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What Makes a Philosopher Great?: Thirteen Arguments for Twelve Philosophers book cover

1st Edition

What Makes a Philosopher Great? Thirteen Arguments for Twelve Philosophers

Edited By Stephen Hetherington Copyright 2018
282 Pages
by Routledge

282 Pages
by Routledge

282 Pages
by Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
This book is inspired by a single powerful question. What is it to be great as a philosopher? No single grand answer is presumed to be possible; instead, rewardingly close studies of philosophical greatness are developed. This is a scholarly yet accessible volume, blending metaphilosophy with the long history of philosophy and traversing centuries and continents. The result is a series of case... Read more

CONTENTS

Preface and acknowledgements

List of contributors

  1. Philosophical greatness: Introducing the very idea

    2. Stephen Hetherington

  2. Plato, Platonism, and the history of philosophy

    3. Lloyd P. Gerson

  3. Zhuangzi’s suggestiveness: Sceptical questions

    4. Karyn Lai

  4. Aristotle as systematic philosopher: Essence, necessity, and explanation in theory and practice

    5. David Bronstein

  5. Attention to greatness: Buddhaghosa

    6. Jonardon Ganeri

  6. Aquinas’s complex web

    7. Jeffrey Hause

  7. Descartes as a great philosopher: Comprehensive physics, mechanistic embodiment, and methodological systematicity

    8. Gary Hatfield

  8. Émilie du Châtelet on women’s minds and education

    9. Karen Detlefsen

  9. What’s so great about Hume?

    10. Don Garrett

  10. Is Kant a great moral philosopher?

    11. Allen Wood

  11. ‘How is metaphysics possible?’ Kant’s great question and his great answer

    12. Nicholas F. Stang

  12. Nietzsche: This time it’s personal

    13. Ken Gemes

  13. What makes Peirce a great philosopher?

    14. Cheryl Misak

  14. Wittgenstein’s un-ruley solution to the problem of philosophy

           David Macarthur

Biography

Stephen Hetherington is Professor of Philosophy at the University of New South Wales. His publications include Epistemology’s Paradox (1992), Good Knowledge, Bad Knowledge (2001), How to Know (2011), and Knowledge and the Gettier Problem (2016).

"What is the difference between a merely good philosopher and a great one? Lists of the great (and usually dead) philosophers presuppose an answer to this question but it's far from obvious what the answer is. The distinguished contributors to this terrific volume advance our understanding of what great philosophy is and explain the greatness of some of the greatest philosophers."

--Quassim Cassam, University of Warwick

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