This book introduces the methodology and basic concepts of Dussel's ethics of liberation. Enrique Dussel is one of the principal founders of the philosophy of liberation in Latin America. Frederick B. Mills discusses how, for Dussel, we can realize our co-responsibility for human life by responding, in accord with ethical principles, to the appeals of victims of the prevailing capital system. Mills shows how these principles, when subsumed in the political and economic fields, aim at overcoming the ongoing assault on human life and nature and provide a moral compass for forging a path to liberation. He makes the case that the study of Dussel is critical to the understanding of liberatory thought in Latin America today. This book aims to introduce the ethics of liberation to a broader audience in the Global North where Dussel's ideas are urgently relevant to progressive political and economic theory and praxis.

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Ideas of Human Nature" presents twelve of the most influential western thinkers on the topic of human nature. This updated second edition includes new chapters on Locke and Kant and a new conclusion on postmodernism. The thinkers are all examined in their historical context and their relevance to contemporary controversies is discussed.

The issues covered include perennial philosophical problems such as the connection between mind and body; life after death; the role of reason; free will and determinism; the relationship between the individual and society; and the problem of relativism.

This is a key text for anyone interested in the theories that have affected the course of human history and continue to interest and challenge us today.

The movement of German idealism culminates in the revelation of the re? ective boundaries of theoretical knowledge. The history of the most important intellectual developments thereafter could be described, following a recent remark of Jurgen Habermas, as a his- 1 tory of the de-transcendentalization of the cognizing subject. In this context, the epistemological interpretation proposed in this book must be speci? cally understood. Examining the problem of knowledge in the development of German idealism, it aims not at an epistem- ogy of the Cartesian type, and even less at a formal logical analysis of knowledge which lacks the re? ective element of the devices it employs as "the search for the immutable structures within which knowledge, 2 life, and culture must be contained. " These "structures" do not only condition the process of knowledge, they are themselves conditioned. There is thus an unsurpassable circle in this process, a circle which German idealism brings to the surface and profoundly scrutinizes. Therefore, the task is to re? ectively account for the historical horizons in which cognition arises (being ultimately thereupon dependent), instead of searching for an ultimate Archimedean point for its deduction. Rather than searching for inexplicably transc- dental concepts, this argument points to their determination from within a given Lebenswelt. It does not renounce but rather rede? nes 3 objectivity, by seeing the subject as a coming-to-know-itself totality. 1 J. Habermas, Wahrheit und Rechtfertigung. Philosophische Aufsatze (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1999), p. 186."

From bookshelves overflowing with self-help books to scholarly treatises on neurobiology to late-night infomercials that promise to make you happier, healthier, and smarter with the acquisition of just a few simple practices, the discourse of habit is a staple of contemporary culture high and low. Discussion of habit, however, tends to neglect the most fundamental questions: What is habit? Habits, we say, are hard to break. But what does it mean to break a habit? Where and how do habits take root in us? Do only humans acquire habits? What accounts for the strength or weakness of a habit? Are habits something possessed or something that possesses? We spend a lot of time thinking about our habits, but rarely do we think deeply about the nature of habit itself. Aristotle and the ancient Greeks recognized the importance of habit for the constitution of character, while readers of David Hume or American pragmatists like C.S. Peirce, William James, and John Dewey know that habit is a central component in the conceptual framework of many key figures in the history of philosophy. Less familiar are the disparate discussions of habit found in the Roman Stoics, Thomas Aquinas, Michel de Montaigne, Rene Descartes, Gilles Deleuze, French phenomenology, and contemporary Anglo-American philosophies of embodiment, race, and gender, among many others. The essays gathered in this book demonstrate that the philosophy of habit is not confined to the work of just a handful of thinkers, but traverses the entire history of Western philosophy and continues to thrive in contemporary theory. A History of Habit: From Aristotle to Bourdieu is the first of its kind to document the richness and diversity of this history. It demonstrates the breadth, flexibility, and explanatory power of the concept of habit as well as its enduring significance. It makes the case for habit's perennial attraction for philosophers, psychologists, and sociologists.

