, is the problem of evil & suffering. Is it bad enough to warrant this bleak statement about the value of life?
“Better to never have been born,” claimed the cheerful figure Silenus, “and next best to die soon.” In a world in which people had so little control, the concept of fate naturally played an important role.
Guess it all depends on who/what/when/where you are. Or why. But fate is no friend of the unborn, is it?
In place of the whims and passions of the gods and the uncertainties of fate, there had to be logos (logos), some reason or underlying logic. Religion had opened the way to the “beyond” for thousands of years, but it was philosophy that would demand order in the beyond.
…what is best known (in the west) about Indian philosophy — its mysticism and that familiar set of exercises known as yoga…
Xenophanes: “if horses and oxen had hands and could draw pictures, their gods would look remarkably like horses and oxen.”
Job & Ecclesiastes…Buddhists on suffering… Berenstain Bears
