The Examined Life: Readings from Western Philosophers from Plato to Kant [Hardcover]

Stanley Rosen (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 22, 2000

What did Plato contribute to the philosophy of art? What do Pascal's Pensees really say? Everyone knows the names of these philosophers, but few really understand the ideas at the core of western philosophy.

In this treasury of western thought, the primary sources speak for themselves. Over 35 excerpts from important philosophers -- including Aristotle and Hume, as well as contemporary thinkers -- offer a solid introduction to philosophy for the curious reader.

Leading scholars have carefully chosen the selections, which are arranged according to major discipline, including Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Art and Aesthetics, and Metaphysics. These experts have contributed a provocative introductions in their areas of expertise.

Unlike other philosophy collections, this book is not a history, a secondary source, or a quick reference. It stands out as an intelligent and accessible compilation of primary source material.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Perhaps you haven't the time for a cover-to-cover read of Plato's Republic, Pascal's Pensées, and Machiavelli's The Prince, let alone Aristotle's Politics, Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling, and Maimondides' Guide for the Perplexed. You're familiar with the names Schiller, Kant, and Hobbes, but you haven't actually gotten around to reading their works. But that doesn't mean you wouldn't like to sample the writings of the sages, be conversant with their philosophical styles, and know what they have to say. Towards that end, Stanley Rosen has done a great service for the scholarly minded but time-challenged seekers of wisdom.

The Borden Parker Bowne Professor of Philosophy at Boston University, the Evan Pugh Professor Emeritus at Penn State University, and a past president of the Metaphysical Society of America, Rosen is eminently versed in all things philosophical, and as such he's already written 13 books, including Hermeneutics as Politics, The Question of Being, and Plato's Symposium. The Examined Life, however, is unusual in that it's geared towards the amateur scholar of philosophy. Rosen and a team of distinguished scholars selected 35 excerpts from 23 of the Western world's great philosophers, including Plato and Aristotle, Descartes and Rousseau, Hegel and Nietzsche, Kant and Wittgenstein. He then arranged the excerpts by discipline: "Social and Political Philosophy," "Philosophy of Religion," "Philosophy of Art and Culture," "Metaphysics," "Epistemology," and "Philosophy of Science." And for each section, an expert editor has written a provocative introduction offering insight and perspective into the philosophers' works. Rosen writes, "My intention has been to introduce the intelligent nonspecialist to the universality, but also to the urgency, of philosophy." If you seek such an introduction to Western philosophy, or a recap of what you learned years ago but have long since forgotten, Rosen's anthology is a thoughtful, readable, and well-organized place to start. --Stephanie Gold

From Library Journal

This is an oddly mistitled but useful collection. While more than a third of the selections are from philosophers after Kant, at least a third of the material has nothing directly to do with the "examined life." But the collection is worthwhile because the material from Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Descartes, Pascal, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rousseau, and Hegel is carefully chosen and includes introductions by genuinely distinguished authors, among them Jaakko Hintikka, Gian-Carlo Rota, and William Desmond. The philosophers after Kant are worthy: Dewey, Wittgenstein, Husserl, and Adorno. There is also a splendid essay on mathematics and logic by Stephen Simpson. Oddly, however, no medieval philosopher rates inclusion, and, apart from Simpson and Paul Feyerabend, only Dewey represents American philosophy. Rosen (Metaphysics in Ordinary Language, LJ 5/15/99) is Borden Parker Bowne Professor of Philosophy at Boston University, yet Bowne, the father of American personalism, who surely made a massive contribution to the idea of the "examined life," isn't here. Mainly for philosophy students, this also makes a handy reference work for small general collections.DLeslie Armour, Univ. of Ottawa
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 656 pages
• Publisher: Random House Reference; 1 edition (February 22, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375405011
• ISBN-13: 978-0375405013
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,663,955 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars not just another collection of philosophical texts, May 26, 2000

By 

Chin-Tser Huang (Columbia, SC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Examined Life: Readings from Western Philosophers from Plato to Kant (Hardcover)

This book presents a solid collection of 35 excerpts from important Western philosophers ranging from as early as Plato to as modern as Feyerabend. However, it is not where the value of this book lies. The contribution of the book is that the editor categorized those maginificent works into six disciplines, and arranged an introductory essay in front of each section. All the essays are well-written and provide the reader with an examination of the importance of and the relationship between each work. They are really the compass in the labyrinth of Western philosophy.

