Jeremy Bentham, the father of utilitarianism, not only created a philosophical system which sought a rational solution to the problems of ethics, but was also concerned with the practical application of his theories to social reforms, administration, education and the law. This reissued volume represents a comprehensive collection of essays on Bentham's work from J. S. Mill to the year of the book's first publication in 1974. The wide range of Bentham's concern and the varied reactions he provoked are well represented by the essays in this volume. It begins with Mill's famous appraisal of the virtues and deficiencies of the theory that had so much influence on his own, followed by the criticisms of perhaps the ablest of Bentham's (and Mill's) contemporary opponents, William Whewell. Bentham's psychology and analysis of human motivation is dealt with by John Watson, and in the editor's own essay on the thorny problem of the justification of the principle of utility, the whole question of the link between specific human desires and the general desire for pleasure is examined as a psychological as well as a logical problem. The seldom-considered subject of Bentham's logic and the way in which he anticipates in some respects the work of Frege and Wittgenstein is considered by H. L. A. Hart, who has also contributed a paper on the question of sovereignty. Bentham's Political Fallacies is examined by Professor Burns, and the Constitutional Code and its projection of Bentham's ideal republic as considered by Thomas Peardon makes interesting reading in the light of David Robert's analysis of the impact Bentham had on the Victorian administrative state. Finally, there is Wesley C. Mitchell's interesting paper on the notorious felicific calculus. The editor has written an extensive introduction which will prove useful not only to those unfamiliar with Bentham's writings but to those acquainted with only one aspect of his work. Philosophers, jurists and political scientists should all find something of interest in this collection.

First published in 1905, this reissued edition of The Philosophical Works of Francis Bacon is an edited collection based upon the definitive seven volume edition of 1857, translated and prefaced by Robert Leslie Ellis and James Spedding. Of great historical, philosophical and scientific interest, this collection brings together translations of Bacon's most important works, including the Novum Organum, the De Augmentis Scientarium, the Parasceve, and the De Principiis atque Originibus, as well as works originally written in English, such as the Valerius Terminus and the Filum Labyrinthi. The reissue offers a comprehensive and provocative collection of the key writings of the man we now consider to be the father of Empiricism who popularised inductive methodologies for scientific inquiry. All works include prefaces by Robert Leslie Ellis and James Spedding, and the collection includes an introductory note from the editor John M. Robertson.

First published in 1905, this reissued edition of The Philosophical Works of Francis Bacon is an edited collection based upon the definitive seven volume edition of 1857, translated and prefaced by Robert Leslie Ellis and James Spedding.

Of great historical, philosophical and scientific interest, this collection brings together translations of Bacon 's most important works, including the Novum Organum, the De Augmentis Scientarium, the Parasceve, and the De Principiis atque Originibus, as well as works originally written in English, such as the Valerius Terminus and the Filum Labyrinthi. The reissue offers a comprehensive and provocative collection of the key writings of the man we now consider to be the father of Empiricism who popularised inductive methodologies for scientific inquiry. All works include prefaces by Robert Leslie Ellis and James Spedding, and the collection includes an introductory note from the editor John M. Robertson.

This work synthesizes work previously published in leading journals in the field into a coherent narrative that has a distinctive focus on Germany while also being aware of a broader European dimension. It argues that the German Lutheran Christoph August Heumann (1681-1764) marginalized the biographical approach to past philosophy and paved the way for the German Lutheran Johann Jacob Brucker's (1696-1770) influential method for the writing of past philosophy, centred on depersonalised and abstract systems of philosophy. The work offers an authoritative and engaging account of how late ancient Platonism, Plotinus in particular, was interpreted in eighteenth-century Germany according to these new precepts. Moreover, it reveals the Lutheran religious assumptions of this new approach to past philosophy, which underpinned the works of Heumann and Brucker, but also influential reviews that rejected the English Plato translator Thomas Taylor (1758-1835) and his understanding and evaluation of late ancient Platonism.

This book offers translations of early critical reactions to Kant's account of free will. Spanning the years 1784-1800, the translations make available, for the first time in English, works by little-known thinkers including Pistorius, Ulrich, Heydenreich, Creuzer and others, as well as familiar figures including Reinhold, Fichte and Schelling. Together they are a testimony to the intense debates surrounding the reception of Kant's account of free will in the 1780s and 1790s, and throw into relief the controversies concerning the coherence of Kant's concept of transcendental freedom, the possibility of reconciling freedom with determinism, the relation between free will and moral imputation, and other arguments central to Kant's view. The volume also includes a helpful introduction, a glossary of key terms and biographical details of the critics, and will provide a valuable foundation for further research on free will in post-Kantian philosophy.

