Gary E. Kessler

Editor Kessler collected readings from a broad range of voices across time and place on fundamental philosophical issues. These "fundamentals" cross over into science and theology. {Now in 9th Edition, I have First.}

Questions are well-supplied, as both guides and content. How should one live? Reference Buddha, Walpola Rahula, Confucius, Plato, Aristotle, Bhagavad-Gita, and Eagle Man.

How can I know what is right? Reference, Kant, JS Mill, Tan Tai Wei, Rita Manning.

What makes a society show more Just? Reference: Abu'l A'la Mawdudi, JS Mill, Marx, Mao, Plato, ML King Jr, and Paulo Freire.

Is Justice for all Possible? Reference SCOTUS, abortion activists, feminists, Gay and Animal Rights.

Are we Free or Determined? Blatchford, Sartre, Radhakrishnan, Smullyan.

What is Rea? Reference, Laozi, Pato, Shankara, Berkeley, High Elliot, Borges ("The circular ruins").

Is Knowledge possible? Reference, Al-Ghazali (Sufi period), Descartes, Hume, Matilal, Rorty.

Is there a God? Reference: Maimonides (Guide for the Perplexed), Aquinas, Weisskopf, Descartes, Palen, Dawkins, Daly.

Why Evil? Xunzi (Human nature is evil), Humphreys, Kwame Gyekye, BC Johnson, Fachenheim (fragment on the Holocaust).

Who Am I? And can I survive Death? References, Descartes, Eve Cole (embodied Self), Diga Nikaya, in Milindapahna, Searle, Dennett, Olen, Sri Aurobindo.

Note that the current 552 page Ninth Edition, only adds a few texts to the First Edition, from the Buddha, Plato, Immanuel Kant, Martin Luther King, Jr., John Rawls, Martha Nussbaum, Nelson Mandela and others.

These are landmark writings. show less

It's about what you'd expect. It's clear to see why most of these stories weren't published traditionally.