Nietzsche, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics explores how Nietzsche criticizes, adopts, and reformulates Kant's critique of metaphysics and his transcendental idealism. Thing in itself and phenomenon, space and time, intuition and thought, the I and self-consciousness, concepts and judgments, categories and schemata, teleological judgement: building on established and recent literature on these topics in both thinkers, this volume asks whether Nietzsche can - malgr lui - be considered a Kantian of sorts. Nietzsche's intensive engagement with early Neo-Kantians (Lange, Liebmann, Fischer, von Helmholtz) and other contemporaries of his, largely ignored in the Anglophone literature, is also addressed, raising the question whether Nietzsche's positions on Kant's theoretical philosophy are best understood as historically embedded in the often rather loose relation they had to the first Critique. These and other questions are taken up in Nietzsche, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, which in different ways tackles the complexities of Nietzsche's relation to Kant's theoretical philosophy and its reception in nineteenth Century philosophy.

Donald Davidson was one of the 20th Century's deepest analytic thinkers. He developed a systematic picture of the human mind and its relation to the world, an original and sustained vision that exerted a shaping influence well beyond analytic philosophy of mind and language. At its center is an idea of minded creatures as essentially rational animals: Rational animals can be interpreted, their behavior can be understood, and the contents of their thoughts are, in principle, open to others. The combination of a rigorous analytic stance with aspects of humanism so distinctive of Davidsonian thought finds its maybe most characteristic expression when this central idea is brought to bear on the relation of the mental to the physical: Davidson defended the irreducibility of its rational nature while acknowledging that the mental is ultimately determined by the physical.
Davidson made contributions of lasting importance to a wide range of topics -- from general theory of meaning and content over formal semantics, the theories of truth, explanation, and action, to metaphysics and epistemology. His writings almost entirely consist of short, elegant, and often witty papers. These dense and thematically tightly interwoven essays present a profound challenge to the reader.
This book provides a concise, systematic introduction to all the main elements of Davidson's philosophy. It places the theory of meaning and content at the very center of his thought. By using interpretation, and the interpreter, as key ideas it clearly brings out the underlying structure and unified nature of Davidson's work. Kathrin Gluer carefully outlines his principal claims and arguments, and discusses them in some detail. The book thus makes Davidson's thought accessible in its genuine depth, and acquaints the reader with the main lines of discussion surrounding it."

What do thoughts, hopes, paintings, words, desires, photographs, traffic signs, and perceptions have in common? They are all about something, are directed, are contentful - in a way chairs and trees, for example, are not. This book inquires into the source of this power of directedness that some items exhibit while others do not. An approach to this issue prevalent in the philosophy of the past half-century seeks to explain the power of directedness in terms of certain items' ability to reliably track things in their environment. A very different approach, with a venerable history and enjoying a recent resurgence, seeks to explain the power of directedness rather in terms of an intrinsic ability of conscious experience to direct itself. This book attempts a synthesis of both approaches, developing an account of the sources of such directedness that grounds it both in reliable tracking and in conscious experience.

Volume 2 of "The Writings of Charles De Koninck"is part of the three-volume series presenting the first English edition of the collected works of the Catholic Thomist philosopher Charles De Koninck (1906-1965). Ralph McInerny is the project editor and has prepared the excellent translations.The second volume begins with two works published in 1943: "Ego Sapientia: The Wisdom That Is Mary," De Koninck's first study in Mariology, and "The Primacy of the Common Good Against the Personalists" (with "The Principle of the New Order"), which generated a strong critical reaction. Included in this volume are two reviews of "The Primacy of the Common Good," by Yves R. Simon and I. Thomas Eschmann, O.P., and De Koninck's substantial response to Eschmann in his lengthy "In Defense of St. Thomas." The volume concludes with a group of short essays: "The Dialectic of Limits as Critique of Reason," "Notes on Marxism," "This Is a Hard Saying," " Review of] "Between Heaven and Earth,"" and "Concept, Process, and Reality."

