Ultimate Questions

Rauhut's short, affordable introduction walks through the central questions of present-day philosophy. Its more than one hundred reflection prompts, labeled Food for Thought, are designed to build critical thinking and turn students into active participants rather than passive readers. Written with a problems-based course in mind, it is still accessible to general readers who want to wrestle with topics such as free will, personal identity, and whether God exists.

The book shows how philosophy's oldest puzzles grow out of everyday habits of thought and experience. Its examples are concrete and lively, encouraging readers to test ideas for themselves. Along the way it introduces current theories that analytic philosophers apply to those same enduring problems.

By the end, readers should have a clearer sense of how puzzling human nature is.