For more than forty years Jacques Derrida has attempted to unsettle and disturb the presumptions underlying many of our most fundamental philosophical, political, and ethical conventions. In The Philosophy of Derrida, Mark Dooley examines Derrida's large body of work to provide an overview of his core philosophical ideas and a balanced appraisal of their lasting impact. One of the author's primary aims is to make accessible Derrida's writings by discussing them in a vernacular that renders them less opaque and nebulous. Derrida's unusual writing style, which mixes literary and philosophical vocabularies, is shown to have hindered their interpretation and translation. Dooley situates Derrida squarely in the tradition of historicist, hermeneutic and linguistic thought, and Derrida's objectives and those of "deconstruction" are rendered considerably more convincing. While Derrida's works are ostensibly diverse, Dooley reveals an underlying cohesion to his writings. From his early work on Husserl, Hegel and de Saussure, to his most recent writings on justice, hospitality and cosmopolitanism, Derrida is shown to have been grappling with the vexed question of national, cultural and personal identity and asking to what extent the notion of a "pure" identity has any real efficacy. Viewed from this perspective Derrida appears less as a wanton iconoclast, for whom deconstruction equals destruction, but as a sincere and sensitive writer who encourages us to shed light on out historical constructions so as to reveal that there is much about ourselves that we do not know.

This book brings together leading figures in history, sociology, political science, feminism and critical theory to interpret, evaluate, criticize and update Weber's legacy. In a collection of specially commissioned pieces and translated articles the Weberian scholarship recognizes Max Weber as the figure central to contemporary debates on the need for societal rationality, the limits of reason and the place of culture and conduct in the supposedly post-religious age. In Part 1, Wolfgang Mommsen, Wilhelm Hennis, Guenther Roth and Wolfgang Schluchter provide a full and varied account of the theme of rationalization in the world civilizations. In Part 2 Pierre Bourdieu and Barry Hindess critically examine Weber's social action model, and Johannes Weiss and Martin Albrow address the putative 'crisis' of Western rationality. In Part 3 Jeffrey Alexander, Ralph Schroeder, Bryan Turner, Roslyn Bologh and Sam Whimster scrutinize Weber's understanding of modernity with its characteristic plurality of 'gods and demons'; they focus on its implications for individuality and personality, the body and sexuality, feminism and aesthetic modernism. Part 4 turns to politics, law and the state in the contemporary world: Colin Gordon on liberalism, Luciano Cavalli on charismatic politics, Stephen Turner and Regis Factor on decisionism and power and Scott Lash on modernism, substantice rationality and law. This book was first published in 1987.

The problem of the nature of values and the relation between values and rationality is one of the defining issues of twentieth-century thought, and Max Weber was one of the defining figures in the debate. In this book, Turner and Factor consider the development of the dispute over Max Weber's contribution to this discourse, by showing how Weber's views have been used, revised, and adapted in new contexts. The story of the dispute is itself fascinating, for it cuts across the major political and intellectual currents of the twentieth century, from positivism, pragmatism, and value-free social science, through the philosophy of Jaspers and Heidegger, to Critical Theory and the revival of Natural Right and Natural Law. As Weber's ideas were imported to Britain and America, they found new formulations and new adherents and critics, and became absorbed into different traditions and new issues. This book was first published in 1984.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Max Weber, central thinkers to the discussion of political legitimacy, represent two very different stages and forms of social theory: early modern political philosophy and classical sociology. In these studies, Dr Merquior describes and assesses their individual contributions to the understanding of the concept of political legitimacy. Dr Merquior compares Rousseau and Weber to a handful of other major theorists and highlights the contemporary prospects of the alternatives between democratic participation and bureaucratizm. This book was first published in 1980.

Over the last decade renewed interest in Hegel's thought and its legacy, especially in Anglo-American philosophy, has combined with the publication of new critical editions of his work in German to underline the value of Hegel for contemporary philosophy. "Hegel: New Directions" takes stock of this re-evaluation and presents an assessment of current thinking on this seminal philosopher. Leading scholars, who have spearheaded the reappraisal, bring the history of philosophy into dialogue with contemporary philosophical questions. Drawing on a broad range of themes, the essays offer a critical and stimulating guide to Hegel's thought, whilst addressing central questions of contemporary philosophy in epistemology, ethics, political and social theory, religion, philosophy of nature and aesthetics.

