Discover for yourself the pleasures of philosophy! Written both for the seasoned student of philosophy as well as the general reader, the renowned writer Roger Scruton provides a survey of modern philosophy. Always engaging, Scruton takes us on a fascinating tour of the subject, from founding father Descartes to the most important and famous philosopher of the twentieth century, Ludwig Wittgenstein. He identifies all the principal figures and outlines the main intellectual preoccupations that have informed western philosophy. Painting a portrait of modern philosophy that is vivid and animated, Scruton introduces us to some of the greatest philosophical problems invented in this period and pursued ever since. Including material on recent debates, A Short History of Modern Philosophy is already established as the classic introduction. Read it and find out why.

"The Future of Hegel "is one of the most important recent books on Hegel, a philosopher who has had a crucial impact on the shape of continental philosophy. Published here in English for the first time, it includes a substantial preface by Jacques Derrida in which he explores the themes and conclusions of Malabou's book.
"The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality and Dialectic" restores Hegel's rich and complex concepts of time and temporality to contemporary philosophy. It examines Hegel's concept of time, relating it to perennial topics in philosophy such as substance, accident and the identity of the subject. Catherine Malabou also contrasts her account of Hegelian temporality with the interpretation given by Heidegger in "Being and Time," arguing that it is the concept of "plasticity" that best describes Hegel's theory of temporality. The future is understood not simply as a moment in time, but as something malleable and constantly open to change through our interpretation.
"The Future of Hegel "also develops Hegel's preoccupation with the history of Greek thought and Christianity and explores the role of theology in Hegel's thought.
Essential reading for those interested in Hegel and contemporary continental philosophy, "The Future of Hegel "will also be fascinating to those interested in the ideas of Heidegger and Derrida.

The history of modern philosophy is a major topic in philosophy and is crucial to an understanding of the advent of feminist philosophy. "Feminism and Modern Philosophy" introduces fundamental topics in modern philosophy from a feminist perspective. It takes the student through the subject step by step by looking at the main thinkers most usually examined on a course in modern philosophy and by examining the role of gender in studying classic philosophical texts.
The book covers the following structure looking at the ideas and work of the important thinkers in this period:
* Rereading the canon
* The attack on modernist philosophical reason
* The nature of "Man"
* The search for male allies
* Discovering women philosophers
* Are there universal philosophical truths?
* The function of history within the discipline of philosophy
Each chapter looks closely at the way in which the traditional philosophical canon has been re-interpreted by feminist theory and examines the implications for our interpretation of specific texts. It looks at, for example:
* A feminist critique of Cartesian rationalism
* The implications of Locke's state of nature for the idea of the family
* An appreciation of Hume's unique "collaboration" with Annette Baier
Chapters close with a summary and the book contains an extensive annotated bibliography.
Andrea Nye's style is student friendly and will be ideal for anyone coming to the topic for the first time. It will be appropriate for philosophy as well as gender studies courses looking at the development of modern Western thought.

Paul Ricoeur is one of the giants of contemporary continental philosophy and one of the most enduring and wide-ranging thinkers in the twentieth century, publishing major works ranging from existentialism and phenomenology to psychoanalysis, politics, religion and the theory of language. Richard Kearney offers a critical engagement with the work of Ricoeur, beginning with a general introduction to his hermeneutic philosophy. Part one explores some of the main themes in Ricouer's thought under six headings: phenomenology and hermeneutics; language and imagination; myth and tradition; ideology and utopia; evil and alterity; poetics and ethics. The second part comprises five dialogical exchanges which Kearney has conducted with Ricoeur over the last three decades (1977-2003), charting and explaining his intellectual itinerary. This book is aimed at a broad student readership as well as the general intelligent reader interested in knowing more about one of the most enduring major figures in contemporary continental philosophy.

