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Philosophical Skepticism" provides a selection of texts drawn from the skeptical tradition of Western philosophy as well as texts written by opponents of skepticism. Taken together with the historical introduction by Landesman and Meeks, these texts clearly illustrate the profound influence that skeptical stances have had on the nature of philosophical inquiry.
Draws a selection of texts from the skeptical tradition of Western philosophy as well as texts written by opponents of skepticism.
Spans centuries of skeptical and anti-skeptical arguments, from Socrates to Rorty.
Includes essays by Plato, Cicero, Diogenes Laertius, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Kierkegaard, Russell, Quine, Nagel, and many others.
Provides a solid foundation for further study.

This volume draws a balanced picture of the Rationalists by bringing their intellectual contexts, sources and full range of interests into sharper focus, without neglecting their core commitment to the epistemological doctrine that earned them their traditional label. The collection of original essays addresses topics ranging from theodicy and early modern music theory to Spinoza's anti-humanism, often critically revising important aspects of the received picture of the Rationalists. Another important contribution of the volume is that it brings out aspects of Rationalist philosophers and their legacies that are not ordinarily associated with them, such as the project of a Cartesian ethics. Finally, a strong emphasis is placed on the connection of the Rationalists' philosophy to their interests in empirical science, to their engagement in the political life of their era, and to the religious background of many of their philosophical commitments.

Human, All Too Human (1878) is often considered the start of Friedrich Nietzsche's mature period. A complex work that explores many themes to which Nietzsche later returned, it marks a significant departure from his previous thinking. Here Nietzsche breaks with his early allegiance to Schopenhauer and Wagner, and establishes the overall framework of his later philosophy. In contrast to his previous disdain for science, now Nietzsche views science as key to undercutting traditional metaphysics. This he sees as a crucial step in the emergence of free spirits who will be the avant-garde of culture.
In summing up the crucial change of perspective expressed in Human, All Too Human, Nietzsche used the following words in his later work Ecce Homo:
Human, All Too Human is a memorial of a crisis.... W]ith this book I liberated myself from that in my nature which did not belong to me. Idealism does not belong to me...realities were altogether lacking in my knowledge, and the 'idealities' were worth damn all A downright burning thirst seized hold of me: thenceforward I pursued in fact nothing other than physiology, medicine, and natural science.
This is an essential work for anyone who wishes to understand Nietzsche's incisive critique of Western culture and values.

The eighteenth-century French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau's reputation for writing in apparent inconsistencies and paradoxes is well deserved. He confronts the reader with ironies of all sorts. In this engaging new work, Penny A. Weiss wrestles with issues of gender in the works of Rousseau. She addresses the apparent male/female role contradictions that run through many of his works and attempts to resolve them by placing them within the context of themes and principles that provide the framework for his political philosophy. Rousseau advocated separate family roles for men and women as a way of encouraging them to become more effective social and political beings. His advocacy of sexual differentiation has often been criticized as antifeminist. In Emile, for example, Rousseau argues that women engaged in activities outside the home will become neglectful of their domestic duties. Penny A. Weiss maintains that Rousseau's antifeminist convictions arise not out of any belief that biology determines different family roles for men and women or that the traditional nuclear family is naturally better than other types of families. Rather, he believes that sexual differentiation forces individuals to look beyond themselves for certain functions and to become more interdependent, social beings. Some have argued that rigidly defined roles for men and women have the effect of making both sexes incomplete. Such incompleteness is, however, precisely what Rousseau seeks since it helps people to overcome a natural egoism and selfishness and prepares them to be effective participants in the political order. It is tempting to attribute Rousseau's remarks on the sexes to the times in which hewrote or to his personal idiosyncratic preferences, so starkly do they seem to conflict with his principled commitments to freedom and equality. Weiss examines the debates about Rousseau's concepts of gender, justice, freedom, community, and equality, making a significant contribution to feminist theory. In recovering the connection between Rousseau's sexual politics and his political theory, Weiss advances a new, more complete picture of Rousseau's work. She convinces us that Rousseau's political strategy is ultimately unworkable, undermining, as it does, the very community it is meant to establish. Addressing important contemporary questions regarding families, citizens, and communities, Gendered Community also reveals the variety and complexity of antifeminist writing.