"A witty, learned, authoritative survey of philosophical thought." -The New York Times Book Review The first authoritative and accessible single-volume history of philosophy to cover both Western and Eastern traditions, from one of the world's most eminent thinkers The story of philosophy is an epic tale, spanning civilizations and continents. It explores some of the most creative minds in history. But not since the long-popular classic by Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, published in 1945, has there been a comprehensive and entertaining single-volume history of this great, intellectual, world-shaping journey. With characteristic clarity and elegance, A. C. Grayling takes the reader from the age of the Buddha, Confucius, and Socrates through Christianity's capture of the European mind, from the Renaissance and Enlightenment on to Mill, Nietzsche, Sartre and, finally, philosophy today. Surveying in tandem the great philosophical traditions of India, China, and the Persian-Arabic world, and astonishing in its range and accessibility, Grayling's The History of Philosophy is destined to be a landmark work.

In his introduction to these closely linked essays Professor Hart offers both an exposition and a critical assesment of some central issues in jurisprudence and political theory. Some of the essays touch on themes to which little attention has been paid, such as Bentham's identification of the forms of mistification protecting the law from criticism; his relation to Beccaria; and his conversion to democratic radicalism and a passionate admiration for the United States.

Bringing together scholars from literature and the history of ideas, Passions and Subjectivity in Early Modern Culture explores new ways of negotiating the boundaries between cognitive and bodily models of emotion, and between different versions of the will as active or passive. In the process, it juxtaposes the historical formation of such ideas with contemporary philosophical debates. It frames a dialogue between rhetoric and medicine, politics and religion, in order to examine the relationship between mind and body and between experience and the senses. Some chapters discuss literature, in studies of Shakespeare, Donne, and Milton; other essays concentrate on philosophical arguments, both Aristotelian and Galenic models from antiquity, and new mechanistic formations in Descartes, Hobbes and Spinoza. A powerful sense of paradox emerges in treatments of the passions in the early modern period, also reflected in new literary and philosophical forms in which inwardness was displayed, analysed and studied-the autobiography, the essay, the soliloquy-genres which rewrite the formation of subjectivity. At the same time, the frame of reference moves outwards, from the world of interior states to encounter the passions on a public stage, thus reconnecting literary study with the history of political thought. In between the abstract theory of political ideas and the inward selves of literary history, lies a field of intersections waiting to be explored. The passions, like human nature itself, are infinitely variable, and provoke both literary experimentation and philosophical imagination. Passions and Subjectivity in Early Modern Culture thus makes new connections between embodiment, selfhood and the emotions in order to suggest both new models of the self and new models for interdisciplinary history.

Promoting cultural understanding in a globalized world, this collection offers a new perspective on Western philosophy and religion through the voices of Chinese scholars. It examines the evolution of economic and political structures across the United States and the European Union, as well as key developments in various educational systems in the United Kingdom, Sweden, the US, France and Germany. As an interdisciplinary study situated at the intersection of sociology, history, culture and philosophy, this book re-examines pivotal structures and developments in Western countries and provides readers with a succinct yet effective way of mastering a deeper understanding of Western culture.

A landmark work. Mandatory reading for anyone who wants to learn to be a good skeptic.
In this widely acclaimed and highly controversial book, Paul Kurtz examines the reasons why people accept supernatural and paranormal belief systems in spite of substantial evidence to the contrary. According to the author, it is because there is within the human species a deeply rooted tendency toward magical thinking - the "transcendental temptation" - which undermines critical judgment and paves the way for willful beliefs. He explores in detail the three major monotheistic religions - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - finding striking psychological and sociological parallels between these religions, the spiritualism of the 19th century, and the paranormal belief systems of today. There are sections on mysticism, belief in the afterlife, the existence of God, reincarnation, astrology, and ufology. Kurtz also explains the nature of skepticism as an antidote to belief in the transcendental.

