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Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Western philosophy > Modern Western philosophy, c 1600 to the present > General
The political philosophy of the 18th century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau has long been associated with the dramatic events of the French Revolution. In this book, an international team of scholars has been brought together to examine the connection between Rousseaus thought and the revolutionary traditions of modern Europe. The book explores Rousseaus own conceptions of violence and revolution in contrast to those of other thinkers such as Hegel and Fanon and in connection with his ideas on democracy. Historical analyses also consider Rousseaus thinking in light of the French Revolution in particular and the European revolutions that have followed it. Across the eleven chapters the book also touches on such issues as citizenship, activism, terrorism and the State. In doing so, the book reveals Rousseau to be an important source of insight into contemporary political problems.
Jeremy Bentham coined the term 'utilitarian' in 1781, but the idea of 'utility' as a value, goal or principle in political, moral or economic life has a long and rich history. The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Utilitarianism captures the complex developmental history and the multi-faceted character of utilitarianism in its various contexts and forms more completely than any previous source. Studies of utilitarianism hitherto have been notably compartmentalised, focusing on utilitarian ethics, or the socio-political utilitarianism epitomized in Benthamism, or the genesis of Austrian jurisprudence, but never making these various aspects available for comparative study within a single work. The Encyclopedia includes entries on the authors and texts that are recognised as having built the tradition of utilitarian thinking, as well as on the issues and critics that have arisen at every stage of the development of that tradition. Academics and researchers in search of fresh juxtapositions of issues and arguments will welcome this unique reference work.
This book discusses the most comprehensive of Hegel's works: his long-neglected Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline. It contains original essays by internationally renowned and emerging voices in Hegel scholarship. Their contributions elucidate fundamental aspects of Hegel's encyclopedic system with an eye to its contemporary relevance. The book thus addresses system-level claims about Hegel's unique conceptions of philosophy, philosophical "science" and its method, dialectic, speculative thinking, and the way they relate to both Hegelian and contemporary notions of nature, history, religion, freedom, and cultural praxis.
Originally published in 1988 Arthur Schopenhauer's English Schooling examines the famous German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, and his image of England and the influences and experiences which formed that image, notably his visit to England in 1803. His philosophy, when he came to formulate it, showed the pervasive influence of his English reading, was riddled with allusions to his three months at Wimbledon School, and was indeed in many 'English' style; above all it was a philosophy designed as a refutation of 'Christianity' as understood and practised by his English headmaster, who is the invisible bete noire behind it. In the course of the book two major figures who have hitherto been known only by name are identified and their lives related. The book also examines many background figures in Schopenhauer's English diary and the letters addressed to him in 1803. This book, which is based on a wide variety of hitherto unknown material from many different sources, will permanently modify our view of his philosophy; it also has important implications for educationalists and for all interest in the history of ideas.
This volume explores recent developments in the practice of hospitality, as well as the curious, precarious relationship between guests and their hosts. Drawing from personal interactions with an aging innkeeper called Herr Klaus and modern Airbnb hostess Gretchen, Amitai Touval offers a touching and illuminating account of how the rise of Airbnb has forged new standards of generosity, hostility, and accountability. An Anthropological Study of Hospitality is a must-read for anyone who has wondered about the intricate social cues involved in such a seemingly simple exchange.
No single text could be considered more important in the history of philosophy than Descartes' Meditations. This unique collection of background material to this magisterial philosophical text has been translated from the original French and Latin. The texts gathered here illustrate the kinds of principles, assumptions, and philosophical methods that were commonplace when Descartes was growing up. The selections are from: Francisco Sanches, Christopher Clavius, Pierre de la Ramee (Petrus Ramus), Francisco Suarez, Pierre Charron, Eustachius a Sancto Paulo, Scipion Dupleix, Marin Mersenne, Pierre Gassendi, Jean de Silhon, Francois de la Mothe le Vayer, Charles Sorel, and Jean-Baptiste Morin.
Hume's discussion of the idea of space in his Treatise on Human Nature is fundamental to an understanding of his treatment of such central issues as the existence of external objects, the unity of the self, and the relation between certainty and belief. Marina Frasca-Spada's rich and original study examines this difficult part of Hume's philosophical writings and connects it to eighteenth-century works in natural philosophy, mathematics and literature. Her analysis points the way to a reassessment of the central current interpretative questions in Hume studies.
