In Living With Nietzsche, Solomon suggests that we read Nietzsche from a very different point of view, as a provocative writer who means to transform the way we view our lives. This means taking Nietzsche personally. Rather than focus on the "true" Nietzsche or trying to determine "what Nietzsche really meant" by his seemingly random and often contradictory pronouncements about "the Big Questio…
This study offers a systematic reconstruction of the theoretical foundations and framework of critical social theory. It is Habermas' "magnum opus", and it is regarded as one of the most important works of modern social thought. In this second and final volume of the work, Habermas examines the relations between action concepts and systems theory and elaborates a framework for analyzing the dev…
Alan Bloom's new translation of Emile, Rousseau's masterpiece on the education and training of the young, is the first in more than seventy years. In it, Bloom, whose magnificent translation of Plato's Republic has been universally hailed as a virtual rediscovery of that timeless text, again brings together the translator's gift for journeying between two languages and cultures and the philosop…
This is the most important book on Hegel to have appeared in the past ten years. Robert Pippin offers a completely new interpretation of Hegel's idealism, which focuses on Hegel's appropriation and development of kant's theoretical project.
A philosophical history of the concept of evil in western culture.'Evil is something to be feared, and historically, we shall see, it is the enemy within who has been seen as representing the most intense evil of all - the enemy who looks just like us, talks like us, and is just like us.'The Myth of Evil explores a contradiction: the belief that human beings cannot commit acts of pure evil, tha…
This robust volume explores life's big questions related to God, human existence, meaning, and knowledge, sketching a distinctly Christian approach to philosophical inquiry that is founded on the Bible and informed by Christian theology.
Since the late-1980s the rise of the Internet and the emergence of the Networked Society have led to a rapid and profound transformation of everyday life. Underpinning this revolution is the computer a media technology that is capable of not only transforming itself, but almost every other machine and media process that humans have used throughout history. In Philosophy of Media, Hassan and Sut…
This text covers, at an introductory level, issues in epistemology and philosophy of mind. It is, so far as we're aware, the only contemporary text to do so. It also serves as an introduction to philosophy per se, raising issues about the nature and methods of philosophical trade (e.g., modus ponens, reductio ad absurdum, etc.)
Juergen Habermas opens Volume 2 with a brilliant reinterpretation of Mead and Durkheim and then develops his own approach to society, combining two hitherto competing paradigms, "system" and "lifeworld." The strength of this combination is then demonstrated in a detailed critique of Parsons's theory of social systems. Concluding with a critical reconstruction of the Weberan and Marxian treatmen…
Romantic love, in contrast with neighbourly love or love for God, is rarely viewed as an important issue for Kierkegaard.1 Despite the textual evidence regarding the centrality of this kind of love in his works, scholars in this field often seem reluctant to take the matter seriously. When required to address Kierkegaard’s repeated references to love stories, the secondary literature tends ei…
Here, for the first time in English, is volume one of Jürgen Habermas's long-awaited magnum opus: The Theory of Communicative Action. This pathbreaking work is guided by three interrelated concerns: (1) to develop a concept of communicative rationality that is no longer tied to the subjective and individualistic premises of modern social and political theory; (2) to construct a two-level conc…
Socrates was born in Athens in 469 B.C.E. Although he wrote nothing of any significance and had no students in anything like the ordinary sense of that term, he became one of the most influential philosophers in western civilization. During his own lifetime, his philosophical activities, which were carried on in public settings and private homes, together with his idiosyncratic demeanor, gained…
Everyone, whether he be plowman or banker, clerk or captain, citizen or ruler, is, in a real sense, a philosopher. Being human, having a highly developed brain and nervous system, he must think; and thinking is the pathway to philosophy.
Confused by metaphysics? In a muddle with aesthetics? Intimidated by Kant? Then look no further! Philosophy For Dummies, UK Edition is a complete crash-course in philosophical thought, covering key philosophers, philosophical history and theory and the big questions that affect us today. Tying in with standard UK curricula and including core topics such as logic, ethics and political philosophy…
This book does not seek to present a complete historical genealogy of nihilism, even though there is a loose chronology directing the progression of the chapters. What is rather offered is a genealogy which endeavours, first of all, to isolate certain crucial historical moments in the history of nihilism, moments which at time reveal clearly an intermittent development of prior influences. In t…
When the Greek soldiers burst into the city of Troy, Cassandra—who had prophesied it all, who knew what fate awaited her and all the Trojan women—fled to the temple of Athena.
