To understand anything well we must grasp it in its context, particularly when we attempt to understand cultures other than our own. However, being thorough in this endeavor can lead to complete contextualization, in which everything becomes the context of everything else. The opposing position of noncontextuality is equally problematic. In THE DILEMMA OF CONTEXT, Scharfstein contends that the problems encountered with context are insoluble. He explains why this problem lays an intellectual burden on us that, while remaining inescapable, can become so heavy it destroys the understanding it was created to further.

This highly readable volume offers a broad introduction to modern philosophy and philosophers. Ben-Ami Scharfstein contends that personal experience, especially that of childhood, affects philosophers' sense of reality and hence the content of their philosophies. He bases his argument on biographical studies of twenty great philosophers, beginning with Descartes and ending with Wittgenstein and Sartre. Taken together, these studies provide the beginnings of a psychological history of the philosophy of the period.

Scharfstein first focuses on the philosophers' efforts to arrive at the objective truth and to persuade themselves and others of its existence. He then explores truth and relevance, both proposing the broadening of the traditional philosophical conception of relevance and considering philosophers' need to create something that belongs to and transcends them as individuals.

What if Immanuel Kant floated down from his transcendental heights, straight through Alice's rabbit hole, and into the fabulous world of Lewis Carroll? For Ben-Ami Scharfstein this is a wonderfully instructive scenario and the perfect way to begin this wide-ranging collection of decades of startlingly synthesized thought. Combining a deep knowledge of psychology, cultural anthropology, art history, and the history of religions - not to mention philosophy - he demonstrates again and again the unpredictability of writing and thought and how they can teach us about our experiences. Scharfstein begins with essays on the nature of philosophy itself, moving from an autobiographical account of the trials of being a comparativist to philosophy's function in the outside world to the fear of death in Kant and Hume. From there he explores an impressive array of art: from China and Japan to India and the West; from an essay on sadistic and masochistic body art to one on the epistemology of the deaf and the blind. He then returns to philosophy, writing on Machiavelli and political ruthlessness, then on the ineffable, and closes with a review of Walter Kaufmann's multivolume look at the essence of humanity, Discovering the Mind. Altogether, these essays are a testament to adventurous thought, the kind that leaps to the furthest reaches of the possible.

Describes the extraordinary powers than have been attributed to language everywhere, and then its failure to express important aspects in the major philosophical systems of Indian, China, Japan, and the west. Argues that just as there is something of our ordinary awkwardness with words in the linguistic struggles of philosophers, so also there is s