This book is a historically informed and textually grounded study of the connections between Montaigne, the inventor of the essay, and Nietzsche, who thought of himself as an "attempter." In conversation with the Essais, Nietzsche developed key themes of his oeuvre: experimental scepticism, gay science, the quest for drives beneath consciousness, the free spirit, the affirmation of sexuality and the body, and the meaning of greatness. Robert Miner explores these connections in the context of Nietzsche's reverence for Montaigne-a reverence he held for no other author-and asks what Montaigne would make of Nietzsche. The question arises from Nietzsche himself, who both celebrates Montaigne and includes him among a small number of authors to whose judgment he is prepared to submit.
This is a classic account of Nietzsche's thought, first published in 1957. It traces the development of Nietzsche's thought through all its principal phases, and stresses its relevance to our times. Squarely based on original literary and biographical sources, it avoids technicalities and obscure comparison. It is intended for the general reader rather than the specialist - above all for the reader who desires, as Nietzsche did, to "clear his mind of cant".
In Hegel's Rabble, Frank Ruda identifies and explores a crucial problem in the Hegelian philosophy of right that strikes at the heart of Hegel's conception of the state. This singular problem, which Ruda argues is the problem of Hegelian political thought, appears in Hegel's text only in a seemingly marginal form under the name of the "rabble": a particular side-effect of the dialectical deduction of the necessity of the existence of state from the contradictory constitution of civil society. Working out from a thorough analysis of this problem and drawing on contemporary discussions in the work of such thinkers as Alain Badiou, Jean-Luc Nancy and Slavoj Zizek, the book proceeds to re-examine and reconstruct Hegel's entire political project. Ruda goes on to argue that only by re-thinking this problem of the rabble' in Hegel's thought the only problem Hegel is able neither to resolve nor to sublate can the early Marxian conception of the proletariat' be properly understood. The book closes with an Afterword from Slavoj Zizek.
This book is the first systematic account of Pierre Charron s influence among the major French philosophers in the period (1601-1662). It shows that Charron s "Wisdom" was one of the main sources of inspiration of Pierre Gassendi s first published book, the "Exercitationes adversus aristoteleos." It sheds new light on La Mothe Le Vayer, who is usually viewed as a major free thinker. By showing that he was a follower of Charron, La Mothe emerges neither as a skeptical apologist nor as a disguised libertine, as combatting superstition but not as irreligious. The book shows the close presence of Charron in the preambles of Descartes philosophy and that the cogito is mainly based on the moral Academic self-assurance of Charron s wise man. This interpretation reverses the standard view of Descartes relation to skepticism. Once this skepticism is recognized to be Charron s Academic one, it is seen not as the target but as the source of the cogito. Pascal is the last major philosopher for whom Charron s wisdom is crucially relevant. Montaigne and Descartes influenced, respectively, Pascal s view of the Pyrrhonian skeptic and of the skeptical main arguments. The book shows that Charron s Academic skeptical wise man is one of the main targets of his projected apology for Christianity, since he considered him as a threat and counter-example of the kind of Christian view of human beings he believed. By restoring the historical philosophical relevance of Charron in early modern philosophy and arguing for the relevance of Academic skepticism in the period, this book opens a new research program to early modern scholars and will be valuable for those interested in the history of philosophy, French literature and religion."
In recent years interest in the thought of Kierkegaard has grown dramatically, and with it the body of secondary literature has expanded so quickly that it has become impossible for even the most conscientious scholar to keep pace. The problem of the explosion of secondary literature is made more acute by the fact that much of what is written about Kierkegaard appears in languages that most Kierkegaard scholars do not know. Kierkegaard has become a global phenomenon, and new research traditions have emerged in different languages, countries and regions. The present volume is dedicated to trying to help to resolve these two problems in Kierkegaard studies. Its purpose is, first, to provide book reviews of some of the leading monographic studies in the Kierkegaard secondary literature so as to assist the community of scholars to become familiar with the works that they have not read for themselves. The aim is thus to offer students and scholars of Kierkegaard a comprehensive survey of works that have played a more or less significant role in the research. Second, the present volume also tries to make accessible many works in the Kierkegaard secondary literature that are written in different languages and thus to give a glimpse into various and lesser-known research traditions. The six tomes of the present volume present reviews of works written in Catalan, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, and Swedish.