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 ongoing revival of interest in the work of American philosopher and pragmatist John Dewey has given rise to a burgeoning flow of commentaries, critical editions, and reevaluations of Dewey's writings. While previous studies of Dewey's work have taken either a historical or a topical focus, Shook offers an innovative, organic approach to understanding Dewey and eloquently shows that Dewey's instrumentalism grew seamlessly out of his idealism. He argues that most current scholarship operates under a mistaken impression of Dewey's early philosophical positions and convincingly demonstrates a number of key points:

that Dewey's metaphysical empiricism remained more indebted to Kant and Hegel than is commonly supposed;
that Dewey owed more to the influence of Wundt than is commonly believed;
that the influence of Peirce and James was not as significant for the development of Dewey's theories of mind and truth as has been argued in the past;
and that Dewey's pragmatic theory of knowledge never really abandoned idealism.

Shook's exposition of the unity of Dewey's thought challenges a large scholarly industry devoted to suppressing or explaining away the consistency between Dewey's early thought and his later work. In every respect, "Dewey's Empirical Theory of Knowledge and Reality" is a provocative and engaging study that will occupy a unique niche in this field. It is certain to stimulate discussion and controversy, forcing Dewey traditionalists out of habitual modes of thought and transforming our conventional understanding of the development of classical American philosophy.

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.

A comprehensive interpretation of the Scienza Nuova and of the ways in which Vico managed to present his essentially naturalistic philosophy in a form acceptable within the ecclesiastical climate of 18th century Italy.

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.

This final volume of the letters of John locke contains letters 3287-3648, and covers the period from May 15, 1703 to August 23, 1704. It also contains the full index to all eight volumes of the Locke Correspondence.

This book is a study of the much debated problem of Soren Kierkegaard's "indirect communication." It approaches the problem, however, in quite a new way by applying some of the insights of recent literary theory. This study is both a contribution to literary theory, in the sense that it seeks to apply it, and a suggestion for renewal within phenomenological philosophy. A deconstructive approach to the written work is followed by a phenomenological description of the development of the lived sign. The book is an attempt to investigate a theme concerning individual rights and embodiment that descends from Kant through Edmund Husserl to Maurice Merleau-Ponty.

Robert Morrison offers an illuminating comparative study of two linked and interactive traditions that have had great influence in twentieth-century thought:Buddhism and the philosophy of Nietzsche. Nietzsche saw a direct historical parallel between the cultural situation of his own time and of the India of the Buddha's age: the emergence of nihilism as a consequence of loss of traditional belief. Nietzche's fear, still resonant today, was that Europe was about to enter a nihilistic era, in which people, no longer able to believe in the old religious and moral values, would feel themselves adrift in a meaningless cosmos where life seems to have no particular purpose or end. Though he admired Buddhism as a noble and humane response to this situation, Nietzsche came to think that it was wrong in not seeking to overcome nihilism, and constituted a threat to the future of Europe. It was in reaction against nihilism that he forged his own affirmative philosophy, aiming at the transvaluation of all values. Nietzsche's view of Buddhism has been very influential in the West; Dr Morrison gives a careful critical examination of this view, argues that in fact Buddhism is far from being a nihilistic religion, and offers a counterbalancing Buddhist view of the Nietzschean enterprise. He draws out the affinities and conceptual similarities between the two, and concludes that, ironically, Nietzsche's aim of self-overcoming is akin to the Buddhist notion of citta-bhavana (mind-cultivation). Had Nietzsche lived in an age where Buddhism was better understood, Morrison suggests, he might even have found in the Buddha a model of his hypothetical Ubermensch.

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.

A bold and insightful departure from related texts, "Descartes" goes beyond the categorical associations placed on the philosopher's ideas, and explores the subtleties of his beliefs.
An elegant, compelling and insightful introduction to Descartes' life and work.
Discusses a broad range of his most scrutinized philosophical thought, including his contributions to logic, philosophy of the mind, epistemology, metaphysics, the philosophy of science, and the philosophy of religion.
Explores the subtleties of Descartes' seemingly contradictory beliefs.
Addresses themes left unexamined in other works on Descartes.

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.

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.