Jeremy Stangroom, Ophelia Benson

Why Truth Matters (eBook, PDF)

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

Truth has always been a central preoccupation of philosophy in allits forms and traditions. Yet in the late twentieth century truth became suddenly rather unfashionable. The precedence given to assortedpolitical and ideological agendas, along with the rise of relativism, postmodernism and pseudoscience in academia, led to a decline both of truth as a serious subject, and an intellectual tradition thatbegan with the Enlightenment.

Why Truth Matters is a timely, incisive and entertaining look at how and why modern thought and culture lost sight of the importance of truth. It is also an eloquent and inspiring argument for restoring truth to its rightful place. Jeremy Stangroom and Ophelia Benson, editors of the successful butterfliesandwheels website-itself established to "fight fashionable nonsense"-identify and debunk such senselessness, and the spurious claims made for it, in all its forms. Their account ranges over religious fundamentalism, Holocaust denial, the challenges of postmodernism and deconstruction, the wilful misinterpretation of evolutionary biology, identity politics and wishful thinking.

Why Truth Matters is both a rallying cry for the enlightened vision and an essential read for anyone who's everbeen bored, frustrated, bewildered or plain enraged by the worst excesses of the fashionable intelligentsia.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury UK eBooks
• Seitenzahl: 214
• Erscheinungstermin: 9. Februar 2006
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781441161925
• Artikelnr.: 40780281

Autorenporträt

Jeremy Stangroom is the author of the international bestseller Einstein's Riddle and its sequels. His writing has also appeared in the Guardian, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Daily Telegraph, and elsewhere. He holds a PhD from the London School of Economics.

Inhaltsangabe

1. The Antinomies of Truth
2. Truth, Doubt and the Philosophers
3. The Truth Radicals
4. The Social Construction of Truth
5. Politics, Ideology and Evolutionary Biology
6. Wishful Thinking and Epistemological Confusion
7. Institutions, Academe and Truth
8. Why Truth Matters

Rezensionen

'Though its arguments are simple, straightforward and unpretentious, the book is still remarkably effective in retaining the interest of specialists. Although perhaps is even more successful for its care in not showing, at the same time, condescension towards lay readers. In so doing, it teaches by example.' J. Elias Saidennunez, Lund University, Consciousness, Literature and the Arts, Vol 7 No. 3, Dec 2006--Sanford Lakoff