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Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Western philosophy > General
Grant ackowledges that Christian theology owes much to the philosophy of the classical world, but he believes the remarkable tenacity of Christian inspiration resulted from the revelation of the Trinity. From the philosophical background of Christian doctrine, especially Middle Platonism and the writings of Numenius of Apamea, Grant traces the development of God the Father, Creator, and Preserver of the universe.
As the crises of capitalism continue to intensify, radical thinkers must conjure realistic and inspirational alternative futures beyond this failing social order. This book presents a stimulating array of essays exploring such post-capitalist futures. With contributions and perspectives from the Global North and Global South, central topics include ecosocialism, ecofeminism, degrowth, community economies, and the Green New Deal. There are also chapters offering analyses of land, energy, technology, universal basic services, and (re)localisation of economies. The book is in three parts. The first presents various alternative paradigms for thinking about - and working toward - post-capitalist futures. The second section offers perspectives on alternative governance strategies and approaches for post-capitalist futures. The closing section gathers various analyses of post-capitalist geographies and resistance. Going beyond critique and instead envisioning alternative imaginaries, this collection should challenge and inspire readers to think and act upon the range of possibilities immanent in our crisis-ridden present.
This book suggests that applied linguistics research is inherently concerned with complexity, emergence and causality, and because of this it also requires a robust social ontology. The book identifies and unpacks a range of conceptual issues in applied linguistics from a social realist perspective, and provides a critique of successionism and interpretivism as two dominant and enduring empiricist tendencies in the field. From this critique, it considers the emergence of complex dynamic system theory as viable yet not entirely unproblematic conceptual sophistication of current applied linguistics research. Although the growing popularity of complex dynamic system theory is undeniable and understandable, this book argues that its integration within a social realist ontology is necessary for further developments in the field. The book will be of interest to applied linguists and social scientists interested in language-related issues including language learning and teaching, language change, language policy and planning, bilingualism/multilingualism, and language and identity.
This book presents, for the first time in English, a comprehensive anthology of essays on Christian Wolff's psychology written by leading international scholars. Christian Wolff is one of the towering figures in 18th-century Western thought. In the last decades, the publication of Wolff's Gesammelte Werke by Jean Ecole and collaborators has aroused new interest in his ideas, but the meaning, scope, and impact of his psychological program have remained open to close and comprehensive analysis and discussion. That is what this volume aims to do. This is the first volume in English completely devoted to Wolff's efforts to systematize empirical and rational psychology, against the background of his understanding of scientific method in metaphysics. Wolff thereby paved the way to the very idea of a scientific psychology. The book is divided into two parts. The first one covers the theoretical and historical meaning and scope of Wolff's psychology, both in its internal structure and in its relation to other parts of his philosophical system, such as logic, cosmology, aesthetics, or practical philosophy. The second part deals with the reception and impact of Wolff's psychology, starting with early reactions from his disciples and opponents, and moving on to Kant, Hegel, and Wundt. The Force of an Idea: New Essays on Christian Wolff's Psychology shows not only that Wolff's psychological ideas have been misinterpreted, but also that they are historically more significant than traditional wisdom has it. The book, therefore, will be of interest to historians and philosophers of science, historians of philosophy and psychology, as well as to philosophers and psychologists interested in understanding the roots of scientific psychology in 18th and 19th century German philosophy.
Contemporary French Environmental Thought in the Post-COVID-19 Era is focused on the fields of biosemiotics, linguistics, ecocriticism, and environmental ethics. Closely aligning with Sustainable Development Goal 13.1, Keith Moser's study aims to strengthen resilience to climate-related hazards by drawing on ecological theories developed by French philosophers in conversation with biosemiotic principles. Not only does the novel theoretical framework offered by biosemiotic interpretations of the universe and our place in it represent an indispensable conceptual tool for understanding the unprecedented medical challenges at the dawn of a new millennium, but it also beckons us to think harder about the environmental crisis that threatens the continued existence of all sentient beings who call the biosphere home. This book also highlights the richness, diversity, and utility of the ecological theories developed by the French philosophers Michel Serres, Edgar Morin, Jacques Derrida, Dominique Lestel, and Michel Onfray in addition to how they engage with biosemiotic principles. Taken together, the book probes the scientific, linguistic, philosophical, and ethical implications of biosemiotic theories in a post-pandemic world from an environmental and medical perspective.