"Volume Two of "The Writings of Charles De Koninck"reveals a Thomist at home not merely in the deepest questions of natural science and natural philosophy, but also in the highest reaches of ethical and political philosophy, and in the most wonderful realm of revealed theology. De Koninck combines a justified confidence in his wisdom about the highest things with humility and gratitude for the gift of that wisdom. The series edited by Dr. McInerny is taking shape as a recovered treasure of a philosopher who labored to receive, and to pass on, the gift of wisdom." --David Quackenbush, Thomas Aquinas College

Simone de Beauvoir and Luce Irigaray famously insisted on their philosophical differences, and this mutual insistence has largely guided the reception of their thought. What does it mean to return to Simone de Beauvoir and Luce Irigaray in light of questions and problems of contemporary feminism, including intersectional and queer criticisms of their projects? How should we now take up, amplify, and surpass the horizons opened by their projects? Seeking answers to these questions, the essays in this volume return to Beauvoir and Irigaray to find what the two philosophers share. And as the authors make clear, the richness of Beauvoir and Irigaray's thought far exceeds the reductive parameters of the Eurocentric, bourgeois second-wave debates that have constrained interpretation of their work. The first section of this volume places Beauvoir and Irigaray in critical dialogue, exploring the place of the material and the corporeal in Beauvoir's thought and, in doing so, reading Beauvoir in a framework that goes beyond a theory of gender and the humanism of phenomenology. The essays in the second section of the volume take up the challenge of articulating points of dialogue between the two focal philosophers in logic, ethics, and politics. Combined, these essays resituate Beauvoir and Irigaray's work both historically and in light of contemporary demands, breaking new ground in feminist philosophy.

Modernism has long been understood as a radical repudiation of the past. Reading against the narrative of modernism-as-break, Pragmatic Modernism traces an alternative strain of modernist thought that grows out of pragmatist philosophy and is characterized by its commitment to gradualism, continuity, and recontextualization. It rediscovers a distinctive response to the social, intellectual, and artistic transformations of modernity in the work of Henry James, Marcel Proust, Gertrude Stein, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Dewey, and William James. These thinkers share an institutionally-grounded approach to change which emphasizes habits, continuities, and daily life over spectacular events, heroic opposition, and radical rupture. Pragmatic modernists developed an active, dialectical approach to habit, maintaining a critical stance toward mindless repetitions while refusing to romanticize moments of shock or conflict. Through its analysis of pragmatist keywords, including "habit," "institution," "prediction," and "bigness," Pragmatic Modernism offers new readings of works by James, Proust, Stein, and Andre Breton, among others. It shows, for instance, how Stein's characteristic literary innovation-her repetitions-aesthetically materialize the problem of habit; and how institutions-businesses, museums, newspapers, the law, and even the state itself-help to construct the subtlest of personal observations and private gestures in James's novels. This study reconstructs an overlooked strain of modernism. In so doing, it helps us to reimagine the stark choice between political quietism and total revolution that has been handed down to us as modernism's legacy.

David Kaplan's intellectual influence on 20th century analytic philosophy has been transformative. He introduced lasting innovations in the philosophy of language and philosophical logic. Just as important, however, is Kaplan's way of doing philosophy; generous but incisive, his profoundly interactive style mentored countless generations of students, many of whom contribute to this volume.
This volume collects new, previously unpublished articles on Kaplan, analyzing a broad spectrum of topics ranging from cutting edge linguistics and the philosophy of mathematics, to metaphysics, the foundations of pragmatics, and the theory of communication.
With its historical introduction and personal tributes, The Philosophy of David Kaplan also reveals much of Kaplan's life and times, highlighting the key players of analytic philosophy of the last century, and underscoring Kaplan's substantial impact on contemporary philosophy.

After 9/11/2001, gendered narratives of humiliation and revenge proliferated in the U.S. national imaginary. How is it that gender, which we commonly take to be a structure at the heart of individual identity, is also at stake in the life of the nation? What do we learn about gender when we pay attention to how it moves and circulates between the lived experience of the subject and the aspirations of the nation in war? What is the relation between national sovereignty and sovereign masculinity? Through examining practices of torture, extra-judicial assassination, and first person accounts of soldiers on the ground, Bonnie Mann develops a new theory of gender. It is neither a natural essence nor merely a social construct. Gender is first and foremost an operation of justification which binds the lived existence of the individual subject to the aspirations of the regime. Inspired by a reexamination of the work of Simone de Beauvoir, the author exposes how sovereign masculinity hinges on the nation's ability to tap into and mobilize the structure of self-justification at the heart of masculine identity. At the national level, shame is repeatedly converted to power in the War on Terror through hyperbolic displays of agency including massive aerial bombardment and practices of torture. This is why, as Mann demonstrates, the phenomenon of gender itself demands a four-dimensional analysis that moves from the phenomenological level of lived experience, through the collective life of a people expressed in the social imaginary and the operations of language, to the material relations that prevail in our times.