Thomas Aquinas (1224/6–1274) lived an active, demanding academic and ecclesiastical life that ended while he was still in his forties. He nonetheless produced many works, varying in length from a few pages to a few volumes. Because his writings grew out of his activities as a teacher in the Dominican order and a member of the theology faculty of the University of Paris, most are concerned wit…
The volume sheds light on the discussion between hedonists and anti-hedonists, by concentrating on the 'crucial point' at which any philosophical analysis of the good life (hedonistic or other) ought to argue that the life of the philosopher is the most desirable, and thus truly pleasurable, life.
Covers a range of philosophers, from Simplicius to John Wyclif, and philosophical problems, including: the harmony of Platonism and Aristotelianism; the relationship between logic, and metaphysics; the number of categories; and realism versus nominalism.
The core of this book is a set of five lectures delivered by Habermas at Princeton in 1971 under the title a Reflections on the Linguistic Foundation of Sociologya .
The dominance of logical empiricism’s verification principle in the middle part of the twentieth century forced philosophy of religion almost entirely out of the philosophy curriculum, and, with a few notable exceptions, few philosophers willingly identified themselves as Christians. However, logical empiricism collapsed under the weight of its own principles, and in the spring of 1980 Time m…
This book has its origins in two ideas: first, that a central, if neglected, concept at the heart of philosophical inquiry is that of place; and, second, that the concept of place is also central to the thinking of the key twentieth-century philosopher, Martin Heidegger. Originally the material dealt with in these pages was intended to form part of a single investigation into the nature and sig…
The present volume brings together philosophical essays that were written between 1996 and 2000 and pick up on a line of thought that I had set aside since Knowledge and Human Interests. With the exception of the final essay (“The Relationship between Theory and Practice Revisited”), they deal with issues in theoretical philosophy that I have neglected since then. Of course, the formal prag…
Seneca's Letters to Lucilius are a rich source of information about ancient Stoicism, an influential work for early modern philosophers, and a fascinating philosophical document in their own right. This selection of the letters aims to include those which are of greatest philosophical interest, especially those which highlight the debates between Stoics and Platonists or Aristotelians in the fi…
God is Infinite, but language finite; thus speech would seem to condemn him to finitude. In speaking of God, would the theologian violate divine transcendence by reducing God to immanence, or choose, rather, to remain silent? At stake in this argument is a core problem of the conditions of divine revelation. How, in terms of language and the limitations of human understanding, can transcendence…
A defining work of moral philosophy, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals has been highly influential and famously difficult. Dieter Schönecker and Allen Wood make clear the ways this work forms the basis of our modern moral outlook and how moral law relates to freedom and free will within Kant's overall philosophy.
The systematic philosophy presented in this book has arisen from two insights, formulable as two theses, resulting from a long and intensive occupation with the fundamental philosophical conceptions from history and of the present. The first thesis is that, in terms of its intention, self-understanding, and accomplishments, the theoretical enterprise that for over two thousand years has been de…
If the philosophy of Levinas has one fundamental idea, it is the following: human existence should not be thought of as “self-orientated,” but as a “reception of the other.” Spinoza’s principle of the conatus essendi, the will to maintain oneself, as the basic form of existence is constantly undermined in Levinas’ texts by the reference to another layer in the subject which is just …
The idea of this project came to me over fifty years ago, and the reading and research have continued fairly steadily since then, though the writing began less than ten years ago during my third sojourn at the Institute for Advanced Study and was finished just as I retired both from Rutgers University and from my editorship of the Journal of the History of Ideas. For me at least this marks inde…
Music has been an object of philosophical enquiry since the beginning of philosophy. Reading Plato’s Republic for the first time, students are often surprised to find that he devotes so much space to music’s influence on personal character and social harmony. For Plato and his contemporaries, an account of music was important to issues in metaphysics and epistemology, and philosophy of musi…
Editing and compiling this historical and critical review of twentieth-century philosophy has been extremely challenging, but ultimately it has been a rewarding task. The project was conceived in 2002 with the aim of drawing together experts in the various subject areas who could comment both authoritatively and critically on the current condition of their respective disciplines and on the natu…
It gives me great pleasure to provide this preface to the revised edition of A Theory of Justice. Despite many criticisms of the original work, I still accept its main outlines and defend its central doctrines. Of course, I wish, as one might expect, that I had done certain things differently, and I would now make a number of important revisions. But if I were writing A Theory of Justice over a…
On What Matters is a major work in moral philosophy. It is the long-awaited follow-up to Derek Parfit's 1984 book Reasons and Persons, one of the landmarks of twentieth-century philosophy. In this first volume Parfit presents a powerful new treatment of reasons and rationality, and a critical examination of three systematic moral theories -- Kant's ethics, contractualism, and consequentialism -…
Ursula Coope argues that Aristotle sees time as a universal order within which all changes are related to each other. This interpretation enables her to explain two striking Aristotelian claims: that the now is like a moving thing, and that time depends for its existence on the mind.
