In 2012, philosopher and public intellectual Slavoj Zizek published what arguably is his magnum opus, the one-thousand-page tome Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism. A sizable sequel appeared in 2014, Absolute Recoil: Towards a New Foundation of Dialectical Materialism. In these two books, Zizek returns to the German idealist G. W. F. Hegel in order to forge a new materialism for the twenty-first century. Zizek's reinvention of Hegelian dialectics explores perennial and contemporary concerns: humanity's relations with nature, the place of human freedom, the limits of rationality, the roles of spirituality and religion, and the prospects for radical sociopolitical change. In A New German Idealism, Adrian Johnston offers a first-of-its-kind sustained critical response to Less Than Nothing and Absolute Recoil. Johnston, a leading authority on and interlocutor of Zizek, assesses the recent return to Hegel against the backdrop of Kantian and post-Kantian German idealism. He also presents alternate reconstructions of Hegel's positions that differ in important respects from Zizek's version of dialectical materialism. In particular, Johnston criticizes Zizek's deviations from the secular naturalism and Enlightenment optimism of his chosen sources of inspiration: not only Hegel, but Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud too. In response, Johnston develops what he calls transcendental materialism, an antireductive and leftist materialism capable of preserving and advancing the core legacies of the Hegelian, Marxian, and Freudian traditions central to Zizek.

This Element surveys the place of the Critique of Pure Reason in Kant's overall philosophical project and describes and analyzes the main arguments of the work. It also surveys the developments in Kant's thought that led to the first critique, and provides an account of the genesis of the book during the 'silent decade' of its composition in the 1770s based on Kant's handwritten notes from the period.

The essays in this volume provide a state-of-the-art overview of the central elements of Hobbes's political philosophy and the ways in which they can be interpreted. The volume's contributors offer their own interpretations of Hobbes's philosophical method, his materialism, his psychological theory and moral theory, and his views on benevolence, law and civil liberties, religion, and women. Hobbes's ideas of authorization and representation, his use of the 'state of nature', and his reply to the unjust 'Foole' are also critically analyzed. The essays will help readers to orient themselves in the complex scholarly literature while also offering groundbreaking arguments and innovative interpretations. The volume as a whole will facilitate new insights into Hobbes's political theory, enabling readers to consider key elements of his thought from multiple perspectives and to select and combine them to form their own interpretations of his political philosophy.

Why must we believe that God is dead? Can we accept that traditional morality is just a 'useful mistake'? Did the principle of 'the will to power' lead to the Holocaust? What are the limitations of scientific knowledge? Is human evolution complete or only beginning? It is difficult to overestimate the importance of Friedrich Nietzsche for our present epoch. His extraordinary insights into human psychology, morality, religion and power seem quite clairvoyant today: existentialism, psychoanalysis, semiotics and postmodernism are plainly anticipated in his writings - which are famously enigmatic and often contradictory."Introducing Nietzsche" is the perfect guide to this exhilarating and oft-misunderstood philosopher.

This book focuses on the unity, diversity, and centrality of the notion of law as it is employed in Kant's theoretical and practical philosophy. Eric Watkins argues that, by thinking through a number of issues in various historical, scientific, and philosophical contexts over several decades, Kant is able to develop a univocal concept of law that can nonetheless be applied to a wide range of particular cases, despite the diverse demands that these contexts give rise to. In addition, Watkins shows how Kant comes to view both the generic conception of law which he develops and its different particular instances as crucial components of his systematic philosophy as a whole. This volume's new and unified account of a major current running through Kant's work will be important for scholars interested in numerous aspects of his philosophy, from the theoretical and abstract to the practical and empirical.

Immanuel Kant is widely recognized as one of the most important Western philosophers since Aristotle. His thought has had, and continues to have, a profound effect on every branch of philosophy, including ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, political philosophy, and philosophy of religion. This Lexicon contains detailed and original entries by 130 leading Kant scholars, covering Kant's most important concepts as well as each of his writings. Part I covers Kant's notoriously difficult philosophical concepts, providing entries on these individual 'trees' of Kant's philosophical system. Part II, by contrast, provides an overview of the 'forest' of Kant's philosophy, with entries on each of his published works and on each of his sets of lectures and personal reflections. This part is arranged chronologically, revealing not only the broad sweep of Kant's thought but also its development over time. Professors, graduate students, and undergraduates will value this landmark volume.

