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Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Western philosophy > General
This revolutionary book empowers its readers by exploring enduring,
challenging, and timely philosophical issues in new essays written
by expert women philosophers. The book will inspire and entice
these philosophers' younger counterparts, curious readers of all
genders, and all who support equity in philosophy. If asked to
envision a philosopher, people might imagine a bearded man,
probably Greek, perhaps in a toga, pontificating about abstract
ideas. Or they might think of that same man in the Enlightenment,
gripping a quill pen and pouring universal truths onto a page. They
may even call to mind a much more modern man, wearing a black
sweater and smoking a cigarette in a Paris cafe, expressing
existential angst in a new novel or essay. What people are unlikely
to picture, though, is a woman. Women have historically been
excluded from the discipline of philosophy and remain largely
marginalized in contemporary textbooks and anthologies. The
under-representation of women in secondary and post-secondary
curricula makes it harder for young women to see themselves as
future philosophers. In fact, it makes it harder for all people to
engage the valuable contributions that women have made and continue
to make to intellectual thought. While some progress has been made
in building a more inclusive world of philosophy, especially in the
last fifty years, important work remains to be done. Philosophy for
Girls helps correct the pervasive and problematic omission of women
from philosophy. Divided into four sections that connect to major,
primary fields in philosophy (metaphysics, epistemology, social and
political philosophy, and ethics), this anthology is unique:
chapters are all written by women, and each chapter opens with an
anecdote about a girl or woman from mythology, history, art,
literature, or science to introduce chapter topics. Further, nearly
all primary and secondary sources used in the chapters are written
by women philosophers. The book is written in a rigorous, academic
spirit but in lively and engaging prose, making serious
philosophical insights accessible to readers who are new to
philosophy. This book appeals to a wide audience. Individual
readers will find value in these pages-especially girls and women
ages 16-24, as well as university and high school educators and
students who want a change from standard anthologies that include
few or no women. The book's contributors both represent and map the
diverse landscape of philosophy, highlighting its engagement with
themes of gender and equity. In doing so, they encourage
philosophers current and future philosophers to explore new
territory and further develop the topography of the field.
Philosophy for Girls is a rigorous yet accessible entry-point to
philosophical contemplation designed to inspire a new generation of
philosophers.
What makes for a philosophical classic? Why do some philosophical
works persist over time, while others do not? The philosophical
canon and diversity are topics of major debate today. This
stimulating volume contains ten new essays by accomplished
philosophers writing passionately about works in the history of
philosophy that they feel were unjustly neglected or ignored-and
why they deserve greater attention. The essays cover lesser known
works by famous thinkers as well as works that were once famous but
now only faintly remembered. Works examined include Gorgias'
Encomium of Helen, Jane Adams' Women and Public Housekeeping,
W.E.B. DuBois' Whither Now and Why, Edith Stein's On the Problem of
Empathy, Jonathan Bennett's Rationality, and more. While each
chapter is an expression of engagement with an individual work, the
volume as a whole, and Eric Schliesser's introduction specifically,
address timely questions about the nature of philosophy,
disciplinary contours, and the vagaries of canon formation.
Eternity is a unique kind of existence that is supposed to belong
to the most real being or beings. It is an existence that is not
shaken by the common wear and tear of time. Over the two and half
millennia history of Western philosophy we find various conceptions
of eternity, yet one sharp distinction between two notions of
eternity seems to run throughout this long history: eternity as
timeless existence, as opposed to eternity as existence in all
times. Both kinds of existence stand in sharp contrast to the
coming in and out of existence of ordinary beings, like hippos,
humans, and toothbrushes: were these eternally-timeless, for
example, a hippo could not eat, a human could not think or laugh,
and a toothbrush would be of no use. Were a hippo an
eternal-everlasting creature, it would not have to bother itself
with nutrition in order to extend its existence. Everlasting human
beings might appear similar to us, but their mental life and
patterns of behavior would most likely be very different from ours.
