In this short, elegant book, Philip Kitcher distills the case for Darwinian evolutionary theory and its implications in a clear and forceful way. Kitcher shows how the alleged rivals to Darwinism, like Intelligent Design, are essentially scientifically bankrupt - and that scientific discoveries, including Darwin's, pose a genuine problem for religious faith, one that neither Darwin's opponents nor his militant defenders have satisfactorily resolved.

In the title essay, Erich Fromm uses the tools of psychoanalysis to examine the development of the dogma of Christ in the context of social history. The remaining essays examine psychological and cultural problems with keen insight and humanistic sympathies.

Marx was barely 25 when he produced this astonishing rich body of work-including economic and Philosophical Manuscripts and On the Jewish Question.

Mainstream modern science, with its analytical methods and its “objective” teachings, is the dominant force in modern culture. If science simply discovered and taught the truth about reality, who could object? But mainstream science does not simply “discover the truth”; instead it relies in part on a set of unscientific, false philosophical presuppositions as the basis for many of its conclusions. Thus, crucial aspects of what modern science teaches us are simply shabby philosophy dressed up in a white lab coat.

Why is that? The stakes are now considerably higher. Darwinism: Science or Philosophy? is the proceedings of a symposium that took place at Southern Methodist University in the spring of 1992. The focus of that symposium was Phillip Johnson’s then recently published book Darwin on Trial. At the time, Johnson was a novelty -- a respected professor of criminal law at Cal Berkeley who was raising doubts about evolution. All harmless, good fun, no doubt. And Berkeley has an illustrious history (...) of harboring eccentrics, kooks, and oddballs. (shrink)

Two commonly held views about the nature of Nature lead to a systematic misunderstanding and mismeasurment of natural processes. The “economistic” view conceives of the natural environment as a repository of resources, available for human exploitation, and “services” provided by mechanistic ecological processes. The economistic perspective leads to a failure to properly recognize the sharp distinctions between ecological and economic processes, by positing that environmental-sustainability issues can be successfully addressed by “economizing ecology and ecologizing the economy.” The deep ecology view (...) conceives of nature in an idealized manner as a harmonious system in eternal balance unless disturbed by humans. This perspective fails to appreciate the material basis of nature and society and views changes in value systems as the key to achieving ecological sustainability. The authors advocate an alternative conception—one developed by Marxist scholars in the natural sciences that eschews both mechanistic and idealized conceptions of nature in favor of a dialectical, historical, and materialist view of natural processes. This approach allows us to better understand natural history and the dynamic processes of human interaction with the environment. (shrink)

The first volume of the collected works of Karl Marx, which is being issued by the Marx-Engels Institute of Moscow, opens with a dissertation entitled ‘Über die Differenz der demokritischen und epikureischen Naturphilosophie’, which he presented for his doctorate at the University of Jena in 1841. It is interesting to find one who was afterwards to win fame in very different fields starting his career with an enthusiastic tract on Greekphilosophy, which he evidently intended to make his work for years (...) to come; for not only does he tell us in his introduction that this thesis is a prelude to a comprehensive study of Epicureanism, Stoicism, and Scepticism, ‘the philosophical basis of Roman life and character’, but appended to the dissertation are some seventy pages of preliminary notes for the larger work, which range over such varied subjects as ‘The Immanent Dialectic of the Epicurean Philosophy’, ‘The Idea of the “Wise Man” in Greek Philosophy,’, and ‘Parallels between the Epicureans, and the Pietists and Supernaturalists.’. (shrink)

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Ben Wiker traces the story that explains our present perplexing moral culture, showing how it was Darwinism that provided the ancient teaching of Epicurus with the seemingly modern and scientific basis that captured twentieth-century minds.

In this highly acclaimed book, one of the most prominent theologians in the world offers a theological and psychoanalytic assessment of Freud's atheism and of its implications for current psychoanalytic practice.