Robert Fogelin here collects fifteen of his essays, organized around the theme of interpreting philosophical texts. The book begins with an essay that lays down a set of principles governing the interpretation of difficult texts. Fogelin places particular emphasis on understanding the argumentative or dialectical role that passages play in the specific context in which they occur. The somewhat surprising result of taking this principle seriously is that certain traditional, well-worked texts are given a radical re-interpretation. Certain seemingly implausible positions are found to have more merit than has usually been attributed to them. Throughout the essays reprinted here, Fogelin argues that, when carefully read, the philosophical position under consideration has more merit than commonly believed. Included are essays dealing with texts from the works of Plato, Aquinas, Hume, Berkeley, Kant, Price, Hamilton, and Wittgenstein. With three exceptions, the selections were first published in major journals. Two appeared as part of collections, and one is new to this volume.

In this work, Henry Vyverberg traces the evolution and consequences of a crucial idea in French Enlightenment thought--the idea of human nature. Human nature was commonly seen as a broadly universal, unchanging entity, though perhaps modifiable by geographical, social, and historical factors. Enlightenment empiricism suggested a degree of cultural diversity that has often been underestimated in studies of the age. Evidence here is drawn from Diderot's celebrated Encyclopedia and from a vast range of writing by such Enlightenment notables as Voltaire, Rousseau, and d'Holbach. Vyverberg explains not only the age's undoubted fascination with uniformity in human nature, but also its acknowledgment of significant limitations on that uniformity. He shows that although the Enlightenment's historical sense was often blinkered by its notions of a uniform human nature, there were also cracks in this concept that developed during the Enlightenment itself.

While claiming that liberalism is the dominant political theory and practice of modernity, this book provides two alternative post modern theoretical approaches to the political. Concentrating on Nietzsche's and Foucault's work, it offers a novel interpretation of their genealogical projects. It argues that genealogy can be applied to analyze different forms of cultural kitsch vis-a-vis the dominant political institutions of consumer capitalism. The problem with consumer capitalism is not so much that it exploits individuals, but that it fosters cheap human existence saturated with the artefacts of kitsch. Contrasting genealogy with hermeneutic philosophy, it calls for a renewal of hermeneutics within the Thomistic tradition.

In 'Aristotle's Politics Today', political philosophers representing a diversity of approaches examine the meaning, relevance, and implications of Aristotle's political thought for contemporary social and political theory.

This book uncovers in the works of Plato and Nietzsche, not some royal road to truth, but rather the intensity of their love and commitment to the life of thought, whatever it discovers and wherever it might lead. Plato explored this in his ubiquitous absence from the adventures of thought depicted in his Dialogues. Nietzsche followed suit with his unrelenting presence as the grim and forceful conscience behind all the masks through which he spoke in his chaotic oeuvre. It is not a matter of biography or of shared doctrine, some favourite thoughts by which their lesser exegetes can keep them in their respective stables and move on to others with other favourite thoughts. To discover Plato and Nietzsche's kinship required something more, an intensive, lifelong philosophical engagement that Monique Dixsaut's students witnessed in her teaching at the Sorbonne, now available in English via this translation, which is suitable for academics, intellectuals and general readers alike. The `other way' to philosophise proves to be the practice of philosophy itself.

Vinod Acharya presents a new existential interpretation of Nietzsche's philosophy. He contends that Nietzsche's peculiar form of existentialism can be understood only by undertaking a thorough analysis of his characterization and critique of metaphysics. This reading remedies the shortcomings of previous existential interpretations of Nietzsche, which typically view existentialism as concerned primarily with the meaning of individual existence, and therefore necessarily at odds with the abstraction and objectivity of metaphysical thought. Acharya argues that the approach of Nietzsche's philosophy, especially in his mature works, is to make the typical existential position foundational, and then to develop to the fullest the implications of this position. This meta-existential approach necessarily yields an ambiguous and open-ended critique of metaphysics. Taking issue with the Heideggerian, the poststructuralist, and the naturalistic interpretations, this book contends that Nietzsche neither simply overcomes metaphysics nor remains trapped within its confines. Acharya argues that an ever-renewed encounter with and critique of metaphysics is an essential aspect of Nietzsche's meta-existentialism.