The distinction between eternity as timelessness and eternity as
everlastingness goes back to ancient philosophy, to the works of
Plato and Aristotle, and even to the fragments of Parmenides'
philosophical poem. In the twentieth century, it seemed to go out
of favor, though one could consider as eternalists those proponents
of realism in philosophy of mathematics, and those of timeless
propositions in philosophy of language (i.e., propositions that are
said to exist independently of the uttered sentences that convey
their thought-content). However, recent developments in
contemporary physics and its philosophy have provided an impetus to
revive notions of eternity due to the view that time and duration
might have no place in the most fundamental ontology. The
importance of eternity is not limited to strictly philosophical
discussions. It is a notion that also has an important role in
traditional Biblical interpretation. The Tetragrammaton, the Hebrew
name of God considered to be most sacred, is derived from the
Hebrew verb for being, and as a result has been traditionally
interpreted as denoting eternal existence (in either one of the two
senses of eternity). Hence, Calvin translates the Tetragrammaton as
'l'Eternel', and Mendelssohn as 'das ewige Wesen' or 'der Ewige'.
Eternity also plays a central role in contemporary South American
fiction, especially in the works of J.L. Borges. The representation
of eternity poses a major challenge to both literature and arts
(just think about the difficulty of representing eternity in music,
a thoroughly temporal art). The current volume aims at providing a
history of the philosophy of eternity surrounded by a series of
short essays, or reflections, on the role of eternity and its
representation in literature, religion, language, liturgy, science,
and music. Thus, our aim is to provide a history of philosophy as a
discipline that is in constant commerce with various other domains
of human inquisition and exploration.
Our modern-day word for sympathy is derived from the classical
Greek word for fellow-feeling. Both in the vernacular as well as in
the various specialist literatures within philosophy, psychology,
neuroscience, economics, and history, "sympathy" and "empathy" are
routinely conflated. In practice, they are also used to refer to a
large variety of complex, all-too-familiar social phenomena: for
example, simultaneous yawning or the giggles. Moreover, sympathy is
invoked to address problems associated with social dislocation and
political conflict. It is, then, turned into a vehicle toward
generating harmony among otherwise isolated individuals and a way
for them to fit into a larger whole, be it society and the
universe. This volume offers a historical overview of some of the
most significant attempts to come to grips with sympathy in Western
thought from Plato to experimental economics. The contributors are
leading scholars in philosophy, classics, history, economics,
comparative literature, and political science. Sympathy is
originally developed in Stoic thought. It was also taken up by
Plotinus and Galen. There are original contributed chapters on each
of these historical moments. Use for the concept was re-discovered
in the Renaissance. And the volume has original chapters not just
on medical and philosophical Renaissance interest in sympathy, but
also on the role of antipathy in Shakespeare and the significance
of sympathy in music theory. Inspired by the influence of Spinoza,
sympathy plays a central role in the great moral psychologies of,
say, Anne Conway, Leibniz, Hume, Adam Smith, and Sophie De Grouchy
during the eighteenth century. The volume should offers an
introduction to key background concept that is often overlooked in
many of the most important philosophies of the early modern period.
About a century ago the idea of Einfuhlung (or empathy) was
developed in theoretical philosophy, then applied in practical
philosophy and the newly emerging scientific disciplines of
psychology. Moreover, recent economists have rediscovered sympathy
in part experimentally and, in part by careful re-reading of the
classics of the field.
The idea of the pre-existence of the soul has been extremely
important, widespread, and persistent throughout Western
history--from even before the philosophy of Plato to the poetry of
Robert Frost. When Souls Had Wings offers the first systematic
history of this little explored feature of Western culture.
Terryl Givens describes the tradition of pre-existence as
"pre-heaven"--the place where unborn souls wait until they descend
to earth to be born. And typically it is seen as a descent--a
falling away from a happier and untroubled state into the turbulent
and sinful world we know. The title of the book refers to the idea
put forward in antiquity that our souls begin with wings, and that
only after shedding those wings do we fall to earth. The book not
only traces the history of the idea of pre-existence, but also
captures its meaning for those who have embraced it. Givens
describes how pre-existence has been invoked to explain "the better
angels of our nature," including the human yearning for
transcendence and the sublime. Pre-existence has been said to
account for why we know what we should not know, whether in the
form of a Greek slave's grasp of mathematics, the moral sense
common to humanity, or the human ability to recognize universals.
