For freshman/junior-level courses in Introduction to Philosophy. Designed to provide introductory-level students with a sophisticated - yet accessible - global perspective in philosophy, this text presents a collection of readings - from classical and modern Western and Asian philosophical traditions. Explores basic problems and enduring issues in philosophical anthropology, ethics and political philosophy, epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of religion.

This popular text has now been revised to ensure that it continues to meet the needs of the growing number of people interested in all the main philosophical traditions of the world. Introduces all the main philosophical systems of the world, from ancient times to the present day. Now includes new sections on Indian and Persian thought and on feminist and environmental philosophy. The preface and bibliography have also been updated. Written by a highly successful textbook author.

World Philosophies presents in one volume a superb introduction to all the world’s major philosophical and religious traditions. Covering all corners of the globe, Ninian Smart’s work offers a comprehensive and global philosophical and religious picture. In this revised and expanded second edition, a team of distinguished scholars, assembled by the editor Oliver Leaman, have brought Ninian Smart’s masterpiece up to date for the twenty-first century. Chapters have been revised by experts in the field to include recent philosophical developments, and the book includes a new bibliographic guide to resources in world philosophies. A brand new introduction which celebrates the career and writings of Ninian Smart, and his contribution to the study of world religions, helps set the work in context.

Traditions throughout the world and across history have tackled fundamental questions about the human condition. This one-of-a-kind guide shows how these different philosophies can be effectively studied together. Monika Kirloskar-Steinbach's and Leah Kalmanson's introduction marks a break from conventional approaches. Instead of assuming philosophy has always operated with a single, easily identifiable conceptual framework across space and time, which we call-and have always called-philosophy, they attest to the plurality of concepts and methods adopted at different times and places. The book serves as a practical teaching guide to the theoretical and methodological diversification of philosophy as practiced in academia today. Complementing the Bloomsbury Introductions to World Philosophies series, it covers a variety of traditions featured in the book series, exploring how Anglo-American, Chinese, Indian, African, Islamicate, and Maori thinkers have all addressed fundamental questions such as: · How do we understand ourselves and our relations to others? · How do we understand our world? · How do we seek knowledge, share knowledge, and, importantly, intervene in the norms of received knowledge when needed? Featuring teaching notes, discussion questions, and a list of further reading, this is a book packed with the background, guidance, and tools required to teach different philosophies. Through it we come to see why making room for different conceptual frameworks improves our understanding of ourselves and the worlds we live in.

A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print. One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning—but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.

A distinctive focus of 19th- and 20th-century Latin American philosophy is the convergence of identity formation and political liberation in ethnically and racially diverse postcolonial contexts. From this perspective, Omar Rivera interprets how a "we" is articulated and deployed in central political texts of this robust philosophical tradition. In particular, by turning to the work of Peruvian political theorist José Carlos Mariátegui among others, Rivera critiques philosophies of liberation that are invested in the redemption of oppressed identities as conditions for bringing about radical social and political change, foregrounding Latin America's complex histories and socialities to illustrate the power and shortcomings of these projects. Building on this critical approach, Rivera studies interrelated epistemological, transcultural, and aesthetic delimitations of Latin American philosophy in order to explore the possibility of social and political liberation "beyond redemption."

Breaks through the cultural barriers between Western, Indian, and Chinese philosophy and demonstrates that despite considerable differences between these three great philosophical traditions, there are fundamental resemblances in their abstract principles.