Nietzsche and Science explores the German philosopher's response to the extraordinary cultural impact of the natural sciences in the late nineteenth century. It argues that the science of his day exerted a powerful influence on his thought and provided an important framework within which he articulated his ideas. The first part of the book investigates Nietzsche's knowledge and understanding of specific disciplines and the influence of particular scientists on Nietzsche's thought. The second part examines how Nietzsche actually incorporated various scientific ideas, concepts and theories into his philosophy, the ways in which he exploited his reading to frame his writings, and the relationship between his understanding of science and other key themes of his thought, such as art, rhetoric and the nature of philosophy itself.

This volume presents eighty-nine letters exchanged between John Stuart Mill and Auguste Comte between 1841 and 1847. They address important issues of the mid-nineteenth century in philosophy, science, economics, and politics. Cumulatively, these letters provide a humanistic view of Western Europe and its social problems. They add valuable perspective to what we know about the work of Mill and Comte, in a critical period of English and French thought. The correspondence begins with an admiring letter from Mill who considers himself a positivist at the tune and writes to Comte as to an elder colleague. A close friendship developed, in the course of which they discussed matters of common concern. Their understanding extends to personal experiences, including their respective mental crises at an early age. The opinions expressed about their contemporaries are significant and include comments on Thomas Carlyle, John and Sarah Austin, and Alexander Bain, on philosophers and major authors in France, Germany, and Italy. Mill and Comte eventually encountered issues on which they could not come to consensus, especially the equality of women. While Mill was an ardent defender of women's rights, Comte supported the traditional hierarchy that endowed men with social and political superiority. According to Jerome H. Buckley, Gurner Professor of English Literature Emeritus at Harvard University, "The correspondence of Mill and Comte, now available for the first time in English translation, is a remarkable intellectual exchange, a dialogue of real significance in the history of ideas." This volume will be of great interest to philosophers, historians, economists, women's studies scholars, and political scientists.

Mary Midgley argues in her powerful new book that far from being the opposite of science, myth is a central part of it. In brilliant prose, she claims that myths are neither lies nor mere stories but a network of powerful symbols that suggest particular ways of interpreting the world.

Using Phillipe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy's groundbreaking study of the persistence of German Idealist philosophy as his starting point, Justin Clemens presents a valuable study of the links between Romanticism and contemporary theory. The central contention of this book is that contemporary theory is still essentially Romantic - despite all its declarations to the contrary, and despite all its attempts to elude or exceed the limits bequeathed it by Romantic thought. The argument focuses on the ruses of 'Romanticism's indefinable character' under two main rubrics, 'Contexts' and 'Interventions'. The first three chapters investigate 'Contexts', examining some of the broad trends in the historical and institutional development of Romantic criticism; the second section, 'Interventions', comprises close readings of the work of Jacques Lacan, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Ian Hunter and Alain Badiou. In the first chapter Clemens identifies and traces the development of two interlocking recurrent themes in Romantic criticism: the Romantic desire to escape Romanticism, and the problem posed to aesthetico-philosophical thought by the modern domiciliation of philosophy in the university. He develops these themes in the second chapter by examining the link forged between aesthetics and the subject in the work of Immanuel Kant. In the third chapter, Clemens shows how the Romantic problems of the academic institution and aesthetics were effectively bound together by the philosophical diagnosis of nihilism. Chapter Four focuses on two key moments in the work of Jacques Lacan - his theory of the 'mirror stage' and his 'formulas of sexuation' - and demonstrates how Lacan returns to the grounding claims of Kantian aesthetics in such a way as to render him complicit with the Romantic thought he often seems to contest. In the following chapter, taking Deleuze and Guattari's notion of 'multiplicity' as a guiding thread, Clemens links their account to their professed 'anti-Platonism', showing how they find themselves forced back onto emblematically Romantic arguments. Chapter Six provides a close reading of Sedgwick's most influential text, Epistemology of the Closet. Clemens' reading localizes her practice both in the newly consolidated academic field of 'Queer Theory' and in a conceptual genealogy whose roots can be traced back to a particular anti-Enlightenment strain of Romanticism. Clemens next turns to the professedly anti-Romantic arguments of Ian Hunter, a major figure in the ongoing re-writing of modern histories of education. In the final chapter he examines the work of the contemporary French philosopher Alain Badiou. Clemens argues that, if Badiou's hostility to the diagnosis of nihilism, his return to Plato and mathematics, and his expulsion of poetry from philosophical method, all place him at a genuine distance from dominant Romantic trends, even this attempt admits ciphered Romantic elements. This study will be of interest to literary theorists, philosophers, political theorists, and cultural studies scholars.