This biography of French philosopher Jacques Maritain and his wife Raissa offers a fascinating story of perhaps the most influential French theologian of the twentieth century. This award-winning book, written by Jean-Luc Barre at the request of the Maritain Archives in Kolbsheim, France, and published in France in 1995, was the first biography of noted French philosopher Jacques Maritain and his wife Raissa. Drawing on the wealth of Maritain materials at the Kolbsheim archives, many of which are unpublished, Barre offers a clear and objective account of the remarkable lives and intellectual pursuits of the Maritains. Noted scholar and translator Bernard E. Doering has now made this essential work available for the first time in English. Jacques and Raissa Maritain: Beggars for Heaven focuses not only on the Maritains' philosophical work, but also on their pursuit of social justice, their opposition to the Vichy, their battle against intellectual repression in the church, and their contemplative life of prayer and devotion. Barre places a particular emphasis on the Maritains' close and supportive friendships with novelists, poets, painters, and musicians who were considered revolutionary at the time. Doering's translation will appeal not only to scholars but also to anyone interested in intellectual history generally and the intellectual history of modern Catholicism in particular.

The overall spirit that permeates this volume is Clarke's firm conviction that the philosophical thought of St. Thomas Aquinas is an inexhaustibly rich and profound resource, and his purpose is to share this conviction with contemporary philosophers. In so doing Clarke both reflects and triggers significant new directions in contemporary Thomistic thought.

"In this massive, meticulously researched work Trinkaus makes a major contribution to our understanding of the Italian humanists and the Christian Renaissance in Italy. . . . The author argues persuasively that the Italian humanists drew their inspiration more from the church fathers than from the pagan ancients. . . . [This is] the most comprehensive and most important study of Italian humanism to appear in English. It is a mine of information, offering, among other things, detailed analyses of texts which have been ignored even by Italian scholars." -Library Journal

This work examines that of the 20th-century German philosopher, Eric Voegelin, from a theological viewpoint. It includes a comparison to the philosophy of the Jesuit, Bernard Lonergan. Voegelin's thought is claimed to be as relevant to theology as it is to political science and history.

Plato's "Phaedo", Hegel's "Phenomenology of Spirit" and Heidegger's "Being and Time" are three of the most profound meditations on variations of the ideas that to practice philosophy is to practice how to die. This study traces how these variations are connected with each other and with the reflections of this idea to be found in the works of other ancient and modern philosophers - including Neitzsche, Husserl, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and levinas. The book also shows how this philosophical thanatology motivates or is motivated by experiences documented in psychoanalysis and in the anthropology of Western and Oriental religions and myths.

Iris Murdoch's philosophy has long attracted readers searching for a morally serious yet humane perspective on human life. Her eloquent call for "a theology which can continue without God" has been especially attractive to those who find that they can live neither with religion nor without it. By developing a form of thinking that is neither exclusively secular nor traditionally religious, Murdoch sought to recapture the existential or spiritual import of philosophy. Long before the current wave of interest in spiritual exercises, she approached philosophy not only as an academic discourse, but as a practice whose aim is the transformation of perception and consciousness. As she put it, a moral philosophy should be capable of being "inhabited"; that is, it should be "a philosophy one could live by."
In A Philosophy to Live By, Maria Antonaccio argues that Murdoch's thought embodies an ascetic model of philosophy for contemporary life. Extending and complementing the argument of her earlier monograph, Picturing the Human: The Moral Thought of Iris Murdoch, this new work establishes Murdoch's continuing relevance by engaging her thought with a variety of contemporary thinkers and debates in ethics from a perspective informed by Murdoch's philosophy as a whole. Among the prominent philosophers engaged here are Charles Taylor, Martha Nussbaum, Stephen Mulhall, John Rawls, Pierre Hadot, and Michel Foucault, and theologians such as Stanley Hauerwas, David Tracy, William Schweiker, and others. These engagements represent a sustained effort to think with Murdoch, yet also beyond her, by enlisting the resources of her thought to explore wider debates at the intersections of moral philosophy, religion, art, and politics, and in doing so, to illuminate the distinctive patterns and tropes of her philosophical style.