Examines how Nietzschean ideas influenced the composition of Mahler's first four, so-called Wunderhorn, symphonies. Gustav Mahler and Friedrich Nietzsche both exercised a tremendous influence over the twentieth century. All the more fascinating, then, is Mahler's intellectual engagement with the writings of Nietzsche. Given the limited and frequently cryptic nature of the composer's own comments on Nietzsche, Mahler's specific understanding of the elusive thinker is achieved through the examination of Nietzsche's reception amongst the people who introduced composer to philosopher: members of the Pernerstorfer Circle at the University of Vienna. Mahler's Nietzsche draws on a variety of primary sources to answer two key questions. The first is hermeneutic: what do Mahler's allusions to Nietzsche mean? The second is creative: how can Mahler's own characterization of Nietzsche as an "epoch-making influence" be identified in his compositional techniques? By answering these two questions, the book paints a more accurate picture of the intersections of the arts, philosophy and politics in fin-de-siecle Vienna. Mahler's Nietzsche will be required reading for scholars and students of nineteenth and early twentieth century German music and philosophy.

The distinguished philosopher Louis Loeb examines the epistemological framework of Scottish philosopher David Hume, as employed in his celebrated work A Treatise of Human Nature. Loeb's project is to advance an integrated interpretation of Hume's accounts of belief and justification. His thesis is that Hume, in his Treatise, has a "stability-based" theory of justification which posits that his belief is justified if it is the result of a belief producing mechanism that engenders stable beliefs. But Loeb argues that the striking (if paradoxical) corollary to this theory is that no belief generating mechanism is fully stable - or fully justified - for a fully reflective person. This carefully argued and original interpretation of Hume makes sense of seemingly contradictory ideas and will provoke serious discussion among Hume scholars.

This volume explores the themes of vanishing matter, matter and the laws of nature, the qualities of matter, and the diversity of the debates about matter in the early modern period. Chapters are unified by a number of interlocking themes which together enable some of the broader contours of the philosophy of matter to be charted in new ways. Part I concerns Cartesian Matter; Part II covers Matter, Mechanism and Medicine; Part III covers Matter and the Laws of Motion; and Part IV covers Leibniz and Hume. Bringing together some of the worlda (TM)s leading scholars of early modern philosophy, as well as some exciting new researchers, Vanishing Matter and the Laws of Motion stakes out new territory that all serious scholars of early modern philosophy and science will want to traverse.

This anthology of readings in contemporary Western philosophy focuses on 19th-century philosophers who represent a variety of responses to the issue of their day: whether or not there was a knowable, nonhuman rational order upon which thinking persons could willfully choose to act. The selections are readable and accessible, yet remain faithful to the original works. Accompanying the text are drawings, diagrams, photographs, and a timeline; all of which allow the reader to really study the major philosophical thinkers of the 19th-century: Bentham, Wollstonecraft, Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Comte, Feuerbach, Mill, Kierkegaard, Marx, Peirce, James, and Nietzche. For anyone interested in owning a collection of works from the greatest philosophical thinkers in the 19th-century.

This is the first new scholarly edition this century of one of the greatest works in the history of philosophy: David Hume's Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. It is the third volume (the second to be published) of the Clarendon Hume Edition, which will be the definitive edition for the foreseeable future. In this work Hume gives an elegant and accessible presentation of strikingly original and challenging views. The distinguished Hume scholar Tom Beauchamp presents an authoritative text accompanied by introduction, annotation, glossary, biographical sketches, bibliographies, and indexes.

Rousseau and Radical Democracy presents the first comprehensive examination of Rousseau's founding role in, and continuing relevance for, recent and influential theories of democracy. Kevin Inston demonstrates the actuality of Rousseau's thinking through an analysis of his deep connection with the groundbreaking work of contemporary European thinkers, including Lefort, Laclau and Mouffe. The book affirms Rousseau's centrality for current debates in democratic thought by showing how, contrary to common assumptions, his writings emphasise the openness and difference necessary for a dynamic mode of democracy committed to extending the principles of freedom and equality. By connecting Rousseau's philosophy with present-day thinking, Inston stresses the theoretical consistency of his political thought against those influential deconstructive readings of his work by thinkers such as Derrida and De Man. This book argues that the ambiguities and tensions in Rousseau actually form part of the logic of Rousseau's rigorous reflection on democracy that accepts the inherent incompleteness and uncertainty of any political project as the condition of freedom and change.