The Literary Wittgenstein is a stellar collection of articles relating the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) to core problems in the theory and philosophy of literature. Amid growing recognition that Wittgenstein's philosophy has important implications for literary studies, this book brings together twenty-one articles by the most prominent figures in the field. Eighteen of the articles are published here for the first time. The Literary Wittgenstein applies the approach of Wittgenstein to core areas of literary theory, including poetry, deconstruction, the ethical value of literature, and the nature and logic of fictional discourse. The literary dimension of Wittgenstein's own writings is also explored, such as the authorial strategy of the Tractatus, and writing and method in the Philosophical Investigations. Major literary figures discussed in the book include William Faulkner, Joseph Conrad, and Friedrich Hoelderlin. By mapping out the foundations of a new approach to literature, The Literary Wittgenstein is essential reading for anyone interested in the relevance and application of Wittgenstein's thought to literary theory, aesthetics, and the philosophy of language and logic.

Naturalization of the Soul charts the development of the concepts of soul and self in Western thought, from Plato to the present. It fills an important gap in intellectual history by being the first book to emphasize the enormous intellectual transformation in the eighteenth century, when the religious 'soul' was replaced first by a philosophical 'self' and then by a scientific 'mind'. The authors show that many supposedly contemporary theories of the self were actually discussed in the eighteenth century, and recognize the status of William Hazlitt as one of the most important Personal Identity theorists of the British Enlightenment, for his direct relevance to contemporary thinking.
Now available in paperback, Naturaliazation of the Soul is essential reading for anyone interested in the issues at the core of the Western philosophical tradition.

Contents:
1. Prehistoric Greek Ethics 2. Classical Greek Ethics 3. Hellenistic Ethics 4. Roman Ethics 5. Early Medieval Ethics 6. Later Medieval Ethics 7. Renaissance Ethics 8. Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Ethics 9. Nineteenth-Century British Ethics 8. Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Ethics 9. Nineteenth-Century British Ethics 10. Nineteenth-Centruy Continental Ethics 11. Twentieth-Century Continental Ethics, Part 1 12. Twentieth-Century Continental Ethics, Part 2 13. Twentieth-Century Anglo-American Ethics

Since the seventeenth century, concern in the Western world for the welfare of the individual has been articulated philosophically most often as a concern for his rights. The modern conception of individual rights resulted from abandonment of ancient, value-laced ideas of nature and their replacement by the modern, mathematically transparent idea of nature that has room only for individuals, often in conflict. In "A Philosophical History of Rights," Gary B. Herbert traces the historical evolution of the concept and the transformation of the problems through which the concept is defined. The volume examines the early history of rights as they existed in ancient Greece, and locates the first philosophical inquiry into the nature of rights in Platonic and Aristotelian accounts. He traces Roman jurisprudence to the advent of Christianity, to the divine right of kings. Herbert follows the historical evolution of modern subjective rights, the attempts by Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Fichte, and Hegel to mediate rights, to make them sociable. He then turns to nineteenth-century condemnation of rights in the theories of the historical school of law, Benthamite utilitarianism, and Marxist socialism. Following World War II, a newly revived language of rights had to be constructed, to express universal moral outrage over what came to be called crimes against humanity. The contemporary Western concern for rights is today a concern for the individual and a recognition of the limits beyond which a society must not go in sacrificing the individual's welfare for its own conception of the common good. In his conclusion, Herbert addresses the postmodern critique of rights as a form of moral imperialism legitimizing relations of dominance and subjection. In addition to his historical analysis of the evolution of theories of rights, Herbert exposes the philosophical confusions that arise when we exchange one concept of rights for another and continue to cite historical antecedents for contemporary attitudes that are in fact their philosophical antithesis. "A Philosophical History of Rights" will be of interest to philosophers, historians, and political scientists.

