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Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Western philosophy > General
In The Domestication of Derrida, Lorenzo Fabbri argues that Rorty's
powerful reading protocol is motivated by the necessity to contain
the risks of Derrida's critique of Western philosophy and politics.
Rorty claims that Derrida reduces philosophy to a production of
private fantasies that do not have any political or epistemological
relevance. Fabbri challenges such an aberrant appropriation by
investigating the two key features of Rorty's privatization of
deconstruction: the reduction of deconstructive writing to an
example of merely autobiographical literature; and the idea that
Derrida not only dismisses, but also mocks the desire to engage
philosophy with political struggle. What is ultimately questioned
in The Domestication of Derrida is the legitimacy of labelling
deconstruction as a post-modern withdrawal from politics and
theory. By discussing Derrida's resistance against the very
possibility of theoretical and political ascetism, Fabbri shows
that there is much more politics and philosophy in deconstruction
than Rorty is willing to admit.
In "Modern Individuality in Hegel s Practical Philosophy," Erzs bet
R zsa aims to reconstruct Hegel s theory of individuality in the
light of his idea of modernity. Modern individuality is one of the
central topics of Hegel s practical philosophy, discussed
systematically in the forms of subjectivity in subjective,
objective, and practical spirit. Hegel interpreted modern existence
and lifeworld in the context of law, politics, economy, and private
life. Infinite subjective freedom is the historical principle of
the modern age, as well as the basic determination of modern
individual forms of existence and knowledge. Modern form of life
and mentality based on the values and practical actions of
self-konwledge and self-determination is an achievement of
historical significance. This radical turn, however, gives a new
perspective to the problem of good life: the normative role of
substantial values is overshadowed by the stabilizatory function of
the objective order of institutions.
The reader will find a mystical and often magical self-realization
throughout Chandler's working designs through both writing and art.
The "Template of Time" is a collection of the actual statements,
written verbatim by Chandler, as they were heard. Chandler Zedac
does not trance which made it even more difficult to hear and
interpret the statements. Many have been relieved of the pressures
of believing that they were demon possessed or schizophrenic.
Hearing the universal "voice" is happening to over half of the
world, now, at a time when Man has shown that he is ready to "shed
the old wineskins to prepare for the new wine in new skins."
One may feel the ease of the timelessness of dimensional science
woven through the artwork, which was also under advisement by
Chandler's communicator. This was in hopes of setting up for the
reader a much broader understanding of whom he is in relationship
to the surrounding Universe, and to prepare the reader for the
masterworks of the Eternal Force within us all; to openly work
within oneself, as well. For those who have already experienced the
timelessness of the Listening Ear, the Masterworks will encourage
and sustain you in knowing that you too are unfolding as you should
be, and encourage you to take comfort in the daily responses of the
Master Soul working in your everyday life-path.
This book provides a comprehensive account of the phenomenon of
identity in politics, featuring for the first time the question of
individual emancipation. It addresses the burning questions of our
times, viz. nationalism, populism, Islamic fundamentalism,
multiculturalism, postsecularism and postcolonialism. The volume
repudiates an easy reconciliation between identity and
emancipation, such as it occurs in contemporary liberal and
multicultural political theories. It shows that we cannot achieve
emancipation without Kant's help, whereas identity relentlessly
draws us back to collective values and the community. The book
urges for a new understanding of identity and a politics that
instead of accommodating identities seeks to govern them. Identity
is the buzzword in the humanities and social sciences, but also the
most contentious and least conceptualized term. This book intends
to bring theoretical clarity into the debate on how identity plays
out in politics.
Contributions to Philosophy was published posthumously in 1989. The
book casts Heidegger's philosophy in a wholly new light against the
received opinion of Being and Time, as well as forming an important
bridge between Heidegger's earlier and later works. Jason Powell's
detailed and informative examination of this major work is
extremely timely. Powell situates Contributions to Philosophy in
the context of Heidegger's entire corpus and particularly alongside
the other works he was writing in the 1930s. He shows how this
important book continues to define the term 'Sein' ('Being') and
further develops 'life' (here in a religious sense) as a central
theme in Heidegger's work. Powell provides the reader with an
overview of the significance of Contributions, its genesis and
production, as well as current interpretations and its position in
the received body of work on Heidegger. He explores in particular
how this work relates to Heidegger magnum opus, Being and Time, and
argues that Contributions was in fact the next step in Heidegger's
major philosophical project as set out in his first major work.
