Does life have any meaning for you? Is it possible to create meaning? What do you think life is about? Do you think life is worth living?

These questions, taken from the text of Rethinking Our World, challenge the reader to look critically and creatively at many of society’s traditional beliefs. They encourage readers to look at their world differently by asking questions about change, identity and direction.

The authors outline the major figures and basic principles of each philosophy, then analyse the type of thinking each approach encourages. They go on to challenge readers to examine ways in which the different approaches can be used to understand the world.

The following major philosophies are covered on an introductory and interactive level:

• Logical empiricism and empiricism
• Critical rationalism
• Critical theory
• Existentialism
• Phenomenology
• Hermeneutics
• Systems theory
• Postmodernism
• Feminism
• African philosophy
• Ken Wilber’s Holon theory

Chapter 1: Thinking clearly and learning from experience: the beginning of our new world
Chapter 2: Asking questions: challenging what the world tells us
Chapter 3: How in the world can we give our lives meaning?
Chapter 4: What of an African world?
Chapter 5: Can we change our world?
Chapter 6: Rethinking a woman’s world
Chapter 7: Who is the world am I?
Chapter 8: Is there a world that speaks to us?
Chapter 9: Where in the world are we going?

Rethinking our world will be invaluable to undergraduate students in the human and social sciences, as well as to a more general readership seeking an understanding of the arguments in the major philosophies.