Kierkegaard's Concepts is a comprehensive, multi-volume survey of the key concepts and categories that inform Kierkegaard's writings. Each article is a substantial, original piece of scholarship, which discusses the etymology and lexical meaning of the relevant Danish term, traces the development of the concept over the course of the authorship, and explains how it functions in the wider context of Kierkegaard's thought. Concepts have been selected on the basis of their importance for Kierkegaard's contributions to philosophy, theology, the social sciences, literature and aesthetics, thereby making this volume an ideal reference work for students and scholars in a wide range of disciplines.
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.
Experimental philosophy was an exciting and extraordinarily successful development in the study of nature in the seventeenth century. Yet experimental philosophy was not without its critics and was far from the only natural philosophical method on the scene. In particular, experimental philosophy was contrasted with and set against speculative philosophy and, in some quarters, was accused of tending to irreligion. This volume brings together ten scholars of early modern philosophy, history and science in order to shed new light on the complex relations between experiment, speculation and religion in early modern Europe. The first six chapters of the book focus on the respective roles of experimental and speculative philosophy in individual seventeenth-century philosophers. They include Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, Margaret Cavendish, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Isaac Newton. The next two chapters deal with the relation between experimental philosophy and religion with a special focus on hypotheses and natural religion. The penultimate chapter takes a broader European perspective and examines the paucity of concerns with religion among Italian natural philosophers of the period. Finally, the concluding chapter draws all these individuals and themes together to provide a critical appraisal of recent scholarship on experimental philosophy. This book is the first collection of essays on the subject of early modern experimental philosophy. It will appeal to scholars and students of early modern philosophy, science and religion.
In recent years interest in the thought of Kierkegaard has grown dramatically, and with it the body of secondary literature has expanded so quickly that it has become impossible for even the most conscientious scholar to keep pace. The problem of the explosion of secondary literature is made more acute by the fact that much of what is written about Kierkegaard appears in languages that most Kierkegaard scholars do not know. Kierkegaard has become a global phenomenon, and new research traditions have emerged in different languages, countries, and regions. The present volume is dedicated to trying to help to resolve these two problems in Kierkegaard studies. Its purpose is, first, to provide book reviews of some of the leading monographic studies in the Kierkegaard secondary literature so as to assist the community of scholars to become familiar with the works that they have not read for themselves. The aim is thus to offer students and scholars of Kierkegaard a comprehensive survey of works that have played a more or less significant role in the research. Second, the present volume also tries to make accessible many works in the Kierkegaard secondary literature that are written in different languages and thus to give a glimpse into various and lesser-known research traditions. The six tomes of the present volume present reviews of works written in Catalan, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, and Swedish.
In recent years interest in the thought of Kierkegaard has grown dramatically, and with it the body of secondary literature has expanded so quickly that it has become impossible for even the most conscientious scholar to keep pace. The problem of the explosion of secondary literature is made more acute by the fact that much of what is written about Kierkegaard appears in languages that most Kierkegaard scholars do not know. Kierkegaard has become a global phenomenon, and new research traditions have emerged in different languages, countries and regions. The present volume is dedicated to trying to help to resolve these two problems in Kierkegaard studies. Its purpose is, first, to provide book reviews of some of the leading monographic studies in the Kierkegaard secondary literature so as to assist the community of scholars to become familiar with the works that they have not read for themselves. The aim is thus to offer students and scholars of Kierkegaard a comprehensive survey of works that have played a more or less significant role in the research. Second, the present volume also tries to make accessible many works in the Kierkegaard secondary literature that are written in different languages and thus to give a glimpse into various and lesser-known research traditions. The six tomes of the present volume present reviews of works written in Catalan, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, and Swedish.
Kierkegaard's Concepts is a comprehensive, multi-volume survey of the key concepts and categories that inform Kierkegaard's writings. Each article is a substantial, original piece of scholarship, which discusses the etymology and lexical meaning of the relevant Danish term, traces the development of the concept over the course of the authorship, and explains how it functions in the wider context of Kierkegaard's thought. Concepts have been selected on the basis of their importance for Kierkegaard's contributions to philosophy, theology, the social sciences, literature and aesthetics, thereby making this volume an ideal reference work for students and scholars in a wide range of disciplines.
