The Inescapable Self : An Introduction to Western Philosophy
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Description
The ultimate nightmare scenario: everything is a nightmare. Reality itself is part of a dream - nothing is real and nothing can be trusted. The stuff of science-fiction? Yes, but the problem of the 'inescapable self' - the problem of certainty beyond our own consciousness - also lies at the very core of Western philosophical thinking. Walking in the footsteps of Plato and Descartes, Timothy Chappell recognizes that 'the fortress of my certainty about my own existence becomes the prison of my uncertainty about the existence of a world beyond me'. Using this insight as a springboard, Chappell launches into an exploration of a series of intellectual dilemmas that are the very stuff of philosophy: how can we know things outside ourselves? What basis is there for altruistic behaviour? Can we bridge the gap between mind and world? Do we have free will?
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Product details
- Hardback | 288 pages
- 132 x 198 x 34mm | 470g
- 15 Oct 2005
- Orion Publishing Co
- Weidenfeld & Nicolson
- London, United Kingdom
- English
- 029784735X
- 9780297847359
- 2,264,811
Review quote
"an academic work about the history of scepticism and the timeless questions it raises." GOOD BOOK GUIDE
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About Timothy Chappell
Dr Timothy Chappell (MA, Classics and Philosophy, Oxford 1988, PhD Edinburgh 1992) was a Junior Research Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford, and a College Lecturer at Merton College, Oxford, from 1992 to 1995. Since then he has held tenured posts at a series of Universities ever closer to the winter climbing on Ben Nevis - UEA, Manchester, and (since 1998) Dundee. Since 2000 he has been Treasurer of the Mind Association; since 2002 he has been Reviews Editor of The Philosophical Quarterly. In 2001-2 he held an AHRB research fellowship, and was a Visiting Fellow in the School of Latin, Greek and Ancient History in St Andrews. In January to May 2003 he was a Visiting Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
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