Apocalyptic nightmares that humanly-created intelligences will one day rise up against their creators haunt the western creative imagination. However, these narratives find their initial expression not in the widely disseminated Frankenstein story but in William Blake's early mythological works. This book looks at why we persistently fear our own creations by examining Blake's illuminated books of the 1790s through the lens of Kierkegaard's theories of personality and of anxiety. It offers a close examination of Kierkegaard's and Blake's similar, and to an extent shared, historical milieux as residents of Denmark's and England's political and economic centers. Each author's residence in a major urban center motivated them to develop a concept of innocence closely identified with the pastoral, and to place their respective and similar concepts of innocence within a larger developmental scheme encompassing an ethical and then a religious consciousness. Rovira identifies contemporary tensions between monarchy and democracy, science and religion, and nature and artifice as the source both of Kierkegaard's concept of anxiety and Blake's representation of creation anxiety in his early illuminated books.

Friedrich Nietzsche's intellectual autobiography Ecce Homo has always been a controversial book. Nietzsche prepared it for publication just before he became incurably insane in early 1889, but it was held back until after his death, and finally appeared only in 1908. For much of the first century of its reception, Ecce Homo met with a sceptical response and was viewed as merely a testament to its author's incipient madness. This was hardly surprising, since he is deliberately outrageous with the 'megalomaniacal' self-advertisement of his chapter titles, and brazenly claims 'I am not a man, I am dynamite' as he attempts to explode one preconception after another in the Western philosophical tradition. In recent decades there has been increased interest in the work, especially in the English-speaking world, but the present volume is the first collection of essays in any language devoted to the work. Most of the essays are selected from the proceedings of an international conference held in London to mark the centenary of the first publication of Ecce Homo in 2008. They are supplemented by a number of specially commissioned essays. Contributors include established and emerging Nietzsche scholars from the UK and USA, Germany and France, Portugal, Sweden and the Netherlands.

Recent years have seen a growth of interest in the great English idealist thinker T. H. Green (1836-82) as philosophers have begun to overturn received opinions of his thought and to rediscover his original and important contributions to ethics, metaphysics, and political philosophy. This collection of essays by leading experts, all but one published here for the first time, introduces and critically examines his ideas both in their context and in their relevance to contemporary debates.

Part of the "Blackwell Readings in the History of Philosophy" series, this survey of early modern philosophy focuses on the key texts and philosophers of the period whose beliefs changed the course of western thought.
Assembles the key texts from the most significant and influential philosophers of the early modern era to provide a thorough introduction to the period.
Features the writings of the major philosophical, scientific, and political thinkers of the time, including Descartes, Hobbes, Leibniz and Spinoza.
Focuses on the development and growth of Rationalism which stressed reason, logic, and experimentation in the pursuit of truth.
Readings are accompanied by expert commentary from the editors, who are leading scholars in the field.

Covering all the key concepts of Nietzsches work, Starting with Nietzsche provides an accessible introduction to the development of and motivation behind the ideas that are embodied in his key works. Thematically structured, the book encourages the reader to engage with Nietzsches thought, leading him or her to a more thorough understanding of the roots of his philosophical concerns and the enormous influence of his ideas. Offering coverage of the full range of Nietzsches writings, the book shows that, despite Nietzsches notoriously anti-systematic approach, his philosophy in fact constitutes a coherent and unified system of thought. Crucially the book introduces the major motivations and influences behind Nietzsches work, clarifies his idea of the role of the philosopher and demonstrates the impact his work has had on a huge range of topics in contemporary scholarship. This is the ideal introduction for anyone coming to the work of this challenging thinker for the first time.

Thomas Hobbes was one of the most important and influential philosophers of the seventeenth century. Covering all the key concepts of his work, "Starting with Hobbes "provides an accessible introduction to the ideas of this hugely significant thinker. Thematically structured, this book leads the reader through the full range of Hobbes's ideas and, uniquely, not just his political philosophy. In his day, he was internationally as famous for his theories about knowledge, language, the material nature of reality, mathematics, psychology, and religion, as he was for his politics; and these aspects of his work are fully covered. The book places Hobbes firmly in his historical context, with discussions of his relations to contemporary thinkers such as Galileo and Descartes and his influence on later thinkers such as Spinoza and Leibniz. This is the ideal introduction for anyone coming to the work of one of the greatest of English philosophers for the first time. >