The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill took thirty years to complete and is acknowledged as the definitive edition of J.S. Mill and as one of the finest works editions ever completed. Mill's contributions to philosophy, economics, and history, and in the roles of scholar, politician and journalist can hardly be overstated and this edition remains the only reliable version of the full range of Mill's writings. Each volume contains extensive notes, a new introduction and an index. Many of the volumes have been unavailable for some time, but the Works are now again available, both as a complete set and as individual volumes.

The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill took thirty years to complete and is acknowledged as the definitive edition of J.S. Mill and as one of the finest works editions ever completed. Mill's contributions to philosophy, economics, and history, and in the roles of scholar, politician and journalist can hardly be overstated and this edition remains the only reliable version of the full range of Mill's writings. Each volume contains extensive notes, a new introduction and an index. Many of the volumes have been unavailable for some time, but the Works are now again available, both as a complete set and as individual volumes.

First published in 1999, this volume endeavours to determine the coherence of David Hume's philosophical system. That is, to show that Hume' philosophy is founded upon nothing but his doctrine of belief, from which the entirety of Hume's philosophy may ultimately be derived. Paul A. Mwaipaya demonstrates the coherence of Hume's thoughts in order to show where it has been misunderstood and to dissolve confusing interpretations of Hume's philosophy. This ultimate commonality is derived through examinations of Hume's general theory of perception, Hume's theory of knowledge and probability and Hume's theory of passions and morality.

Stuart Hampshire, one of the most eminent British philosophers of the twentieth century, will be perhaps best remembered for his work on the seventeenth-century philosopher Spinoza, all of which is gathered now in this volume. Among the great thinkers of modern times, only Spinoza created a complete system of philosophy that rivals Plato's, with crucial contributions to every major philosophical topic.
Hampshire's classic 1951 book Spinoza remains the best introduction to this thinker, and it is reprinted here. But what gives particular interest to this new volume is the first publication of Hampshire's last work "Spinoza and Spinozism," an extended presentation of a Spinozist philosophical worldview. Hampshire's influential 1962 essay "Spinoza and the Idea of Freedom" is also included.
Spinoza and Spinozism is thus an ideal companion to the study and interpretation of this great philosopher.

In Between Philosophy and Religion Volumes I and II, Brayton Polka examines Spinoza's three major works_on religion, politics, and ethics_in order to show that his thought is at once biblical and modern. Indeed, Polka argues that Spinoza is biblical only insofar as he is understood to be one of the great philosophers of modernity and that he is modern only when it is understood that he is unique in making the interpretation of the Bible central to philosophy and philosophy central to the interpretation of the Bible. This book and its companion volume are essential reading for any scholar of Spinoza.

Manifest Activity presents and critically examines Thomas Reid's doctrines about the model of human power, the will, our capacities for purposeful conduct, and the place of our agency in the natural world. Reid is one of the most important philosophers of the 18th century, but hitherto under-appreciated; through the reconstruction of his arguments, many of which have never before been discussed, Gideon Yaffe demonstrates that Reid's simple prose and direct style belie the complexity of the views he advocates and the subtlety of the reasons he offers in their favour. For Reid, contrary to the view of many of his predecessors, it is simply manifest that we are active with respect to our behaviours; it is manifest, he thinks, that our actions are not merely remote products of forces that lie outside of our control. Reid holds, instead, that actions are all and only those events that spring from active power, and he produces insightful and imaginative arguments for the claim that only a creature with a mind is capable of having active power. He believes that only human beings, and creatures 'above us', are capable of directing events towards ends, of endowing them with purpose or direction, the distinctive feature of action. However, he also holds that all events, and not merely human actions, are products of active power, power possessed either by human beings or by God. This collection of theses leads Reid to the view that human behaviour and the progress of nature are both essentially teleological. Patterns in nature are the products of laws of which God is the author; patterns in human conduct are the products of character and the laws that individuals set for themselves. Manifest Activity examines Reid's arguments for this view and the view's implications for the nature of character, motivation, and the special kind of causation involved in the production of human behaviour. Yaffe's assessment will greatly profit anyone working on current theories of action and free will, as well as historians of ideas.

