Are you studying under Spock from Star Trek? You are on to what sometimes is called the paradox of desire. If one seeks to be rid of desire, one seems to be in the paradoxical position of desiring to be without desires, which is as hopeless as deliberately trying to go to sleep. Still, like going to sleep, it seems we can indirectly achieve this through relaxing and, arguably, someone may endeavor to be rid of desire by going into a state of what the stoics called apotheos (from which we get the English term apathy) a process of shedding desire rather than a state of desiring to be rid of desire. Richard Sorabji has a terrific book on the Stoics' project of taming and then either eradicating or simply moderating desire. If one is working with a general understanding of desire which would include wants and appetites it seems very hard to imagine a complete eradication of desire (can one really give up on the desire to breathe?)

Thank you to replies by Peter and Eric. I do agree with Eric and take note that more and more theists are in play, certainly more than when I started grad school in 1975. In typing in the names of current well known theists, I mangled a few names: Lynne Adams should be Lynne Baker. She is a PERFECT example of a philosopher who does highly respectable work in secular topics in metapysics and also does amazingly good work as a theist in philosophy of relgion. R. Crel should be: Richard Creel and J. Kvanvid should be Jonathan Kvanvig Other prominant theists (again this is pretty random, but here are some more who work in the English-speaking world and have great reputations in other areas) include: Michael Dummet, Peter Forrest, D. Howard-Snyder, H. Meynell, J. O'L eary Hawthorne, Peter van Inwagen, S. Wykstra, Timothy O'C onnor, Ed Wieringa, William Mann, Nelson Pike, R.C. Koons, A. Pruss, Bruce Reichenbach........all these and the others mentioned (as well as some philosophers...

There are many atheists, but there are also many theists and agnostics. Here is an off the top of my head list of theists working in philosophy today who have made excellent contributions to philosophy: R.M. Adams, Marilyn Adams, Avlin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne, Lynda Zagzepski, Eleonore Stump. Lynne Adams, John Cottingham, Timothy Chappell, T. Mawson, Chad Meister, John Lucas, Brian Leftow, John Haldane, Scott MacDonald, M. Peterson, W. Hasker, Steve Evans, Brian Davies, William Wainwright, W. Craig, S.T. Davis, Victoria Harrison, Stewart Goetz, Paul Griffiths, Paul Helm, C. Hughes, Robert Audi, Michael Rea, Thomas Flint, Sarah Coakley, R. Crell, W. Abraham, Jerome Gellman, Laura Garcia, Patty Sayre, John Hare, J. Kvanvid, G. Mavrodes, Jeff Jordan, Robert Roberts, Keith Yandell..... This is a purely random list. There are also well known atheists and agnostics, but the field is not without prominent alternatives. For a good overview, I recommend the second edition of the Blackwell...

When I was at Harvard, there was no course on existentialism, but perhaps things have changed! In any case, I encourage your reading of Husserl independently. In defense of your introductory class and the average text dedicated to existentialism, Husserl is more closely linked to phenomenology than existentialism. A reading of Husserl can enhance one's reading of Heidegger (who was quite ambivalent about being classified as an existentialist), but I am not sure it is essential for appreciating and engaging the work of Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Simone de Beauvoir, and you can certainly have a full go at the work of Kierkegaard (whom Sartre once billed as the father of existentialism) without Husserl. One other factor to consider on behalf of your philosophy instructor: you mentioned that your course was "introductory." Husserl is VERY VERY difficult. Sartre and company are far more easy to engage and attract newcomers. If you set off one morning to read Husserl's "The way to the...

An affirmative answer might put us on a rather slippery slope. What about the gift of money prior to death? Would you prohibit a parent paying for a child's education? And why just money? Would you prohibit all inheritance, from a farm to a sentimental photograph? It seems that in a general sense of the word "inherit" it is difficult for persons not to inherit all kinds of things (good or bad) from parents / family / care-givers (getting one's own start in life, then, is not easy, for others will invariably have had a hand in each person making a start) and so long as you allow for gift-giving among the living it is hard to see why one would prohibit someone willing that, when she dies, some of her belongings go to her children. So, there are some reasons to hesitate in giving an unqualified affirmative answer to your question(s), but there are also some reasons in a democratic republic which prizes fairness for moderating inheritance to prevent or at least discourage vast amounts of dynastic wealth...