Henry E. Allison presents a comprehensive commentary on Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (1785). It differs from most recent commentaries in paying special attention to the structure of the work, the historical context in which it was written, and the views to which Kant was responding. Allison argues that, despite its relative brevity, the Groundwork is the single most important work in modern moral philosophy and that its significance lies mainly in two closely related factors. The first is that it is here that Kant first articulates his revolutionary principle of the autonomy of the will, that is, the paradoxical thesis that moral requirements (duties) are self-imposed and that it is only in virtue of this that they can be unconditionally binding. The second is that for Kant all other moral theories are united by the assumption that the ground of moral requirements must be located in some object of the will (the good) rather than the will itself, which Kant terms heteronomy. Accordingly, what from the standpoint of previous moral theories was seen as a fundamental conflict between various views of the good is reconceived by Kant as a family quarrel between various forms of heteronomy, none of which are capable of accounting for the unconditionally binding nature of morality. Allison goes on to argue that Kant expresses this incapacity by claiming that the various forms of heteronomy unavoidably reduce the categorical to a merely hypothetical imperative.

This book features an important collection of essays examining Nietzsche's response to contemporary nihilism. "Nietzsche, Nihilism and the Philosophy of the Future" examines Nietzsche's analysis of and response to contemporary nihilism, the sense that nothing has value or meaning. Eleven newly-commissioned essays from an influential team of contributors illustrate the richness and complexity of Nietzsche's thought by bringing together a diverse collection of perspectives on Nietzsche. Nietzsche's engagement with nihilism has been relatively neglected by recent scholarship, despite the fact that Nietzsche himself regarded it as one of the most original and important aspect of his thought. This book addresses that gap in the literature by exploring this central and compelling area of Nietzsche's thought. The essays concentrate on Nietzsche's philosophical analysis of nihilism, the cultural politics of his reaction to nihilism, and the rhetorical dimensions and intricacies of his texts. "Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy" presents cutting-edge scholarship in the field of modern European thought. The wholly original arguments, perspectives and research findings in titles in this series make it an important and stimulating resource for students and academics from across the discipline.

What happens when philosophy and literature meet? This pioneering study of the essays and fiction of Georges Bataille, Pierre Klossowski, and Maurice Blanchot examines the relationship between the literary and the philosophical dimension of their work and throws new light on the radical singularity of their writing.

This book begins with an observation: At the time when empiricism arose and slowly established itself, the word itself had not yet been coined. Hence the central question of this volume: What does it mean to conduct empirical science in early modern Europe? How can we catch the elusive figure of the empiricist? Our answer focuses on the practices established by representative scholars. This approach allows us to demonstrate two things. First, that empiricism is not a monolith but exists in a plurality of forms. Today's understanding of the empirical sciences was gradually shaped by the exchanges among scholars combining different traditions, world views and experimental settings. Second, the long proclaimed antagonism between empiricism and rationalism is not the whole story. Our case studies show that a very fruitful exchange between both systems of thought occurred. It is a story of integration, appropriation and transformation more than one of mere opposition. We asked twelve authors to explore these fascinating new facets of empiricisms. The plurality of their voices mirrors the multiple faces of the concept itself. Every contribution can be understood as a piece of a much larger puzzle. Together, they help us better understand the emergence of empiricism and the inventiveness of the scientific enterprise.

The Evident Connexion presents a new reading of Hume's 'bundle theory' of the self or mind, and his later rejection of it. Galen Strawson argues that the bundle theory does not claim that there are no subjects of experience, as many have supposed, or that the mind is just a series of experiences. Hume holds only that the 'essence of the mind is] unknown'. His claim is simply that we have no empirically respectable reason to believe in the existence of a persisting subject, or a mind that is more than a series of experiences (each with its own subject).
Why does Hume later reject the bundle theory? Many think he became dissatisfied with his account of how we come to believe in a persisting self, but Strawson suggests that the problem is more serious. The keystone of Hume's philosophy is that our experiences are governed by a 'uniting principle' or 'bond of union'. But a philosophy that takes a bundle of ontologically distinct experiences to be the only legitimate conception of the mind cannot make explanatory use of those notions in the way Hume does. As Hume says in the Appendix to the Treatise of Human Nature having 'loosen'd all our particular perceptions' in the bundle theory, he is unable to 'explain the principle of connexion, which binds them together'. This lucid book is the first to be wholly dedicated to Hume's theory of personal identity, and presents a bold new interpretation which bears directly on current debates among scholars of Hume's philosophy.