On the Genealogy of Morality, the classic three essay treatise of
Friedrich Nietzsche, is considered by scholars to be one of the
author's philosophic masterworks. This astounding work represents
the maturity of Nietzsche's ideas, and consists of three distinct
essays. In each, Nietzsche isolates and expands upon ideas he
expressed in Beyond Good and Evil. Nietzsche juxtaposes ideas of
weakness and strength, and notions of human preconception as
generated over millenia of hierarchy inclusive of slavery, to
demonstrate an evolution of ideas beyond traditional duality. This
text controversially introduces the 'blond beast' - a a forebear
for Nietzsche's posthumous association with Nazism and racial
superiority. Nietzsche demonstrates how people with allegiance to
ascetic ideals gained traction in society. He proceeds to discount
science as an opposing influence, together with historians and idle
thinkers, advocating for criticism of what is accepted as truth,
and a replacement for flawed definitions.
The correspondence between Leibniz and Samuel Clarke was the most
influential philosophical exchange of the eighteenth century, and
indeed one of the most significant such exchanges in the history of
philosophy. Carried out in 1715 and 1716, the debate focused on the
clash between Newtonian and Leibnizian world systems, involving
disputes in physics, theology, and metaphysics. The letters ranged
over an extraordinary array of topics, including divine immensity
and eternity, the relation of God to the world, free will,
gravitation, the existence of atoms and the void, and the size of
the universe.
This penetrating book is the first to offer a comprehensive
overview and commentary on the Leibniz-Clarke correspondence.
Building his narrative around general subjects covered in the
exchange--God, the soul, space and time, miracles and nature,
matter and force--Ezio Vailati devotes special attention to a
question crucial for Leibniz and Clarke alike. Both philosophers,
worried by the advance of naturalism and its consequences for
morality, devised complex systems to counter naturalism and
reinforce natural religion. However, they not only deeply disagreed
on how to answer the naturalist threat, but they ended up seeing in
each other's views the germs of naturalism itself. Vailati
rigorously tracks the twists and turns of this argument, shedding
important new light on a critical moment in modern
philosophy.
Lucid, taut, and energetically written, this book not only
examines the Leibniz-Clarke debate in unprecedented depth but also
situates the views advanced by the two men in the context of their
principal writings. An invaluable reference to a fascinating
exchange of ideas, Leibnizand Clarke makes vital reading for
philosophers and historians of science and theology.
"In a language there are only differences without positive terms.
Whether we take the signified or the signifier, the language
contains neither ideas nor sounds that pre-exist the linguistic
system, but only conceptual differences and phonic differences
issuing from this system." (From the posthumous Course in General
Linguistics, 1916.)
No one becomes as famous as Saussure without both admirers and
detractors reducing them to a paragraph's worth of ideas that can
be readily quoted, debated, memorized, and examined. One can argue
the ideas expressed above - that language is composed of a system
of acoustic oppositions (the signifier) matched by social
convention to a system of conceptual oppositions (the signified) -
have in some sense become "Saussure," while the human being, in all
his complexity, has disappeared. In the first comprehensive
biography of Ferdinand de Saussure, John Joseph restores the full
character and history of a man who is considered the founder of
modern linguistics and whose ideas have influenced literary theory,
philosophy, cultural studies, and virtually every other branch of
humanities and the social sciences.
Through a far-reaching account of Saussure's life and the time in
which he lived, we learn about the history of Geneva, of Genevese
educational institutions, of linguistics, about Saussure's
ancestry, about his childhood, his education, the fortunes of his
relatives, and his personal life in Paris. John Joseph intersperses
all these discussions with accounts of Saussure's research and the
courses he taught highlighting the ways in which knowing about his
friendships and family history can help us understand not only his
thoughts and ideas but also his utter failure to publish any major
work after the age of twenty-one.
This is an important new monograph, focussing on the concept of
Angst, a concept central to Heidegger's thought and popular among
readers.The early Heidegger of "Being and Time" is generally
believed to locate finitude strictly within the individual, based
on an understanding that this individual will have to face its
death alone and in its singularity. Facing death is characterized
by the mood of Angst (anxiety), as death is not an experience one
can otherwise access outside of one's own demise.In the later
Heidegger, the finitude of the individual is rooted in the finitude
of the world it lives in and within which it actualizes its
possibilities, or Being. Against the standard reading that the
early Heidegger places the emphasis on individual finitude, this
important new book shows how the later model of the finitude of
Being is developed in "Being and Time". Elkholy questions the role
of Angst in Heidegger's discussion of death and it is at the point
of transition from the nothing back to the world of projects that
the author locates finitude and shows that Heidegger's later
thinking of the finitude of Being is rooted in "Being and Time".
Jean-Paul Sartre was one of the most distinctive and vociferous
social critics of the twentieth century. As editor of the French
post-war journal Les Temps Modernes, Sartre was able to complement
his literary and philosophical views with essays devoted to
practical ethical and political issues. The post-war era was one of
the most fruitful, exciting and daring periods for Sartre's
thinking.