Nelson Goodman's acceptance and critique of certain methods and tenets of positivism, his defence of nominalism and phenomenalism, his formulation of a new riddle of induction, his work on notational systems, and his analysis of the arts place him at the forefront of the history and development of American philosophy in the twentieth-century. However, outside of America, Goodman has been a rather neglected figure. In this first book-length introduction to his work Cohnitz and Rossberg assess Goodman's lasting contribution to philosophy and show that although some of his views may be now considered unfashionable or unorthodox, there is much in Goodman's work that is of significance today. The book begins with the "grue"-paradox, which exemplifies Goodman's way of dealing with philosophical problems. After this, the unifying features of Goodman's philosophy are presented - his constructivism, conventionalism and relativism - followed by an discussion of his central work, The Structure of Appearance and its significance in the analytic tradition. The following chapters present the technical apparatus that underlies his philosophy, his mereology and semiotics, which provides the background for discussion of Goodman's aesthetics. The final chapter examines in greater depth the presuppositions underlying his philosophy.

Putnam is one of the most influential philosophers of recent times, and his authority stretches far beyond the confines of the discipline. However, there is a considerable challenge in presenting his work both accurately and accessibly. This is due to the width and diversity of his published writings and to his frequent spells of radical re-thinking. But if we are to understand how and why philosophy is developing as it is, we need to attend to Putnam's whole career. He has had a dramatic influence on theories of meaning, semantic content, and the nature of mental phenomena, on interpretations of quantum mechanics, theory-change, logic and mathematics, and on what shape we should desire for future philosophy. By presenting the whole of his career within its historical context, de Gaynesford discovers a basic unity in his work, achieved through repeated engagements with a small set of hard problems. By foregrounding this integrity, the book offers an account of his philosophy that is both true to Putnam and helpful to readers of his work.

One of the most influential philosophers and cultural theorists of the twentieth century, Theodor Adorno poses a considerable challenge to students. His works can often seem obscure and impenetrable, particularly for those with little knowledge of the philosophical traditions on which he draws. Adorno: A Guide for the Perplexed is an engaging and accessible account of his thought that does not patronise or short-change the reader. Those new to Adorno - and those who have struggled to make headway with his work - will find this an invaluable resource: clearly written, comprehensive and specifically focused on just what makes Adorno difficult to read and understand.

Descartes's Principles 0. / Philosophy is his longest and most ambitious work; it is the only work in which he attempted to actually deduce scientific knowledge from Cartesian metaphysics, as he repeatedly claimed was possible. Whatever the success of this attempt, there can be no doubt that it was enormously influential. Cartesian celestial mechanics held sway for well over a century, and some of the best minds of that period, including Leibniz, Malebranche, Euler, and the Bernoullis, attempted to modify and quantify the Cartesian theory of vortices into an acceptable alternative to Newton's theory of universal gravitation. Thus, the Principles is not only of inherent and historical interest philosophically but is also a seminal document in the history of science and of 17th Century thought. Principles of Philosophy was first published in Latin, in 1644. In 1647, a French translation, done by the Abbe Claude Picot and containing a great deal of additional material and a number of alterations in the original text, was published with Descartes's enthusiastic approval. Unlike some English translations of portions of the Principles, this translation uses the Latin text as its primary source; however, a good deal of additional material from Picot's translation has been included. There are several reasons for this. First, there is good evidence that Descartes himself was responsible for some of the additional material, including, of course, the Preface to the French translation.

This book offers an examination of Levinas 's philosophy of religion in light of his ethics and anthropology. It provides critical perspectives on Levinas by relating his work to that of Heidegger, Ricoeur, Rorty, Derrida and Vattimo. The focus of interpretation is the hermeneutics of kenosis: the subject 's ability to be open towards the other to the point where man can be seen as a place of God.

Merleau-Ponty in contemporary perspective: this was the theme of the conference at the Institute of Philosophy, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (K. U. L. ) from 29 November to 1 December 1991. Thirty years after Merleau Ponty's untimely death, it seemed appropriate to bring together scholars from Europe and from the United States of America to reappraise his philosophy. In fact, a significant body of scholarship has emerged which would seem to attest to the continuing importance of his thought for a variety of disciplines within the humanities, the social sciences, and the philosophy of nature. In the present volume, Gary Brent Madison addresses the issue whether Merleau-Ponty can be considered to be a classical philosopher. The fact that his work is one of the highlights of the phenomenological tradition and is of continuing inspiration for researchers in various domains seems to justify that claim. Yet, it is the feeling of many of the contributors to this volume that the so-called "second Merleau-Ponty" is still not really known. The unfinished state of The Visible and the Invisible and the cryptic condition of many of the "Working Notes" may be responsible for that. More research should be done, to uncover "the unsaid" of Merleau-Ponty. lowe to a remark of Paul Ricoeur in his introduction to the work of G. B. Madison, La Phenomenologie de Merleau-Ponty. Une recherche des limites de la conscience (Paris, Klincksieck, 1973, p."

