Scottish philosopher Lady Mary Shepherd (1777-1847) wrote two books that she conceived as one unified project: Essay Upon the Relation of Cause and Effect (1824) and Essays on the Perception of an External Universe (1827). While they were well received in her day, Shepherd's insightful philosophical writings have been neglected for some 150 years and are only now receiving the scholarly attention they deserve. Mary Shepherd: A Guide by Deborah Boyle, part of the Oxford Guides to Philosophy series, navigates students of philosophy or general readers through Shepherd's two significant works. The first four chapters address topics raised in the 1824 Essay: Shepherd's arguments for two key causal principles, her objections to Hume and her alternative accounts of causation and causal inference; her theory of objects as bundles of qualities; her critique of Thomas Brown's defence of Humean causation; and her discussion of London surgeon William Lawrence's accounts of sentience and life, which Shepherd treats as a case study of how Humean theory can lead to errors in scientific reasoning. Chapter 5 covers topics central to both of Shepherd's books: what she means by "sensation," "idea," "will," "imagination," "understanding," "reasoning," and "latent reasoning." The remaining five chapters proceed systematically through Shepherd's 1827 book, where she seeks to prove, against Berkeleian idealism, that we can know that an external world of mind-independent matter exists. Boyle discusses Shepherd's proofs for such an external world, her responses to various sceptical challenges, and her specific objections to Berkeley. Each chapter ends with a list of works for further reading and a glossary of terms that explain Shepherd's sometimes idiosyncratic philosophical vocabulary, resulting in an essential guide to a philosopher who exerted considerable influence during her time.

Exploring the life, work and ideas of the great 19th Century utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, this study takes a unique look at his intellectual project from the point of view of the development of his political thought and later reassessment of his own ideas. Placing Bentham's work in its historical and intellectual context, Utilitarian Philosophy and Politics considers in particular Bentham's utilitarianism in relation to his later engagement with political and constitutional reform. James Crimmins argues that, despite being one of the most argued over philosophers of the 19 th century, Bentham remains one of the most misunderstood of political philosophers. By attempting to look again at the context in which Bentham was writing and his self-conscious concern with his own legacy, this book offers a new and comprehensive account of this major political and moral thinker.

Education, Self-consciousness and Social Action reconstructs the Hegelian concept of education, Bildung, and shows that this concept could serve as a powerful alternative to current psychologist notions of learning. Taking a Hegelian perspective, Stojanov claims that Bildung should be interpreted as growth of mindedness and that such a growth has two central and interrelated components, including the development of self-consciousness toward conceptual self-articulation and the formation of one's capacity for intelligent social action. The interrelation between the two central components of education implies that learning is transformed into education only when it involves the self-consciousness and the identity of the learner. Since both are grounded in the ethical beliefs and values of the individual, transforming learning into education therefore requires that education also address students' everyday ethical assumptions, as well as their articulation and conceptualization. This claim has a number of implications for educational policy and pedagogy; one being that learning and teaching in schools are educative only if they have ethical significance for both students and teachers. Another implication is that the point of departure for educative teaching becomes the actual, everyday ethical beliefs and experiences of the students, rather than fixed curricular contents. Students' encountering with sciences and arts should aim at the conceptual articulation of those beliefs and experiences - an articulation which makes individual's rational autonomy and self-determination possible. Education, Self-consciousness and Social Action will be of great interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students interested in the philosophy of education. It should also be essential reading for anyone engaged in the study of Hegel's work.

Friedrich Nietzsche's thoughts in 140 characters or less. Tweetable Nietzsche introduces and analyzes the worldview of Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche's tweets, 140 characters or less, provide readers a distilled essence of every major aspect of his worldview. Each tweet illustrates some aspect of his worldview contributing toward a full-orbed understanding of Nietzsche's thought. Friedrich Nietzsche radically confronted Western culture, morality, and social mores, until his death in 1900. Occupying a first-rank position as a thinker, his thought later inspired numerous movements that weave the tapestries of contemporary culture: existentialism, theology, nihilistic culture, Nazism, twentieth century film and art, atheism, ethical egoism, deconstruction, the hermeneutics of suspicion, and the postmodern age. Nietzsche's incalculable sway on our culture persists to this day. Even his acerbic criticism of Christianity has affected the religion. But many people remain unaware of the pervasive attitudes Nietzsche disseminated, attitudes they echo. His stark prophecy that "God is dead, and we killed him" thrives in this accelerating secular age where postmodernists lionized him as a prophetic voice of a new era.

