In Rawls, Dewey and Constructivism, Eric Weber examines and critiques John Rawls' epistemology and the unresolved tension - inherited from Kant - between Representationalism and Constructivism in Rawls' work. Weber argues that, despite Rawls' claims to be a constructivist, his unexplored Kantian influences cause several problems. In particular, Weber criticises Rawls' failure to explain the origins of conceptions of justice, his understanding of "persons" and his revival of Social Contract Theory. Drawing on the work of John Dewey to resolve these problems, the book argues for a rigorously constructivist approach to the concept of justice and explores the practical implications of such an approach for Education.

'There is no question of the contemporary importance and relevance of these essays. T. W. Adorno is one of the great critics of the role of irrational authoritarianism in contemporary society.' Douglas Kellner

'This collection demonstrates the continuing relevance of Adorno's work to the analysis and understanding of modern times. A brilliant contribution to the sociology of racism, anti-Semitism and popular culture.' - Bryan S. Turner, co-editor, The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology

'Theodor Adorno returns from the grave to deliver this timely warning about the dangers of superstition.' Review

When the American modern dancers Isadora Duncan (1877-1928) and Martha Graham (1894-1991) read Nietzsche, they were inspired by the way in which he uses images of dance to figure an alternative to Christian values. They each came to describe their visions for dance in Nietzschean terms. This book investigates the role Nietzsche's dance images play in his project of 'revaluing all values' and does so alongside the religious rhetoric and subject matter evident in the dancing, teaching, and writing of Duncan and Graham. It concludes that these modern dancers found justification and guidance in Nietzsche's texts for developing dance as a medium of religious experience and expression.

This book is the first complete commentary on Marx's manuscripts of 1861-63, works that guide our understanding of fundamental concepts such as 'surplus-value' and 'production price'.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203461754

Dialogos" encompasses Greek language and literature, Greek history and archaeology, Greek culture and thought, present and past: a territory of distinctive richness and unsurpassed influence. It seeks to foster critical awareness and informed debate about the ideas, events and achievements that make up this territory, by redefining their qualities, by exploring their interconnections and by reinterpreting their significance within Western culture and beyond.

In Relation to the Mysteries of Christianity

What are counterfactuals and what is their point? In many cases, none at all. It may be true that if kangaroos didn't have tails, they would fall over, but they do have tails and if they didn't they wouldn't be kangaroos (or would they?). This is the sort of thing that can give counterfactuals a bad name, as inhabitants of a La La Land of the mind. On the other hand, counterfactuals do useful service across a broad range of disciplines in both the sciences and the humanities, including philosophy, history, cosmology, biology, cognitive psychology, jurisprudence, economics, art history, literary theory. They are also richly, albeit sometimes treacherously, present in the everyday human realm of how our lives are both imagined and lived: in the 'crossroads' scenario of decision-making, the place of regret in retrospective assessments of paths taken and not taken, and, at the outer limit, as the wish not to have been born. Christopher Prendergast take us on a dizzying exploratory journey through some of these intellectual and human landscapes, mobilizing a wide range of reference from antiquity to the present, and sustained by the belief that, whether as help or hindrance, and with many variations across cultures, counterfactual thinking and imagining are fundamental to what it is to be human.

The Jewish Philosophy Reader is the first comprehensive anthology of classic writings on Jewish philosophy from the Bible to the present. Complementing the History of Jewish Philosophy, the Reader is divided into four parts:
* Foundations and First Principles
* Medieval and Renaissance Jewish Philosophy
* Modern Jewish Thought
* Contemporary Jewish philosophy

eBook available with sample pages: PB:0415168600

"Routledge Philosophy Guidebooks" introduce students to the classic works of philosophy. Each guidebook considers a major philosopher and a key area of their philosophy by focusing upon an important text - situating the philosopher and work in a historical context, considering the text in question and assessing the philosopher's contribution to contemporary thought.;Leibniz is a major figure in western philosophy and, with Descartes and Spinoza, one of the most influential philosophers of the Rationalist School. The "Monadology" is his most famous work and one of the most important works of modern philosophy. This text introduces and assesses: Leibniz's life and the background to the "Monadology"; the ideas and text of the "Monadology"; and Leibniz's continuing importance to philosophy.

