Language Philosophy

Published four years after Rousseau's death, Confessions is a remarkably frank and honest self-portrait, described by Rousseau as "the history of my soul". From his idyllic youth in the Swiss mountains, to his career as a composer in Paris and his abandonment of his children, Rousseau lays bare his entire life with preternatural honesty.

The front cover of the second edition of Language, Truth and Logic carried this statement in capital letters: ‘THE CLASSIC TEXT WHICH FOUNDED LOGICAL POSITIVISM - AND MODERN BRITISH PHILOSOPHY.’ It was a bold statement, but the book, first published in 1936 when A. J. Ayer was just 25 and a lecturer on philosophy at Christ Church, Oxford, drew unstinting praise from leading figures in the field, including Bertrand Russell.

This book offers what may with reservations be described as a theory of the mind. But it does not give new information about minds. We possess already a wealth of information about minds, information which is neither derived from, nor upset by, the arguments of philosophers. The philosophical arguments which constitute this book are intended not to increase what we know about minds, but to rectify the logical geography of the knowledge which we already possess.

The Three Languages of Politics is a profoundly illuminating exploration of communication in America’s political landscape. Progressives, conservatives, and libertarians are like tribes speaking different languages. This is an accessible, precise, and insightful guide to lowering the barriers coarsening our politics. This is not a book about one ideology over another. Instead, it is a book about how we communicate issues and ideologies and how language intended to persuade instead divides.

One of the two major philosophical traditions of the twentieth century was linguistic analysis, derived largely from Wittgenstein. The other, diametrically opposed, came from Heidegger, and its fundamental question was, "What is the meaning of existence?" For Heidegger, this question could not simply be "analyzed away". It was beyond the reach of logic or reason. It was the primary "given" of every individual life. To confront it, Heidegger needed to develop an entire new form of philosophy.

In five hours, Andy will take you through Hegel’s Logic, the book on philosophy which has been most influential amongst radicals and revolutionaries and all those who stray from the well trodden path of conventional, bourgeois thinking. The book begins with an explanation of social conditions in early 19th-century Germany and then, walks through the text of the Logic paragraph by paragraph. This reading stands out from all others in its clarity of explanation and in Andy's ability to make Hegel's Logic relevant to social and political problems of today.

Our species, it appears, is hardwired to get things wrong in myriad different ways. Why did recipients of a loan offer accept a higher rate of interest when a pretty woman's face was printed on the flyer? Why did one poll on immigration find the most despised aliens were ones from a group that did not exist? What made four of the Air Force's best pilots fly their planes, in formation, straight into the ground?

With Hegel, philosophy became very difficult indeed. His dialectical method produced the most grandiose metaphysical system known to man. Even Hegel conceded that "only one man understands me, and even he does not." Hegel's system included absolutely everything, but its most vital element was the dialectic of the thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. This method sprang from Hegel's ambition to overcome the deficiencies of logic and ascended toward mind as the ultimate reality.

Leo Tolstoy was born to an aristocratic Russian family, became a world-famous influential novelist, and then chose to lead the simple life of a peasant. Dating from this last part of his life, Tolstoy’s influential book What I Believe takes readers along on the path to a life modeled literally on Jesus Christ’s "Sermon on the Mount" and the teachings of the Gospels. In revealing and frank essays he reimagines a faith without dogma, centered solely on Jesus’ doctrine of love, humility, and self-denial.

"More years ago than I care to reckon up, I met Richard Feynman." So begins The Language God Talks, Herman Wouk's gem on navigating the divide between science and religion. In one rich, compact volume, Wouk draws on stories from his life as well as on key events from the 20th century to address the eternal questions of why we are here, what purpose faith serves, and how scientific fact fits into the picture.

Aristotle wrote on everything from the shape of seashells to sterility, from speculations on the nature of the soul to meteorology, poetry, art, and even the interpretation of dreams. Apart from mathematics, he transformed every field of knowledge that he touched. Above all, Aristotle is credited with the founding of logic. When he first divided human knowledge into separate categories, he enabled our understanding of the world to develop in a systematic fashion.

In The Stuff of Thought, Steven Pinker marries two of the subjects he knows best: language and human nature. The result is a fascinating look at how our words explain our nature. What does swearing reveal about our emotions? Why does innuendo disclose something about relationships? Pinker reveals how our use of prepositions and tenses taps into peculiarly human concepts of space and time, and how our nouns and verbs speak to our notions of matter.

Think Like Socrates doesn’t go into boring details and endless philosophical methodology. It provides you instead with lessons from one of the best philosophers in human history, Socrates, and keeps you hooked as you explore the fascinating techniques of the thinking genius. Socrates is often mentioned as the founder of Western philosophy. He encouraged his students to think for themselves instead of having someone provide the solution. He was an excellent communicator and questioner. He is a human worth examining.

With Friedrich Nietzsche, philosophy was dangerous not only for philosophers but for everyone. His ideas presaged a collective madness that had horrific consequences in Europe in the early 1900s. Though his philosophy is more one of aphorisms than a system, it is brilliant, persuasive, and incisive. His major concept is the will to power, which he saw as the basic impulse for all our acts. Christianity he saw as a subtle perversion of this concept, thus Nietzsche's famous pronouncement, "God is dead."

All effective debaters, whether they know it or not, employ Aristotle's 3 basic principles of effective argument that form the spine of Rhetoric. In Poetics, Aristotle draws a dramatic distinction between poetry and history. This collection also includes Aristotle's body of work that has come to be identified as Logic.

In very recent times humanity has learnt a vast amount about the universe, the past and itself. But through our remarkable successes in acquiring knowledge we have learned how much we have yet to learn: the science we have, for example, addresses just five per cent of the universe, pre-history is still being revealed, with thousands of historical sites yet to be explored, and the new neurosciences of mind and brain are just beginning.

Discover the Language of the Mind: The Hypnotist's Guide to Psycho-Linguistics by Patrick K. Porter, PhD was previously published as Psycho-Linguistics: The Language of the Mind. This fully revised edition includes updates on dozens of new developments in the hypnosis field, full transcripts for each of the eleven processes, which includes two never-before published techniques as developed and tested by Dr. Patrick Porter and the experts at Positive Changes Hypnosis Centers.

Audiolibro de Vive el Tiempo. Escrito hace más de dos mil años, El Arte de la Guerra es un manual de enseñanzas para salir exitoso de cualquier batalla que se presente en la vida. Hoy en día este libro ha superado su original carácter militar y se ha convertido en una ineludible herramienta para quienes quieren ser triunfadores en la política, en los negocios, en los deportes, en la diplomacia y en todas las relaciones humanas.

Le "Discours de la méthode" est un texte composite, assez peu méthodique en vérité, qui touche à la morale, à la logique, aux sciences. La méthode proprement dite se résume en peu de règles : "ne recevoir jamais aucune chose pour vraie, que je ne la connusse évidemment être telle" ; "diviser chacune des difficultés que j'examinerais" ; "conduire par ordre mes pensées" et m'assurer, par des "dénombrements si entiers, et des revues si générales", de n'avoir rien omis dans ces "chaînes de raisons", sur le modèle des géomètres.

Written in a conversational, easy-to-follow format that makes the concepts easy to understand, Western Philosophy in Simple German explores the main traditions of Western philosophers from Aristotle to Descartes, and from Kant to Nietzsche.