First published in 2001, this book sets out to shed light on traditional controversies in Mill scholarship, underscore the significance of the contribution Mill made to associationist psychology, argue he is not entirely successful in explaining why art matters, and that this failure is linked to a deep tension in his mature work - rooted in his unwillingness to shake off the moral psychology he was raised on. The book examines various episodes and tensions in Mill's life and work and how they relate to and informed his philosophy - while also giving a critical account of it. This book will be of interest to students of philosophy.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau is one of the most controversial philosophers of the eighteenth century, and his groundbreaking work still provokes heated debate in contemporary political theory. In this book, Celine Spector, one of the world's foremost experts on Rousseau's thought, provides an accessible introduction to his moral, social and political theory. She explores the themes and central concepts of his thought, ranging from the state of nature, the social contract and the general will to natural and political freedom, religion and education. She combines a skilful exposition of Rousseau as a 'man of paradoxes' with a discussion of his often-overlooked ideas on knowledge, political economy and international relations. The book traces both the overall unity and the significant changes in Rousseau's philosophy, accounting for its complexity and for the importance of its legacy. It will be essential reading for scholars, students and general readers interested in the Enlightenment and more broadly in the history of modern political thought and philosophy.

"Chatter" cannot always be taken lightly, for the insignificance and insubstantiality of "idle talk," "prattle," "nonsense," and so forth challenge the very notions of substance and significance through which rational discourses seek justification. This book shows that in "chatter" Kierkegaard uncovered a specfically linguistic mode of negativity-not that of the Hegelian concept-became the medium in which a non-speculative and non-historicist presentation of history could be carried out. The author examines in detail those writings of Kierkegaard in which he undertook complex negotiations with the threat-and also the promise-of "chatter." One effect of these negotiations is revealed as an insistence on "existence," which alone could appear as a counterweight to the lightness and insubstantiality of mere language. The author's readings of both well-known and neglected works do not simply show how indirect communication affects this insistence on "existence"; they also show how the negation of direct communication (which in genderal makes reading necessary) undoes the distinctions through which weighty "existence" and insubstantial "chatter" are set apart.

This new anthology of early modern philosophy enriches the possibilities for teaching this period by highlighting not only metaphysics and epistemology but also new themes such as virtue, equality and difference, education, the passions, and love. It contains the works of 43 philosophers, including traditionally taught figures such as Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, as well as less familiar writers such as Lord Shaftesbury, Anton Amo, Julien Offray de La Mettrie, and Denis Diderot. It also highlights the contributions of women philosophers, including Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway, Gabrielle Suchon, Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz, and Emilie Du Chatelet.

Hegel's Transcendental Ontology argues that Hegel presents the kernel of his metaphysics, in the Doctrine of the Concept, the final part of his Science of Logic. The Concept has three moments: universality (a process through which conceptual content of empirical determinations is formed), particularity (a holistic system of inferentially interrelated determinations comprising the totality of conceptual content), and individuality (the totality of objects conditioned by the shared system of empirical determinations that comprise the particular moment). The book details these three moments as well as the specific schema of their relation to one another. One of its aims is to offer a resolution to the recent debate between Kantian and traditional metaphysics-based readings of Hegel that has been dominating Hegel scholarship. The author claims that Hegel walked a narrow path between Scylla, of offering just another version of the traditional kind of metaphysics and Charybdis of abstaining from making any substantive claims about the nature of reality and focusing exclusively on the analysis of the faculty of understanding. Hegel left behind traditional approaches to the problems of metaphysics and, through a radical reformulation of the relationship between thought and being, proposed a new kind of metaphysics that is Kantian through and through.

Exploring the experiments in individual and national self-consciousness conducted during the Romantic period, this essential comparative study of European literature, philosophy and politics makes original and often surprising connections and contrasts to reveal how personal and social identities were re-orientated and disorientated from the French Revolution onwards. Reviving a contested moment in the history of aesthetic theory, this study shows how the growing awareness of irresolution in Kant's third Kritik allowed Romantic writers to put the aesthetic to radical uses not envisaged by its parent philosophy. It also recounts how they would go on to force philosophy to revise received notions of authority, empowering women and subordinated ethnic groups to re-orientate existing hierarchies. The sheer range and variety of writers covered is testament both to the breadth of writing that Kant's philosophy so rashly legitimated and to the wider importance of philosophy to the understanding of Romantic literature.

Renowned for his metaphysics, Spinoza made significant contributions to understanding the human mind, the emotions, moral philosophy, and political philosophy.
Beginning with an overview of Spinoza's life, Michael Della Rocca carefully unpacks and explains Spinoza's philosophy: his metaphysics of substance and argument at the center of his whole system that God is the sole independent substance; his account of the human mind and its relation to the body; his theory that human beings tend towards self-preservation and his most famous work, the Ethics, including the problem of free will; and his writings on the state, religion and scripture.