A small flaw of the book is that the editor failed to add the years of the birth and death of each philosopher. But this is not a very serious problem to a good book.

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The necessity of an examined life, April 12, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Examined Life: Readings from Western Philosophers from Plato to Kant (Hardcover)

It has been said that the unexamined life is not worth living, with this said it is crucial that as much evidence as possible be gathered to enable a person to possess a more holistic view of life and of values. The book The Examined Life provides a through introduction to many facets of philosophy, both classical and modern, and provides ample information for the individual reader to begin examiming his own life and the state of his soul. From Plato's scathing and revolutionary thoughts on democracy and its pitfalls, to Kant's pursuit of wisdom and reason, this book offers thoughts and ideals still relevant in today's society.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Making life worth living..., July 17, 2003

By 

FrKurt Messick "FrKurt Messick" (Bloomington, IN USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Examined Life: Readings from Western Philosophers from Plato to Kant (Hardcover)

The title of this new book on philosophy, T'he Examined Life: Readings from Western Philosophy from Plato to Kant' by Stanley Rosen, calls to mind that basic underpinning and justification for philosophy: the unexamined life is not worth living.

This book is divided into six main parts, which reflect the traditional subdivisions of philosophy: social and political philosophy, philosophy of religion, philosophy of art and culture, metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of science. Each section is introduced by a philosopher who has made a study of that particular branch; the source texts reflect a small but typical collection in each field from major philosophers which reflect a cross-section of philosophical development.

Rosen states, 'This is not a dictionary or an encyclopedia but an attempt to give a fair portrait of the aforementioned variety in a way that encourages the reader to philosophise, not to look up famous names or definitions of technical terms. Facts about philosophy are worthless, except to the philosopher. And we are all philosophers by nature.'

Below is a list of Chapters and the contents of each

Part One: Social and Political Philosophy
Introduction by Paul Rahe
Selections from
Plato, Symposium
Plato, Gorgias
Plato, Republic
Aristotle, Politics
Machiavelli, The Prince
Hobbes, Leviathan
Rousseau, First and Second Discourses

Part Two: Philosophy of Religion
Introduction by William Desmond
Selections from
Augustine, Confessions
Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed
Pascal, Pensees
Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion
Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling

Part Three: Philosophy of Art and Culture
Introduction by Robert Pippin
Selections from
Plato, Republic
Aristotle, Poetics
Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man
Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy
Dewey, Art as Experience
Adorno, Aesthetic Theory

Part Four: Metaphysics
Introduction by Richard Velkley
Selections from
Aristotle, Metaphysics
Descartes, Meditations
Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy
Leibniz, Reflections on the Common Concept of Justice
Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics
Wittgenstein, The Blue and Brown Books

Part Five: Epistemology
Introduction by Jaakko Hintikka
Selections from
Plato, Meno
Aristotle, Posterior Analytics
Descartes, Meditations
Hume, Abstract on a Treatise of Human Nature

Part Six: Philosophy of Science
Introduction by Gian-Carlo Rota & Jeffrey Thomas Crants
Selections from
Feyerabend, Against Method
Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences
Ayala, 'The Concept of Biological Progress'
Poincare, Science and the Scientist
Poincare, Science and Hypothesis
Simpson, Logic and Mathematics

You will notice among the authors ancient masters and modern scholars; Plato and Aristotle figure prominently in most every chapter as a starting point, which reflects their prominence in philosophical discussion throughout history. Going through the list, those who are philosophically trained may quickly notice names missing (we all have our favourite philosophers) but given the intent of the volume, I feel that a fairly good representative sampling of ideas has been selected.

This is not light reading by any means, but as 600 pages, is in fact a brief yet fairly comprehensive introduction to philosophy. The translations are accessible; some are recent and some are older, more standard translations. If you were to have just one philosophy book, this might well be it.