It is no exaggeration to say that of the early 20th century German philosophers who claimed to establish a new ontology, former neo-Kantian turned realist Nicolai Hartmann is the only one to have actually followed through. "Ontology: Laying the Foundations" deals with "what is insofar as it is," and its four parts tackle traditional ontological assumptions and prejudices and traditional categories such as substance, thing, individual, whole, object, and phenomenon; a novel redefinition of existence and essence in terms of the ontological factors Dasein and Sosein and their interrelations; an analysis of modes of "givenness" and the ontological embeddedness of cognition in affective transcendent acts; and a discussion of the status of ideal being, including mathematical being, phenomenological essences, logical laws, values, and the interconnections between the ideal and real spheres. Hartmann's work offers rich resources for those interested in overcoming the human-centeredness of much 20th century philosophy. Hartmann's work offers rich resources for those interested in overcoming the human-centeredness of much 20th century philosophy.

Antonio Gramsci and the Ancient World explores the relationship between the work of the Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci and the study of classical antiquity. The collection of essays engages with Greek and Roman history, literature, society, and culture, offering a range of perspectives and approaches building on Gramsci's theoretical insights, especially from his Prison Notebooks. The volume investigates both Gramsci's understanding and reception of the ancient world, including his use of ancient sources and modern historiography, and the viability of applying some of his key theoretical insights to the study of Greek and Roman history and literature. The chapters deal with the ideas of hegemony, passive revolution, Caesarism, and the role of intellectuals in society, offering a complex and diverse exploration of this intersection. With its fascinating mixture of topics, this volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of classics, ancient history, classical reception studies, Marxism and history, and those studying Antonio Gramsci's works in particular.

Though inspired by a Panofskyan legacy, this book diverges at certain points from Erwin Panofsky's declared objectives, and calls attention to several of aspects that were until now less accentuated in his intellectual reception. Insisting on the importance of iconology as a method for art history and the humanities in general, it shows how examining this promotes a cooperation between the history of art and the history of philosophy. It discusses whether Panofsky's method could be of use for general questions in the epistemology of the historical sciences that examine human works. Figural Philology also shows that Panofsky shares affinities with twentieth-century romance philology. A reading of Panofsky's work alongside the philological enterprise of Erich Auerbach and several other authors demonstrates that a proper appropriation of the philological impulse can provide a way out of the methodological antimony still hanging between hyper-formalist and hyper-theoretical approaches to the history of art.

The limit of language is one of the most pervasive notions found in Wittgenstein's work, both in his early Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and his later writings. Moreover, the idea of a limit of language is intimately related to important scholarly debates on Wittgenstein's philosophy, such as the debate between the so-called traditional and resolute interpretations, Wittgenstein's stance on transcendental idealism, and the philosophical import of Wittgenstein's latest work On Certainty. This collection includes thirteen original essays that provide a comprehensive overview of the various ways in which Wittgenstein appeals to the limit of language at different stages of his philosophical development. The essays connect the idea of a limit of language to the most important themes discussed by Wittgenstein-his conception of logic and grammar, the method of philosophy, the nature of the subject, and the foundations of knowledge-as well as his views on ethics, aesthetics, and religion. The essays also relate Wittgenstein's thought to his contemporaries, including Carnap, Frege, Heidegger, Levinas, and Moore.

Long-regarded as a classic in philosophical circles for launching the theory of fictionalism, Vaihinger's reputation has grown steadily over the years - now is the perfect time to enter the Routledge Classics pantheon The Philosophy of As If influenced various schools of philosophy, especially pragmatism, North America's most important philosophical movement The Routledge Classics edition includes a new foreword by Michael Rosenthal

This volume addresses the issue of freedom in the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari. This is all the more challenging in that Deleuze-Guattari almost never use the term freedom, preferring instead, the concept of the refrain. The essays collected in the volume show that freedom has been understood in a remarkably narrow sense and that in fact freedom operates as the refrain in every realm of thought and creation. The motivating approach in these essays is Deleuze-Guattari's emphasis on the irreality of media and capitalistic sign regimes, which they perceive to have taken over even the practices of philosophy, the arts, and science. By offering a clear and engaging treatment of the underexplored issue of freedom, this volume moves the discussion of Deleuze-Guattari's philosophy forward in ways that will appeal to researchers in Continental philosophy and a wide range of other disciplines.

This book investigates the conflicts concerning pragmatism in Wittgenstein's work On Certainty, through a comparison with the pragmatist tradition as expressed by its founding fathers Charles S. Peirce and William James. It also describes Wittgenstein's first encounters with pragmatism in the 1930s and shows the relevance of Frank Ramsey in the development of his thought. Offering a balanced, critical and theoretical examination the author discusses issues such as doubt, certainty, common sense, forms of life, action and the pragmatic maxim. While highlighting the objective convergences and divergences between the two approaches, the volume makes links to ongoing debates on relativism, foundationalism, scepticism and objectivity. It will be of interest to anyone searching for new perspectives on Wittgenstein's philosophy.