This book examines the Irish philosopher George Berkeley's contributions to debates concerning the role of virtue in society, which formed the foundation of his reputation as "the good bishop." Through a close analysis of key texts and the larger historical contexts within which they were composed, this study explores Berkeley's engagement with the social and economic threats facing Ireland and Britain, highlighting his belief that virtue and religion could help alleviate these problems. In doing so, Breuninger provides a more complete view of Berkeley's work outside the realm of philosophy and thus broadens our understanding of his place in the early Enlightenment.

Fresh translations of key texts, exhaustive coverage from Plato to Kant, and detailed commentary by expert scholars of philosophy add up to make this sourcebook the first and most comprehensive account of the history of the philosophy of mind. Published at a time when the philosophy of mind and philosophical psychology are high-profile domains in current research, the volume will inform our understanding of philosophical questions by shedding light on the origins of core conceptual assumptions often arrived at before the instauration of psychology as a recognized subject in its own right. The chapters closely follow historical developments in our understanding of the mind, with sections dedicated to ancient, medieval Latin and Arabic, and early modern periods of development. The volume's structural clarity enables readers to trace the entire progression of philosophical understanding on specific topics related to the mind, such as the nature of perception. Doing so reveals the fascinating contrasts between current and historical approaches. In addition to its all-inclusive source material, the volume provides subtle expert commentary that includes critical introductions to each thematic section as well as detailed engagement with the central texts. A voluminous bibliography includes hundreds of primary and secondary sources. The sheer scale of this new publication sheds light on the progression, and discontinuities, in our study of the philosophy of mind, and represents a major new sourcebook in a field of extreme importance to our understanding of humanity as a whole.

The development of Simone de Beauvoir's notion of self in both her philosophical and autobiographical writings is analyzed in this volume. Two ideas of the self are isolated: the existential notion of the self and the gendered self, which she developed in "The Second Sex," and which represents a major departure from existential philosophy. Beginning with a study of her early essays, the author proceeds to discuss Beauvoir's major philosophical works and her autobiographical writings where three personae emerge--the child, the woman in love, and the writer. This analysis highlights the innovative quality of Beauvoir's thought. It also shows that writing an autobiography can be a philosophically inventive enterprise and one in which Beauvoir created her most profound analysis of the self.

Luce Irigaray is one of the most influential philosophers and theorists in the field of feminist thought, and her work is considered both revolutionary and controversial. This volume offers the first critical assessment of the relation between her early poetic writings to her later political applied philosophy. Contributors examine how the question of sexual difference has unfolded in a wealth of different directions in Irigaray's later work, focusing on the areas of nature and technology, social and political theory and praxis, ethics, psychoanalysis, and phenomenology. They also address whether there has been a radical conceptual "turn" in Irigaray's thought by exploring the idea of a "turn" as a return to themes that have concerned her all along. By considering each of her views in relation to the entirety of her work, readers will come to appreciate the richness of her thought.

This book brings out the profound influence of the tradition of philosophical skepticism on political thought. It shows that many of the root ideas of liberalism in early modern thought were a product of engagement with the skeptical tradition.
The book begins with the first extended discussion in the literature of the political implications of ancient skepticism, asking the question, "Can Skeptics Live a Skeptical Politics?" The following sections explore the influence of skepticism on the political thought of Montaigne, Hume, and Kant. The case is made that some forms of liberalism derived from these thinkers have been historically closely bound up with skepticism.

This volume signals reinvigoration of Russell the public campaigner. The title of the volume is taken from one of his most famous and eloquent short essays and probably the best known of his many broadcasts for the BBC. "Man's Peril, 1954-55 not only captures the essence of Russell's thinking about nuclear weapons and the Cold War in the mid-1950s, its extraordinary impact served to jolt him into political protest once again.

Paul Grice (1913-1988) is best known for his psychological account of meaning, and for his theory of conversational implicature, although these form only part of a large and diverse body of work. This is the first book to consider Grice's work as a whole. Drawing on the range of his published writing, and also on unpublished manuscripts, lectures and notes, Siobhan Chapman discusses the development of Grice's ideas and relates his work to the major events of his intellectual and professional life.

