All men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of sight. For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we prefer seeing (one might say) to everything else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know and brings to light many differences between things.

Cartea publicat? ?n 1983 este ?mp?r?it? ?n cinci p?r?i (ce cuprind treisprezece capitole). Fiecare capitol este constituit dintr-un dialog sau dialoguri, povestiri sau ra?ionamente ce abordeaz?, ?n general, paradoxuri, probleme de filosofie, logic? ?i matematic?. Printre temele redate ?n aceast? lucrare se num?r? problema p?catului ?i a virtu?ii (capitolul 4, intitulat ,,O ?ntrebare“), percep?ia ?i reprezentarea realit??ii (capitolul 7 ,,O fantezie minte-corp“), ontologia (capitolul 10 ,,Ce este existen?a?“), solipsismul (capitolul 12 ,,Solipsismul luminat“), problema adev?rului (capitolul 1 ,,De ce spui adev?rul?“ ?i capitolul 2 ,,O problem?“), problema vie?ii ?i a mor?ii (capitolul 9 ,,Zen de via?? ?i de moarte“). Lucrarea se remarc? printr-o formul? dens? ?i, ?n egal? m?sur?, elegant?, care ?i permite autorului s? prezinte chestiuni de altfel complexe ?n c?teva pagini revelatoare, prin povestiri sau dialoguri, f?r? a-?i plictisi cititorii. Ca ?ntr-un num?r de magie, art? de care autorul nu este str?in, publicul este atras ?i captivat de aparenta simplitate ?i ingeniozitate a ra?ionamentelor expuse. Probabil, ceea ce face cartea mai u?or de citit este atitudinea autorului, tonul s?u glume?, ludic ?n cea mai mare parte din cele 200 de pagini. Putem ilustra aceast? idee prin c?teva exemple. ?n cadrul capitolului 3, denumit ,,C?teva fragmente“, Raymond Smullyan poveste?te c? le-ar fi declarat studen?ilor ?n timpul unui examen c? dac? ei ?i-ar da cuv?ntul de onoare c? nu vor copia, atunci el ?i-ar da cuv?ntul c? nu va raporta mai departe dac? ei ar ?ncerca s? copieze. Cineva l-ar fi ?ntrebat la un moment dat dac? crede ?n astrologie. El a r?spuns c? nu crede ?n astrologie deoarece este ?n zodia Gemeni. Lista de propozi?ii care se contrazic singure, a lui Saul Gorn, un specialist ?n informatic?, pe care Smullyan le citeaz?, reprezint? ?i ele o mostr? de umor. Printre acestea se reg?sesc afirma?ii precum: ,,?nainte de a ?ncepe s? vorbesc, a? vrea s? v? spun ceva.“, ,,Jum?tate dintre minciunile pe care ei le spun despre mine sunt adev?rate.“ sau ,,Te ai dep??it pe tine ?nsu?i, ca de obicei.“

Malcolm Ross, a young barrister, is awakened in the middle of the night and summoned to the house of famous Egyptologist Abel Trelawny at the request of his daughter, Margaret, with whom Malcolm is enamored. Once Malcolm arrives at the house, he meets Margaret, Superintendent Dolan, and Doctor Winchester, and learns why he has been called: Margaret, hearing strange noises from her father’s bedroom, woke to find him unconscious and bloodied on the floor of his room, under some sort of trance.

As he waited for his breakfast, never served to time, Mr. Lashmar drummed upon the window-pane, and seemed to watch a blackbird lunching with much gusto about the moist lawn of Alverholme Vicarage. But his gaze was absent and worried. The countenance of the reverend gentleman rarely wore any other expression, for he took to heart all human miseries and follies, and lived in a ceaseless mild indignation against the tenor of the age.

The story follows adventures of five Americans on an uncharted island in the South Pacific. The five Americans escape from prison during the siege of Richmond, Virginia, by hijacking a balloon.