Contents:
1. Introduction Part 1. Philosophical Foundations 2. Presuppositions 3. Subject and Infinite Power 4. Concept and Spirit 5. Freedom 6. From System to History 7. Passion and Conquest 8. The Cunning of Reason 9. Peoples 10. States 11. The End of History 12. The Ways of God

Lyotard's work challenges the presumption and orientation of modern political philosophy. In particular, he repudiates attempts to justify knowledge and society in terms of "grand" narratives of, for example, the liberation of mankind or the immanence of science. He argues that the totalising perspective of these meta-narratives is superseded by a post-modern acceptance of difference and variety and a scepticism towards unifying meta-theories. This study considers Lyotard's notion of a "grand" narraative and analyzes his critique of modernity. In the light of Lyotard's views, it goes on to examine the work of seven political thinkers whose ideas represent different stands of a distinctively modern perspective. The author concludes that, while their theories conform to Lyotard's conept of a metanarrative, they generate insights into the modern world which cannot be dismissed as lightly as their universalistic assumptions. Finally he comments on the plausibility and viability of Lyotard's repudiation of modernity.

This first of two volumes brings together invited papers of the 32nd International Wittgenstein Symposium (Kirchberg/W. (Austria), 2009). The relation between language and the world was undoubtedly one if not the central issue in Wittgenstein's whole philosophical oeuvre. His one hundred and twentieth birthday provided an occasion for foregrounding this aspect of his work. A special workshop was dedicated to new aspects of Wittgenstein's Nachlass. In this volume Frank Cioffi, Peter Hacker, Ian Hacking, Roy Harris, Lars Hertzberg, Jaakko Hintikka, Marie McGinn, Daniele Moyal-Sharrock, Hans Sluga among others provide substantial contributions on various aspects of Wittgenstein's writings such as the philosophy of mathematics, the problem of rule following or the relation between meaning and use.

Economic collapse, poverty, disease, natural disasters, the constant threat of community unrest and international terrorism--a quick look at any newspaper is enough to cause almost anyone to feel trapped and desperate. Yet the recent election also revealed a growing search for hope spreading through society. In the timely Hope in the Age of Anxiety, Anthony Scioli and Henry Biller illuminate the nature of hope and offer a multitude of techniques designed to improve the lives of individuals, and bring more light into the world.
In this fascinating and humane book, Scioli and Biller reveal the ways in which human beings acquire and make use of hope. Hope in the Age of Anxiety is meant to be a definitive guide. The evolutionary, biological, and cultural roots of hope are covered along with the seven kinds of hope found in the world's religions. Just as vital, the book provides many personal tools for addressing the major challenges of the human condition: fear, loss, illness, and death. Some of the key areas illuminated in Hope in the Age of Anxiety:
How do you build and sustain hope in trying times?
How can hope help you to achieve your life goals?
How can hope improve your relationships with others?
How can hope aid your recovery from trauma or illness?
How does hope relate to spirituality?
Hope in the Age of Anxiety identifies the skills needed to cultivate hope, and offers suggestions for using these capacities to realize your life goals, support health and healing, strengthen relationships, enhance spirituality, and inoculate yourself against the despair that engulfs many individuals.

This book explores an overlooked area in Hegel studies: his use of ‘individuality’ (Individualität). Hegel joined a lively conversation, from Leibniz to Romanticism and beyond, about this novel concept/phenomenon. Successive chapters track Hegel’s engagement, in such texts as the Phenomenology, Encyclopedia, and Aesthetics. Hegel’s system tends to follow a syllogistic logic (universal, particular, singular), but ‘individuality’ departs from the norm. The category enacts a certain pragmatics (as against semantics or syntactics) regarding tacit assumptions at work or implicit terms of address, which requires active participation by a thinking subject charged with discerning individuality (which bars resort to explicit rules). The category reflexively implicates the user even in presuming an objective context. ‘Individuality’ should not be confused with ‘individualism,’ wholly distinct in origin. Moreover, Hegel’s Aesthetics embraces a paradoxical anachronism. Like ‘art’ itself, ‘individuality’ emerged as an essentially modern category, though one transferred to the past and to distant cultures.

This collection gathers together comments and reviews on the works of Adam Smith. All introductions to the later editions of his works, either in English or in translation, are included as well as the editor's notes (where possible). Volume One contains contemporary comments, letters and reviews on Smith's works from his Edinburgh lectures to the posthumous "Essays on Philosophical Subjects" . The second and third volumes contain introductions, supplementary chapters and notes to the early English editions, together with early reviews. They also include some critical remarks on his moral philosophy in the early nineteenth century and two studies by representative writers of the century. The remaining three volumes focus on overseas responses to his work.

