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Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Western philosophy > Modern Western philosophy, c 1600 to the present > General
Twenty-First Century Intelligence collects the thinking of some of
the foremost experts on the future of intelligence in our new
century. The essays contained in this volume are set against the
backdrop of the transforming events of the September 11 terrorist
attacks. Intelligence plays a central and highly visible role in
the global war on terror, and in new doctrines of global
pre-emption of threats. Yet the challenges for intelligence
services are great as the twenty-first century unfolds.
From the 18th to the 19th century, the history of philosophy becomes the history of a particular science. Modern philosophical historiography is an entirely ambivalent project. On the one hand, we find an affirmative concept of Bildung through tradition and historical insight; on the other, there arises a critical reflection on historical education in the light of an emerging critique of modern culture. The book offers a comprehensive overview of the historiography of modern philosophy.
Although they were not written by Kant himself, the transcripts of his lectures constitute an important source for philosophical research today. Some of the contributions presented in this volume discuss the authenticity and significance of these transcripts, for example the status of Kant's lectures on logic and anthropology, while others shed light on the historical formation of specific writings, for instance the texts on the philosophy of religion. The contributions provide new insights into Kant's philosophy, that, if looking at Kant's published writings alone, we would not be able to gain. In a number of cases, a critical analysis of Kant's lectures gives us a better understanding of his published works. Thus his lectures on metaphysics shed new light on his Critique of Pure Reason, while the lecture on natural law is a valuable source for the understanding of his published legal writings.
This volume collects 12 essays by various contributors on the subject of the importance and influence of Schopenhauer's doctoral dissertation (On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason) for both Schopenhauer's more well-known philosophy and the ongoing discussion of the subject of the principle of sufficient reason. The contributions deal with the historical context of Schopenhauer's reflections, their relationship to (transcendental) idealism, the insights they hold for Schopenhauer's views of consciousness and sensation, and how they illuminate Schopenhauer's theory of action. This is the first full-length, English volume on Schopenhauer's Fourfold Root and its relevance for Schopenhauer's philosophy. The thought-provoking essays collected in this volume will undoubtedly enrich the burgeoning field of Schopenhauer-studies.
Nietzsche is undoubtedly one of the most original and influential thinkers in the history of philosophy. With ideas such as the overman, will to power, the eternal recurrence, and perspectivism, Nietzsche challenges us to reconceive how it is that we know and understand the world, and what it means to be a human being. Further, in his works, he not only grapples with previous great philosophers and their ideas, but he also calls into question and redefines what it means to do philosophy. Nietzsche and the Philosophers for the first time sets out to examine explicitly Nietzsche's relationship to his most important predecessors. This anthology includes essays by many of the leading Nietzsche scholars, including Keith Ansell-Pearson, Daniel Conway, Tracy B. Strong, Gary Shapiro, Babette Babich, Mark Anderson, and Paul S. Loeb. These excellent writers discuss Nietzsche's engagement with such figures as Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Socrates, Hume, Schopenhauer, Emerson, Rousseau, and the Buddha. Anyone interested in Nietzsche or the history of philosophy generally will find much of great interest in this volume.
This book connects Schopenhauer's philosophy with transcendental idealism by exploring the distinctly Kantian roots of his pessimism. By clearly discerning four types of coming to knowledge, it demonstrates how Schopenhauer's epistemology can enlighten this connection with other areas of his philosophy. The individual chapters in this book discuss how these knowledge types-immediate or mediate, representational or non-representational-relate to Schopenhauer's metaphysics, ethics and action, philosophy of religion, aesthetics, and asceticism. In each of these areas, a specific sense of pessimism serves to disarm a number of paradoxes and inconsistencies typically associated with Schopenhauer's philosophy. The Kantian Foundation of Schopenhauer's Pessismism shows how Schopenhauer's claim that he is a true successor to Kant can be justified.
What is it to see the world, other people, and imagined situations as making personal moral demands of us? What is it to experience stories as speaking to us personally and directly? "Kierkegaard's Mirrors" explores Kierkegaard's answers to these questions, with a new phenomenological interpretation of Kierkegaardian interest.
Descartes is perhaps most closely associated with the title, "the Father of Modern Philosophy." Generations of students have been introduced to the study of philosophy through a consideration of his Meditations on First Philosophy. His contributions to natural science is shown by the fact that his physics, as promulgated by the Cartesians, played a central role in the debates after his death over Isaac Newton's theory of gravitation. Descartes also made major contributions to the field of analytic geometry; we still speak today of "Cartesian coordinates" and the "Cartesian product." This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Descartes and Cartesian Philosophy covers the history through a chronology, an introductory essay, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 300 cross-referenced entries on various concepts in Descartes' philosophy, science, and mathematics, as well as biographical entries about the intellectual setting for Descartes' philosophy and its reception, both with Cartesians and anti-Cartesians. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Descartes.
Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy focuses on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--the extraordinary period of intellectual flourishing that begins, very roughly, with Descartes and his contemporaries and ends with Kant. It also publishes papers on thinkers or movements outside of that framework, provided they are important in illuminating early modern thought.
Two decades ago, Schelling first resurfaced in Zizek's Indivisible Remainder, and the same argumentative move of redeploying Schellingian themes for contemporary ends has continued to play a significant role in critical theory since (Markus Gabriel, Iain Hamilton Grant, Jean-Luc Nancy). All the articles in this volume attempt to take seriously the idea of Schelling as a contemporary philosopher: Schelling is read in dialogue with key figures in the canon of European philosophy and critical theory (Alain Badiou, Emilie du Chatelet, Gilles Deleuze, Paul de Man, Quentin Meillassoux, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Gilbert Simondon, Slavoj Zizek), as well as in light of recent trends in analytic philosophy (Brandomian pragmatism, powers-based metaphysics and semantic naturalism) - and such readings are not meant merely to highlight Schellingian influences or resonances in contemporary thinking but rather to challenge and interrogate current orthodoxies by insisting upon the contemporaneity of Schellingian speculation. That is, the aim is both to evaluate and constructively build upon this repeated return to Schelling: to probe, to diagnose and to experiment on the latent Schellingianisms of the present and the future. This book was originally published as a special issue of Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities.
Hobbes's philosophical discourse is deconstructed as the interplay of the drama of individual behaviour as perceived by rational "agents" and the detached analysis of conflict by a "political geometer". The author offers solutions to some long-standing problems in Hobbesian political philosophy (for example, the role of glory, Hobbes' pessimism) and shows the consistency of Hobbes' attempt to derive absolution as the only stable political association. Although based on extensive textual analysis of Hobbes' works and correspondence, the text is an exercise in political philosophy that students should find iconoclastic and experts challenging.
Many philosophical accounts of reason are geared toward providing rational justifications ex post facto rather than accounting for the role reason plays in actu in the process of creative work. Moreover, when in actu accounts of reason are given, they are usually too narrow to describe the sort of high-level creative work that is involved in the composition of poetry or the creation of a scientific theory. This book suggests that the rudiments of a broader account are found in various German Idealist figures, most notably the philosopher-novelist-critic Friedrich Schlegel and the philosophical poet and novelist Friedrich Hoelderlin. However, German Idealism generally is subject to Hans Blumenberg 's secularization critique which provides a strong prima facie argument that the accounts of poetic reason suggested by Schlegel and Hoelderlin are indefensible. This book argues that confronting Blumenberg's secularization critique and his associated legitimation of modernity with a romantic conception of poetic reason requires revisions on both sides, and that the work of Lacan is especially well-suited to provide the conditions upon which a legitimation of poetic reason can be provided.
This book, first published in 1987, offers a reconstruction of Berkeley's doctrine on notions by examining the implications of his repeated suggestion that there is a close relationship between his doctrine and his semantic theory. The study ties in with some of the most important topics in modern analytic philosophy, and casts important light on modern philosophical concerns as well as on Berkeley's thought.
This book, first published in 1985, presents a key collection of essays on Berkeley's moral and political philosophy. They form an introduction to, and analysis of, Berkeley's immaterialist arguments, part of his consciously adopted strategy to subvert Enlightenment thought, which he saw as a danger to civil society.
"Exploring Hegels philosophical psychology to uncover viable remedies to the chief dilemmas plaguing contemporary philosophy of mind, Hegel and Mind exposes why mind cannot be an epistemological foundation nor reduced to discursive consciousness not modelled after computing machines"--Provided by publisher.
This book, first published in 2005, explores the historical contextualization of Nietzsche's thought, focusing on his controversial Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The fourth part of Nietzsche's Zarathustra consists of Zarathustra's encounter with eight 'higher men' whom Zarathustra meets in succession on his path. The prophet then invites each individual to his cave for the evening festivities, culminating in a blasphemous festival in which his guests worship an ass as God. Revealing each guest's specific characteristics and distinct roles, the author attempts to discern 'who' these guests are or represent (historically) through glimpsing the characteristics specific to each guest.
This is the third volume to appear in an edition that will be the
first complete, critical, and annotated English translation of all
of Nietzsche's work. Volume 2: "Unfashionable Observations,"
translated by Richard T. Gray, was published in 1995; Volume 3:
"Human, All Too Human (I)," translated by Gary Handwerk, was
published in 1997. The edition is a new English translation, by
various hands, of the celebrated Colli-Montinari edition, which has
been acclaimed as one of the most important works of scholarship in
the humanities in the last half century.
