[...]... term philosophy can be, and is, appended to just about every other area of study If you examine the catalogue of any major university, you are likely to come across courses with titles like Philosophy of Science,” Philosophy of Religion,” Philosophy of Mathematics,” Philosophy of Art,” Philosophy of Technology,” Philosophy of Life,” and on and on It seems as if there is a philosophy of everything;... clarity and precision; draw freely on the tools of logic; and often identify, professionally and intellectually, more closely with the sciences and mathematics, than with the humanities.”1 One of the central elements binding this category of philosophers together, and from which they take the name “analytic philosophy, ” is the emphasis on analysis From this perspective, the job of philosophy is, by and. .. analysis and naturalistic speculation © Juneko J Robinson The Milesian School: Thales and Anaximander The majority of what we know about the Presocratic philosophers is secondhand Most of their writing has been lost, and so our understanding of their way of thinking must be put together from fragments of texts and the accounts of later philosophers like Aristotle Traditionally, the first of the Presocratic... will, be present in the field of philosophy On the one hand, philosophers desire answers to questions They pursue their inquiries because they want to make discoveries and come to know something about themselves and the world in which they live On the other hand, some of the most important and enduring questions that humans ask themselves are of a sort that resist being answered These questions have... with clear and definitive answers to the questions that we have about the universe and our place in it Philosophy, in this view, is closely allied with science, and its goal is thought to be the elimination of mystery and ignorance as well as the promotion of the progressive growth of human knowledge In the words of Brian Leiter, one of the most vigorous proponents of the analytic style of philosophy. .. de-emphasizing mythic and religious accounts, the Presocratics initiated the growth of both philosophy and science Yet in their revolutionary theories and ideas we can still, nevertheless, detect a concern for the sorts of issues that religion and myth always sought to address These thinkers asked grand questions about humans and their place in the universe, offering answers and speculations that were often articulated... light”; and there was light And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness God called the light Day and the darkness he called Night (Genesis 1:3) Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them And on the seventh day God finished his work which he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done So God blessed the seventh... he Path of Philosophy: Truth, Wonder, and Distressis dedicated to the memory of my mother, Frances Marmysz Without her, I would not be, and so neither would this book This book is the culmination of 10 years of thinking, discussing, teaching, studying, and writing Over the course of these years, it has evolved and changed into something much more ambitious than it initially was intended to be At the. .. 275 Fear and Trembling 279 Schopenhauer’s Synthesis of Plato, Kant, and Hinduism Piercing the Veil of the Thing-in-Itself The Will 287 Anxiety, Suffering, and Distress 285 289 Friedrich Nietzsche and Positive Nihilism The Will to Power 295 294 The Superman and the Death of God 297 Beyond Good and Evil: Nietzsche contra Utilitarianism The Greatest Happiness Principle 282 301 301 Wonder and Distress. .. motivation for the pursuit of new developments in science, religion, and philosophy itself Despite its successes, in the end, philosophical thinking always falls short of its real goal It involves both the wonder of aspiring toward Truth and the distress of falling short of that Truth In this way, philosophy can be characterized as wondrous distress Unlike many other introductory texts, The Path of Philosophy .