The belief has explained human bonds that seem to have their own
mysterious prehistory, salved the wounded sensibility of a host of
thinkers who could not otherwise account for the unevenly
distributed pain and suffering that are humanity's common lot, and
has been posited by philosophers and theologians alike to salvage
the principle of human freedom and accountability.
When Souls had Wings underscores how durable (and controversial)
this idea has been throughout the history of Western thought, the
theological dangers it has represented, and how prominently it has
featured in poetry, literature, and art.
Kant's discussion of the relations between cognition and
self-consciousness lie at the heart of the Critique of Pure Reason,
in the celebrated transcendental deduction. Although this section
of Kant's masterpiece is widely believed to contain important
insights into cognition and self-consciousness, it has long been
viewed as unusually obscure. Many philosophers have tried to avoid
the transcendental psychology that Kant employed. By contrast,
Patricia Kitcher follows Kant's careful delineation of the
necessary conditions for knowledge and his intricate argument that
knowledge requires self-consciousness. She argues that far from
being an exercise in armchair psychology, the thesis that thinkers
must be aware of the connections among their mental states offers
an astute analysis of the requirements of rational thought.
The book opens by situating Kant's theories in the then
contemporary debates about "apperception," personal identity and
the relations between object cognition and self-consciousness.
After laying out Kant's argument that the distinctive kind of
knowledge that humans have requires a unified self- consciousness,
Kitcher considers the implications of his theory for current
problems in the philosophy of mind. If Kant is right that rational
cognition requires acts of thought that are at least implicitly
conscious, then theories of consciousness face a second "hard
problem" beyond the familiar difficulties with the qualities of
sensations. How is conscious reasoning to be understood? Kitcher
shows that current accounts of the self-ascription of belief have
great trouble in explaining the case where subjects know their
reasons for the belief. She presents a "new" Kantian approach to
handling this problem. In this way, the book reveals Kant as a
thinker of great relevance to contemporary philosophy, one whose
allegedly obscure achievements provide solutions to problems that
are still with us.
The Oxford Handbook of German Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century
is the first collective critical study of this important period in
intellectual history. The volume is divided into four parts. The
first part explores individual philosophers, including Fichte,
Hegel, Schopenhauer, Marx, and Nietzsche, amongst other great
thinkers of the period. The second addresses key philosophical
movements: Idealism, Romanticism, Neo-Kantianism, and
Existentialism. The essays in the third part engage with different
areas of philosophy that received particular attention at this
time, including philosophy of nature, philosophy of mind,
philosophy of language, philosophy of history, and hermeneutics.
Finally, the contributors turn to discuss central philosophical
topics, from skepticism to mat-erialism, from dialectics to ideas
of historical and cultural Otherness, and from the reception of
antiquity to atheism. Written by a team of leading experts, this
Handbook will be an essential resource for anyone working in the
area and will lead the direction of future research.
Embodiment-defined as having, being in, or being associated with a
body-is a feature of the existence of many entities, perhaps even
of all entities. Why entities should find themselves in this
condition is the central concern of the present volume. The problem
includes, but also goes beyond, the philosophical problem of body:
that is, what the essence of a body is, and how, if at all, it
differs from matter. On some understandings there may exist bodies,
such as stones or asteroids, that are not the bodies of any
particular subjects. To speak of embodiment by contrast is always
to speak of a subject that variously inhabits, or captains, or is
coextensive with, or even is imprisoned within, a body. The subject
may in the end be identical to, or an emergent product of, the
body. That is, a materialist account of embodied subjects may be
the correct one. But insofar as there is a philosophical problem of
embodiment, the identity of the embodied subject with the body
stands in need of an argument and cannot simply be assumed. The
reasons, nature, and consequences of the embodiment of subjects as
conceived in the long history of philosophy in Europe as well as in
the broader Mediterranean region and in South and East Asia, with
forays into religion, art, medicine, and other domains of culture,
form the focus of these essays. More precisely, the contributors to
this volume shine light on a number of questions that have driven
reflection on embodiment throughout the history of philosophy. What
is the historical and conceptual relationship between the idea of
embodiment and the idea of subjecthood? Am I who I am principally
in virtue of the fact that I have the body I have? Relatedly, what
is the relationship of embodiment to being and to individuality? Is
embodiment a necessary condition of being? Of being an individual?
