The Everything Guide to Understanding Philosophy Quotes

“You will learn that character traits like greed and selfishness are not intrinsic to human nature, but were only relics of the capitalist world.”
― Kenneth Shouler, The Everything Guide to Understanding Philosophy: Understand the basic concepts of the greatest thinkers of all time

“In the Old Testament it is stated that man shall have “dominion” over the animals. Bentham may have been the first to denounce that dominion and call it tyranny.”
― Kenneth Shouler, The Everything Guide to Understanding Philosophy: Understand the basic concepts of the greatest thinkers of all time

“Though he was Thales' student, Anaximander disagreed with his teacher. Anaximander contended that the original substance of the universe was not matter like water, but must be immaterial . He thought the fundamental, ultimate stuff of the universe must be the infinite. The Greek word is apeiron , meaning something that is “without limit” or “boundless.” His thinking was that prior to all perceptible material bodies there must have been an indefinite, immaterial something.”
― Kenneth Shouler, The Everything Guide to Understanding Philosophy: Understand the basic concepts of the greatest thinkers of all time

“Like other Ionian philosophers, Thales believed in the doctrine of hylozoism . This theory says that matter possesses life, or sensation. In other words, life and matter are inseparable. Soul is in substances. This may be the explanation of another saying attributed to him. A story goes that he saw metal filings being drawn to a magnet. He could not account for how this happened and proclaimed, “Everything is full of gods.”
― Kenneth Shouler, The Everything Guide to Understanding Philosophy: Understand the basic concepts of the greatest thinkers of all time

“They are often referred to as physicists because of their devotion to cosmology — that branch of physics that deals with the “cosmos,” or the nature of the orderly universe. In particular, these first philosophers wanted to know the nature of substance, or matter.”
― Kenneth Shouler, The Everything Guide to Understanding Philosophy: Understand the basic concepts of the greatest thinkers of all time

“The first three “pre-Socratic” philosophers were Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes.”
― Kenneth Shouler, The Everything Guide to Understanding Philosophy: Understand the basic concepts of the greatest thinkers of all time