This book mediates between postcolonial positions that criticize Marxist approaches (and Marx's writings) for their Eurocentrism and defenders of Marx, who claim that this accusation is a myth. In different contributions to this volume, Kolja Lindner pleads for a differentiated assessment of the whole of Marx's work, including less known manuscripts, and a theoretical reconstruction of various elements that have come into the focus of postcolonial critique: ethnocentrism, Orientalism, false universalism and the oblivion of modernity's global entanglement. Against this background, two opportunities simultaneously arise: Marx's Eurocentrism can be deconstructed and his growing awareness of global developments and cosmopolitan struggles established.

This book explores Wittgenstein's long engagement with the work of the pragmatist William James. In contrast to previous discussions, Russell Goodman argues that James exerted a distinctive and pervasive positive influence on Wittgenstein's thought. He shows that both share commitments to anti-foundationalism, to the description of the concrete details of human experience, and to the priority of practice over intellect. Considering in detail what Wittgenstein learnt from his reading of William James, Goodman provides considerable evidence for Wittgenstein's claim that he is saying "something that sounds like pragmatism."

This volume comprises one of the key lecture courses leading up to the publication in 1966 of Adorno's major work, "Negative Dialectics," These lectures focus on developing the concepts critical to the introductory section of that book. They show Adorno as an embattled philosopher defining his own methodology among the prevailing trends of the time. As a critical theorist, he repudiated the worn-out Marxist stereotypes still dominant in the Soviet bloc - he specifically addresses his remarks to students who had escaped from the East in the period leading up to the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961. Influenced as he was by the empirical schools of thought he had encountered in the United States, he nevertheless continued to resist what he saw as their surrender to scientific and mathematical abstraction. However, their influence was potent enough to prevent him from reverting to the traditional idealisms still prevalent in Germany, or to their latest manifestations in the shape of the new ontology of Heidegger and his disciples. Instead, he attempts to define, perhaps more simply and fully than in the final published version, a 'negative', i.e. critical, approach to philosophy. Permeating the whole book is Adorno's sense of the overwhelming power of totalizing, dominating systems in the post-Auschwitz world. Intellectual negativity, therefore, commits him to the stubborn defence of individuals - both facts and people - who stubbornly refuse to become integrated into 'the administered world'.

These lectures reveal Adorno to be a lively and engaging lecturer. He makes serious demands on his listeners but always manages to enliven his arguments with observations on philosophers andwriters such as Proust and Brecht and comments on current events. Heavy intellectual artillery is combined with a concern for his students' progress.

Ramon Llull (1232-1316), born on Majorca, was one of the most remarkable lay intellectuals of the thirteenth century. He devoted much of his life to promoting missions among unbelievers, the reform of Western Christian society, and personal spiritual perfection. He wrote over 200 philosophical and theological works in Catalan, Latin, and Arabic. Many of these expound on his "Great Universal Art of Finding Truth," an idiosyncratic dialectical system that he thought capable of proving Catholic beliefs to non-believers.
This study offers the first full-length analysis of his theories about rhetoric and preaching, which were central to his evangelizing activities. It explains how Llull attempted to synthesize commonplace advice about courtly speech and techniques of popular sermons into a single program for secular and sacred eloquence that would necessarily promote love of God and neighbor. Llull's work is a remarkable testimony to the diffusion of clerical culture among educated lay-people of his era, and to their enthusiasm for applying that knowledge in pursuit of learning and piety. This book should find a place on the shelf of every scholar of medieval history, religion, and rhetoric.

