Connections to the World: The Basic Concepts of Philosophy

Arthur C. Danto's lucid introduction to the central topics of Western philosophical thought remains an unparalleled guide to problems in metaphysics and epistemology that have engaged philosophers for several millennia. Examining the work of Plato, Berkeley, Descartes, Hume, and Wittgenstein, Danto explores debates about empiricism, the mind/body problem, the nature of matter, and the status of language, consciousness, and scientific explanation. In a new preface to this edition he considers the current relationship between philosophy and the humanities.

Philosopher-teacher Danto is an adroit guide through the thickets of contemporary philosophy. First, he defines our connections to the universe in terms of three basic elements: the subject, his or her representation of the world and the world itself. Using this formula as a yardstick, he gauges the approaches taken by various schools and thinkers to problems of morality, knowledge, the concept of the person, language and meaning. The reader engages in a dialogue with Kant, Wittgenstein, Plato, neurophilosophers, behaviorists. Danto demonstrates how the "vehicles of understanding" philosophers usesymbols, images, ideas, propositionsare crucial to their modes of thought. Professor at Columbia University and art critic for the Nation , he peppers his sometimes difficult discourse with down-to-earth examples drawn from Samuel Johnson, Marcel Duchamp, Superman and Kafka. His disquisition points up a dilemma: many problems with which modern thinkers grapple rest on archaic categories they now repudiate.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This book is a contemporary discussion of some of the basic issues in philosophy by one of America's leading philosophers. Danto (Columbia) draws upon the ideas of the great philosophers such as Plato, Locke, Descartes, and Kant to explore theories of understanding, the mind/body problem, the connections between language and the world, and the relationship of mathematics to reality. He also offers a timely critique of the present state of philosophical inquiry and its place within the spectrum of knowledge. This is not only an excellent introduction to philosophy for the general reader but also a superb example of a philosopher engaged in the activity of thinking about the world. Highly recommended.
- Raymond Frey, Bergen Community Coll., Paramus, N.J.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.