This collection brings together in translation the finest postwar German-language scholarship on Nietzsche's philosophy, ranging over his concept of irony, his thoughts on music, his relation to the pre-Socratics, his concept of truth, and numerous other topics. Many of the essays appear in English here for the first time, and all are newly translated for the volume.

This is a book about the ethics of authorship. Most directly, it explores different conceptualizations of the responsibilities of the author to the reader. But it also engages the question of what styles of authorship allow these responsibilities to be met. Style itself is an ethical issue, since the relation between the writing subject and the reader--and the dynamics of authority and influence, of gift giving and friendship in this relation--have as much to do with how one writes as what one says. The two writers who serve as the main subjects for this work, the German idealist philosopher G. W. F. Hegel and the Danish Christian existentialist Soren Kierkegaard, invite us to confront particularly challenging questions about the ethics of authorship. Each in his own way explores styles of authorship that employ a variety of strategies of seduction in order to entice the reader into his narratives, strategies that at least on the surface appear to be fundamentally manipulative and unethical. Further, both seek to enact their own deaths as authors, effectively disappearing as reliable guides for the reader. That might also seem to be ethically irresponsible, an abandonment of the reader, who has been seduced only to be deserted. This is the first work to undertake a sustained questioning of Kierkegaard's central distinction between his own "indirect" style of communication and the (purportedly) "direct" style of Hegel's philosophy. Hegel was in fact a much more subtle practitioner of style than Kierkegaard represents him as being, indeed, a practitioner whose style is in the service of an ambitious reconceptualization of the ethics of authorship. As for Kierkegaard, his own indirect style raises a whole series of ethical questions about how the reader is imagined in relation to the author. There is finally an either/or between Hegel and Kierkegaard, just not the one Kierkegaard proposes as between an author devoid of ethics and one who makes possible a true ethics of authorship. Rather, the either/or is between two competing practices of authorship, one daunting with the cadences of a highly technical style, the other delightful for its elegance and playfulness--but both powerful experiments in the ethics of style.

For those open to the possibility that philosophical thought can improve life, David Hume's Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary have something to say. In the first comprehensive study of the Essays, Margaret Watkins engages closely with these neglected texts and shows how they provide important insights into Hume's perspective on the breadth and depth of human life, arguing that the Essays reveal his continued commitment to philosophy as a discipline that can promote both social and individual progress. Addressing topics such as politics, war, slavery, the priesthood, the development of industry, aesthetics, emotional disorders, egoism, friendship, sexuality, gender relations, and the nature of philosophy itself, the volume examines Hume's purposes and aims against the backdrop of the eighteenth century society in which he lived. It will be of interest to scholars of modern thought in philosophy, politics, history, and economics.

Hume considered his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals to be one of his best works. In it he offers his most elegant and approachable account of the origins and scope of morality. With the hope of reaching a broad audience, he argues that morality is neither rigid nor austere, but is rather a product of sentiments that all human beings share, and which they are naturally inclined to recognize and act upon. In this Critical Guide, a team of distinguished scholars discuss each section of the Enquiry, its place in Hume's philosophy as a whole, and its historical context; their topics include the nature of morals, talents and moral virtues, benevolence, sympathy, and the sources of moral disagreement. The volume will be valuable for scholars and advanced students working on Hume.

A comprehensive study of Mill's theory of liberty, uncovering Mill's solution to the problem of democracy, the tyranny of the majority Alexis de Tocqueville famously identified the problem of democracy as the "tyranny of the majority," where the rule of the majority oppresses or marginalizes minorities and individuals. John Stuart Mill, perhaps more than any other liberal thinker, attempted to find a solution to this problem. In this study of Mill's political theory, Chris Barker shows how Mill's civic education transforms individuals into citizens who are free to form opinions, analyze arguments, and wield a power capable of moderating the irresponsible power of the ruling majority. Barker examines Mill's thought as it is applied to five prominent components of democratic life-marriage, economic participation, scientific expertise, representative politics, and religion-with particular emphasis on gender and economic reform. Barker concludes that Mill's interpretation of liberty is not well described as either negative or positive. Instead, liberty consists in the mental independence or thinking power of the educated individuals composing and challenging majorities. CHRIS BARKER is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the American University in Cairo.