One of the elements that many readers admire in Kierkegaard's skill as a writer is his ability to create different voices and perspectives in his works. Instead of unilaterally presenting clear-cut doctrines and theses, he confronts the reader with a range of personalities and figures who all espouse different views. One important aspect of this play of perspectives is Kierkegaard's controversial use of pseudonyms. The present volume is dedicated to exploring the different pseudonyms and authorial voices in Kierkegaard's writing. The articles featured here try to explore each pseudonymous author as a literary figure and to explain what kind of a person is at issue in each of the pseudonymous works. The hope is that by taking seriously each of these figures as individuals, we will be able to gain new insights into the texts which they are ostensibly responsible for.
While Kierkegaard is perhaps known best as a religious thinker and philosopher, there is an unmistakable literary element in his writings. He often explains complex concepts and ideas by using literary figures and motifs that he could assume his readers would have some familiarity with. This dimension of his thought has served to make his writings far more popular than those of other philosophers and theologians, but at the same time it has made their interpretation more complex. Kierkegaard readers are generally aware of his interest in figures such as Faust or the Wandering Jew, but they rarely have a full appreciation of the vast extent of his use of characters from different literary periods and traditions. The present volume is dedicated to the treatment of the variety of literary figures and motifs used by Kierkegaard. The volume is arranged alphabetically by name, with Tome II covering figures and motifs from Gulliver to Zerlina.
Kierkegaard's Concepts is a comprehensive, multi-volume survey of the key concepts and categories that inform Kierkegaard's writings. Each article is a substantial, original piece of scholarship, which discusses the etymology and lexical meaning of the relevant Danish term, traces the development of the concept over the course of the authorship, and explains how it functions in the wider context of Kierkegaard's thought. Concepts have been selected on the basis of their importance for Kierkegaard's contributions to philosophy, theology, the social sciences, literature and aesthetics, thereby making this volume an ideal reference work for students and scholars in a wide range of disciplines.
Kierkegaard's Concepts is a comprehensive, multi-volume survey of the key concepts and categories that inform Kierkegaard's writings. Each article is a substantial, original piece of scholarship, which discusses the etymology and lexical meaning of the relevant Danish term, traces the development of the concept over the course of the authorship, and explains how it functions in the wider context of Kierkegaard's thought. Concepts have been selected on the basis of their importance for Kierkegaard's contributions to philosophy, theology, the social sciences, literature and aesthetics, thereby making this volume an ideal reference work for students and scholars in a wide range of disciplines.
"Hobbes and the Making of Modern Political Thought" considers what
it is that makes the study of Hobbes so compelling. Gordon Hull
reads Hobbes as the first 'modern' political philosopher. In Hobbes
we find the combination of an anomalous and anachronistic view of
geometry and a radical, almost post-modern understanding of
language. After situation Hobbes against the late scholastic and
Machiavellian traditions against which he wrote, the book studies
Hobbes's neglected writings on mathematics and language. That
analysis then motivates a rereading of his famous pronouncements
about the state of nature and the absolutist state that is supposed
to be its remedy.
In this text, the most systematic exposition of Malebranche's philosophy, he presents clear and comprehensive statements of his two best-known contributions to metaphysics and epistemology, namely, the doctrines of occasionalism and vision in God. This edition presents a translation of the text that is clear, readable and more accurate than any of its predecessors, together with an introduction that analyzes Malebranche's central teachings and explains the importance of the Dialogues in the context of seventeenth-century philosophy.
Ralph Cudworth (1617-1688) deserves recognition as one of the most important English seventeenth-century philosophers after Hobbes and Locke. In opposition to Hobbes, Cudworth proposes an innatist theory of knowledge that may be contrasted with the empirical position of his younger contemporary Locke, and in moral philosophy he anticipates the ethical rationalists of the eighteenth century. A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality is his most important work, and this volume makes it available, together with his shorter Treatise of Freewill, in its first modern edition, with a historical introduction, a chronology of his life, and an essay on further reading. |
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