Ethical Politics and Modern Society introduces and critically examines British idealist philosopher, Thomas Hill Green, his practical philosophy, and its reception in China between the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. As a response to the modernity issue in Great Britain, Green's philosophy, in particular his ethical politics, anticipated a practical solution to the individual alienation issue in modern society. Witnessing the resemblance between Green's ethical politics and classical Chinese ethical and political thought, some Chinese scholars became inclined to take Green's thought as an intellectual approach to assimilate Western modernity. While Green and the Chinese scholars both intended to articulate an ethical conception of modern politics in response to the issue of modernity, their results were very different. In this book, James Jia-Hau Liu analyses why modern Chinese scholars introduced Green's philosophy to China and why the studies of Green's philosophy in China have since faded away. Modern Chinese scholars, such as Gao Yi-Han, Chin Yueh-Lin, Tang Jun-Yi, Chang Fo-Chuan, and Yin Hai-Guang, are explored in greater detail. The contradictory standings towards modernity between Green and Chinese scholars illustrate how to understand the difference forms of modernity that can be embodied therein. Ethical Politics and Modern Society is a valuable resource to scholars of political philosophy, political theory, history of social and political thought, British idealism, and the work of Thomas Hill Green.
This volume consists of the revised and expanded versions of the papers presented at the International Conference "Nietzsche On Instinct and Language", held at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Portugal) in December 2009. The list of contributors includes top Nietzsche scholars, like Werner Stegmaier, Patrick Wotling, and Scarlett Marton. The volume as a whole represents a fresh look at Nietzsche's attempt to connect language to the instinctive activity of the human body. Four of the papers focus on Nietzsche's early Nachlass notes and writings, including The Birth of Tragedy and On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense; the other seven deal with his mature views on this important subject, especially in Beyond Good and Evil, The Gay Science, and the Nachlass. In focusing on how Nietzsche tries to dissolve the traditional opposition between instinct and language, as well as between instinct and consciousness and instinct and reason, the different papers consider, from this viewpoint, such Nietzschean themes as morality, value, the concept of philosophy, dogmatism, naturalization, metaphor, affectivity and emotion, health and sickness, tragedy, and laughter.
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.
This book is about learning how to live the good life. Part biography and part philosophical inquiry, it is a fresh, original interpretation of the intellectual world of the largely forgotten, eighteenth-century professor, Adam Ferguson. Although less well-known today than his famous Scottish contemporaries, Adam Smith and David Hume, Ferguson was considered their equal in the 18th century. The book shows how Ferguson, who grew up speaking Gaelic and English, and spent a decade ministering to a Highlander regiment, developed a distinctive, cross-cultural approach to moral philosophy that is relevant for doing comparative ethics in today's global village. The premise is that life in the twenty-first century is plagued by a moral disorientation that has affinities with the materialism, privatization, social fragmentation and spiritual crises that were emerging in 18th-century, urban Scotland. Like his peers in medical science, Ferguson pursued what was then known as moral science with a particular concern to diagnose and treat moral "dis-ease." The book contends that his moral philosophy lectures became strikingly modern experiments in recovering moral moorings-disclosing epitomes of moral dynamics, investigating the use of moral terms in ordinary language, and crafting moral principles, such as probity, which preserved classical moral virtues but also incorporated the practical wisdom of 'peoples of the mountains.' Although focused on re-discovering Ferguson as a full-blown ethicist before his time, the book is also intended as a primer for the reader's own quest for living a life which is emblematic of ethical integrity The primary audience for this book is philosophers, historians, religious studies scholars who specialize in ethics, eighteenth-century English literature scholars, and social scientists (anthropologists, sociologists and political scientists) who focus on the eighteenth-century.
Emmanuel Kant has the distinction of having introduced a great revolution into philosophy and yet stood the test of time. He stands as one of the great foundation stones of modern thought. This book, first published in 1925, covers Kant's works essential to his philosophy as a system, and also illustrates his position in the history of thought. It is a clear and accurate statement of Kant's chief doctrines.
First published in 1934, and revised and expanded in 1964, this book is the standard work on the political thought of Rousseau. It was acclaimed by English reviewers as 'an excellently arranged, lucidly written, unbiased account of Rousseau's political theory', a 'scholarly book, distinguished for lucidity both in thought and style', and a 'first-rate book in defence of the essential sanity of Rousseau's thought'.
This book, first published in 1974, presents a critical examination of Berkeley's immaterialism. It is based on a detailed study of his writings (in particular of his notebooks), and while it places his ideas against their eighteenth-century background it also takes into account the various interpretations of Berkeley found in the literature.
The Discourse on Metaphysics is one of Leibnizs fundamental works. Written around January 1686, it is the most accomplished systematic expression of Leibniz's philosophy in the 1680s, the period in which Leibniz's philosophy reached maturity. Leibniz's goal in the Discourse is to give a metaphysics for Christianity; that is, to provide the answers that he believes Christians should give to the basic metaphysical questions. Why does the world exist? What is the world like? What kinds of things exist? And what is the place of human beings in the world? To this purpose Leibniz discusses some of the most traditional topics of metaphysics, such as the nature of God, the purpose of God in creating the world, the nature of substance, the possibility of miracles, the nature of our knowledge, free will, and the justice behind salvation and damnation. This volume provides a new translation of the Discourse, complete with a critical introduction and a comprehensive philosophical commentary. |
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