Search results for ""Author Ray Monk""

Great philosophical biographies can be counted on one hand. Monk's life of Wittgenstein is such a one.—The Christian Science Monitor.

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J. Robert Oppenheimer is among the most contentious and important figures of the twentieth century. As head of the Los Alamos Laboratory, he oversaw the successful effort to beat the Nazis to develop the first atomic bomb – a breakthrough which was to have eternal ramifications for mankind, and made Oppenheimer the 'father of the Bomb'.But his was not a simple story of assimilation, scientific success and world fame. A complicated and fragile personality, the implications of the discoveries at Los Alamos were to weigh heavily upon him. Having formed suspicious connections in the 1930s, in the wake of the Allied victory in World War Two, Oppenheimer’s attempts to resist the escalation of the Cold War arms race would lead many to question his loyalties – and set him on a collision course with Senator Joseph McCarthy and his witch hunters.

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Though Wittgenstein wrote on the same subjects that dominate the work of other analytic philosophers - the nature of logic, the limits of language, the analysis of meaning - he did so in a peculiarly poetic style that separates his work sharply from that of his peers and makes the question of how to read him particularly pertinent. At the root of Wittgenstein's thought, Ray Monk argues, is a determination to resist the scientism characteristic of our age, a determination to insist on the integrity and the autonomy of non-scientific forms of understanding. The kind of understanding we seek in philosophy, Wittgenstein tried to make clear, is similar to the kind we might seek of a person, a piece of music, or, indeed, a poem. Extracts are taken from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and from a range of writings, including Philosophical Investigations, The Blue and Brown Books and Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology.

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'The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts' Bertrand Russell'Science is what you know. Philosophy is what you don't know'Bertrand Russell discovered mathematics at the age of eleven. It was, he recalled, a transporting experience: 'as dazzling as first love'. From that moment on, he would pursue his passion with undying devotion and fervour. Mathematics might succeed, he felt, where philosophy had failed, reducing thought to its purest form, and freeing knowledge from doubt and contradiction. And for a time, so it seemed. Russell's mathematical investigations effortlessly resolved at a stroke some of philosophy's most intractable problems. Yet if mathematics could be a liberating mistress, she was also an unreliable one... Opening up the work of one of our age's undisputed giants, Ray Monk's exhilaratingly clear, readable guide tells a compelling human tale too: a moving story of love and loss, of ecstatic triumph and deep disillusion.

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'Monk's energetic enterprise is remarkable for the interweaving of the philosophical and the emotional aspects of Wittgenstein's life' Sunday Times'Ray Monk's reconnection of Wittgenstein's philosophy with his life triumphantly carries out the Wittgensteinian task of "changing the aspect" of Wittgenstein's work, getting us to see it in a new way' Sunday Telegraph'This biography transforms Wittgenstein into a human being' Independent on Sunday 'It is much to be recommended' Observer'Monk's biography is deeply intelligent, generous to the ordinary reader... It is a beautiful portrait of a beautiful life' Guardian

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Saved from a delinquent childhood by education, cheated out of Oxford by a tragic love tangle, Hilary Burde cherishes his obsessive guilt and ekes out a living in a dull civil service job. When the man whom he has harmed and betrayed reappears as head of his department, Hilary hopes for forgiveness, even for redemption and a new life, but finds himself haunted by a ghostly repetition.

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Approaching the writing of major intellectuals, artists, and philosophers need no longer be daunting. How to Read is a new sort of introduction--a personal master class in reading--that brings you face to face with the work of some of the most influential and challenging writers in history. In lucid, accessible language, these books explain essential topics such as Wittgenstein's determination to insist on the integrity and the autonomy of nonscientific forms of understanding. Though Wittgenstein wrote on the same subjects that dominate the work of other analytic philosophers — the nature of logic, the limits of language, the analysis of meaning — he did so in a peculiarly poetic style that separates his work sharply from that of his peers and makes the question of how to read him particularly pertinent. At the root of Wittgenstein's thought, Monk argues, is a determination to resist the scientism characteristic of our age, a determination to insist on the integrity and the autonomy of non-scientific forms of understanding. The kind of understanding we seek in philosophy, Wittgenstein tried to make clear, is similar to the kind we might seek of a person, a piece of music, or, indeed, of a poem.

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The Great Philosophers in one volume: the widely acclaimed series on the greatest philosophers by specialists writing for the general reader.The Great Philosophers brings together in one volume and in chronological order the best from our hugely successful series: Anthony Gottlieb on Socrates; Bernard Williams on Plato; John Cottingham on Descartes; Roger Scruton on Spinoza; David Berman on Berkeley; Anthony Quinton on Hume; Terry Eagleton on Marx; Ray Monk on Russell; Jonathan Ree on Heidegger; Peter Hacker on Wittgenstein; Frederic Raphael on Popper Andrew Hodges on Turing.

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