This book is about happiness and about how the supremely happy life - the life blessed with what Aristotle refers to as eudaimonia - is the life of an ethical individual living in a healthy community. Much ethical literature has drawn inspiration from Aristotle's outlook, but relatively little attention has been paid to the central concept of Aristotle's ethical system - the concept of eudaimonia. This book fills this important gap, focusing on Aristotle's central ethical concept and, among other things, using Davidson's account of mind and rationality to explain central Aristotelian claims relating to the structure of the psychological domain and to our radical interconnectedness. Starting with Aristotle, Tabensky shows how the ethical domain can best be understood in relation to our fundamental desire to live happy lives. Recapturing the Greek spirit, this book is an invitation to rethink the manner in which we understand our lives and the manner in which we conduct ourselves, and it is an invitation to do so in relation to an understanding of the sorts of creatures we are - creatures living for the sake of happiness.

What is the most distinctive feature of human nature? Does human nature play any significant role in explaining ethical objectivity? How do we arrive at moral judgments? What is the relationship between moral judgments and moral motivation? In answering these questions, this book defends a naturalist, realist and internalist theory of the foundations of ethics. This theory, grounded on a particular concept of humanity, combines insights from Mencius and David Hume. The views of each show how important features left underdeveloped by the other can be supplemented and refined. The unified theory that results is a robust contender among current ethical theories. This illuminating book, relating Chinese and Western philosophical traditions, presents a unique account of the unity of the virtues in Mencius, breaks new ground in Hume studies through its discussion of the concept of sympathy in Hume's theory, and brings combined insights to bear on contemporary analytical theories of ethics.

Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715) is one of the most important philosophers of the 17th Century after Descartes. A pioneer of Rationalism, he was one of the first to champion and to further Cartesian ideas.
Andrew Pyle places Malebranche's work in the context of Descartes and other philosophers, and also in its relation to ideas about faith and reason. He examines the entirety of Malebranche's writings, including the famous The Search After Truth, which was admired and criticized by both Leibniz and Locke. Pyle presents an integrated account of Malebranche's central theses, occasionalism and 'vision in God', before exploring and assessing Malebranche's contribution to debates on physics and biology, and his views on the soul, self-knowledge, grace, and the freedom of the will.
This penetrating and wide-ranging study will be of interest to not only philosophers, but also to historians of science and philosophy, theologians, and students of the Enlightenment or 17th Century thought.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203417704

Verhalen bieden ons bijzonder veelzijdige en duurzame inzichten in de menselijke conditie en hebben al sinds Aristoteles de aandacht van de filosofie getrokken. Het leidmotief van Vertellingen is dat dit digitale en naar verluidt 'postmoderne' tijdperk niet de ondergang van het verhaal aankondigt, maar juist zelf een bron van nieuwe verhalen vormt. Richard Kearney, filosoof en schrijver, ontrafelt in een heldere en meeslepende stijl waarom verhalen deze uitwerking op ons hebben en betoogt dat het onvertelde leven niet waard is om geleefd te worden. Vertellingen is onmisbaar, voor iedereen die helder wil nadenken over de rol van verhalen in ons leven en onze cultuur.

Paul Ricoeur is one of the most wide-ranging thinkers to emerge in the twentieth century. He has developed a unique 'theory of reading' or hermeneutics, which extends far beyond the reading of literary works to build into a theory for the reading of 'life'. For this reason, his work has impacted not only upon literary studies, but upon such disciplines as philosophy, psychoanalysis, history, religion, legal studies and politics.
This introductory guide:
* details Ricoeur's most significant contributions to contemporary critical thought
* provides an intellectual context to his key ideas
* explores the debate around his work on good and evil, psychoanalysis, metaphor, narrative, politics and justice
* suggests the continuing relevance of Ricoeur's thought and examines the increasing interest in his work across a range of disciplines.
Karl Simms also provides a guide to further reading, which offers advice on Ricoeur's publications and relevant secondary texts. Refreshingly clear and impressively comprehensive, Paul Ricoeur is the essential guide to an essential theorist.