His published and unpublished works disclose a striking feature of
Sartrean existentialism. The commonly-held view is that
existentialism champions radical individualism and disparages
community, social roles and civic participation. This book
challenges this received wisdom, showing that Sartrean
existentialism is in fact a deeply social philosophy. T. Storm
Heter demonstrates the vitality of Sartre's landmark essays 'What
is Literature?' and 'Anti-Semite and Jew', and reveals the
importance of the 'Notebooks for an Ethics', a rich and often
ignored manuscript containing Sartre's most extensive discussion of
ethical and political concepts.
Drawing on these sources, Heter argues that Sartrean authenticity
is an ethically and politically important virtue. Contrary to
popular belief, the virtue of authenticity is not a mere codeword
for sincerity and personal acceptance. Authenticity requires
interpersonal recognition and group participation. We cannot be
authentic in a vacuum, for the very dynamic of authenticity
requires that others recognize our authentic identities.
This book not only defends Sartrean ethics against charges of
formalism, emptiness and extreme subjectivism, but also shows that
authenticity is an important civic virtue, relevant to the social
and political institutions of the modern world.
Barry Stroud's work has had a profound impact on a very wide array
of philosophical topics, including epistemological skepticism, the
nature of logical necessity, the interpretation of Hume, the
interpretation of Wittgenstein, the possibility of transcendental
arguments, and the metaphysical status of color and value. And yet
there has heretofore been no book-length treatment of his work. The
current collection aims to redress this gap, with 13 essays on
Stroud's work by a diverse group of contributors including some of
his most distinguished interlocutors and promising recent students.
All but one essay is new to this volume.
The essays cover a range of topics, with a particular focus on
Stroud's treatments of skepticism and subjectivism. There are also
chapters on Stroud's views on meaning and rule-following, on Hume
on personal identity, and on the role of desires in the explanation
of action. Despite the diversity, the essays are unified by the
thematic unity in Stroud's own writings. Stroud approaches every
philosophical problem by attempting to get as clear as possible on
the nature and source of that problem. He aims to determine what
kind of understanding philosophical questions are after, and what
the prospects for achieving that understanding might be. This
theme--of the nature and possibility of philosophical
understanding--is introduced in the opening essay of this volume
and recurs in different ways throughout the remaining chapters.
In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in the
philosophy of philosophy. As these essays show, one important
source of insight on this subject is the thought of Barry Stroud,
for whom pursuit of the philosophy of philosophy has always been
indistinguishable from pursuit of philosophy as such.
You want to know how it really is. Start here and by the end of the
book you will know cause of the universe. Ultimate Cause is your
most intimate companion It makes a difference to you yourself, your
culture and the people of the world what you think about cause of
the universe. You are your thoughts. They are all of the mortal
universe except for Ultimate Cause. THINK The universe is a box.
Think outside the box. Think of cause of the box. That is Ultimate
Cause. This book is about cause of the whole universe from galaxies
of stars to subatomic particles, from DNA to human cultures. In
seeking to know, in contributing to knowing and in knowing cause of
the universe all people, all thought, sciences, religions and
philosophies are united. We know Ultimate Cause by inference from
our knowledge of the universe as capability to cause the universe
to be as it is. With the point of view of Ultimate Cause we see
that UC likes and enjoys everything and everyone. We can too. We
work and struggle in the processes of life. It all ends. It is all
mortal --- except for Ultimate Cause. The mortality and recycling
of the universe make sense when we think of it as a drama for UC to
experience and enjoy. Our existence, birth and growth depend on
mortality and recycling. UC is not mortal, so is not moral, likes
and enjoys everyone and everything.. Ultimate Cause is our most
intimate companion, sharing our every thought and feeling. UC has
it all in memory beyond the existence of the universe. This is
Jin Yuelin (1895-1984) was a leading philosopher in Republican-era
China, yet he remains virtually unknown in the West. His major
publications include a textbook on logic (Luoji), an epistemology
(Zhishilun) and an ontology (Lun dao). Like many other Chinese
intellectuals of his time, he was greatly influenced by Western
ideas and terms. Most importantly, he considered the problem of
induction, which was central to his thought, from the perspectives
of epistemology and ontology. In his response to this problem, Jin
employed terms drawn from Chinese tradition, as well as neologisms,
thus creating a unique philosophy of process. This work focuses on
Jin's ontological response to the problem of induction, and also
provides a summary of his epistemological response.
This volume aims to inspire a return to the energetics of
Nietzsche's prose and the critical intensity of his approach to
nihilism and to give back to the future its rightful futurity. The
book states that for too long contemporary thought has been
dominated by a depressed what is to be done?. All is regarded to be
in vain, nothing is deemed real, there is nothing new seen under
the sun. Such a postmodern lament is easily confounded with an
apathetic reluctance to think engagedly. Hence the contributors
draw on the variety of topical issues - the future of life, the
nature of life forms, the techno sciences, the body, religion - as
a way of tackling the question of nihilism's pertinence to us now.