First published in 2005. Twentieth-century philosophy, more than that of any other period, has become deeply and sharply conscious of the connection between philosophical problems and language. We now seem to have entered what might well be called the Wittgensteinian 'moment' in philosophy. This volume seeks to provide a general survey of Wittgenstein's thought, considering both the Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus (1922) and the Philosophical Investigations (1953), and also to give some account of the influence which these two very different books have exercised.

Heidegger holds that our age is dominated by the ambition of reason to possess the world. And he sees in Leibniz the man who formulated the theorem of our modern age: nothing happens without a reason. He calls this attitude `calculating thought' and opposes to it a kind of thought aimed at preserving the essence of things, which he calls `meditating thought'. Cristin's book ascribes great importance to this polarity of thinking for the future of contemporary philosophy, and thus compares the basic ideas of the two thinkers. Leibniz announces the conquest of reason; Heidegger denounces the dangers of reason. Their diversity becomes manifest in the difference between the idea of reason and the image of the path. But is Leibniz's thought really only `calculating'? And do we not perhaps also encounter the traces of reason along Heidegger's path? With these questions in mind we may begin to redefine the relation between the two thinkers and between two different conceptions of reason and philosophy. The hypothesis is advanced that Heidegger's harsh judgment of Leibniz may be mitigated, but it also becomes clear that Heidegger's rewriting of the code of reason is an integral part of our age, in which many signs point to new loci of rationality. With his original interpretation, aware of the risks he is taking, Renato Cristin offers a new guide to the understanding of reason: he shows forth Leibniz as one who defends the thought of being in the unity of monadology, and Heidegger as a thinker who preserves the sign of reason in his meditating thought.

As a founding father of Existentialism, Karl Jaspers has been seen as a twentieth-century successor to Nietzsche and Kierkegaard; as an exponent of reason, he has been seen as an heir of Kant. But studies tracing influences upon his thought or placing him in the context of Existentialism have not dealt with Jasper's concern with the political realm and how we think in it and about it. In this study Elisabeth Young-Bruehl explicates Jasper's practical philosophizing, his search for ways in which we can orient ourselves toward our world and its political questions. Political freedom and freedom for philosophizing, for critical thinking, were of a piece for Jaspers, and Young-Bruehl makes the dynamic unity of these two freedoms the subject of her book. What was important for Jaspers was not a systematic set of philosophical concepts but the activity of philosophizing, a mode of thinking that could illuminate the origins and implications of such unprecedented phenomena as nuclear weapons and totalitarian regimes. Young-Bruehl shows how Jaspers aimed at responsibility to the diversity of the world and attempted to formulate criteria for judgment conducive to responsible thought and action.

Aurel Kolnai was born in Budapest, in 1900 and died in London, in 1973. He was, according to Karl Popper and the late Bernard Williams, one of the most original, provocative, and sensitive philosophers of the twentieth century. Kolnai's moral philosophy is best described in his own words as intrinsicalist, non-naturalist, non-reductionist", which took its original impetus from Scheler's value ethics, and was developed by using a natural phenomenologist method. The unique combination of linguistic analysis and phenomenology yields highly original ideas on classical fields of moral theory, such as responsibility and free will, the meaning of right and wrong, the universalisability of ethical norms, the role of moral emotions, internalism vs externalism, to mention a few. The volume presents a selection of essays by Kolnai, including his main political theoretical work, "What is Politics About", available in English here for the first time. The second half of the book Kolnai's work is analyzed in a series of essays by eminent scholars

The book about John Michell (1724-93) has two parts. The first and longest part is biographical, an account of Michell's home setting (Nottinghamshire in England), the clerical world in which he grew up (Church of England), the university (Cambridge) where he studied and taught, and the scientific activities he made the center of his life. The second part is a complete edition of his known letters. Half of his letters have not been previously published; the other half are brought together in one place for the first time. The letters touch on all aspects of his career, and because they are in his words, they help bring the subject to life. His publications were not many, a slim book on magnets and magnetism, one paper on geology, two papers on astronomy, and a few brief papers on other topics, but they were enough to leave a mark on several sciences. He has been called a geologist, an astronomer, and a physicist, which he was, though we best remember him as a natural philosopher, as one who investigated physical nature broadly. His scientific contribution is not easy to summarize. Arguably he had the broadest competence of any British natural philosopher of the eighteenth century: equally skilled in experiment and observation, mathematical theory, and instruments, his field of inquiry was the universe. From the structure of the heavens through the structure of the Earth to the forces of the elementary particles of matter, he carried out original and far-reaching researches on the workings of nature.

