From the acclaimed writer and thinker--whose award-winning books include both fiction and nonfiction--a dazzlingly original plunge into the drama of philosophy, revealing its hidden but essential role in today's debates on love, religion, politics, and science.
Imagine that Plato came to life in the twenty-first century and set out on a multicity speaking tour: How would he handle a host on Fox News who challenges him on religion and morality? How would he mediate a debate on the best way to raise a child between a Freudian psychoanalyst and a Tiger Mom? How would he answer a neuroscientist who, about to scan Plato's brain, argues that all his philosophical problems can be solved by our new technologies? What would he make of Google, and the idea that knowledge can be crowdsourced rather than reasoned out by experts? With a philosopher's depth and a novelist's imagination, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein probes the deepest issues confronting us--from sexuality and...
Description:
From the acclaimed writer and thinker--whose award-winning books include both fiction and nonfiction--a dazzlingly original plunge into the drama of philosophy, revealing its hidden but essential role in today's debates on love, religion, politics, and science.
Imagine that Plato came to life in the twenty-first century and set out on a multicity speaking tour: How would he handle a host on Fox News who challenges him on religion and morality? How would he mediate a debate on the best way to raise a child between a Freudian psychoanalyst and a Tiger Mom? How would he answer a neuroscientist who, about to scan Plato's brain, argues that all his philosophical problems can be solved by our new technologies? What would he make of Google, and the idea that knowledge can be crowdsourced rather than reasoned out by experts? With a philosopher's depth and a novelist's imagination, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein probes the deepest issues confronting us--from sexuality and...