Sami Pihlstrom (418 results)

Condition: Very Good. Pages intact with possible writing/highlighting. Binding strong with minor wear. Dust jackets/supplements may not be included. Stock photo provided. Product includes identifying sticker. Better World Books: Buy Books. Do Good.

Hardcover. Condition: New. Hardcover. No jacket as issued. viii+277pp. New condition. Never opened. Dimensions: 5.75x8.75x1 inches. Weight: 478 grams. (If you order this from outside the United States, we are likely to request an additional payment to help cover the postage.) Every order includes tracking and is wrapped and robustly packaged with care in Tucson, AZ. ~Mesquite Booksellers.…

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Paperback. Condition: New. Introduces and defends antitheodicy as an ethically superior response to suffering, rejecting traditional theodicies for their tendency to justify or instrumentalize evil and thereby undermine the victim's perspective.Our world is a world of pain and suffering-at the individual level of private lives as well as the level of historical and political events. The familiar examples of suffering we need to engage with range from everyday unpleasantness, such as a prolonged illness, to massive horrors epitomized in world wars and genocides, such as, at the extreme, the Holocaust. We know, in most cases, how to explain these evils: medical science tells us how and why illnesses occur, geology explains earthquakes, and history and social psychology explain what happened at the darkest moments of our civilization, and why. However, even when everything has been explained, many of us feel that we still fail to properly understand why unspeakable events like brutal mass murders and war crimes happen. Those with religious convictions may wonder why God, if God exists, allows such things to exist. The theological and philosophical tradition of theodicy is an influential attempt to respond to such questions focusing not so much on explaining suffering but on the normative question of justifying suffering.This book introduces antitheodicy as a critical ethical response to the problem of evil and suffering. While the mainstream debate on this problem in the philosophy of religion continues to focus on theodicies seeking to justify or excuse God's allowing that there is apparently meaningless suffering, this introduction not only explains why an antitheodicist alternative is ethically superior to such attempts but also, more importantly, extends the antitheodicist approach from the philosophy of religion to broader ethical engagements with suffering. Sketching some of the historical milestones of antitheodicist thought as well as the most important contemporary versions of antitheodicy, the book argues that antitheodicy is the only decent account of suffering and that theodicies are incompatible with ethical seriousness. Theodicies tend to instrumentalize suffering in the service of some imagined overall good, or a metaphysical scheme failing to recognize the individual perspective of the victim. The significance of this essentially ethical argument against theodicies reaches far beyond the philosophy of religion, as the theodicy versus antitheodicy opposition also has interesting secular varieties. Any explicit or implicit instrumentalization of suffering in the service of real or imagined overall goodness may be claimed to be quasi-theodicist, even if it has nothing to do with religious or theological attempts to justify suffering. Antitheodicist critique is therefore needed across a range of ethical and political problems.…

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Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Cover, spine and binding are in excellent condition. 2.

Hardcover. Condition: Very good. None. First Edition. Clean internals, minimal shelf wear, minor external pencil markings.

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Paperback. Condition: New. Introduces and defends antitheodicy as an ethically superior response to suffering, rejecting traditional theodicies for their tendency to justify or instrumentalize evil and thereby undermine the victim's perspective.Our world is a world of pain and suffering-at the individual level of private lives as well as the level of historical and political events. The familiar examples of suffering we need to engage with range from everyday unpleasantness, such as a prolonged illness, to massive horrors epitomized in world wars and genocides, such as, at the extreme, the Holocaust. We know, in most cases, how to explain these evils: medical science tells us how and why illnesses occur, geology explains earthquakes, and history and social psychology explain what happened at the darkest moments of our civilization, and why. However, even when everything has been explained, many of us feel that we still fail to properly understand why unspeakable events like brutal mass murders and war crimes happen. Those with religious convictions may wonder why God, if God exists, allows such things to exist. The theological and philosophical tradition of theodicy is an influential attempt to respond to such questions focusing not so much on explaining suffering but on the normative question of justifying suffering.This book introduces antitheodicy as a critical ethical response to the problem of evil and suffering. While the mainstream debate on this problem in the philosophy of religion continues to focus on theodicies seeking to justify or excuse God's allowing that there is apparently meaningless suffering, this introduction not only explains why an antitheodicist alternative is ethically superior to such attempts but also, more importantly, extends the antitheodicist approach from the philosophy of religion to broader ethical engagements with suffering. Sketching some of the historical milestones of antitheodicist thought as well as the most important contemporary versions of antitheodicy, the book argues that antitheodicy is the only decent account of suffering and that theodicies are incompatible with ethical seriousness. Theodicies tend to instrumentalize suffering in the service of some imagined overall good, or a metaphysical scheme failing to recognize the individual perspective of the victim. The significance of this essentially ethical argument against theodicies reaches far beyond the philosophy of religion, as the theodicy versus antitheodicy opposition also has interesting secular varieties. Any explicit or implicit instrumentalization of suffering in the service of real or imagined overall goodness may be claimed to be quasi-theodicist, even if it has nothing to do with religious or theological attempts to justify suffering. Antitheodicist critique is therefore needed across a range of ethical and political problems.…

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Condition: New.

Paperback. Condition: New. Solipsism is one of the philosophical thesis or ideas that has generally been regarded as highly implausible, or even crazy. The view that the world is "my world" in the sense that nothing exists independently of my mind, thought, and/or experience is, understandably, frowned up as a genuine philosophical position. For this reason, solipsism might be regarded as an example of a philosophical position that does not "matter" at all. It does not seem to play any role in our serious attempts to understand the world and ourselves. However, by arguing that solipsism does matter, after all, Why Solipsism Matters more generally demonstrates that philosophy, even when dealing with highly counterintuitive and "crazy" ideas, may matter in surprising, unexpected ways. It will be shown that the challenge of solipsism should make us rethink fundamental assumptions concerning subjectivity, objectivity, realism vs. idealism, relativism, as well as key topics such as ethical responsibility - that is, our ethical relations to other human beings - and death and mortality.Why Solipsism Matters is not only an historical review of the origins and development of the concept of solipsism and a exploration of some of its key philosophers (Kant and Wittgenstein to name but a few) but it develops an entirely new account of the idea. One which takes seriously the global, socially networked world in which we live in which the very real ramifications of solipsism - including narcissism - can be felt. …

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Paperback. Condition: New. It is commonly believed that populist politics and social media pose a serious threat to our concept of truth. Philosophical pragmatists, who are typically thought to regard truth as merely that which is 'helpful' for us to believe, are sometimes blamed for providing the theoretical basis for the phenomenon of 'post-truth'. In this book, Sami Pihlström develops a pragmatist account of truth and truth-seeking based on the ideas of William James, and defends a thoroughly pragmatist view of humanism which gives space for a sincere search for truth. By elaborating on James's pragmatism and the 'will to believe' strategy in the philosophy of religion, Pihlström argues for a Kantian-inspired transcendental articulation of pragmatism that recognizes irreducible normativity as a constitutive feature of our practices of pursuing the truth. James himself thereby emerges as a deeply Kantian thinker.…

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Condition: New. pp. 240.

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