Against the Idols of the Age

David Stove (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

384 Seiten

2001
Transaction Publishers (Verlag)
978-0-7658-0910-0 (ISBN)

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Little known outside his native Australia, David Stove was one of the most illuminating and brilliant philo-sophical essayists of the postwar era. A fearless at-tacker of intellectual and cultural orthodoxies, Stove left powerful critiques of scientific irrationalism, Dar-winian theories of human behavior, and philosophi-cal idealism. He was also an occasional essayist of considerable charm and polemical snap. Stove's writ-ing is both rigorous and immensely readable. It is, in the words of Roger Kimball, "an invigorating blend of analytic lucidity, mordant humor, and an amount of common sense too great to be called 'common.'" Against the Idols of the Age brings together a repre-sentative selection of Stove's writing and is an ideal introduction to his work.

The book opens with some of Stove's most impor-tant attacks on irrationalism in the philosophy of sci-ence. He exposes the roots of this fashionable attitude, tracing it through writers like Paul Feyerabend andThomas Kuhn to Karl Popper. Stove was a born controversialist, so it is not surpris-ing that when he turned his attention to contemporary affairs he said things that are politically incorrect. The topical essays that make up the second part of the book show Stove at his most withering and combative. Whether the subject is race, feminism, the Enlightenment, or the demand for "non-coercive philosophy," Stove is on the mark with a battery of impressive arguments expressed in sharp, uncompromis-ing prose. Against the Idols of the Age concludes with a generous sampling of his blistering attacks on Darwinism.

David Stove's writings are an undiscovered treasure. Although readers may dis-agree with some of his opinions, they will find it difficult to dismiss his razor-sharp arguments. Against the Idols of the Age is the first book to make the full range of this important thinker available to the general reader.

David Stove (1927-1994) taught philosophy at the University of New South Wales and, until his retirement in 1988, at the University of Sydney. He was the author of numerous essays, articles, and several books including Anything Goes: Origins of the Cult of Scientific Irrationalism, The Plato Cult and Other Intellectual Follies, and two posthumously published volumes, Darwinian Fairytales and Cricket versus Republicanism. Roger Kimball is managing editor of the New Criterion and an art critic for the London Spectator. He is author of Tenured Radicals (newly revised and expanded) and co-editor with Hilton Kramer of Against the Grain: The New Criterion on Art and Intellect at the End of the Twentieth Century and The Future of the European Past: Essays from The New Criterion.

1: The Cult of Irrationalism in Science; 1: Cole Porter and Karl Popper: The Jazz Age in the Philosophy of Science; 2: Sabotaging Logical Expressions; 3: Paralytic Epistemology, Or the Soundless Scream; 2: Idols Contemporary and Perennial; 4: D'Holbach's Dream: The Central Claim of the Enlightenment; 5: “Always apologize, always explain”: Robert Nozick’s War Wounds; 6: The Intellectual Capacity of Women; 7: Racial and Other Antagonisms; 8: Idealism: A Victorian Horror-story (Fart Two); 3: Darwinian Fairytales; 9: Darwinism's Dilemma; 10: Where Darwin First Went Wrong About Man; 11: Genetic Calvinism, or Demons and Dawkins; 12: He Ain't Heavy, He's my Brother or, Altruism and Shared Genes

Erscheint lt. Verlag	31.7.2001
Verlagsort	Somerset
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	544 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Philosophie der Neuzeit
Themenwelt	Naturwissenschaften
ISBN-10	0-7658-0910-9 / 0765809109
ISBN-13	978-0-7658-0910-0 / 9780765809100
Zustand	Neuware