Della Rocca concludes with a chapter on Spinoza's legacy and how modern philosophers, Hume, Hegel, and Nietzsche, responded to Spinoza's challenge. Ideal for those coming to Spinoza for the first time as well as those already acquainted with his thought, Spinoza is essential reading for anyone studying philosophy.

When it appeared in 1670, Baruch Spinoza's "Theological-Political Treatise" was denounced as the most dangerous book ever published--"godless," "full of abominations," "a book forged in hell . . . by the devil himself." Religious and secular authorities saw it as a threat to faith, social and political harmony, and everyday morality, and its author was almost universally regarded as a religious subversive and political radical who sought to spread atheism throughout Europe. Yet Spinoza's book has contributed as much as the Declaration of Independence or Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" to modern liberal, secular, and democratic thinking. In "A Book Forged in Hell," Steven Nadler tells the fascinating story of this extraordinary book: its radical claims and their background in the philosophical, religious, and political tensions of the Dutch Golden Age, as well as the vitriolic reaction these ideas inspired.

It is not hard to see why Spinoza's "Treatise" was so important or so controversial, or why the uproar it caused is one of the most significant events in European intellectual history. In the book, Spinoza became the first to argue that the Bible is not literally the word of God but rather a work of human literature; that true religion has nothing to do with theology, liturgical ceremonies, or sectarian dogma; and that religious authorities should have no role in governing a modern state. He also denied the reality of miracles and divine providence, reinterpreted the nature of prophecy, and made an eloquent plea for toleration and democracy.

A vivid story of incendiary ideas and vicious backlash, "A Book Forged in Hell" will interest anyone who is curious about the origin of some of our most cherished modern beliefs.

Friedrich Nietzsche is often depicted in popular and scholarly discourse as a lonely philosopher dealing with abstract concerns unconnected to the intellectual debates of his time and place. Robert C. Holub counters this narrative, arguing that Nietzsche was very well attuned to the events and issues of his era and responded to them frequently in his writings. Organized around nine important questions circulating in Europe at the time in the realms of politics, society, and science, Nietzsche in the Nineteenth Century presents a thorough investigation of Nietzsche's familiarity with contemporary life, his contact with and comments on these various questions, and the sources from which he gathered his knowledge. Holub begins his analysis with Nietzsche's views on education, nationhood, and the working-class movement, turns to questions of women and women's emancipation, colonialism, and Jews and Judaism, and looks at Nietzsche's dealings with evolutionary biology, cosmological theories, and the new "science" of eugenics. He shows how Nietzsche, although infrequently read during his lifetime, formulated his thought in an ongoing dialogue with the concerns of his contemporaries, and how his philosophy can be conceived as a contribution to the debates taking place in the nineteenth century. Throughout his examination, Holub finds that, against conventional wisdom, Nietzsche was only indirectly in conversation with the modern philosophical tradition from Descartes through German idealism, and that the books and individuals central to his development were more obscure writers, most of whom have long since been forgotten. This book thus sheds light on Nietzsche's thought as enmeshed in a web of nineteenth-century discourses and offers new insights into his interactive method of engaging with the philosophical universe of his time.

Mountains represent one of the most inspiring and attractive natural features on the surface of the earth. Visually, they dominate the landscape. However, the increasing realization of the fragility of mountain areas because of changes in land use, management and climate, combined with an understanding of their importance for water and other natural resources, has resulted in a growing interest in mountain environments in recent years. Hence, Mountain Geomorphology represents a timely and unique contribution to the literature. Written by a team of international experts, this book is divided into three sections, which consider historical, functional and applied mountain geomorphology from both global and local perspectives. Historical mountain geomorphology focuses on the evolution of landforms. Functional mountain geomorphology emphasises the interaction between processes and landforms, while applied mountain geomorphology concerns the interrelationships between geomorphological processes and society. Mountain Geomorphology is a valuable source of information for students studying mountain geomorphology, and also for academics and research scientists interested in mountain environments.

Both Hegel's philosophy and psychoanalytic theory have profoundly influenced contemporary thought, but they are traditionally seen to work in separate rather than intersecting universes. This book offers a new interpretation of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit and brings it into conversation the work of two of the best-known contemporary psychoanalysts, Christopher Bollas and Andre Green. Hegel and Psychoanalysis centers a consideration of the Phenomenology on the figure of the Unhappy Consciousness and the concept of Force, two areas that are often overlooked by studies which focus on the master/slave dialectic. This book offers reasons for why now, more than ever, we need to recognize how concepts of intersubjectivity, Force, the Third, and binding are essential to an understanding of our modern world. Such concepts can allow for an interrogation of what can be seen as the profoundly false and constructed senses of community and friendship created by social networking sites, and further an idea of a "global community," which thrives at the expense of authentic intersubjective relations.