Christos Yannaras pioneering critique of the concept of the right of the individual is presented in English for the first time. This central aspect of political theory (since Hegels Philosophy of Right) summarizes the philosophical and cultural identity of the paradigm of modernity, but the philosophical assumptions underlying the concept of right have not hitherto been subject to scrutiny. Yannaras shows that the starting-point of the concept of right is a phenomenalistic naturalism, which presupposes an abstract concept of the human subject as a fundamentally undifferentiated natural individual. The question is also explored of how the priority accorded to this concept of right is related to the contemporary crisis of the modern politico-social paradigm, while a new preface from the translator underlines the continued significance of Yannaras proposal for Anglophone readers. Against the modern concept of right with its illusion of objectivity, The Inhumanity of Right sketches out the basic lines of a political theory that prioritizes new social needs that reflect the relational character of the human person.

If the Enlightenment turned to reason to reoccupy the place left vacant by the death of God, the history of the last two centuries has undermined the confidence that reason will bind freedom and keep it responsible. We cannot escape this history, which has issued in a pervasive nihilism and has rendered all appeals to the ethical questionable. Nor could Kierkegaard. The specter of nihilism haunts all of his writings, as it haunts already German romanticism, to which he is so indebted. To exorcize it is his most fundamental concern. And it is the same fundamentally religious concern that makes Kierkegaard so relevant to our situation: What today is to make life meaningful? If not reason, does the turn to the aesthetic promise an answer? To really choose is to bind freedom. Either-Or calls us to make such a choice, i.e. to be authentic. But what does it mean to be authentic? How are we today to think of such an authentic choice? As autonomous action? As a blind leap? As a leap of faith? Either/Or circles around these questions.

The intellectual relationship between Henry James and his father proved to be an influential resource for the novelist. Andrew Taylor examines the nature of both men's engagement with autobiographical strategies, issues of gender reform, and the language of religion. He argues for a reading of Henry James that is informed by an awareness of paternal inheritance. Through the study of a wide range of novels and texts, he demonstrates how James Senior's dialogue with his contemporaries, such as Emerson and Whitman, anticipates James's own theories of fiction and selfhood.

This is by far the most exhaustive biography on Niels Stensen, anatomist, geologist and bishop, better known as "Nicolaus Steno". We learn about the scientist's family and background in Lutheran Denmark, of his teachers at home and abroad, of his studies and travels in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy, Austria, Hungary, Bohemia and Germany, of his many pioneering achievements in anatomy and geology, of his encounters with Swammerdam, Malpighi and with members of the newly established Royal Society of London and the Accademia del Cimento in Florence, and with the philosopher Spinoza. It further treats Stensen's religious conversion. The book includes the full set of Steno's anatomical and geological scientific papers in original language. The editors thoroughly translated the original Latin text to English, and included numerous footnotes on the background of this bibliographic and scientific treasure from the 17th century.

Distinguished scholars--Jurgen Habermas, Claus Offe, Douglas Kellner, and Martin Jay, among others--draw upon historical, theoretical, and biographical information to assess Marcuse's philosophy, from its grounding in classical German idealism, through the break with Heidegger, to his role in the American counterculture of the sixties and seventies. Indispensable for anyone interested in an in-depth understanding of one of the most burning issues of our time: the relation of critical theory to social action.

Presenting the history of an unexplored yet significant institution in East Germany, this book analyses the development of the Parteihochschule Karl Marx (PHS), a training institute for Communist party officials and members of the functional elite. By chronicling the PHS from its establishment in 1946, the author demonstrates how it sought to implement Stalin's rule, and sheds light on the activities of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) in the German Democratic Republic. The book focuses on the leadership of Walter Ulbricht and Erich Honecker as First Secretary and General Secretary of the SED respectively, and examines key personalities within the PHS. The activities of party functionaries under the rule of Hanna Wolf and Kurt Tiedke are scrutinised, revealing the dogmatic nature of the East German regime. An essential read for anyone interested in German history and East European Communism, this book brings to light one of the key institutions in implementing Stalinism and Marxism-Leninism in the German Democratic Republic.