This book defines the relationship between the thought of Adam Smith and that of the ancients---Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and the Stoics. Vivenza offers a complete survey of all Smith's writings with the aim of illustrating how classical arguments shaped opinions and scholarship in the eighteenth century.

In Of Liberty and Necessity James A. Harris presents the first comprehensive account of the free will problem in eighteenth-century British philosophy. Harris proposes new interpretations of the positions of familiar figures such as Locke, Hume, Edwards, and Reid. He also gives careful attention to writers such as William King, Samuel Clarke, Anthony Collins, Lord Kames, James Beattie, David Hartley, Joseph Priestley, and Dugald Stewart, who, while well-known in the eighteenth century, have since been largely ignored by historians of philosophy. Through detailed textual analysis, and by making precise use of a variety of different contexts, Harris elucidates the contribution that each of these writers makes to the eighteenth-century discussion of the will and its freedom. In this period, the question of the nature of human freedom is posed principally in terms of the influence of motives upon the will. On one side of the debate are those who believe that we are free in our choices. A motive, these philosophers believe, constitutes a reason to act in a particular way, but it is up to us which motive we act upon. On the other side of the debate are those who believe that, on the contrary, there is no such thing as freedom of choice. According to these philosophers, one motive is always intrinsically stronger than the rest and so is the one that must determine choice. Several important issues are raised as this disagreement is explored and developed, including the nature of motives, the value of 'indifference' to the will's freedom, the distinction between 'moral' and 'physical' necessity, the relation between the will and the understanding, and the internal coherence of the concept of freedom of will. One of Harris's primary objectives is to place this debate in the context of the eighteenth-century concern with replicating in the mental sphere what Newton had achieved in the philosophy of nature. All of the philosophers discussed in Of Liberty and Necessity conceive of themselves as 'experimental' reasoners, and, when examining the will, focus primarily upon what experience reveals about the influence of motives upon choice. The nature and significance of introspection is therefore at the very centre of the free will problem in this period, as is the question of what can legitimately be inferred from observable regularities in human behaviour.

Irony, humour and the comic play vital yet under-appreciated roles in Kierkegaard's thought. Focusing upon the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, this book investigates these roles, relating irony and humour as forms of the comic to central Kierkegaardian themes. How does the comic function as a form of 'indirect communication'? What roles can irony and humour play in the infamous Kierkegaardian 'leap'? Do certain forms of wisdom depend upon possessing a sense of humour? And is such a sense of humour thus a genuine virtue?

Through a close and extensive reading of his works, Dialectics of Human Nature in Marx's Philosophy demonstrates that Marx's explanations are fundamentally dialectical, and that his dialectic method, as well as his philosophical system, is inconceivable without his conception of human nature. An exploration of Marx's thought without any favorable or critical ideological agendas, this book opposes the compartmentalization of Marx's thought into various competing doctrines, such as historical materialism, dialectical materialism, and different forms of economic determinism. Mehmet Tabak highlights Marx's humanism; however, instead of pitting Marx's humanism against materialism, dialectical and historical, this book demonstrates their unity in a novel way.

Russell Hardin presents a new explication of David Hume's moral and political theory. With Hume, he holds that our normative views can be scientifically explained but they cannot be justified as true. Hume argued for the psychological basis of such views. In particular, he argued for sympathy as the mirroring of the psychological sensations and emotions of others. By placing Hume in the developing tradition of social science, as a strong forerunner of his younger friend Adam Smith, Hardin demonstrates Hume's strong strategic sense, his nascent utilitarianism, his powerful theory of convention as a main source of social and political order, and his recognition of moral and political theory as a single enterprise.

Marchetti offers a revisionist account of James's contribution to moral thought in the light of his pragmatic conception of philosophical activity. He sketches a composite picture of a Jamesian approach to ethics revolving around the key notion and practice of a therapeutic critique of one's ordinary moral convictions and style of moral reasoning.

This book presents an answer to the question of why modern legal institutions and the idea of citizenship are important for leading a free life. The majority of views in political and legal philosophy regard the law merely as a useful instrument, employed to render our lives more secure and to enable us to engage in cooperate activities more efficiently. The view developed here defends a non-instrumentalist alternative of why the law matters. It identifies the law as a constitutive feature of our identities as citizens of modern states. The constitutivist argument rests on the (Kantian) assumption that a person's practical identity (its normative self-conception as an agent) is the result of its actions. The law co-constitutes these identities because it maintains the external conditions that are necessary for the actions performed under its authority. Modern legal institutions provide these external prerequisites for achieving a high degree of individual self-constitution and freedom. Only public principles can establish our status as individuals who pursue their life plans and actions as a matter of right and not because others contingently happen to let us do so. The book thereby provides resources for a reply to anarchist challenges to the necessity of legal ordering.