This book charts an interdisciplinary narrative of literary pragmatism and creative democracy across the writings of African American women, from the works of nineteenth-century philosophers to the novels and short stories of Harlem Renaissance authors. The book argues that this critically neglected narrative forms a genealogy of black feminist intersectionality and a major contribution to the development of American pragmatism. Bringing together the philosophical writings of Maria Stewart, Anna Julia Cooper, and Mary Church Terrell and the fictional works of Jessie Fauset, Nella Larsen, and Zora Neale Hurston, this text provides a literary pragmatist study of the archetypes, tropes, settings, and modes of resistance that populate the narrative of creative democracy. Above all, this book considers how these philosophers and authors construct democracy as a lived experience that gains meaning not through state institutions but through communities founded on relationships among black women and their shared understandings of culture, knowledge, experience, and rebellion.
In this, the first full-length study of Vico's highly original autobiography, Verene discusses its place in the history of autobiography generally, and shows it to be the first work of modern intellectual autobiography which uses a genetic method. The author views the autobiography as a work in which Vico applies the principles of human history discussed in New Science, making the telling of his own life an application and verification of his own philosophy. He places Vico's autobiography within the general development of the genre, considering it in relation to Augustine's Confessions, Descartes's Discourse, and Rousseau's Confessions. The author shows Vico to be not only the founder of the philosophy of history, but also the originator of a philosophical art of self-narrative which is the response by a modern thinker to the ancient problem of self-knowledge.
Mainstream and Formal Epistemology provides the first, easily accessible, yet erudite and original analysis of the meeting point between mainstream and formal theories of knowledge. These two strands of thinking have traditionally proceeded in isolation from one another, but in this book, Vincent F. Hendricks brings them together for a systematic comparative treatment. He demonstrates how mainstream and formal epistemology may significantly benefit from one another, paving the way for a new unifying program of "plethoric" epistemology. His book will both define and further the debate between philosophers from two very different sides of the epistemological spectrum.
This book re-conceptualizes teaching through an engagement with Jean-Paul Sartre's early existentialist thought. Against the grain of teacher accountability, it turns to the demanding account of being human in Sartre's thought, on the basis of which an alternative account of teaching can be developed. It builds upon Sartre's key concepts related to the self, freedom, bad faith, and the Other, such that they might open up original ways of thinking about the practices of teaching. Indeed, given the everyday complexities that characterize teaching, as well as the vulnerabilities and uncertainty that it so often involves, this book ultimately aims to create a space in which to reimagine forms of accounting that move from technicist ways of thinking to existential sensitivity in relation to one's practice as a teacher.
This volume presents a colourful and entertaining overview of German intellectual history by a central figure in its development. Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), famous poet, journalist, and political exile, studied with Hegel and was personally acquainted with the leading figures of the most important generation of German writers and philosophers. In his groundbreaking History he discusses the history of religion, philosophy, and literature in Germany up to his time, seen through his own highly opinionated, politically aware, philosophically astute, and always ironic perspective. This work, and other writings focussing especially on Heine's rethinking of Hegel's philosophy, are presented here in a new translation by Howard Pollack-Milgate. The volume also includes an introduction by Terry Pinkard which examines Heine both in relation to Hegel and Nietzsche and as a thinker in his own right.
This book draws on recent developments in research on Ferdinand de Saussure's general linguistics to challenge the structuralist doctrine associated with the posthumous Course in General Linguistics (1916) and to develop a new philosophical interpretation of Saussure's conception of language based solely on authentic source materials. This project follows two new editorial paradigms: 1. a critical re-examination of the 1916 Course in light of the relevant sources and 2. a reclamation of the historically authentic materials from Saussure's Nachlass, some of them recently discovered. In Stawarska's book, this editorial paradigm shift serves to expose the difficulties surrounding the official Saussurean doctrine with its sets of oppositional pairings: the signifier and the signified; la langue and la parole; synchrony and diachrony. The book therefore puts pressure not only on the validity of the posthumous editorial redaction of Saussure's course in general linguistics in the Course, but also on its structuralist and post-structuralist legacy within the works of Levi-Strauss, Lacan, and Derrida. Its constructive contribution consists in reclaiming the writings from Saussure's Nachlass in the service of a linguistic phenomenology, which intersects individual expression in the present with historically sedimented social conventions. Stawarska develops such a conception of language by engaging Saussure's own reflections with relevant writings by Hegel, Husserl, Roman Jakobson, and Merleau-Ponty. Finally, she enriches her philosophical critique with a detailed historical account of the material and institutional processes that led to the ghostwriting and legitimizing the Course as official Saussurean doctrine.