First published in 2001, this book sets out to shed light on traditional controversies in Mill scholarship, underscore the significance of the contribution Mill made to associationist psychology, argue he is not entirely successful in explaining why art matters, and that this failure is linked to a deep tension in his mature work - rooted in his unwillingness to shake off the moral psychology he was raised on. The book examines various episodes and tensions in Mill's life and work and how they relate to and informed his philosophy - while also giving a critical account of it. This book will be of interest to students of philosophy.

First published in 1962. Kant's philosophical works, and especially the Critique of Pure Reason, have had some influence on recent British philosophy. But the complexities of Kant's arguments, and the unfamiliarity of his vocabulary, inhibit understanding of his point of view. In Kant's Theory of Knowledge an attempt is made to relate Kant's arguments in the Critique of Pure Reason to contemporary issues by expressing them in a more modern idiom. The selection of issues discussed is intended to present a continuous argument, of an epistemological kind, which runs centrally through the Critique. The argument deals with essentially with the problems, raised in the Transcendental Analytic, about the status of categories. It deals with certain preliminary assumptions made in setting these problems, and discusses the way in which the various sections of the Analytic contribute to their solution. It also deals with Kant's criticisms of traditional metaphysics, and ends with an account of his effort in the Third Antinomy to resolve the conflict between freedom and causality, and so to effect a transition of knowledge to moral philosophy.

This book expounds Kant's Critique of Judgement by interpreting all the details in the light of what Kant himself declares to be his fundamental problem. Providing an excellent introduction to Kant's third critique, it will be of interest to students of philosophy.

First published in 1990. The aim of this thesis is to show that the way to understand the central claims of Kant's ethics is to accept the idea that morality is a distinctive form of rationality; that the moral "ought" belongs to a system of imperatives based in practical reason; and that moral judgment, therefore, is a species of rational assessment of agents' actions. It argues, in effect, that you cannot understand Kant's views about morality if you read him with Humean assumptions about rationality. This title will be of interest to students of philosophy.

Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason is a key element of the system of philosophy which Kant introduced with his Critique of Pure Reason, and a work of major importance in the history of Western religious thought. It represents a great philosopher's attempt to spell out the form and content of a type of religion that would be grounded in moral reason and would meet the needs of ethical life. It includes sharply critical and boldly constructive discussions on topics not often treated by philosophers, including such traditional theological concepts as original sin and the salvation or 'justification' of a sinner, and the idea of the proper role of a church. This new edition includes slightly revised translations, a revised introduction with expanded discussion of certain key themes in the work, and up-to-date guidance on further reading.

Samuel Pufendorf's seminal work, "The Whole Duty of Man, According to the Law of Nature" (first published in Latin in 1673), was among the first to suggest a purely conventional basis for natural law. Rejecting scholasticism's metaphysical theories, Pufendorf found the source of natural law in humanity's need to cultivate sociability. At the same time, he distanced himself from Hobbes's deduction of such needs from self-interest. The result was a sophisticated theory of the conventional character of man's social persona and of all political institutions.Pufendorf wrote this work to make his insights accessible to a wide range of readers, especially university students. As ministers, teachers, and public servants, they would have to struggle with issues of sovereignty and of the relationship between church and state that dominated the new state system of Europe in the aftermath of the Peace of Westphalia (1648)."The Whole Duty" was first translated into English in 1691. The fourth edition was significantly revised--by anonymous editors--to include a great deal of the very important editorial material from Jean Barbeyrac's French editions. This was reproduced in the fifth edition from 1735 that is republished here. The English translation provides a fascinating insight into the transplantation of Pufendorf's political theory from a German absolutist milieu to an English parliamentarian one.Samuel Pufendorf (1632-1694) was one of the most important figures in early-modern political thought. An exact contemporary of Locke and Spinoza, he transformed the natural law theories of Grotius and Hobbes, developed striking ideas of toleration and of the relationship between church and state, and wrote extensive political histories and analyses of the constitution of the German empire.Jean Barbeyrac (1674-1744) was a Huguenot refugee who taught natural law successively in Berlin, Lausanne, and Amsterdam, and edited and translated into French the major natural law works of Grotius, Pufendorf, and Cumberland.Andrew Tooke (1673-1732) was headmaster of Chaterhouse School and professor of geometry at Gresham College, London.Ian Hunter is Australian Professorial Fellow in the Centre for the History of European Discourses, University of Queensland.David Saunders is Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Arts at Griffith University.Knud Haakonssen is Professor of Intellectual History at the University of Sussex, England.

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.