Philosophy is an exciting and accessible subject, and this engaging text acquaints students with the core problems of philosophy and the many ways in which they are and have been answered. Introducing A Text with Integrated Readings, Eighth Edition, insists both that philosophy is very much alive today and that it is deeply rooted in the past. Accordingly, it combines substantial original sources from significant works in the history of philosophy and current philosophy with detailed commentary and explanation that help to clarify the readings. The selections range from the oldest known fragments to cutting-edge essays in feminism, multiculturalism, and cognitive science. At the end of each chapter is a summary, a list of review questions, a glossary, and a bibliography with suggestions for further reading. Important philosophical terms are carefully introduced in the text and also summarized at the end of each chapter, and brief biographies of the philosophers are provided at the end of the book. New to the Eighth Edition : * Addressing the needs of a new generation of students, Robert C. Solomon has included for the first time more than 300 study and review questions. Appearing throughout the text and at the end of each chapter, these questions require immediate feedback from students. They encourage students to articulate the central ideas of what they have just read, instead of just "passing through" on the way to the next reading. * New selections expand and update the chapters on religion, knowledge, mind and body, freedom, ethics, justice, and beauty. The selections include work by Charles Hartshorne, Paul Davies, Cory Juhl, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, Sextus Empiricus, Edmund L. Gettier, David Braddon-Mitchell and Frank Jackson, John R. Searle, Colin McGinn, Daniel Dennett, Harry Frankfurt, Gilbert Harman, Emma Goldman, and Arthur C. Danto. * A companion website at www.oup.com/us/solomon8e features 300 study and review questions (100 multiple-choice, 100 true-or-false, and 100 fill-in-the-blank), discussion questions, chapter overviews and summaries, topical links, suggestions for further reading, and PowerPoint lecture aids.
Author
Robert C. Solomon (September 14, 1942 – January 2, 2007) was a professor of continental philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. Early life Solomon was born in Detroit, Michigan. His father was a lawyer, and his mother an artist. After earning a B.A. (1963) at the University of Pennsylvania, he moved to the University of Michigan to study medicine, switching to philosophy for an M.A. (1965) and Ph.D. (1967). He held several teaching positions at such schools as Princeton University, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Pittsburgh. From 1972 until his death, except for two years at the University of California at Riverside in the mid-1980s, he taught at University of Texas at Austin, serving as Quincy Lee Centennial Professor of Philosophy and Business. He was a member of the University of Texas Academy of Distinguished Teachers. Solomon was also a member of the inaugural class of Academic Advisors at the Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics. His interests were in 19th-century German philosophy—especially Hegel and Nietzsche—and 20th-century Continental philosophy—especially Sartre and phenomenology, as well as ethics and the philosophy of emotions. Solomon published more than 40 books on philosophy, and was also a published songwriter. He made a cameo appearance in Richard Linklater's film Waking Life (2001), where he discussed the continuing relevance of existentialism in a postmodern world. He developed a cognitivist theory of the emotions, according to which emotions, like beliefs, were susceptible to rational appraisal and revision. Solomon was particularly interested in the idea of "love," arguing against the notion that romantic love is an inherent state of being, and maintaining, instead, that it is instead a construct of Western culture, popularized and propagated in such a way that it has achieved the status of a universal in the eyes of many. Love for Solomon is not a universal, static quality, but an emotion, subject to the same vicissitudes as other emotions like anger or sadness. Solomon received numerous teaching awards at the University of Texas at Austin, and was a frequent lecturer in the highly regarded Plan II Honors Program. Solomon was known for his lectures on Nietzsche and other Existentialist philosophers. Solomon described in one lecture a very personal experience he had while a medical student at the University of Michigan. He recounted how he stumbled as if by chance into a crowded lecture hall. He was rather unhappy in his medical studies at the time, and was perhaps seeking something different that day. He got precisely that. The professor, Frithjof Bergmann, was lecturing that day on something that Solomon had not yet been acquainted with. The professor spoke of how Nietzsche's idea asks the fundamental question: "If given the opportunity to live your life over and over again ad infinitum, forced to go through all of the pain and the grief of existence, would you be overcome with despair? Or would you fall to your knees in gratitude?" Solomon died on January 2, 2007 at Zurich airport. His wife, philosopher Kathleen Higgins, with whom he co-authored several of his books, is Professor of Philosophy at University of Texas at Austin.
