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...

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...

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...

I might add a modest point that could be helpful: It may not be helpful to see philosophy on the one side and religion on the other side of a great divide in terms of "final answers" and the offering of clear answers. Many philosophers today and in the past have adopted religious convictions, and many religious traditions (east and west) have either shaped or been shaped by philosohical inquiry. Within each of the great world religions there are multiple philosophically significant traditions that are experimental and speculative (non-dogmatic). So, for example, in Christianity there are materialists (Christian materialism is a new movement with philosophers like Peter van Inwagen and Lynne Baker) and dualists, nominalists and realists, utilitarians and virtue theorists, those who accept the static or dynamic theory of time (the so-called A series and B series), those who are libertarians versus compatabilists, and so on. And there is a similar diversity of views among philosophers in Jewish, Muslim,...

I agree with the two other replies, that neither theists nor atheists need be dogmatic. I would, however, like to offer a brief word on behalf of certain convictions that one seems to know (with or without argument) and such convictions are beyond negotiation. For example, I think all of us know that it is morally wrong (I am going to use a grotesque example) to skin and salt babies. However, I can imagine a utilitarian argument justifying this under extreme (though perhaps quite implausable) conditions. In such a case, I think a person might well retain her moral integrity by simply holding her position that such an act is wrong and not justified, even if she can think of no good objection to the utilitarian argument. By analogy, I think we can imagine the following: a person has had what she takes to be a compelling, even miraculous experience of God. I happen to think that there are good versions of arguments from religious experience (see work by Jerome Gellman, William Alston), but let's...

Yes. Actually a great deal of Medieval philosophy (for Jews, Christians, and Muslims) consisted in commentaries (often on Plato and Aristotle), and in modern philosophy there is a famous example of C.D. Broad highly detailed commentary on the work of McTaggart. There are highly detailed modern commentaries on much of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant (multiple volumes), Hegel, and Wittgenstein, to name a few. A good university or college library will carry some of these, and you can find the volumes by simply searching the stacks electronically or (as I still prefer) in person. As far as accessibility is concerned, Blackewell, Routledge and other British presses (including Oxford and Cambridge) do have short, very clear introductions to very difficult philosophers (Robert Solomon has a nice short intro to Hegel). But once you have gotten through the introductions, some of the commentaries are very much worthy of patient attention. Broad's on McTaggart is well...

Your request raises an interesting issue. A great deal of philosophy, east and west, has some of what may be called religious inclinations, as does philosophy out of Africa (pre and post-colonial) and the Americas. But that should not deter you if you are uninterested in such an inclination, as the philosophy that has been generated from Hindu, Buddhist and other traditions in India and China (and elsewhere) contain a massive amount of philosophical arguments that can be engaged from a secular perspective. There are multiple Buddhist arguments about the nature of identity, for example, to delight a secular philosopher who is interested in metaphysics. And Moism in China can provide a good focus if your interest is in ethics and utilitarianism. In terms of access to philosophy from around the globe, I recommend the Blackwell Companion dedicated to world philosophy.

Brilliant question. I suggest that simply to have a world-view or general outlook on what there is and its meaning or value is to have a philosophy. In this sense, virtually all persons have some kind of philosophy (even if it is highly skeptical). In this very general sense of the word 'philosophy' I suggest that any question about world-views is (again, in general) a philosophical question. Questions about governance can be interpreted as questions about one's philosophy of politics (or political philosophy). More specifically, though, 'philosophy' names the practice of inquiry into world-views (what exists and why?) values, and so on, with an aim to identify which positions are more reasonable or evident (hence the preoccupation of philosophy with matters of justification). Some questions can, I believe, be more philosophical than others. So, a question about (for example) what a person believes about God would be philosophical in a general sense if the question was aimed at doing no more than...

Philosophy of action concerns the analysis of agency and take up such questions as: What is it to be an agent? Is agency best explained in terms of beliefs and desires? In addition to beliefs and desires, must agency also involve a unique, additional power, such as the power to act or the power to form and act on intentions? How should acts be distinguished? Arguably, you can be doing more than one thing in making a single move (greet someone as well as signal an espionage agent that you are ready to return to the submarine). Should we count how many actions you are doing right now (reading, passing time, thinking about your own views on this topic) based on what you deliberately will? When is an agent free? Are free actions explainable scientifically? When are you responsible for your actions? And then there are more peripheral, but interesting questions: Do corporations act? Do you act in dreams and, if so, are you responsible for what you do in dreams?

Great question! By the way you pose the question (Thales to Rorty) I assume you mean western philosophy. Yes, I think you can carry out such a project, reading a bit of each of the major philosophers and then relying on a good history as a guide. I would highly recommend Anthony Kenny's multi-volume Oxford University Press books as lively and engaging. Copleston's history of philosophy is perhaps less engaging but it is reliable and a good companion. Speaking of Companions, Blackwell, Oxford, Cambridge, and Routledge each have massive Companion series that would also be helpful in filling out your reading. You might want to set as a goal an overall grasp of the history of philosophy and then dig in to a few areas and thinkers so as to deepen your understanding of philosophy and also to engage more in the practice of philosophy (wrestling with arguments and counter-arguments) in reference to a specific area or philosopher.