‘In this stunning book, Roy Bhaskar develops his own program of critical realism into a radically new and original theory of dialectics and a critique of previous theories from the ancient Greeks to twentieth century neo-Marxism. The result is comparable in its scope and ambition to Sartre’s critique of dialectical reasoning. It is hard to think of any other contemporary philosopher with th…
The essays which comprise this book are designed to justify and develop scientific realism, critical naturalism, and a certain, characteristically Marxian, approach to the analysis and criticism of philosophical ideas. The first two chapters consolidate and develop the theories outlined in A Realist Theory of Science and The Possibility of Naturalism, as well as in a number of other recent publ…
This book gives a clear and readable overview of the philosophical work of Jurgen Habermas, the most influential German philosopher alive today, who has commented widely on subjects such as Marxism, the importance and effectiveness of communication, the reunification of Germany, and the European Union. Gordon Finlayson provides readers with a clear and readable overview of Habermas's forbidding…
The Students Library of Education has been designed to meet the needs of students of Education at Colleges of Education and at University Institutes and Departments. It will also be valuable for practising teachers and educationists. The series takes full account of the latest developments in teacher-training and of new methods and approaches in education. Separate volumes will provide authorit…
There are a number of ways in which this book could fail. It has several goals, some of them pedagogical. One of these goals is to introduce readers to the philosophy of mathematics. In my attempt to avoid failure here I’ve included chapters on traditional points of view, such as formalism and constructivism, as well as Platonism. And since I’m aiming at a broad audience, I’ve taken pains…
The aim of this volume is defined by that of the series of which it is part, namely to provide students of philosophy with an accurate rendering and critical elucidation of the dialogue. While the main interest of the commentary is philosophical, the nature of the dialogue has necessitated the inclusion of more literary and historical matter than in some other volumes of the series.
In this well-known work, Etienne Gilson undertakes a sufficiently difficult task, namely, to define the spirit of mediaeval philosophy. He focuses on and supports his conclusion that the Middle Ages produced, besides a Christian literature and art as everyone admits, this very Christian philosophy, which is a matter of dispute.
When I teach the Republic now, the reactions to it are more urgent and more intense than they were a quarter-century ago when i was working this translation and interpretation. The Republic is, of course, a permanent book, one of the small number of books that engage the interest and sympathy of thoughtful persons wherever books are esteemed and read in freedom......
This is a reissue of Jerrold Levinson's 1990 book which gathers together the writings that made him a leading figure in contemporary aesthetics. A new introduction reflects on the essays and their influence over the last 20 years.
The present investigation has grown out of several preoccupations, some private, some professional, and others, finally, that I would call public. Private preoccupation: to say nothing of my gaze directed back now over a long life—Reflexion faite (looking back)—it is a question here of returning to a lacuna in the problematic of Time and Narrative and in Oneself as Another, where temporal e…
Besides the fact that Ethics, Education, and Eschatology all begin with the letter E readers may find the combination strange. However, the three are important themes in Calvin’s works that help to explain the development of western thought and action. Ethics is perhaps the most obvious theme to be found in his work as his first attempt at publication was on ethics; his work on Seneca’s De …
Epistemology is currently in friendly ferment, bubbling away at the heart of everyday philosophical focus. Encouragingly many epistemologists are sampling and analysing new perplexities and fresh theories. And—a welcome sign—there are even probing assessments of epistemological methodology. What will emerge from this activity? What should emerge from it? How worthwhile a philosophical legac…
Immanuel Kant’s moral theory presupposes a theory of action that has not been well understood. As a consequence, his moral theory has not been well understood, at least in parts. So this book develops an interpretation of Kant’s theory of action in order to help us better understand his moral theory.
In the last few decades philosophers have rediscovered friendship as a distinct topic of interest. Aristotle’s thought has been, justifiably, the starting point for most philosophical work on friendship, and often its focus. This renewal of philosophical interest has seldom, however, translated into interest in what Aquinas and other medieval philosophers had to say about friendship. Interest…
On 5 October 1971, I wrote a short paper on Metaphysics 1004b25–6, for a tutorial with G. E. L. Owen at Harvard. Since then I have intermittently pursued some lines of inquiry connected with that passage; the current result of them is this book. The first chapter gives a survey of its contents, and some idea of the main argument. I try to explore some connexions between different areas of Ari…
Before me is a grassy green field. A line of trees marks its far edge, which is punctuated by a spruce on its left side and a maple on its right. Birds are singing. A warm breeze brings the smell of roses from a nearby trellis. I reach for a glass of iced tea, still cold to the touch and flavored by fresh mint. I am alert, the air is clear, the scene is quiet. My perceptions are quite distinct.