Description
Book SynopsisThe author of the highly popular book Think, which Time magazine hailed as the one book every smart person should read to understand, and even enjoy, the key questions of philosophy, Simon Blackburn is that rara avis--an eminent thinker who is able to explain philosophy to the general reader. Now Blackburn offers a tour de force exploration of what he calls the most exciting and engaging issue in the whole of philosophy--the age-old war over truth. The front lines of this war are well defined. On one side are those who believe in plain, unvarnished facts, rock-solid truths that can be found through reason and objectivity--that science leads to truth, for instance. Their opponents mock this idea. They see the dark forces of language, culture, power, gender, class, ideology and desire--all subverting our perceptions of the world, and clouding our judgement with false notions of absolute truth. Beginning with an early skirmish in the war--when Socrates confronted the sophists in ancient A
Trade ReviewBlackburn's lively new book 'Truth: A Guide' will challenge and surprise you.... The great achievement of 'Truth' is to encapsulate the major lines of argument on this intractable question within the covers of a book you can read in a day or two. His chapter on Nietzsche, the fountainhead of modern philosophy and the patron saint of relativism, is worth the price of admission by itself. * Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com *
Admirably sketching the battle lines currently staked out over the idea of objective truth, [Blackburn] makes his subject lively and accessible even as he parts some of its deepest waters.... Blackburn considers truth 'the most exciting and engaging issue in the whole of philosophy,' and, with wit and erudition, he succeeds in proving that point. * Publishers Weekly *
Fluid, highly literate, and deeply informed.... Highly recommended for academic philosophy and literature collections. * Library Journal *
The pleasure of reading this beautifully written and crafted book is almost sensual, so complete does each sentence seem in its witty unfolding. Blackburn takes up the knottiest philosophical issues * truth, justice, belief, evidence, interpretationand without dissolving the knots he carefully undoes them, and then, in some cases, reties them. A wonderful embracing tour through the minefield of philosophical controversy that will inform the novice and delight the afficionado.Stanley Fish *
Gently leads the reader on a guided tour of one simple question * whether there is a universally applicable set of data that can be called capital-T 'Truth'and its infinite complications.Seattle Times *
If you're annoyed, even incensed, at the relativism and ironic nihilism of the youth (or their free-thinking professors), and you're looking for a vicarious voice to denounce the abject postmodern menace and stand up for Western rationalism, this could be the book for you. * Barry Allen, The Globe and Mail *
Between the Scylla of relativism and the Charybdis of absolutism, Simon Blackburn does not merely navigate, but pleasure-sails, visiting and appreciating each. Whether you are appalled by postmodernism, incensed by smug scientism, or simply 'perplexed,' you'll find Blackburn's 'guide' edifying. Learn here what truth is, why it is so elusive, and what hope there is for human knowledge. * Louise Antony, Professor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University *
Table of ContentsPREFACE ; INTRODUCTION ; CHAPTER 1: FAITH, BELIEF AND REASON ; 1. Clifford's Duties ; 2. Fiction and MythJames ; 4. Kinds of Animation ; CHAPTER 2: MAN THE MEASURE ; 1. Turning the Tables: the Recoil Argument ; 2. Modern Judo ; 3. The Variation of Subjectives ; 4. The Moving Bull's-eye ; 5. Doing it Ourselves ; CHAPTER 3: ISHMAEL'S PROBLEM AND THE DELIGHTS OF KEEPING QUIET ; 1. Who Tell the Tale? ; 2. A Gestalt Switch ; 3. You Tell Me, or Down with Pilate ; 4. Moral Relativism ; 5. Man the Measurer ; 6. Summary ; CHAPTER 4: NIETZCHE: THE ARCH DEBUNKER ; 1. Facts or Interpretations? ; 2. Twilight of the Idols ; 3. Perspectivism ; 4. Adequate Words ; 5. Heraclitus and the Flux ; 6. The Darwinian Element ; CHAPTER 5: THE POSSIBILITY OF PHILOSOPHY ; 1. Getting Puzzled ; 2. Four Responses ; 3. Eliminativism ; 4. Realism ; 5. Deconstructing the Issue ; 6. The Constructivist Corner ; 7. The Example of Wittgenstein ; CHAPTER 6: OBSERVATION AND TRUTH: FROM LOCKE TO RORTY ; 1. Paradise Lost ; 2. First Impressions ; 3. Holism ; 4. Davidson's Mantle ; 5. Rorty's Talking World ; 6. Keeping our Feet on the Ground ; 7. Interlude: Law, Tennis, and the Coffee-house ; 8. A Political Message ; CHAPTER 7: REALISM AS SCIENCE; REALISM ABOUT SCIENCE ; 1. No Miracles ; 2. Science Red in Tooth and Claw ; 3. Explaining from Within ; 4. Animation and Belief Again ; 5. Underdetermination ; CHAPTER 8: HISTORIANS AND OTHERS ; 1. Conceptual Schemes ; 2. Mind Reading ; 3. Mirroring ; 4. Infirmities ; 5. Collectives and their Histories ; 6. Peace Breaks Out ; NOTES ; INDEX