A wealthy American Jeorling is looking for a passage back to the USA after private studies of the wildlife on the Kerguelen Islands. Halbrane is one of the first ships to arrive at Kerguelen, and its captain Len Guy somewhat reluctantly agrees to have Jeorling as a passenger as far as Tristan da Cunha. Underway, they meet a stray iceberg with a dead body on it, which turns out to be a sailor from Jane. A note found with him indicates that he and several others including Jane's captain William Guy had survived the assassination attempt at Tsalal and are still alive.

Ivan Ivanovitch attends the funeral of a casual acquaintance and falls to contemplation in the graveyard. He hears the voices of the recently deceased and buried, and he listens to their conversation. They discuss card games and political scandals. As the deceased entertain themselves by revealing all of the shameful details of their earthly lives, Ivan Ivanovitch sneezes.

Emelian was a labourer and worked for a master. He was walking through a field one day on his way to work, when a frog hopped in front of him and he just missed crushing it by stepping across. Suddenly some one called to him from behind. He turned, and there stood a beautiful maiden, who said to him, 'Why don’t you marry, Emelian?'

Lord Arthur Savile's Crime is the opening story in this volume of Oscar Wilde tales and this collection will delight the reader with slightly darker undertones of Wilde's hugely enjoyable humorous tales. Also included in this collection: The Canterville Ghost, The Sphinx Without a Secret, The Modle Millionaire, The Protrait of Mr. W.H.

Eugenie's father Felix is a former cooper who has become wealthy through both business ventures and inheritance. However, he is very miserly, and he, his wife, daughter and their servant Nanon live in a run-down old house which he is too miserly to repair. His banker des Grassins wishes Eugenie to marry his son Adolphe, and his lawyer Cruchot wishes Eugenie to marry his nephew President Cruchot des Bonfons, both parties eyeing the inheritance from Felix.

Come on a journey into the nature of consciousness, finding the space 'between thoughts' as the most obvious place to recognize your true and eternal Self. We recognize overlooked aspects of the natural world around us; as ourselves, as well as using nature to demonstrate spiritual concepts such as God, union and liberation. Your true 'nature' awaits...---------------------------"No matter how it is approached, no amount of words will ever transmit to another person the indescribable 'ultimate Truth'. The fact that it's described as indescribable should be enough to stop us trying. Yet it's made even more difficult because of our troublesome human mind. As intelligent and magnificent as it is, it has a deep and tragic habit of confusing the symbols we use (for simple convenience) in our lives, for the actual things or ideas they represent. As Alan Watts used to say, it's like climbing a signpost rather than walking in the direction it points. Our greatest of misunderstandings is that we confuse the story and idea of who we are, with what is actually true; pure and simple. We make a false judgment on who or what we are, and you wouldn't believe the amount of mischief that arises in result.As exaggerated or humorous as all this may sound on first impressions, this habit of confusing symbols for reality is a very real problem plaguing our human world, and the implications are exceptionally far reaching. We have confused such things as money for wealth, status or fame for character and even the virtual world for real - but most appropriate to this book, is that religious or spiritual concepts are always confused for the things they are pointing towards. That's particularly true of our concepts of 'God', particularly true of Buddha's Dharma, particularly true of any teaching towards enlightenment or liberation."---------------------------"OmniscienceOh father in heaven, omniscience cannot be. It makes no sense, no sense to me....***Between thoughts, your functioning remains flawless. Between thoughts you are ego-less, yet still exist...?How is it so that your heart beats without your control?How do migrating birds travel without directions, newborn horses stand straight up and embryos form without instruction. How does a plant know how to flower and a seed mature into a tree??Without thought or instruction, nature around you is already omniscient. Are you different from nature, or one and the same?***Young one, nature already exists in an omniscient state with no mind…?Between thoughts, are you omniscient?Mid-thought, do you believe you're not?"

The Politics of Aristotle is the second part of a treatise of which the Ethics is the first part. It looks back to the Ethics as the Ethics looks forward to the Politics. For Aristotle did not separate, as we are inclined to do, the spheres of the statesman and the moralist. In the Ethics he has described the character necessary for the good life, but that life is for him essentially to be lived in society, and when in the last chapters of the Ethics he comes to the practical application of his inquiries, that finds expression not in moral exhortations addressed to the individual but in a description of the legislative opportunities of the statesman.

