分类：Philosophy & Thought

[France] Brigitte Labbé, Michel Puech: “A Philosophy Primer for Children”

Philosophy & Thought2007.07.17
[France] Brigitte Labbé, Michel Puech: “A Philosophy Primer for Children”
[French] Brigitte Labbé, Michel Puech: *A Philosophical Introduction for Children*, translated by Pan Lin, Wang Chuanya, et al., Guangxi Normal University Press, June 2005, 125.00 yuan — ☆ At last I’ve found a set of philosophy gift books! (I’ve only flipped through half a volume, so I won’t say much for now; in any case, it’s pretty good.) This series claims to be written for children and teenagers aged eight and up. In my view, parents are the more suitable readers. The best way to initiate children into philosophy, in any case, should be direct conversation. A Philosophical Introduction for Children (Complete Set of 6 Volumes) July 17, 2007 Latest…
philosophy book reading notes education
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2007年7月17日
Religious Language and Its Relation to Reality and Truth

Philosophy & Thought2007.07.07
Religious Language and Its Relation to Reality and Truth
Abstract: This article discusses the sources and significance of religious language and religious knowledge. The author first compares religion with questions of scientific cognition and experience, pointing out that the ability to grasp and use concepts in thought is the precondition for cognition, and that analogy and metaphor are crucial to any system of knowledge. Simply put, these preconditions of knowledge are “language,” and language is grounded in a form of life, so it is necessarily finite. Language cannot possess truth; even the language of science or religion is no exception. However, the significance of language lies in facilitating communication rather than flaunting truth, and the purpose of communication is…
philosophy Kant religion truth
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2007年7月7日
On a Discussion on Teachers’ Blogs: the Criterion of Truth, Pluralism, and Other Matters

Philosophy & Thought2007.07.07
On a Discussion on Teachers’ Blogs: the Criterion of Truth, Pluralism, and Other Matters
On the Discussion on the Teachers’ Blogs: Truth Standards, Pluralism, and Others Gu Ya 发表于 2007-07-07 14:02:46 Preface 2007-06-08 16:59:55 Since I ultimately stopped responding, let me add this here: pluralism is related to the metaphor of dumplings and noodles. When I say that anti-scientism is not anti-science, I do not merely mean that I support some other kind of science; rather, I mean that even with the science that exists now, I do not oppose it. On the contrary, mathematization is not something loathsome: mathematics is very beautiful, marvelous, and a mathematical world is awe-inspiring as well. What we oppose is only the elevation of one particular worldview—no matter…
philosophy philosophy of science truth pluralism
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2007年7月7日
What Is So Good About a Philosophy Department? — Written for Parents

Philosophy & Thought2007.06.22
What Is So Good About a Philosophy Department? — Written for Parents
Poor parents across the world all feel this way: if their children actually choose to study philosophy, it is rather like their children saying they want to join the underworld, or saying they want to marry an eighty-two-year-old man. How many parents would not be deeply worried by that? Such anxiety is only natural. A single casual choice can alter the whole second half of one’s life; how much more so matters as major as the college entrance examination and choosing a major? The child has not yet seen the world, so how could parents not keep a close eye on things? Indeed, many people are simply not suited to…
philosophy scholarship education self
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2007年6月22日
Outline for Discussion on “Religious Knowledge”

Philosophy & Thought2007.06.12
Outline for Discussion on “Religious Knowledge”
Xu Lao-shi is really something… It’s already the last class, and we still have to discuss things, and still have to write a discussion outline… Fortunately the paper can be turned in at the end of the month. Let me write it in a hurry then—I seem to have written a discussion outline for the first time in the form of an outline rather than a paper. But this time it seems to have gone to the other extreme, scattered all over the place… does it have a bit of Vico’s spirit?~ “Religious Knowledge” Discussion Outline According to Kant, intuition and concept are the two elements of knowledge. However, the…
philosophy knowledge language Wittgenstein
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2007年6月12日
“Chess Game” and Rational Pluralism