Paul L. Holmer (1916-2004) was one of the most significant American students of Kierkegaard of his generation. Although written in the 1950s and 1960s, Holmer's theological and philosophical engagement with Kierkegaard challenges much contemporary scholarly discussion. Unlike many, Holmer refuses reductionist readings that tie Kierkegaard to any particular "school." He likewise criticizes biographical readings of Kierkegaard, much in vogue recently, seeing Kierkegaard rather as an indirect communicator aiming at his reader's own ethical and religious capacities. Holmer also rejects popular existentialist readings of Kierkegaard, seeing him as an analyzer of concepts, while at the same time denying that he is a "crypto-analyst." In his important reading of Kierkegaard on "truth," Holmer pits Kierkegaard against those who see "truth" empirically, idealistically, or relativistically. His carefully textured account of Kierkegaard's conceptual grammar of "truth" in ethical and religious contexts addresses immediately current discussions of truth, meaning, reference, and realism versus antirealism, relativism, and hermeneutics. It will be of great interest to all interested in Kierkegaard and his importance for contemporary theology and philosophy.

John Locke's religious interests and concerns permeate his philosophical production and are best expressed in his later writings on religion, which represent the culmination of his studies. In this volume, Diego Lucci offers a thorough analysis and reassessment of Locke's unique, heterodox, internally coherent version of Protestant Christianity, which emerges from The Reasonableness of Christianity and other public as well as private texts. In order to clarify Locke's views on morality, salvation, and the afterlife, Lucci critically examines Locke's theistic ethics, biblical hermeneutics, reflection on natural and revealed law, mortalism, theory of personal identity, Christology, and tolerationism. While emphasizing the originality of Locke's scripture-based religion, this book calls attention to his influences and explores the reception of his unorthodox theological ideas. Moreover, the book highlights the impact of Locke's natural and biblical theology on other areas of his thought, thus enabling a better understanding of the unity of his work.

The influence of Ibn 'Arabi, the 12th century Andalusian mystic philosopher extended beyond the Muslim world from Spain, to China, to Indonesia. Interest in Ibn 'Arabi in the west has grown over the last century. "Ibn Arabi and the Contemporary West" examines 'Arabi's teachings through the work of the Beshara Trust and the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society. The study investigates how the Beshara School has used Ibn 'Arabi's teachings in assisting a range of students from around the world towards personal, spiritual development and how the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society has evolved into an international organisation with increasing influence in both the West and the Muslim world.

Kant's philosophical achievements have long overshadowed those of his German contemporaries, often to the point of concealing his contemporaries' influence upon him. This volume of new essays draws on recent research into the rich complexity of eighteenth-century German thought, examining key figures in the development of aesthetics and art history, the philosophy of history and education, political philosophy, and the philosophy of religion. The essays range over numerous thinkers including Baumgarten, Mendelssohn, Meyer, Winckelmann, Herder, Schiller, Hamann and Fichte, showing how they variously influenced, challenged, and revised Kant's philosophy, at times moving it in novel directions unacceptable to the magister himself. The volume will be valuable for all who are interested in this distinctive period of German philosophy.

Spinoza's Political Psychology advances a novel, comprehensive interpretation of Spinoza's political writings, exploring how his analysis of psychology informs his arguments for democracy and toleration. Justin Steinberg shows how Spinoza's political method resembles the Renaissance civic humanism in its view of governance as an adaptive craft that requires psychological attunement. He examines the ways that Spinoza deploys this realist method in the service of empowerment, suggesting that the state can affectively reorient and thereby liberate its citizens, but only if it attends to their actual motivational and epistemic capacities. His book will interest a range of readers in Spinoza studies and the history of political thought, as well as readers working in contemporary political theory.

Autonomy is one of the central concepts of contemporary moral thought, and Kant is often credited with being the inventor of individual moral autonomy. But how and why did Kant develop this notion? The Emergence of Autonomy in Kant's Moral Philosophy is the first essay collection exclusively devoted to this topic. It traces the emergence of autonomy from Kant's earliest writings to the changes that he made to the concept in his mature works. The essays offer a close historical and philosophical analysis of what prompted Kant to develop his conception of autonomy, charting the historical background which prompted his search, and thoroughly analysing different stages of his writings in order to see which element of autonomy was introduced at which point. The resulting volume will be of interest to both scholars and students of Kantian moral philosophy, as well as to anyone interested in the subject of autonomy.

Schleiermacher's Hermeneutics and Criticism is the founding text of modern hermeneutics. Written as a method for the interpretation and textual criticism of the New Testament, it is remarkably relevant to contemporary theories of interpretation in literary theory and analytical philosophy. This volume offers the text in a new translation by Andrew Bowie, together with related writings on secular hermeneutics and language. An introduction places the texts in the context of Schleiermacher's philosophy as a whole.