This volume presents an innovative look at early modern medicine and natural philosophy as historically interrelated developments. The individual chapters chart this interrelation in a variety of contexts, from the Humanists who drew on Hippocrates, Galen, and Aristotle to answer philosophical and medical questions, to medical debates on the limits and power of mechanism, and on to eighteenth-century controversies over medical materialism and 'atheism.' The work presented here broadens our understanding of both philosophy and medicine in this period by illustrating the ways these disciplines were in deep theoretical and methodological dialogue and by demonstrating the importance of this dialogue for understanding their history. Taken together, these papers argue that to overlook the medical context of natural philosophy and the philosophical context of medicine is to overlook fundamentally important aspects of these intellectual endeavors.

For most of its history, western philosophy has regarded woman as an imperfect version of man. Like so many aspects of European culture, this tradition builds on foundations laid in ancient Greece. Yet the first philosophers of antiquity were hardly agreed on first principles. Vigdis Songe-Muller examines the differences between Presocratic monists like Parmenides, and implicit pluralists such as Anaximander, and shows how the Greeks made intellectual choices that would prove fateful for half of humankind. The text re-evaluates Greek mythology, throws a harsh new light on the invention of democracy, and exposes Platonic harmony to be an ideal driven by a peculiarly masculine fear of death. It was a fear that could only be overcome by denying the significance of difference, and at times even the rightful existence of that which embodied difference. For the Greek man, the difference that mattered was nowhere more frighteningly apparent than in woman.

German Idealism develops its philosophy of history as the theory of becoming absolute and as absolute knowledge. Historism also originates from Hegel's and Schelling's discovery of absolute historicity as it turns against Idealism's philosophy of history by emphasizing the singular and unique in the process of history. German Idealism and Historism can be considered as the central German contribution to the history of ideas. Since Idealism became most influential for modern philosophy and Historism for modern historiography, they are analyzed in this volume in a collaboration of philosophers and historians. German Idealism is presented in Schelling and its critics Schlegel, Baader, and Nietzsche; Historism in Ranke, Droysen, Burckhardt, and Treitschke. The volume further presents the impact of Idealism and Historism on present German approaches to the philosophy of history and outlines the debates on the possibility of a philosophy of history and on the methodology of the historical sciences.

Hoy establishes a basis for a naturalistic political theory that can be sustained as a continuity from Aristotle through the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment contributions of David Hume, John Dewey, Evolutionary Biology, and Deep Ecology.

This entails several contentions. First he argues that the contemporary relevance of Aristotelian naturalism can be defended within the context of a pragmatic realism without recourse to a no-longer-tenable metaphysical biology. Second, he calls for an emphasis on a historicized nature--the human capacities for language, sociality, and habituation that are the product of biological-cultural interaction in human evolution. Third, Hoy contends that, while humans are perceived as the apex of other forms of life, a compassionate relation of humans to non-human nature is a logical extension of human community and moral obligation. His final contention is that an integrative framework for a naturalistic political theory can be formulated within the theoretical categories contributed by John Dewey. Scholars and students of political theory, philosophy, evolutionary biology, and deep ecology in particular will find this study of interest.

What does it mean to love a landscape? Why do certain authors have a predilection for specific landscapes? Why might one be fascinated by a landscape in which one would never wish to live? How does the lay of the land fashion the form of the poem? How does the wind infuse the breath? In The Wind and the Source, Allen S. Weiss explores the role of a significant yet elusive feature of the French landscape in literature, philosophy, and art: the legendary, mysterious, monolithic Mont Ventoux. This is not a book about picturesque, touristic Provence, but about the manifestation of an extreme limit of the imagination that happens to have Provence as its site, as its fantasyland. Weiss is concerned with the vicissitudes of the desire to write about a landscape, the desire to write in a landscape, and perhaps most curiously, the desire to write against a landscape. This is a book about love of the landscape, and abstraction from it; it is an account of how a mountain became a myth, and how an aesthetic and literary study became a metaphysical quest.

This collection of essays is addressed to the legacy of Enlightenment thought, with respect to 18th-century notions of human nature, human rights, representative democracy or the nation state, and with regard to the barbarism, including the Holocaust, allegedly unleashed by 18th-century ideals of civilization. Each author offers an interpretation of modern or postmodern philosophy against the background of a so-called Enlightenment Project, envisaged as the conceptual ghost that haunts modernity.