Lo que piensan los filósofos

by Jeremy Stangroom, Julian Baggini

We may think philosophers live in an ivory tower but they really confront the important issues of life that challenge us all.

Find out how real philosophers approach the Big Questions in What Philosophers Think. A fascinating collection of interviews with 22 of the world's greatest minds, including: Peter Singer, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Helena Cronin, Richard Dawkins, Alan Sokal, Edward O. Wilson, Russel Stannard, John Harris, Don Cupitt, Richard Swinburne, Peter Vardy, Mary Madgley, Stuart Hampshire, Roger Scruton, Mary Warnock, Ray Monk, Ted Honderich, John Searle, Jonathan Ree, Simon Blackburn, Michael Dummett, and Hilary Putnam. This fascinating book provides important insights on such topics as:

Janet Radcliffe Richards on Darwin and nature:
"We seem to have a deeply ingrained idea of the dangers of interference in what is natural But you can only interfere with something which has a purpose or is meant to go a certain way .If we want to achieve any good at all, standing back is not the way to do it."

Russel Stannard on free will: "One can have academic arguments [and] convince yourself that you can't possibly be free you cannot but live your life as though you do have free will."

Genres: Philosophy

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Jeremy Stangroom is a British writer, editor, and website designer. He is an editor and co-founder, with Julian Baggini, of The Philosophers’ Magazine, and has written and edited several philosophy books. He is also co-founder, with Ophelia Benson of the website 'Butterflies and Wheels'.

Reviews

[Ben]

My review can be found here:

https://thebeerthrillers.com/2021/05/...

"Slavoj Zizek is also always interesting and entertaining in his own right. I feel like interviewing him is more or less just unlocking a cage, and seeing what damage is done to the city while fleetingly throwing whatever escaped some morsels and taking notes of what it does with them."

-B. Kline
--The Beer Thrillers

[Carlos]

El quehacer filosófico acompaña a Occidente incluso antes de que la socrática frase “sólo sé que no se nada” se formulara; desde hace milenios, nuevas corrientes, propuestas y visiones han ido soslayando la cosmovisiones de la sociedad occidental. Mas, hoy en día, ¿sabemos cómo está de salud la filosofía? Temas como el darwinismo, el determinismo y el relativismo llevan ya tiempo entre nosotros, pero ¿cuántos hemos escuchado hablar de términos como “antirrealismo”, de propuestas teóricas como la “interpretación no realista de la religión” o la “filosofía del lenguaje”? Estos y muchos otros temas se abordan en “Lo que piensan los filósofos”, un libro que rescata veintidós entrevistas realizadas por Julian Baggini y Jeremy Stangroom en su revista “The Philosophers’ Magazine”.
Lo más interesante de estas conversaciones es el hecho de que no todos los participantes son filósofos, al menos no en un sentido académico: los hay médicos, científicos, teólogos, físicos, incluso zoólogos. No obstante, estos pensadores han llegado a y participan activamente en menesteres filosóficos: nombres como Simon Blackburn, Richar Dawkins, Edward O. Wilson –que tienen una indudable presencia mediática– se unen a otros, como Mary Midgley, Roger Scruton, Alan Sokal y Mary Warnock, todos unas eminencias en sus respectivas áreas de estudio.
El libro compone una obra heterogénea, que abre todo un abanico de posibilidades al lector pues, aunque no se sea un experto en los temas abordados (o ser, como quien esto escribe, un neófito contumaz), la exposición es clara y concisa; resulta, como bien advierten los editores, “un acceso excepcional a las mentes que sustentan las grandes ideas de hoy”.

[Steven R. Kraaijeveld]

Not a lot of depth, unfortunately, but that might have been expected and even necessary given the aims and scope of this book. The editors assembled interviews with various contemporary philosophers and thinkers, in essence providing an apologetic stance toward (academic) philosophy that is aimed at the general 'intelligent' public (the interviewer makes this more than clear).

On my part, the main reason for reading this was to get some insight into the thoughts of some of the professional philosophers and thinkers that were consulted in the interviews. I was already acquainted with a few of them, such as Žižek and Warnock, and with their idiosyncratic outlooks and stances on particular issues (multiculturalism and the right to have children, respectively). I cannot say that I learned much new about their thoughts from the interviews, or from the interviews in general.

The only reason I give this book two stars rather than one is that at times the brilliance of some (and only some) of the thinkers that were interviewed managed to shine through. It just really wasn't often enough, which is a pity, because the material was certainly there.

[Kah Wee]

Could have been so much more. It started off well with what philosophers think of September 11 and the book degrades on every page. The editing of the interviews could have been better too. I find it hard to navigate through.