Aristotle's Poetics is the earliest surviving work of dramatic theory and the first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary theory. In it, Aristotle offers an account of what he calls poetry.

We must, in the next place, investigate the subject of the dream, and first inquire to which of the faculties of the soul it presents itself, i.e. whether the affection is one which pertains to the faculty of intelligence or to that of sense-perception; for these are the only faculties within us by which we acquire knowledge.

The science which has to do with nature clearly concerns itself for the most part with bodies and magnitudes and their properties and movements, but also with the principles of this sort of substance, as many as they may be. For of things constituted by nature some are bodies and magnitudes, some possess body and magnitude, and some are principles of things which possess these. Now a continuum is that which is divisible into parts always capable of subdivision, and a body is that which is every way divisible.

After an interval of some months or years, and at Phlius, a town of Peloponnesus, the tale of the last hours of Socrates is narrated to Echecrates and other Phliasians by Phaedo the beloved disciple. The Dialogue necessarily takes the form of a narrative, because Socrates has to be described acting as well as speaking. The minutest particulars of the event are interesting to distant friends, and the narrator has an equal interest in them.

Of all the writings of Plato the Timaeus is the most obscure and repulsive to the modern reader, and has nevertheless had the greatest influence over the ancient and mediaeval world. The obscurity arises in the infancy of physical science, out of the confusion of theological, mathematical, and physiological notions, out of the desire to conceive the whole of nature without any adequate knowledge of the parts, and from a greater perception of similarities which lie on the surface than of differences which are hidden from view.

The Ion is the shortest, or nearly the shortest, of all the writings which bear the name of Plato, and is not authenticated by any early external testimony. The grace and beauty of this little work supply the only, and perhaps a sufficient, proof of its genuineness. The plan is simple; the dramatic interest consists entirely in the contrast between the irony of Socrates and the transparent vanity and childlike enthusiasm of the rhapsode Ion.

Apology presents the speech of self-defence given by Socrates in his trial for impiety and corruption specifically against the charges of corrupting the young, and by not believing in the gods in whom the city believes, but in other daimonia that are novel.

La acest ?nceput de secol XXI, ?n ?ntreaga lume se intensific? studierea problemelor fundamentale, eterne, ca via?a ?i moartea, rostul vie?ii, originile ?i destina?iile noastre ultime, c?t ?i ?ntrebarea cu privire la existen?a de dup? moarte. Cartea examineaz? filosofia de via?? a budismului Nichiren ?n lumina ideilor de ultim? or? despre via?? ?i moarte, de?i cuprinderea exhaustiv? ?ntr?un singur volum a unei probleme at?t de vaste este imposibil?. Budismul Nichiren ofer? oamenilor mijloacele de a??i transforma destinele prin ?nf?ptuirea propriei revolu?ii umane individuale ?i dezv?luie calea spre pace ?i fericire.

innd seama de multiplele referiri la istorie, ct i de importana i relevana perspectivei temporal-istorice pentru orice alt tem, ajungem firesc la cardinalitatea istoriei n discursul lui Emil Cioran. n noianul tuturor temelor sale obsesive, istoria este o mega-tem, aflat n puternice raporturi cu celelalte. Aderena i entuziasmul pentru studiul problemelor de filosofia istoriei le gsim mrturisite nc de la nceputul traseului, n cteva scrisori ctre Bucur incu din anii ‘30. n acele scrisori vorbete de pasiune, de gndire spontan i personal, de adaptare natural asupra domeniului, i se arat ncredinat c, alturi de problemele de filosofia culturii i antropologiei filosofice, problemele de filosofia istoriei nu pot concepe c lea prsi vreodat. Dintre multiplele justificri ulterioare – opuse ca atitudine fa de cele din perioada iniial, dar care marcheaz aceeai aderen –, s punem dou n corelaie, scrise n ani apropiai, n care preocuparea pentru istorie este descris prin stri de dependen: slbiciune, sete, patim.“ – Ioan Costea