In the two related works in this volume, Bentham offers a detailed critique of William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-9). In "Comment on the Commentaries," on which Bentham began work in 1774, he exposes the fallacies which he claims to have detected in Blackstone, and criticizes the theory of the Common Law. He goes on to provide important reflections on the nature of law, and more particularly on the nature of customary and of statute law, and on judicial interpretation.
A Fragment on Government, which was published in 1776, was detached from the "Comment on the Commentaries." Concentrating on a passage of five or six pages in which Blackstone discusses the origin of society and government, Bentham offers three main criticisms. First, he criticizes Blackstone's methodology for failing to distinguish between the role of the expositor and the role of the censor, and thereby confusing the question of what the law is with the question of what the law ought to be. Second, he criticizes Blackstone's assumption that the theory of the social contract represents an adequate justification of the obligation to obey government. Third, he criticizes Blackstone's theory of sovereignty, which claims that in every state there must exist some absolute, undivided power, whose commands are law. Bentham points to the existence of states where sovereign power is both divided and limited.
In these two works, published by OUP for the first time, Bentham outlines a number of themes which he goes on to develop in his later works: the principle of utility; the importance of a "natural arrangement" for a legal system; the point at which resistance to government becomesjustifiable; the exposition of legal terms; and much more.
The volume also contains Bentham's "Preface" intended for, but not published in, the second edition of A Fragment on Government, which appeared in 1823. Having by this committed himself to political radicalism, Bentham uses this occasion to reflect on the text and the circumstances in which it was produced.
The text has been edited by H.L.A. Hart and J.H. Burns, whose reputations in their respective fields of legal theory and history of political thought are unsurpassed. The volume contains an Editorial Introduction which explains the provenance of the text, and the method of presentation. The texts are fully annotated with textual and historical notes, and the volume is completed with a detailed subject index, based on a methodology devised by Hart.

Impressions of Hume presents new essays from leading scholars in different philosophical, historiographical, and literary traditions to which Hume made defining contributions. Hume has made a variety of impressions on these different areas; his writings, philosophical and otherwise, may indeed be read in a number of different ways. For example, they can be taken as transparent vehicles for philosophical intuitions, problems, and arguments that are still at the centre of philosophical reflection today. On the other hand, there are readings which are interested in locating Hume's views against the background of concerns, debates and discussions of Hume's own time. And this is not all. Hume's texts may be read as highly sophisticated literary-cum-philosophical creations: in such cases, the reader's attention tends to be directed at issues of genre and persuasive strategies rather than on argument. Or they may be regarded as moments in the construction of the ideology of modernity, and as contributions to the legitimation of a given social order. As the true classics that they are, Hume's works are typical 'open texts', which present their readers of all provenances with a bounty of materials and inspirations. It is the editors' conviction that the borders between these approaches are far from neat; and that as much cross-fertilization as possible is to be promoted. Impressions of Hume amply demonstrates the rewards of such an approach.

Nietzsche's Zarathustra takes an interdisciplinary approach to Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, focusing on the philosophical function of its literary techniques and its fictional mode of presentation. It argues that the fictional format is essential to Nietzsche's philosophical message in his work. Part of that message is Nietzsche's alternative to the Western worldview as developed by Plato's dialogues and the Christian Gospel, which he presents through the teachings of his hero, Zarathustra. Another part of that message is that any doctrine, including those of Zarathustra himself, has an ambivalent nature. Although doctrinal formulations are designed to preserve and communicate philosophical insights, they can become dead formulas, out of touch with the live philosophical discoveries that they aimed to capture. Thus Spoke Zarathustra explores Zarathustra's own vulnerability to this risk, and his way of regaining real connection with living wisdom. The doctrine of eternal recurrence, which is particular prominent in Zarathustra, is a case in point. The doctrine is offered in opposition to the worldview that Nietzsche associates with the Christian doctrine of sin, which in his view promotes a view of this life as devoid of intrinsic value. However, certain ways of adhering to this doctrine themselves rob life of its value. The book also defends the importance of Part IV of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which many scholars have seen as unimportant by comparison with the first three parts. Nietzsche's Zarathustra argues that Part III would not have been a culmination for the work, and that Part IV is essential to Nietzsche's project. Part IV's allusions to Apuleius' The Golden Ass, an ancient Menippean satire, suggest that it should be read as a satire in which Zarathustra falls into and recovers from folly. It is thus the culminating statement of the point that there is always a discrepancy between the living philosophical insight and any attempt to articulate it,