This book gives new insight into acting and theatre-making through phenomenology (the study of how the world shows itself to conscious experience). It examines Being-in-the-world in everyday life with exercises for workshops and rehearsal. Each chapter explores themes to guide the creative process through objects, bodies, spaces, being with others, time, history, freedom and authenticity. Key examples in the work are drawn from Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, Sophocles’ Antigone and Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Practical tasks in each section explore how the theatrical event can offer unique insight into Being and existence. In this way, the book makes a bold leap to understand acting as an embodied form of philosophy and to explain how phenomenology can be a rich source of inspiration for actors, directors, designers and the creative process of theatre-making. This original new book will provide new insight into the practice and theory of acting, stimulate new approaches to rehearsal and advance the notion of theatre making a genuine contribution to philosophical discourse. The fundamental task of the actor is to be on stage with purposeful action in the given circumstances. But this simple act of ‘Being’ is not easy. Phenomenology can provide valuable insight into the challenge. For some time, scholars have looked to phenomenology to describe and analyse the theatrical event. But more than simply drawing attention to embodiment and the subjective experience of the world, a philosophical perspective can also shed light on broader existential issues of being. No specialist knowledge of philosophy is required for the reader to find this text engaging and it will be relevant for second-year students and above at tertiary level. For postgraduates and researchers, the book will provide a valuable touchstone for phenomenology and performance as research. The book will appeal to theatre and performance studies, and some applied philosophy courses. The material is also relevant to studies in literary and critical theory, cultural studies and comparative literature. The work is relevant to The International Federation of Theatre Research (IFTR/FIRT) (Performance and Consciousness), Performance Studies International (psi) and the Performance Philosophy Research Network — an influential and growing research field. Primary markets for this book will be students (both at university and conservatoires) and academics in theatre studies, as well as practitioners and actors in training. The text will be useful to students in units or modules relating to acting theory and theatre-making processes, and which combine critical theory with practical performance. It will also be useful for practitioners of theatre looking to expand or inflect their own methods of approaching performance.

John Cottingham In the anglophone philosophical world, there has, for some time, been a curious relationship between the history of philosophy and contemporary philosophical - quiry. Many philosophers working today virtually ignore the history of their s- ject, apparently regarding it as an antiquarian pursuit with little relevance to their "cutting-edge" research. Conversely, there are historians of philosophy who seldom if ever concern themselves with the intricate technical debates that ll the journals devoted to modern analytic philosophy. Both sides are surely the poorer for this strange bifurcation. For philosophy, like all parts of our intellectual culture, did not come into existence out of nowhere, but was shaped and nurtured by a long tradition; in uncovering the roots of that tradition we begin see current philoso- ical problems in a broader context and thereby enrich our understanding of their signi cance. This is surely part of the justi cation for the practice, in almost every university, of including elements from the history of philosophy as a basic part of the undergraduate curriculum. But understanding is enriched by looking forwards as well as backwards, which is why a good historian of philosophy will not just be c- cerned with uncovering ancient ideas, but will be constantly alert to how those ideas pre gure and anticipate later developments.

The writings collected in this volume make an important addition to The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham. They lend credence to Bentham's claim that his ideas were appropriate `for the use of all nations and all governments professing liberal opinions'. The essays, dating mainly from late 1822 and early 1823, are based exclusively on manuscripts, many of which have not been previously published. Turning his attention towards the Mediterranean basin, Bentham here attempts to legislate for one Islamic state, and offers advice to another in the process of throwing off Islamic rule. The Writings for Tripoli include the famous `Securities against Misrule', in which Bentham draws up a constitutional charter with an accompanying explanation of its provisions. He also discusses the social, political, and religious institutions of the country, and proposes a scheme for the introduction of constitutional reform both there and in the other Barbary states. The Writings for Greece include a rare commentary on the first Greek constitution of 1822, and advice and warnings to the Greek legislators against the temptation of `sinister appetites'. The main theme in both groups of writings is the efficacy of representative institutions and the publicity of official actions in preventing the abuse of government power.

In the last decades, Ingvar Johansson has made a formidable contribution to the development of philosophy in general and perhaps especially to the development of metaphysics. This volume consists of original papers written by 50 philosophers from all over the world in honour of Ingvar Johansson to celebrate his 70th birthday. The papers cover traditional issues in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, applied ethics and applied metaphysics, the nature of human rights, the philosophy of economics and sports. Some of the papers study the philosophy of Ingvar Johansson. All of them studies subjects which he has shown an interest in. The variety of subjects covered, testifies to the extraordinary wide range of issues his thought has had a bearing on.