Full name: Concepts and Categories: Philosophical Essays

Author: Isaiah Berlin Year: 1979 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Philosophy Purchase/reserch links: Goodreads Google Books eBooks.com Amazon LibraryThing ISBNs: 9780691002347 0691002347

"The goal of philosophy is always the same, to assist men to understand themselves and thus to operate in the open, not wildly in the dark."--Isaiah Berlin This volume of Isaiah Berlin's essays presents the sweep of his contributions to philosophy from his early participation in the debates surrounding logical positivism to his later work, which more evidently reflects his life-long interest in political theory, the history of ideas, and the philosophy of history. Here Berlin describes his view of the nature of philosophy, and of its main task: to uncover the various models and presuppositions--the concepts and categories--that men bring to their existence and that help form that existence. Throughout, his writing is informed by his intense consciousness of the plurality of values, the nature of historical understanding, and of the fragility of human freedom in the face of rigid dogma. This new edition adds a number of previously uncollected pieces that throw further light on Berlin's central philosophical concerns, and a revealing exchange of letters with the editor and Bernard Williams about the genesis of the book. Similar books: The Defeat of the Mind by Alain Finkielkraut The Heart of Things by A. C. Grayling The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener by Martin Gardner The Temptation to Exist by E. M. Cioran On Seeing and Noticing by Alain de Botton Plato at the Googleplex by Rebecca Goldstein The World as Will and Idea by Arthur Schopenhauer Philosophy For Dummies by Tom Morris Introduction to philosophy by Jacques Maritain Modes of Thought by Alfred North Whitehead Philosophy by Philip Stokes An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume Major Works: Selected Philosophical Writings by Ludwig Wittgenstein The Last Word by Thomas Nagel Matter and Memory by Henri Bergson Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein On Relationship by Jiddu Krishnamurti Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein On Certainty by Ludwig Wittgenstein