Pragmatist philosopher William James has long been deemed a dubious guide to ethical reasoning. This book overturns such thinking, demonstrating the coherence of James's efforts to develop a flexible but rigorous framework for individuals and societies seeking freedom, meaning, and justice in a world of interdependence, uncertainty, and change.

This enterprising book, written in the spirit of William James, urges our appreciation of the intensely personal character of spiritual transcendence. Phil Oliver's work has important implications for specialists concerned with the Jamesian concept of ""pure experience,"" and it illuminates significant interdisciplinary ties among philosophy, literature, and other intellectual domains. Oliver argues Jamesian transcendence is relevant to current questions in cognitive science and the emerging ecological, computer, and cyber worlds. The philosophy of William James celebrates subjectivity, recognizing the integrity of individual experience as it is subjectively understood. But James also proposes that we acknowledge a category of experience neither subjective not objective but ""pure"" of such conceptual distinctions. While it might seem, then, that anything James says about transcendence would come out of his philosophy of pure experience, Oliver shows James as an advocate for a type of personal transcendence that owes at least as much to our subjective natural state as to pure experience. Jamesian transcendence, according to Oliver, seeks to reconcile individual growth with social responsibility. In this age of impersonal information, it invites us all to embrace our own enthusiasms, or ""delights,"" as the surest sources of personal happiness, mutual regard, and real depth in experience.

Among his generation of intellectuals, the eighteenth-century German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder is recognized both for his innovative philosophy of language and history and for his passionate criticism of racism, colonialism, and imperialism. A student of Immanuel Kant, Herder challenged the idea that anyone - even the philosophers of the Enlightenment - could have a monopoly on truth. In Herder: Aesthetics against Imperialism, John K. Noyes plumbs the connections between Herder's anti-imperialism, often acknowledged but rarely explored in depth, and his epistemological investigations. Noyes argues that Herder's anti-rationalist epistemology, his rejection of universal conceptions of truth, knowledge, and justice, constitutes the first attempt to establish not just a moral but an epistemological foundation for anti-imperialism. Engaging with the work of postcolonial theorists such Dipesh Chakrabarty and Gayatri Spivak, this book is a valuable reassessment of Enlightenment anti-imperialism that demonstrates Herder's continuing relevance to postcolonial studies today.

Jonathan Edwards's Philosophy of Nature: The Re-Enchantment of the World in the Age of Scientific Reasoning analyses the works of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) on natural philosophy in a series of contexts within which they may best be explored and understood. Its aim is to place Edwards's writings on natural philosophy in the broad historical, theological and scientific context of a wide variety of religious responses to the rise of modern science in the early modern period - John Donne's reaction to the new astronomical philosophy of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo, as well as to Francis Bacon's new natural philosophy; Blaise Pascal's response to Descartes' mechanical philosophy; the reactions to Newtonian science and finally Jonathan Edwards's response to the scientific culture and imagination of his time.

Hegel and Global Justice details the relevance of the thought of G.W.F. Hegel for the burgeoning academic discussions of the topic of global justice. Against the conventional view that Hegel has little constructive to offer to these discussions, this collection, drawing on the expertise of distinguished Hegel scholars and internationally recognized political and social theorists, explicates the contribution both of Hegel himself and his "dialectical" method to the analysis and understanding of a wide range of topics associated with the concept of global justice, construed very broadly. These topics include universal human rights, cosmopolitanism, and cosmopolitan justice, transnationalism, international law, global interculturality, a global poverty, cosmopolitan citizenship, global governance, a global public sphere, a global ethos, and a global notion of collective self-identity. Attention is also accorded the value of Hegel's account of mutual recognition for analysing themes in global justice, both as regards the politics of recognition at the global level and the conditions for a general account of relations of people and persons under conditions of globalization. In exploring these and related themes, the authors of this book regularly compare Hegel to others who have contributed to the discourse on global justice, including Kant, Marx, Rawls, Habermas, Singer, Pogge, Nussbaum, Appiah, and David Miller.