This text, by the author of The Pragmatic Philosophy of William James, provides a critical analysis of James's philosopy of religion. It examines and extends his insights and arguments, exhibiting their depth and contemporary relevance.

William James (1842-1910) was both a philosopher and a psychologist, nowadays most closely associated with the pragmatic theory of truth. The essays in this Companion deal with the full range of his thought, including technical philosophical issues, religious speculation, moral philosophy and political controversies of his time. New readers and nonspecialists will find this the most convenient and accessible guide to James currently available. Advanced students and specialists will find a conspectus of recent developments in the interpretation of James.

In Everything in Its Right Place, Joseph Almog develops the unitarian and universalist metaphysics of Spinoza. Spinoza's ground zero thesis is that "Nature is one and all. " Everything (including God, mathematics, morals, our own thoughts) finds its place within Spinoza's (capital N) Nature. It is the place that each thing occupies within the grid of Nature-from God on down the cosmic tree of being-that determines its fundamental (lowercase n) nature. For Spinoza, one's nature is determined by one's place in Nature or, in terms of the fundamental axiom of the book-the Nature-unfolding axiom: the nature of x=Nature at x. Almog's reading of Spinoza is distinct in its understanding of the deductive abstractions of part I-II of the Ethics by means of the concrete illustrations of Spinoza's intended subject matter in his political writings, where he tells us directly (i) what Nature is and (ii) how man's nature is not a separate kingdom from the Nature-kingdom but merely an unfolding of it. This leads, as in the Ethics, to a final chapter on what it meant to Spinoza to live in symbiosis with Nature and, therefore, to be one with it-and with God.

In this book, published in 1686, the scientist Robert Boyle (1627-91) attacked prevailing notions of the natural world which depicted 'Nature' as a wise, benevolent and purposeful being. Boyle, one of the leading mechanical philosophers of his day, believed that the world was best understood as a vast, impersonal machine, fashioned by an infinite, personal God. In this cogent treatise, he drew on his scientific findings, his knowledge of contemporary medicine and his deep reflection on theological and philosophical issues, arguing that it was inappropriate both theologically and scientifically to speak of Nature as if it had a mind of its own: instead, the only true efficient causes of things were the properties and powers given to matter by God. As such, A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature represents one of the subtlest statements concerning the philosophical issues raised by the mechanical philosophy to emerge from the period of the scientific revolution.

It was as a political thinker that Thomas Hobbes first came to prominence, and it is as a political theorist that he is most studied today. Yet the range of his writings extends well beyond morals and politics. Hobbes had distinctive views in metaphysics and epistemology, and wrote about such subjects as history, law, and religion. He also produced full-scale treatises in physics, optics, and geometry. All of these areas are covered in this Companion, most in considerable detail. The volume also reflects the multidisciplinary nature of current Hobbes scholarship by drawing together perspectives that are now being developed in parallel by philosophers, historians of science and mathematics, intellectual historians, political scientists, and literary theorists.

This book presents a comprehensive examination of Gottfried Leibniz's views on the nature of agents and their actions. Julia Jorati offers a fresh look at controversial topics including Leibniz's doctrines of teleology, the causation of spontaneous changes within substances, divine concurrence, freedom, and contingency, and also discusses widely neglected issues such as his theories of moral responsibility, control, attributability, and compulsion. Rather than focusing exclusively on human agency, she explores the activities of non-rational substances and the differences between distinctive types of actions, showing how the will, appetitions, and teleology are key to Leibniz's discussions of agency. Her book reveals that Leibniz has a nuanced and compelling philosophy of action which has relevance for present-day discussions of agency. It will be of interest to scholars and students of early modern philosophy as well as to metaphysicians and philosophers of action.

What does it take to be subjectively free in an objectively rational social order? In this book Andreja Novakovic offers a fresh interpretation of Hegel's account of ethical life by focusing on his concept of habit or 'second nature'. Novakovic addresses two central and difficult issues facing any interpretation of his Philosophy of Right: why Hegel thinks that it is is better to relate unreflectively to the laws of ethical life, and which forms of reflection, especially critical reflection, remain available within ethical life. Her interpretation draws on numerous parts of Hegel's system, particularly on his 'Anthropology' and his Phenomenology of Spirit, and also explores connections between his account and those of other philosophers. Her aim is to argue that Hegel has a compelling conception of the ordinary ethical standpoint which takes seriously both the virtues and the perils of reflection.