Jean-François Lyotard is one of the most celebrated proponents of what has become known as the 'postmodern'. More than almost any other contemporary theorist, he has explored the relations between knowledge, art, politics and history, in ways that offer radical new possibilities for thinking about modern culture.
Simon Malpas introduces students to issues at the heart of Lyotard's work, including
*modernity and the postmodern
*the sublime
*ethics
*history and representation
*art and the unpresentable
*knowledge, the university and the future.
Lyotard's work is impossible to dismiss or ignore for anybody who is serious about contemporary literature and culture, and this guide provides the ideal companion to the wide variety of his critical texts.

'I've never kept a journal', Roland Barthes declared in 1979, ' - or, rather, I've never known if I should keep one'. The form itself, he continued, was inferior and 'unnecessary', a 'minor mania of writing'. Barthes died months making this statement, and the years since then have revealed that he had actually been concealing a fondness for diary-writing. The publication in 1985 of Incidents brought to light an intimate journal entitled 'Soirees de Paris', while 2009 saw the appearance of two much longer diaries kept by Barthes following the death of his mother in 1977 and during a trip to China in 1974, respectively. Further journals lie in the archive, unpublished and largely unseen; it is not clear if these will ever enter the public domain. This collection, which brings together some of the most prominent scholars in the field, considers the present implications of Roland Barthes' journals. How do these diaries invite us to reconsider aspects of Barthes' work which have become familiar through his reception as one of the twentieth century's most influential literary and cultural critics? What do they allow us to see for the first time? What is their relation to the works whose appearance Barthes authorised during his lifetime? Where and how do they fit in his oeuvre? How do they relate to each other across moment and mood? Why might they call for deliberations? This book was originally published as a special issue of Textual Practice.

Balancing the theories of cutting-edge neuroscience with the insights of primitive mythologies, Mary Clark provides down-to-earth suggestions for peacefully resolving global problems. Human Nature builds up a coherent, and above all positive, picture of who we really are.

Mike Gane provides an introduction to recent developments in French theorist Jean Baudrillard's thinking. This volume reflects Baudrillard's new concern with radical uncertainty and the way in which he has reconfigured his earlier thinking in the light of more recent ideas and theories. The author disputes the notion that Baudrillard has now become an increasingly extreme theorist, remote from the realities of the world - and argues instead that new developments in Baudrillard's work are a more appropriate reflection on a world of extremes. This book explicitly challenges the conservative response to Baudrillard's work, and underlines the significance of what Baudrillard himself terms the 'fourth order of simulation', in a major contribution to new debates on the significance of recent developments in Western culture and society.

Humanistic theory for more than the past 100 years is marked by extensive attention to practice and practices. Two prominent streams of thought sharing this focus are pragmatism and theories of practice. This volume brings together internationally prominent theorists to explore key dimensions of practice and practices on the background of parallels and points of contact between these two traditions. The contributors all are steeped in one or both of these streams and well-known for their work on practice. The collected essays explore three important themes: what practice and practices are, normativity, and transformation. The volume deepens understanding of these three practice themes while strengthening appreciation of the parallels between and complementariness of pragmatism and practice theory.

Series Information:
Studies in Ethics

Contents:
Preface 1. Inventing the Afterlife 2. Orphism, Pythagoras and the Rise of the Immortal Soul 3. Travelling Souls? Greek Shamanism Reconsidered 4. The Resurrection from Zoroaster to Late Antiquity 5. The Development of Early Christian Afterlife: From the Passion of Perpetua to Purgatory 6. Ancient Necromancy and Modern Spiritualism 7. Near-Death Experiences: Ancient, Medieval and Modern Appendix 1: Why did Jesus' Followers Call themselves Christians? Appendix 2: The Birth of Paradise Appendix 3: God's Heavenly Palace as an Imperial Court: The Vision of Dorotheus Bibliography