Deriving from the name of its originator, Thomas Aquinas (1225-74),
Thomism is a body of philosophical and theological ideas that seeks
to articulate the intellectual content of Catholic Christianity. St
Thomas was one of the main figures in the medieval Scholastic
movement and wrote some of the greatest ever commentaries on
Aristotle (also available from Thoemmes Press). Aquinas and his
followers believed that faith and reason are both routes to truth -
a conflict between them being impossible because they both
originate in God - and Aquinas's celebrated "Five Ways" of proving
the existence of God have remained central objects of study in the
philosophy of religion ever since. The historical influence of
Thomism has been enormous, and Thomist theologians and philosophers
continue to work in what may be the longest continuous intellectual
tradition in the Western world. Twentieth-century Thomists had
important things to say in all of the key areas of philosophy:
logic, metaphysics, theory of knowledge, ethics, natural science
and philosophical anthropology. John Haldane has made a considered
selection of half a dozen works which represent the best
expositions of Thomistic approaches from the period between the
first translation of Aquinas's Summa Theologiae into English (1912)
and the start of the Second Vatican Council (1962) which
transformed the intellectual world of Catholicism. In his
substantial introduction to the set, Haldane gives an overview of
the history of Thomism and locates these six books within it. He
also looks ahead to the prospects for Thomism in the 21st century
and beyond.
This text is part of the "Bristol Introductions" series which aims
to present perspectives on philosophical themes, using
non-technical language, for both the new and the advanced scholar.
This introductory text examines how questions of understanding the
pictorial and narrative arts relate to central themes in
philosophy. It addresses such issues as: how can pictorial and
narrative arts be usefully contrasted and compared?; what in
principle can be, or cannot be, communicated in such different
media?; why does it seem that, at its best, artistic communication
goes beyond the limitations of its own medium - seeming to think
and to communicate the incommunicable?; and what kinds of thought
are exercised in the pictorial and narrative arts? Both refer to or
represent what we take the world to be, and in so doing make the
concepts of aesthetic judgement and imagination unavoidable. The
ways of understanding art are ways of understanding what it is to
be human. Much of what baffles or misleads us in the arts invokes
what puzzles us about ourselves. The issues raised are therefore
central to philosophy as a discipline - failures in understanding
art can be philosophical failures.
In the fields of metaphysics and epistemology, ethics and political
thought, idealism can generate controversy and disagreement. This
title is part of the "Idealism" series, which finds in idealism new
features of interest and a perspective which is germane to our own
philosophical concerns. This text is a collection of essays
analyzing the impact of the thought of F.H. Bradley (1846-1924) on
philosophy throughout the English-speaking world. Bradley's complex
version of absolute idealism plays a key role not only in idealist
philosophy, politics and ethics, but also in the development of
modern logic, of analytical philosophy, and of pragmatism, as well
as in the thinking of figures such as R.G. Collingwood and A.N.
Whitehead. The work of a group of Canadian philosophers writing
from widely different standpoints, the essays in this volume define
both the nature and scale of Bradley's influence and continuing
significance in large areas of debate in 20th-century philosophy.
Topics covered include: the history of idealism in the 20th
century; Bradley's relation to figures such as Bernard Bosanquet,
C.A. Campbell, Brand Blanshard, John Watson, John Dewey, R.G.
Collingwood, and A.N. Whitehead; Bradley's influence on
20th-century empiricism, modern logic, and analytical philosophy;
and his significance for contemporary debates in epistemology and
ethics.
This book explores the changing perspective of astrology from the
Middle Ages to the Early Modern Era. It introduces a framework for
understanding both its former centrality and its later removal from
legitimate knowledge and practice. The discussion reconstructs the
changing roles of astrology in Western science, theology, and
culture from 1250 to 1500. The author considers both the how and
the why. He analyzes and integrates a broad range of sources. This
analysis shows that the history of astrology-in particular, the
story of the protracted criticism and ultimate removal of astrology
from the realm of legitimate knowledge and practice-is crucial for
fully understanding the transition from premodern
Aristotelian-Ptolemaic natural philosophy to modern Newtonian
science. This removal, the author argues, was neither obvious nor
unproblematic. Astrology was not some sort of magical nebulous
hodge-podge of beliefs. Rather, astrology emerged in the 13th
century as a richly mathematical system that served to integrate
astronomy and natural philosophy, precisely the aim of the "New
Science" of the 17th century. As such, it becomes a fundamentally
important historical question to determine why this promising
astrological synthesis was rejected in favor of a rather different
mathematical natural philosophy-and one with a very different
causal structure than Aristotle's.
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