This book approaches the construction of complex and transgressive 'pervert' characters in mainstream (not 'art'), adult-oriented (not pornographic) cinema. It deconstructs an episteme on which to base the construction of characters in screenplays, in a way that acknowledges how semiotic elements of characterisation intersect. In addition, it provides an extended re-phrasing of the notion of 'the pervert' as Feiticiero/a: a newly-coined construct that might serve as an underpinning for complex, sexual filmic characters that are both entertaining and challenging to audiences. This re-phrasing speaks to both an existential/phenomenological conception of personhood and to the scholarly tradition of the 'linguistic turn' of continental philosophers such as Foucault and Lacan, who represent language not primarily as describing the world but as constructing it. The result is an original and interdisciplinary volume that is brought to coherence through a queer, post-humanist lens.

Michel Foucault was one of the twentieth century's most influential and provocative thinkers. His work on freedom, subjectivity, and power is now central to thinking across an extraordinarily wide range of disciplines, including philosophy, history, education, psychology, politics, anthropology, sociology, and criminology. "Michel Foucault: Key Concepts" explores Foucault's central ideas, such as disciplinary power, biopower, bodies, spirituality, and practices of the self. Each essay focuses on a specific concept, analyzing its meaning and uses across Foucault's work, highlighting its connection to other concepts, and emphasizing its potential applications. Together, the chapters provide the main co-ordinates to map Foucault's work. But more than a guide to the work, "Michel Foucault: Key Concepts" introduces readers to Foucault's thinking, equipping them with a set of tools that can facilitate and enhance further study.

Post-Postmodernism begins with a simple premise: we no longer live in the world of "postmodernism," famously dubbed "the cultural logic of late capitalism" by Fredric Jameson in 1984. Far from charting any simple move "beyond" postmodernism since the 1980s, though, this book argues that we've experienced an intensification of postmodern capitalism over the past decades, an increasing saturation of the economic sphere into formerly independent segments of everyday cultural life. If "fragmentation" was the preferred watchword of postmodern America, "intensification" is the dominant cultural logic of our contemporary era. Post-Postmodernism surveys a wide variety of cultural texts in pursuing its analyses-everything from the classic rock of Black Sabbath to the post-Marxism of Antonio Negri, from considerations of the corporate university to the fare at the cineplex, from reading experimental literature to gambling in Las Vegas, from Badiou to the undergraduate classroom. Insofar as cultural realms of all kinds have increasingly been overcoded by the languages and practices of economics, Nealon aims to construct a genealogy of the American present, and to build a vocabulary for understanding the relations between economic production and cultural production today-when American-style capitalism, despite its recent battering, seems nowhere near the point of obsolescence. Post-postmodern capitalism is seldom late but always just in time. As such, it requires an updated conceptual vocabulary for diagnosing and responding to our changed situation.

A Short History of My Philosophy is an autobiographic account of Agnes Heller's intellectual and academic career. While the narration mainly traces the development of ideas, we also learn how they occurred in the context of challenging life circumstances. Agnes Heller presents the life of her ideas is four stages: the first, "years of apprenticeship," details both the pre- and post-Hungarian revolution period during which she studied under Gyorgy Lukacs; the second, "years of dialogue," describes the relationships of the "Budapest school" in terms of their shared work and contributions; the third, "years of building and intervention," gives insight into important works written while living in Australia, along with Agnes Heller's political engagements during this period; and finally, the fourth, "years of wandering," describes the various projects Agnes Heller has undertaken as a world-traveler at conferences since the departure of her late husband, Ferenc Feher.

The Explanation of Behaviour was the first book written by the renowned philosopher Charles Taylor. A vitally important work of philosophical anthropology, it is a devastating criticism of the theory of behaviourism, a powerful explanatory approach in psychology and philosophy when Taylor's book was first published. However, Taylor has far more to offer than a simple critique of behaviourism. He argues that in order to properly understand human beings, we must grasp that they are embodied, minded creatures with purposes, plans and goals, something entirely lacking in reductionist, scientific explanations of human behaviour. Taylor's book is also prescient in according a central place to non-human animals, which like human beings are subject to needs, desires and emotions. However, because human beings have the unique ability to interpret and reflect on their own actions and purposes and declare them to others, Taylor argues that human experience differs to that of other animals. Furthermore, the fact that human beings are often directed by their purposes has a fundamental bearing on how we understand the social and moral world. Taylor's classic work is essential reading for those in philosophy and psychology as well as related areas such as sociology and religion. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new Preface by the author and a new Foreword by Alva Noe, setting the book in philosophical and historical context.