Kant believed that true enlightenment is the use of reason freely in public. This book systematicaaly traces the philosophical origins and development of the idea that the improvement of human understanding requires public activity. Michael Losonsky focuses on seventeenth-century discussions of the problem of irresolution and the closely connected theme of the role of volition in human belief formation. This involves a discussion of the work of Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Spinoza and Leibniz. Challenging the traditional views of seventeenth-century philosophy and written in a lucid, non-technical language, this book will be eagerly sought out by historians of philosophy and students of the history of ideas.
This book is an important gateway through which professional analytic philosophers and their students can come to understand the significance of Hegel's philosophy for contemporary theory of action. As such it will contribute to the erosion of the sterile barrier between the continental and analytic approaches to philosophy. Michael Quante focuses on what Hegel has to say about such central concepts as action, person and will, and then brings these views to bear on contemporary debates in analytic philosophy. Crisply written, this book will thus address the common set of preoccupations of analytic philosophers of mind and action, and Hegel specialists.
In this book Dr Kelly presents the first full-length exposition and sympathetic defence of Jeremy Bentham's unique utilitarian theory of justice. He rescues Bentham's reputation from crude nineteenth- and twentieth-century caricatures, and develops a sophisticated and subtle interpretation of Bentham's moral theory which places him at the heart of the British Liberal tradition. Drawing heavily on Bentham's unpublished civil and distributive law writings, classic and recent Bentham scholarship, and contemporary work in moral and political philosophy, Dr Kelly shows how Bentham developed a moderate welfare-state liberal theory of justice with egalitarian leanings, the aim of which was to secure the material and political conditions of each citizen's pursuit of his own conception of the good life in co-operation with others. This strikingly original interpretation makes a valuable contribution to the growing literature on Bentham's legal and political thought, and develops a utilitarian theory of justice which offers much to contemporary political philosophy.
Hailed as early Christian texts as important as the Dead Sea Scrolls, yet condemned by the Vatican as Islamic heresies, the Lead books of Granada, written on discs of lead and unearthed on a Granadan hillside, weave a mysterious tale of duplicity and daring set in the religious crucible of sixteenth-century Spain. This book evaluates the cultural status and importance of these polyvalent, ambiguous artefacts which embody many of the dualities and paradoxes inherent in the racial and religious dilemmas of Early Modern Spain. Using the words of key individuals, and set against the background of conflict between Spanish Christians and Moriscos in the late fifteen-hundreds, The Lead Books of Granada tells a story of resilient resistance and creative ingenuity in the face of impossibly powerful negative forces, a resistance embodied by a small group of courageous, idealistic men who lived a double life in Granada just before the expulsion of the Moriscos.
Communism as a political movement attained global importance after the Bolsheviks toppled the Russian Czar in 1917. After that time the works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, especially the influential "Communist Manifesto (1848)", enjoyed an international audience. The world was to learn a new political vocabulary peppered with 'socialism', 'capitalism', 'the working class', 'the bourgeoisie', 'labor theory of value', 'alienation', 'economic determinism', 'dialectical materialism', and 'historical materialism'. Marx's economic analysis of history has been a powerful legacy, the effects of which continue to be felt world-wide. Serving as the foundation for Marx's indictment of capitalism is his extraordinary work titled "Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts", written in 1844 but published nearly a century later. Here Marx offers his theory of human nature and an analysis of emerging capitalism's degenerative impact on man's sense of self and his creative potential. What is man's true nature? How did capitalism gain such a foothold on Western society? What is alienation and how does it threaten to undermine the proletariat? These and other vital questions are addressed as the youthful Marx sets forth his first detailed assessment of the human condition.