Great question! Someone else will be better at replying to this, but I will take a first shot to get the ball rolling. I do not think the term "interest" has a standard, clear usage, though I think it is probably most generally equated with a preference or perhaps a desire. So, your having an interest in a reply to your question would be the same as your having a desire or preference that someone give you an interesting answer. "Interesting" (I assume) means worthy of interest. In this sense, if someone is uninterested in X it does not follow that X is uninteresting. A few more distinctions: Philosophers sometimes distinguish the interests that a person has and what is in a person's interest. In this sense, a person may be interested in drinking vast quantities of vodka, but it is not in that person's interest to do so. We also sometimes think in terms of hypothetical or ideal interests. Someone may mistakenly think a glass of liquid is water and report "I am interested in drinking that"...

Without getting into the technicalities of philosophy of mind, I suggest that there is a general sense in which you give other people access to your mind any time you are honestly disclosive and expressive of your thoughts, feelings, desires. Films and books may be disclosive of the mind of the author / director, but they also may obscure and mask a person's inner thoughts. Actually, you might consider flipping around the question and ask whether it makes some sense to think of works of art having a mind of their own. Arguably, this is all a matter of metaphorical attributions, but in our experience of art works can't we sometimes pick up a mood or emotion (there is anger or passion or desire in that film / book / painting, for example). John Updike once remarked that he thought books should have at least one secret. Of course one may interpret that as Updike claiming that the author should perhaps not be completely disclosive of all aspects of the plot and characters. But what about considering...

Interesting. Much of philosophy does consist in making and assessing claims about what is and what ought to be the case (is there a God? is there free will? what is justice? do we human beings have moral obligations to future generations or nonhuman animals or...? and so on). And in seeking answers to such inquiry philosophers may draw on science, history, literature, logic, phenomenology and so on. Though philosophy also consists of inquiry into the very concept of truth, the limits of inquiry, and the challenge of skepticism. I suggest that the truth claims you find in philosophy are, in one sense, not unique and are like the truth claims you find in other domains. One philosopher (a theist) may claim there is a God, while an atheist philosopher claims there is no God; this is not unlike a historian claiming that Marco Polo visited China and another historian claiming that is false. But philosophy does seem to take on unique sorts of questions. Some of these concern the underpinnings of different...

I disagree with Smith's (as usual) and George's reply because they fail to take into account the context of debate and argument. This is easy to do, I suppose, especially for those who think the framework of debate is so skewed against theism. If you adopt what Smith elsewhere describes as "cheerful atheism" then of course he will laugh and laugh at thinking the Kreeft argument can have any credence, but that is because he gives no credence to theism. An assessment of Christ's claims (or the claims by Christians about Christ) has to take place in the context of a broad inquiry that takes theism (and atheism) seriously. I happen to think there are good philosophical grounds to think theism is more reasonable than its most promising alternative (naturalism) and given that broader position reasoning like Kreeft's has credibility. I recommend Richard Swinburne four books, beginning with The Coherence of Theism and The Existence of God (which seem to me to overturn J.L. Mackie's The Miracle of Theism)...

Good question. This is indeed unfortunate. I believe most (if not all) philosophers in the English-speaking world today will have at least one other language, though I wager that for the majority of us that other language is not Asian (in my case my other languages are Greek and French). This need not impair a philosopher taking on Asian themes (I have taught philosophy of religion in English in Hong Kong), but some of us are reluctant to claim (to use your example) expertise or a deep grounding in Confucianism without being able to read Chinese. The two philosophers on my campus who specialize in Indian thought both know Sanskrit. As for the rest of us, not knowing the languages may not be a good excuse (maybe I should learn Chinese). And as more and more Asian (and African and Arabic) texts are being translated with commentaries, philosophy in the classroom is likely to be more global in the future. We are already seeing a concerted effort at more global coverage in all the new encyclopedias of...

Following up on Heck: The church I attend (Episcopal) is quite welcoming to gays. The associate pastor (and for many years my confessor) is a Lesbian priest. There are substantial support groups for homosexual Christians in different denominations. While Richard Swinburne is a Christian philosopher who has serious reservations on the merits of homosexuality, his book Revelation provides a goof philosophical framework within which to take Dr. Heck's advice and see the meaning of the Bible / revelation as something that is on-going and progressive.