What are the theological dimensions of embodiment? To what extent
has the concept of embodiment been deployed in the history of
philosophy to contrast the created world with the state of
existence enjoyed by God? What are the normative dimensions of
theories of embodiment? To what extent is the problem of embodiment
a distinctly western preoccupation? Is it the result of a
particular local and contingent history, or does it impose itself
as a universal problem, wherever and whenever human beings begin to
reflect on the conditions of their existence? Ultimately, to what
extent can natural science help us to resolve philosophical
questions about embodiment, many of which are vastly older than the
particular scientific research programs we now believe to hold the
greatest promise for revealing to us the bodily basis, or the
ultimate physical causes, of who we really are?
This is the first of two volumes of the only English edition of
Hegel's Aesthetics, the work in which he gives full expression to
his seminal theory of art. The substantial Introduction is his best
exposition of his general philosophy of art. In Part I he considers
the general nature of art as a spiritual experience, distinguishes
the beauty of art and the beauty of nature, and examines artistic
genius and originality. Part II surveys the history of art from the
ancient world through to the end of the eighteenth century, probing
the meaning and significance of major works. Part III (in the
second volume) deals individually with architecture, sculpture,
painting, music, and literature; a rich array of examples makes
vivid his exposition of his theory.
First published in France in 1987, this book provides a definitive
account of how to read and interpret Nietzsche, given that it is
the work of Nietzsche himself that has so fundamentally changed our
understanding of what "reading" and "interpreting" mean. The book's
title points to the two central questions raised by Nietzsche: how
culture is formed and how culture forms us; and the extent to which
we are more body than spirit.
We live in an age of growing dissatisfaction with the standard
operations of representative democracy. The solution, according to
a long radical democratic tradition, is the unmediated power of the
people. Mass plebiscites and mass protest movements are celebrated
as the quintessential expression of popular power, and this power
promises to transcend ordinary institutional politics. But the
outcomes of mass political phenomena can be just as disappointing
as the ordinary politics they sought to overcome, breeding
skepticism about democratic politics in all its forms. Potentia
argues that the very meaning of popular power needs to be
rethought. It offers a detailed study of the political philosophies
of Thomas Hobbes and Benedict de Spinoza, focusing on their concept
of power as potentia, concrete power, rather than power as
potestas, authorized power. Specifically, the book's argument turns
on a new interpretation of potentia as a capacity that is
dynamically constituted in a web of actual human relations. This
means that a group's potentia reflects any hostility or hierarchy
present in the relations between its members. There is nothing
spontaneously egalitarian or good about human collective existence;
a group's power deserves to be called popular only if it avoids
oligarchy and instead durably establishes its members' equality.
Where radical democrats interpret Hobbes' "sleeping sovereign" or
Spinoza's "multitude" as the classic formulations of unmediated
popular power, Sandra Leonie Field argues that for both Hobbes and
Spinoza, conscious institutional design is required in order for
true popular power to be achieved. Between Hobbes' commitment to
repressing private power and Spinoza's exploration of civic
strengthening, Field draws on early modern understandings of
popular power to provide a new lens for thinking about the risks
and promise of democracy.
Sanchez and Sanchez have selected, edited, translated, and
introduced some of the most influential texts in Mexican
philosophy, which constitute a unique and robust tradition that
will challenge and complicate traditional conceptions of
philosophy. The texts collected here are organized chronologically
and represent a period of Mexican thought and culture that emerged
from the Mexican Revolution of 1910 and which culminated in la
filosofia de lo mexicano (the philosophy of Mexicanness). Though
the selections reflect on a variety of philosophical questions,
collectively they represent a growing tendency to take seriously
the question of Mexican national identity as a philosophical
question-especially given the complexities of Mexico's indigenous
and European ancestries, a history of colonialism, and a growing
dependency on foreign money and culture. More than an attempt to
describe the national character, however, the texts gathered here
represent an optimistic period in Mexican philosophy that aimed to
affirm Mexican culture and philosophy as a valuable, if not urgent,
contribution to universal culture.