The original, Dutch version of this book served in 1979 as a doctoral disserta tion in philosophy at the Free University in Amsterdam. In this preface to the - slightly revised - English translation, I wish once again to express my gratitude to my supervisors, Prof. J. van der Hoeven of the Free University and Prof. G. Nuchelmans of the University of Leiden, for their excellent and stimulating support. Professor van der Hoeven was associated with this project from the outset. It was a privilege to benefit from his incisive commentaries, especially in those instances where the objective was to break through to more fundamental insights. I shall not lightly forget his friendly and heartening encouragement. I am equally grateful for my discussions with Professor Nuchelmans. I almost always tried to follow his advice, since it was based upon awesome expertness and erudition. I am happy to have found in the person of Herbert Donald Morton, Th.M., M.A., an able and enthusiastic translator. Drs. Gerben Groenewoud made the translations of a number of the Latin citations. I acknowledge permission from Routledge and Kegan Paul and the University of Toronto Press to quote from The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill. And I thank the Netherlands Organization for the Advancement of Pure Research (Z.W.O.) for fmancing this translation."
A close analysis of the Republic s diverse literary styles shows how the peculiarities of verbal texture in Platonic discourse can be explained by Plato s remolding of tropes and techniques from poetry and the Presocratics. This book argues that Plato smuggles poetic language into the Republic s prose in order to characterize the deceitful coloration and polymorphy that accompanies the world of Becoming as opposed to the Real. Plato s distinctive discourse thus can transmit, even to those figures focused on the visual within his Republic, the shiftiness of the base and the unjust."
This book probes beneath modern scientific and sentimental concepts of the heart to discover its past mysteries. Historical hearts evidenced essential aspects of human existence that still endure in modern thought and experience of political community, psychological mentality, and physical vitality. Marjorie O'Rourke Boyle revises ordinary assumptions about the heart with original interdisciplinary research on religious beliefs and theological and philosophical ideas. Her book uncovers the thought of Aristotle, William Harvey, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and John Calvinas it relates to the heart. It analyzes Augustine's outlaw heart in cultural deviance from biblical law; Aquinas's problematic argument for the permanence of the natural law in the heart; and Calvin's advocacy for an affective heart re-created by the Spirit from its fallen nature. This book of cultural anatomies is the climax of her dozen years of publications on the heart.
Frank E. Zachos offers a comprehensive review of one of today's most important and contentious issues in biology: the species problem. After setting the stage with key background information on the topic, the book provides a brief history of species concepts from antiquity to the Modern Synthesis, followed by a discussion of the ontological status of species with a focus on the individuality thesis and potential means of reconciling it with other philosophical approaches. More than 30 different species concepts found in the literature are presented in an annotated list, and the most important ones, including the Biological, Genetic, Evolutionary and different versions of the Phylogenetic Species Concept, are discussed in more detail. Specific questions addressed include the problem of asexual and prokaryotic species, intraspecific categories like subspecies and Evolutionarily Significant Units, and a potential solution to the species problem based on a hierarchical approach that distinguishes between ontological and operational species concepts. A full chapter is dedicated to the challenge of delimiting species by means of a discrete taxonomy in a continuous world of inherently fuzzy boundaries. Further, the book outlines the practical ramifications for ecology and evolutionary biology of how we define the species category, highlighting the danger of an apples and oranges problem if what we subsume under the same name ("species") is in actuality a variety of different entities. A succinct summary chapter, glossary and annotated list of references round out the coverage, making the book essential reading for all biologists looking for an accessible introduction to the historical, philosophical and practical dimensions of the species problem.
Drury regards the political problems of the modern world to be thoroughly Biblical. In the politics of the 21st century, we find two equally arrogant and self-righteous civilizations confronting one another. Each is convinced that it is on the side of God, truth and justice, while its enemy is allied with Satan, wickedness, and barbarism. The language of diplomacy and compromise has been replaced by the language of jihad or the struggle against the cosmic forces of evil. Life is radicalized; and all choices are polarized. Politics properly understood is eclipsed. Drury urges us to transcend the Biblical view of the world. Instead, she argues in favor of a genuinely liberal, secular, and pluralistic understanding of politics.
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