In the late eighteenth century, German Jews began entering the middle class with remarkable speed. That upward mobility, it has often been said, coincided with Jews' increasing alienation from religion and Jewish nationhood. In fact, Michah Gottlieb argues, this period was one of intense engagement with Jewish texts and traditions. One expression of this was the remarkable turn to Bible translation. In the century and a half beginning with Moses Mendelssohn's pioneering translation and the final one by Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, German Jews produced sixteen different translations of at least the Pentateuch. Exploring Bible translations by Mendelssohn, Leopold Zunz, and Samson Raphael Hirsch, Michah Gottlieb argues that each translator sought a "reformation" of Judaism along bourgeois lines, which involved aligning Judaism with a Protestant concept of religion. Buber and Rosenzweig famously critiqued bourgeois German Judaism as a craven attempt to establish social respectability to facilitate Jews' entry into the middle class through a vapid, domesticated Judaism. But Mendelssohn, Zunz, and Hirsch saw in bourgeois values the best means to serve God and the authentic actualization of Jewish tradition. Through their learned, creative Bible translations, these scholars presented competing visions of middle-class Judaism that affirmed Jewish nationhood while lighting the path to a purposeful, emotionally-rich spiritual life grounded in ethical responsibility.

First Published in 1999. The purpose of this series is to provide a contemporary assessment and history of the entire course of philosophical thought. Each book constitutes a detailed, critical introduction to the work of a philosopher of major influence and significance. Any list of the great philosophers has to include Kant. His influence on philosophical thinking in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has been immense, and his work remains of the most immediate contemporary relevance.

More than two hundred years after his birth, and 150 years after the publication of his most famous essay On Liberty, John Stuart Mill remains one of the towering intellectual figures of the Western tradition. This book combines an up-to-date assessment of the philosophical legacy of Mill's arguments, his complex version of liberalism and his account of the relationship between character and ethical and political commitment. Bringing together key international and interdisciplinary scholars, including Martha Nussbaum and Peter Singer, this book combines the latest insights of Mill scholarship with a long-term appraisal of the ways in which Mill's work has been received and interpreted from the time of his death in 1873 to today.

The book offers compelling insights into Mill's posthumous fate and reputation; his youthful political and intellectual activism; his views on the formation of character; the development of his thought on logic; his differences from his father and Bentham; his astonishingly prescient, environmentally sensitive and 'green' thought; his relation to virtue ethics; his conception of higher pleasures and its relation to his understanding of justice; his feminist thought and its place in contemporary debates and feminist discourses; his defence of free speech and its fundamental significance for his liberalism; and his continued contemporary relevance on a number of major issues.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars of Politics, Political Theory, Philosophy, History, English, Psychology, and also Cultural Studies, Empire studies, nationalism and ethnicity studies.

Hume's "New Scene of Thought," is a defense of Hume's philosophical principles in the Treatise of Human Nature. Nelson shows that Hume's new philosophy was a uniquely original and profound work, a masterpiece in philosophical literature, and a work worthy of serious study and acceptance. Expounding on the meaning that Hume gives to his new science of man founded on an empirical foundation, it is shown that all the sciences were, in effect, nothing more than branches of "introspective psychology." The thesis of The Several faces of David Hume in The Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion is that Dialogues is a reflective philosophical autobiography of Hume himself. Every character represents Hume at some stage in his life: Pamphilus is Hume at fifteen, and Philo is Hume in his adult philosophical maturity. Cleanthes is Bishop Butler but also Hume, when Hume was under the sway of Butler's writings as a young man. Demea represents the orthodox religious views that Hume was raised on, which Hume rejected by his eighteenth year.

Few philosophers have had as much influence as Hegel. When he died in 1831, he not only dominated German philosophy, but also left his mark on the study of religion and art, on historical studies, and on political thought. Much later, Lenin insisted that no one could completely comprehend Karl Marx unless he had first made a thorough study of Hegel. Later, it became fashionable to link Hegel with Nazism and communism. There is today broad agreement that knowledge of Hegel's thought adds a critical dimension to our understanding of recent cultural and political history.

This volume, first published in 1970, focuses on Hegel's political philosophy. It brings together ten essays by six authors who present sharply conflicting interpretations. Here are point-by-point discussions, from differing perspectives, on Hegel's philosophy of the state and his ideas about history and war, nationalism and liberty. Never before have these issues been joined in comparable fashion in a single volume.

Sidney Hook sees Hegel as "the very model of a small - minded, timid Continental conservative" and accuses him of "the most specious reasoning that ever disgraced a philosopher," and E. F. Carritt argues for a "totalitarian" reading of Hegel, while T. M. Knox and Shlomo Avineri defend Hegel against these and other charges. The book also contains a short contribution by Z. A. Pelczynski and Walter Kaufmann's "The Hegel Myth and Its Method." Walter Kaufmann, an outstanding historian of European ideas in philosophy, furnished an introduction as well as footnotes that help to clarify perplexing issues and in some cases seek to put an end to long-lived errors. His analysis is itself a major contribution to Hegel's political theories.