Philosophy & Thought2007.06.02
“Chess Game” and Rational Pluralism
The paper I wrote on philosophy of technology before was too rushed—I only decided to switch from Heidegger to Feenberg at two in the morning on Tuesday, spent all of Tuesday and Wednesday reading, and didn’t finish the paper until 6 a.m. on Thursday morning… In fact, many places could still have been developed further. On the question of plural rationality, the example Feenberg gives is a very good one— In the paper I wrote: Here, Feenberg agrees with historicism and social constructivism in holding that not only the content of rational beliefs, but also the principles and forms of reason itself, are historical and culturally plural. In order to…
philosophy culture sociology civilization
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2007年6月2日
[Repost] About Philosophy in Secondary School and Philosophy Departments

Philosophy & Thought2007.05.31
[Repost] About Philosophy in Secondary School and Philosophy Departments
http://www.gotopku.cn/forum/viewthread.php?tid=38381&fpage=1 The previous post doesn’t seem to have been moved over to the blog, has it? Today I ran into yet another classmate who became interested in the philosophy department after reading a Marxist philosophy textbook from the 1980s, so I suppose this needs to be clarified…… But in fact, perhaps the connection is not all that important. As long as one likes thinking, in the end, by a roundabout stroke of luck, one will probably still end up liking the philosophy department. Author: Title: Recommended: "Popular Philosophy" Previous topic | Next topic su Jinshi Points 4017 Posts 2255 Registered 2005-10-16 From Guangzhou Status Offline #1 Recommended "Popular Philosophy" Posted from: Future…
philosophy
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2007年5月31日
The Third Way—An Interpretation of Feenberg’s Philosophy of Technology (Reading Notes)

Philosophy & Thought2007.05.31
The Third Way—An Interpretation of Feenberg’s Philosophy of Technology (Reading Notes)
As usual, let me first post a rough draft of the essay. I had originally planned to write about Heidegger, but Heidegger’s articles are really too ethereal; when I read them, it’s all clouds and fog, impossible to get a grip on… Among the philosophy of technology thinkers discussed so far, aside from Marx, Feenberg is still the one most to my taste, though Ellul and Mumford are also worthy of respect. [US]Andrew Feenberg: Critique of Technology, translated by Han Lianqing and Cao Guanfǎ, Peking University Press,2005 Preface, p. 1, v, (first sentence) Must humanity submit to the harsh logic of machines? Or can technology be fundamentally redesigned so that…
book reading notes Marx Feenberg
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2007年5月31日
Theory Is Not Merely a Set of Propositions or Statements; A Theoretical System Cannot Be Self-Contained

Philosophy & Thought2007.05.05
Theory Is Not Merely a Set of Propositions or Statements; A Theoretical System Cannot Be Self-Contained
Recently I’ve talked about the relevant issues twice: (studying Wittgenstein, without any tidying up, just pasting the chat log~) “Is theory a set of propositions? Agree or not?”—— A proposition, a declarative sentence, in itself has no meaning if you do not know the meaning of each word in it, but the meaning of words cannot be given entirely within a set of propositions; ultimately, the meaning of words still has to involve referential definitions, so it is bound to draw in practical activity and the question of the way we contemplate the world. “Can a system close itself off?”—— A system cannot close itself off A theoretical system is…
philosophy language Wittgenstein proposition
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2007年5月5日
Virtue, Reason, and Spirit

Philosophy & Thought2007.05.03
Virtue, Reason, and Spirit
I once said, “The sublime are often rational; their decisions or choices should be guided more by reason than by mere whim, or by blind obedience to habit—a person of limited intelligence can also be trained into a selfless sacrificer, and a fanatical cultist may likewise completely abandon his own interests, but they cannot be called sublime, because behind their consistent behavior we see more irrationality. Only someone who has freely reflected upon his own life and can autonomously and rationally control his behavior is possibly capable of becoming sublime.” Later I added: “Actually, there is also a matter of level here. When the sublime reach a certain level, their…
philosophy reason emotion virtue
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2007年5月3日