We humans are deeply convinced that there is something distinct about us as a species, but we have never been able to agree on what it is. In the West, the religion of Israel argued that the will is the fundamental vehicle of our relation to God and therefore the determining characteristic of our humanity. Greek philosophy countered with the view that reason is the definitively human characteristic, since humans are the only self-aware animal. Today that unresolved argument is further complicated by the pluralism of contemporary culture and the surprisingly different ways in which different groups understand themselves. These essays approach the question in two different ways. The first is a philosophical attempt at definition. Bhikhu Parekh agrees that there is a universal human nature but that there is also a nature which is culture-specific and a third which is self-reflective. Daniel O. Dahlstrom argues that we know our nature only when it is recognized by our culture and that the liberal democratic idea of the state both celebrates and threatens the notion of fundamental human equality. Stanley H. Rosen gives a contemporary interpretation of the classical Greek view in proposing that philosophy is an expression of our humanity, an openness to the human love of wisdom. Knud Haakonssen is not ready to endorse any given orthodoxy regarding human nature but argues rather for openness to experimental views and promising hypothesis. Lisa Sowle Cahill defends a feminist interpretation of Catholic moral theology; we must be able to say that the battering of women is everywhere and always wrong. And Robert Cummings Neville notes that being human means having the obligation to take responsibility for our history. The second group of essays recognizes that we are what we do as well as what we say we are and asks what it means to be genuinely humane. Glenn C. Loury criticizes Murray and Herrnstein's The Bell Curve

USING AUGUSTINE AS A CONVERSATION partner, this important new book explores the value of Michel Foucault's controversial writings for theologians, ethicists, philosophers, and cultural theorists. J. Joyce Schuld demonstrates the promising possibilities as well as the difficulties and limits of applying Foucault's social criticisms within Christian contexts. She maintains that the best way to make Foucault's postmodern concerns and his unsettling descriptions, metaphors, and methods accessible to Christian readers is to examine his thought through a premodern lens. By bringing Foucault and Augustine into constructive dialogue, Schuld reveals the surprising analytical usefulness of Augustine's writings for postmodern and poststructuralist studies. She pursues from a new and critically illuminating perspective the personal, cultural, and historical ramifications of Augustine's formative understanding of love and the complicated effects of original sin on all inter- and intrapersonal relations. Schuld argues that Foucault's dynamic and relational description of power helps us reconceptualize an ancient doctrine that has lost currency in the modern era and challenges us to rethink the vulnerabilities to which human loves endlessly expose us as individuals and engaged members of sociohistorical communities. This approach facilitates further theological examination of the intertwining personal and political implications of pride, the morally ambiguous aspirations for progress and perfecting knowledge, and the paradoxical power of the incarnation, the cross, and eschatological hope. Schuld's is the first sustained analysis of the rich theological possibilities of employing Foucault's mostinfluential concepts and methods, historical research, and contemporary cultural criticisms. Foucault and Augustine: Reconsidering Power and Love will appeal to those who already use Foucault constructively and to those who have either never read him or who are familiar with his writings but have never considered them valuable for Christians.

In Essays on the History of Ethics Michael Slote collects his essays that deal with aspects of both ancient and modern ethical thought and seek to point out conceptual/normative comparisons and contrasts among different views. Arranged in chronological order of the philosopher under discussion, the relationship between ancient ethical theory and modern moral philosophy is a major theme of several of the papers and, in particular, Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant, and/or utilitarianism feature centrally in (most of) the discussions.
One essay seeks to show that there are three main ways to conceive the relationship between human well-being and virtue: one is dualistic a la Kant (they are disparate notions); one is the sort of reductionism familiar from the history of utilitarianismm; and one, not previously named by philosophers, is implicit in the approach the Stoics, Plato, and Aristotle take (in their different ways) to the topic of virtue and well-being. Slote names this third approach "elevationism" and argue that it is more promising than either reductionism or dualism.
Two of the essays are narrowly focused on Hume's ethics, and one seeks to show that even Kant's opponents have reason to accept a number of important and original Kantian ideas. Finally, the two last essays in the volume talk about ethical thought during the last half of the twentieth century and the first few years of the twenty-first, arguing that the care ethics of Carol Gilligan and Nel Noddings has a distinctive and important contribution to make to ongoing ethical theorizing--and to our understanding of the history of ethics as well.