"God Crucified" and Other Essays on the New Testament's Christology
of Divine Identity The basic thesis of this important book on New
Testament Christology, sketched in the first essay 'God Crucified,
is that the worship of Jesus as God was seen by the early
Christians as compatible with their Jewish monotheism. Jesus was
thought to participate in the divine identity of the one God of
Israel. The other chapters provide more detailed support for, and
an expansion of, this basic thesis. Readers will find not only the
full text of Bauckham's classic book God Crucified, but also
groundbreaking essays, some of which have never been published
previously
This is the first of three volumes which will contain all of
Locke's extant philosophical writings relating to An Essay
Concerning Human Understanding, not included in other Clarendon
editions like the Correspondence. It contains the earliest known
drafts of the Essay, Drafts A and B, both written in 1671, and
provides for the first time an accurate version of Locke's text.
Virtually all his changes are recorded in footnotes on each page.
Peter Nidditch, whose highly acclaimed edition of An Essay
Concerning Human Understanding was published in this series in
1975, used pioneering editorial techniques in his compilation of
Volume 1. Most of the work was completed before his tragically
early death in 1983. Volumes 2 and 3, almost wholly the work of G.
A. J. Rogers will contain the third extant draft of the Essay
(Draft C), the Epitome and the Conduct of the Understanding. They
will also include a History of the Writing of the Essay, together
with other shorter writings by Locke.
This book publishes, for the first time in decades, and in many
cases, for the first time in a readily accessible edition, English
language philosophical literature written in India during the
period of British rule. Bhushan's and Garfield's own essays on the
work of this period contextualize the philosophical essays
collected and connect them to broader intellectual, artistic and
political movements in India. This volume yields a new
understanding of cosmopolitan consciousness in a colonial context,
of the intellectual agency of colonial academic communities, and of
the roots of cross-cultural philosophy as it is practiced today. It
transforms the canon of global philosophy, presenting for the first
time a usable collection and a systematic study of Anglophone
Indian philosophy.
Many historians of Indian philosophy see a radical disjuncture
between traditional Indian philosophy and contemporary Indian
academic philosophy that has abandoned its roots amid
globalization. This volume provides a corrective to this common
view. The literature collected and studied in this volume is at the
same time Indian and global, demonstrating that the colonial Indian
philosophical communities were important participants in global
dialogues, and revealing the roots of contemporary Indian
philosophical thought.
The scholars whose work is published here will be unfamiliar to
many contemporary philosophers. But the reader will discover that
their work is creative, exciting, and original, and introduces
distinctive voices into global conversations. These were the
teachers who trained the best Indian scholars of the
post-Independence period. They engaged creatively both with the
classical Indian tradition and with the philosophy of the West,
forging a new Indian philosophical idiom to which contemporary
Indian and global philosophy are indebted.
It's a belief that unites the left and right, psychologists and philosophers, writers and historians. It drives the headlines that surround us and the laws that touch our lives. From Machiavelli to Hobbes, Freud to Dawkins, the roots of this belief have sunk deep into Western thought. Human beings, we're taught, are by nature selfish and governed by self-interest.
Humankind makes a new argument: that it is realistic, as well as revolutionary, to assume that people are good. By thinking the worst of others, we bring out the worst in our politics and economics too.
In this major book, internationally bestselling author Rutger Bregman takes some of the world's most famous studies and events and reframes them, providing a new perspective on the last 200,000 years of human history. From the real-life Lord of the Flies to the Blitz, a Siberian fox farm to an infamous New York murder, Stanley Milgram's Yale shock machine to the Stanford prison experiment, Bregman shows how believing in human kindness and altruism can be a new way to think - and act as the foundation for achieving true change in our society.
It is time for a new view of human nature.
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