The text centres on the assumption that there are aspects of thinking common to all traditions. On the basis of this assumption, the author offers a comparative introduction to important East/West philosophical questions and positions, and explores 'philosophizing' as expressed in the presuppositions, knowledge techniques, and logic developed by specific Greco-European, Indian and Chinese philosophers in their efforts to understand the object world, human consciousness and their interconnections. The synthesis of philosophy as 'product' and philosophizing as 'process' provides the dimensions of what the author calls 'philosophical space'.

The "existential" drama at the heart of the modern world is the result of a truly cataclysmic transformation in our institutions and modes of belief. It rivals in scope and significance, if it does not surpass, the transformation occasioned by the "Scientific Revolution" of the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Few can still doubt - even if they do not yet appreciate - the comprehensive and global scope of this "Second Scientific Revolution." Our fundamental modes of thought and action, institutional structure, personal identity, economic development, and relation to nature, all require radical revision if human life on this planet (and beyond) is to survive and prosper. We are thus confronted with a world whose structures of meaning and corresponding institutional foundations are being undermined, thus presaging a revolutionary transformation. That transformation, however unclear at present, cannot fail to be radical and comprehensive. This work critically evaluates its nature, outlines the structures of an alternative world view and then develops the contours of the social and institutional order it suggests. It concludes with a discussion of practical strategies by which we may reasonably hope to meet the challenges confronting our civilization.

This archive of source materials from Victorian periodicals provides insight into the evolving moral and political thought of Britain in the 1800s. It should be of interest to the historian of philosophy and anyone interested in utilitarianism. The volumes are divided chronologically: 1800-1851, 1852-1869, 1869-1875 and 1876-1900. The concentration of material in the 1860s and 1870s makes it clear that this was the high water mark of the utilitarian debate.

A collection in 12 volumes of all the published works of Robert Boyle (1627-1691), who was one of the most influential scientific and theological thinkers of his time. Discoverer of Boyle's Law, which still pertains in modern science, his writings range around the greatest scientific issues of his day. Works originally in Latin are presented in their contemporary English translations. There is a general introduction with explanatory notes to the texts. A bibliography and general index permits access to all Boyle's work.

This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.

This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.

Pre-Raphaelitism was a multi-faceted movement which had a fundamental impact on the cultural, artistic, and intellectual life of Victorian Britain and the British Empire. The Pre-Raphaelites were legendary figures mythologized in their own lifetimes. This major movement has direct relevance to contemporary understanding of national heritage. The Pre-Raphaelites and their supporters produced numerous cultural statements spanning the decorative arts, literature and social politics. This four volume set demonstrates the profoundly interdisciplinary nature of Pre-Raphaelitism. It collects together original Pre-Raphaelite materials comprising fiction, prose, verse, literary criticism and illustration. A range of writings on art, design, architecture, philosophy, religion, science and politics is presented in the themed volumes: literature and literary criticism; autobiographies and diaries; philosophy; design and art criticism; social and cultural critique. Whole texts and significant extracts from the writings of key Pre-Raphaelite figures such as William Allingham, Walter Crane, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, William Morris, Walter Pater, Coventry Patmore, George du Maurie

"The nineteenth-century idealist philosopher and precursor of Freud" "The World as Will and Idea" (1819) holds that all nature, including man, is the expression of an insatiable will to life; that the truest understanding of the world comes through art, and the only lasting good through ascetic renunciation. Unique in western philosophy for his affinity with Eastern thought, Schopenhauer influenced philosophers, writers, and composers including Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Wagner, Tolstoy, Thomas Mann, and Samuel Beckett. The Work presented here appeals not only to the student of philosophy, but everyone interested in psychology, literature and eastern and western religion. "The most comprehensive paperback edition available, with introduction, bibliography, selected criticism, index and chronology of Schopenhauer's life and times "

The Cambridge Platonists were defenders of tolerance in the political as well as the moral sphere ; they held that practical j u d g e m e n t came down in the last instance to individual conscience ; and they laid the foundations of our modern conceptions of conscience and liberty. But at the same time they ma intained the existence of eternal truths , and of a Good-in-itself , identical with Truth and Being, refusing to admit that freedom of conscience i m p li e d moral relativism. They were critics of dogmatism, and of the sectarian notion of "enthusiasm" as a source of illumination , on the grounds that both were disruptive of social harmony; they pleaded the cause of reason , in the hope that it could become the foundation of all human knowledge . Yet , for all that , they ma intained that a certain sort of mystical illumination lay at the heart of all true thought , and that human reason had validity only in virtue of i t s divine origin . They debated with Des cartes and took a keen interest in his mech- ism and his dualism ; they brought the atomistic theories of Democritus back into repute; and they sought to provide a detailed account of the causality link ing all phenomena.