Ward's book focuses on the work of the Hungarian philosopher Agnes Heller; prominent member of the Budapest School, a group of students who studied under the Marxist social theorist Gyoergy Lukacs. For both Marx and Heller (albeit in different ways) dissatisfaction emerges as the inevitable result of the expansion of need(s) within modernity and as a catalyst for the development of anthropological wealth (what Marx refers to as the 'human being rich in need'). Ward argues that dissatisfaction and the corresponding category of human wealth-as both motif and method-is central to grasping Heller's seemingly disparate writings. While Marx postulates a radical overcoming of dissatisfaction, Heller argues dissatisfaction is integral not only to the on-going survival of modernity but also to the dynamics of both freedom and individual life. In this way Heller's work remains committed to a position that both continually returns and departs, is both with and against, the philosophy of Marx. This book will be of interest to scholars of political philosophy, social theory, critical theory, and sociology.

This important new book argues that Henry James' fiction reveals a sophisticated theory of moral understanding and moral motivation. The claim is that James is engaged in a distinctive kind of original thinking and reflecting on modern moral life in his novels and short stories. The book offers important new interpretations of many novels as well as several short stories. It is written by one of the pre-eminent interpreters of the modern European philosophical tradition and will interest philosophers as well as literary critics. Moreover, the style is completely non-technical, with no reliance on contemporary literary or philosophical theory, and will therefore be accessible to students and general readers.

Wittgenstein is one of the most important and influential twentieth-century philosophers in the western tradition. In his Philosophical Investigations he undertakes a radical critique of analytical philosophy's approach to both the philosophy of language and the philosophy of mind. The Routledge Guidebook to Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations introduces and assesses: Wittgenstein's life The principal ideas of the Philosophical Investigations Some of the principal disputes concerning the interpretation of his work Wittgenstein's philosophical method and its connection with the form of the text. With further reading included throughout, this guidebook is essential reading for all students of philosophy, and all those wishing to get to grips with this masterpiece.

This is the first comprehensive study of the ethics of G. E. Moore, the most important English-speaking ethicist of the 20th century. Moore's ethical project, set out in his seminal text the Principia Ethica is to preserve common moral insight from skepticism and, in effect, persuade his readers to accept the objective character of goodness. Brian Hutchinson explores Moore's arguments in detail, showing Moore's ethical work to be much richer and more sophisticated than his critics have acknowledged.

The book aims to provide a process-philosophical perspective philosophizing itself. It employs the perspectives of process philosophy for elucidating the historical development of philosophical ideas. The doctrine of historicism in the history of ideas has it that each era and perhaps even each thinker employs philosophical ideas in such a user-idiosyncratic way that there is no continuity and indeed no connectivity of public access across the divides of space, time, and culture. In opposition to such a view, the present processist deliberations see the development of ideas as a matter of generic processes that have ample room for connectivity and recurrence, permitting the very self-same conception to be shared by philosophers of different settings. Beyond arguing this histico-processism on general principles, the book presents a series of case studies of significant philosophical topics that illustrate and elaborate upon the developmental connectivities at issue.

The present book contextualizes Du Chatelet's contribution to the philosophy of her time. The editor offers this tribute to an Epoque Emiliennee as a collection of innovative papers on Emilie Du Chatelet's powerful philosophy and legacy. Du Chatelet was an outstanding figure in the era she lived in. Her work and achievements were unique, though not an exception in the 18th century, which did not lack outstanding women. Her personal intellectual education, her scholarly network and her mental acumen were celebrated in her time, perceiving her to have "multiplied nine figures by nine figures in her head". She was able to gain access to institutions which were normally denied to women. To call an epoch an Epoque Emilienne may be seen as daring and audacious, but it will not be the last time if we continue to bring women philosophers back into the memory of the history of philosophy. The contributors paid attention to the philosophical state of the art, which forms the background to Du Chatelet's philosophy. They follow the transformation of philosophical concepts under her pen and retrace the impact of her ideas. The book is of interest to scholars working in the history of philosophy as well as in gender studies. It is of special interest for scholars working on the 18th century, Kant, Leibniz, Wolff, Newton and the European Enlightenment.