Political philosophy in the English-speaking world has been dominated for more than two decades by various versions of liberal theory, which holds that political inquiry should proceed without reference to religious view. Although a number of philosophers have contested this stance, no one has succeeded in dislodging liberalism from its position of dominance

The most interesting challenges to liberalism have come from those outside of the discipline of philosophy. Sociologists, legal scholars, and religious ethicists have attacked liberalism's embodiment in practice, arguing that liberal practice -- particularly in the United States -- has produced a culture which trivializes religion. This culture, they argue, is at odds with the beliefs and practices of large numbers of citizens.

In the past, disciplinary barriers have limited scholarly exchange among philosophical liberals and their theological, sociological and legal critics. Religion and Contemporary Liberalism makes an important step towards increased dialogue among these scholars. A collection of original papers by philosophers, sociologists, theologians, and legal theorists, this volume will spark considerable debate in philosophy -- debate which will be significant for all of those concerned with the place of religion within a liberal society.

The "Nations" are the "seventy nations": a metaphor which, in the Talmudic idiom, designates the whole of humanity surrounding Israel. In this major collection of essays, Levinas considers Judaism's uncertain relationship to European culture since the Enlightenment, problems of distance and integration. It also includes essays on Franz Rosenzweig and Moses Mendelssohn, and a discussion of central importance to Jewish philosophy in the context of general philosophy. This work brings to the fore the vital encounter between philosophy and Judaism, a hallmark of Levinas's thought.

Delaney (philosophy, U. of Notre Dame) argues that the work of American philosopher Peirce (1839-1914) can best be understood as an investigation of the logic of science, the conditions for the possibility of science, and the speculative extrapolations from science. Annotation copyright Book News, I

Cheryl Misak presents the first collective study of the development of philosophy in North America, from the 18th century to the end of the 20th century. Twenty-six leading experts examine distinctive features of American philosophy, trace notable themes, and consider the legacy and influence of notable figures. This will be the first reference point for future work on the subject, and a fascinating resource for anyone interested in modern philosophy or American intellectual history.

Frank Jackson champions the cause of conceptual analysis as central to philosophical inquiry. In recent years conceptual analysis has been undervalued and, Jackson suggests, widely misunderstood; he argues that there is nothing especially mysterious about it and a whole range of important questions cannot be productively addressed without it. He anchors his argument in discussion of specific philosophical issues, starting with the metaphysical doctrine of physicalism and moving on, via free will, meaning, personal identity, motion and change, to the philosophy of colour and to ethics. The significance of different kinds of supervenience theses, Kripke and Putnam's work in the philosophy of modality and language, and the role of intuitions about possible cases receive detailed attention. Jackson concludes with a defence of a version of analytical descriptivism in ethics. In this way the book not only offers a methodological programme for philosophy, but also throws fascinating new light on some much-debated problems and their interrelations. puffs which may be quoted (please do not edit without consulting OUP editor): 'This is an outstanding book. It covers a vast amount of philosophy in a very short space, advances a number of original and striking positions, and manages to be both clear and concise in its expositions of other views and forceful in its criticisms of them. The book offers something new for those interested in the various individual problems it discusses-conceptual analysis, the mind-body relation, secondary qualities, modality, and ethical realism. But unifying these individual discussions is an ambitious structure which amounts to an outline of a complete metaphysical system, and an outline of an epistemology for this metaphysics. It is hard to think of a central area of analytic philosophy which will not be touched by Jackson's conclusions.' Tim Crane, Reader in Philosophy, University College London 'The writing is clear, straightforward, and down to earth-the usual virtues one expects from Jackson . . . what he has to say is innovative and valuable . . . the book deals with a large number of apparently diverse philosophical issues, but it is also an elegantly unified work. What gives it unity is the metaphilosophical framework that Jackson works out with great care and persuasiveness. This is the first serious and sustained work on the methodology of metaphysics in recent memory. What he says about the role of conceptual analysis in metaphysics is an important and timely contribution. . . . It is refreshing and heartening to see a first-class analytic philosopher doing some serious metaphilosophical work . . . I think that the book will be greeted as an important event in philosophical publishing.' Jaegwon Kim, Professor of Philosophy, Brown University