This edited collection explores the philosophy of Clarence Irving Lewis through two major concepts that are integral to his conceptual pragmatism: the a priori and the given. The relation between these two elements of knowledge forms the core of Lewis's masterpiece Mind and the World Order . While Lewis's conceptual pragmatism is directed against any conception of the a priori as constraining the mind and experience, it also emphasizes the inalterability and the unavoidability of the given that remains the same through any interpretation of it by the mind. The chapters in this book probe Lewis's new account of the relation between the a priori and the given in dialogue with other notable figures in twentieth-century philosophy, including Goodman, Putnam, Quine, Russell, Sellars, and Sheffer. C.I. Lewis: The A Priori and the Given represents a focused treatment of a longneglected figure in twentieth-century American philosophy.

Between 1965 and 1968, the celebrated French philosopher Alain Badiou hosted a televised series in which he interviewed some of the most influential contemporary philosophers of the period, including Michel Foucault, Paul Ricoeur, Michel Henry and Michel Serres. This book presents the first English-language translation of those interviews. Although Badiou had yet to publish the books that would go on to mark him out as the leading thinker of his generation (Being and Event and Logics of Worlds), his unique approach and highly original ideas are present in each discussion and the interviews present his philosophical origins in a lively and engaging context. More importantly these highly accessible and entertaining interviews provide a snapshot of French philosophy in the 1960s, setting the scene for the very public and political context of philosophy in the period immediately preceding the events of May '68, where philosophy played a crucial role. The book includes a new essay by Badiou in which he reflects on the project 30 years on.

Wittgenstein's thought is reflected in his reading and reception of other authors. Wittgenstein Reading approaches the moment of literature as a vehicle of self-reflection for Wittgenstein. What sounds, on the surface, like criticism (e.g. of Shakespeare) can equally be understood as a simple registration of Wittgenstein's own reaction, hence a piece of self-diagnosis or self-analysis. The book brings a representative sample of authors, from Shakespeare, Goethe, or Dostoyevsky to some that have received far less attention in Wittgenstein scholarship like Kleist, Lessing, or Wilhelm Busch and Johann Nepomuk Nestroy. Furthermore, the volume offers means for the cultural contextualization of Wittgenstein's thoughts. Unique to this book is its internal design. The editors' introduction sets the scene with regards to both biography and theory, while each of the subsequent chapters takes a quotation from Wittgenstein on a particular author as its point of departure for developing a more specific theme relating to the writer in question. This format serves to avoid the well-trodden paths of discussions on the relationship between philosophy and literature, allowing for unconventional observations to be made. Furthermore, the volume offers means for the cultural contextualization of Wittgenstein's thoughts.

Originally published in 1989 Social Philosophy and Ecological Scarcity presents a systematic study of the implications of ecological scarcity for social philosophy. The book argues for a new social philosophy based on a conception of the 'good society' and the 'good life' which makes fewer, rather than more demands on scarce ecological resources. The book shows that the two major competing social philosophies in modern philosophical thought - the bourgeois liberal and the state socialist - are both forms of capitalism. Despite their obvious differences, they both pursue the logic of capitalism, of ever-increasing accumulation, growth and consumption. This pursuit is carried out by means of modern science and its technology, which assume that Nature's resources are inexhaustible and can be exploited to meet infinite human wants or needs, ignoring ecological scarcity. The recognition of ecological scarcity would lead to a social philosophy, based on a frugal mode of socialism which has more affinities with the social visions of Fourier and Morris than with that of Marx. Their theories, far from being too 'utopian', are shown as more 'realistic' and less 'fantastic' than either bourgeois capitalism or state capitalism based on the Marxist model.

This volume has two primary aims: to trace the traditions and changes in methods, concepts, and ideas that brought forth the logical empiricists' philosophy of physics and to present and analyze the logical empiricists' various and occasionally contrary ideas about the physical sciences and their philosophical relevance. These original chapters discuss these developments in their original contexts and social and institutional environments, thus showing the various fruitful conceptions and philosophies behind the history of 20th-century philosophy of science. Logical Empiricism and the Natural Sciences is divided into three thematic sections. Part I surveys the influences on logical empiricism's philosophy of science and physics. It features chapters on Maxwell's role in the worldview of logical empiricism, on Reichenbach's account of objectivity, on the impact of Poincare on Neurath's early views on scientific method, Frank's exchanges with Einstein about philosophy of physics, and on the forgotten role of Kurt Grelling. Part II focuses on specific physical theories, including Carnap's and Reichenbach's positions on Einstein's theory of general relativity, Reichenbach's critique of unified field theory, and the logical empiricists' reactions to quantum mechanics. The third and final group of chapters widens the scope to philosophy of science and physics in general. It includes contributions on von Mises' frequentism; Frank's account of concept formation and confirmation; and the interrelations between Nagel's, Feigl's, and Hempel's versions of logical empiricism. This book offers a comprehensive account of the logical empiricists' philosophy of physics. It is a valuable resource for researchers interested in the history and philosophy of science, philosophy of physics, and the history of analytic philosophy.

This is the first volume dedicated solely to the topic of epistemological disjunctivism. The original essays in this volume, written by leading and up-and-coming scholars on the topic, are divided into three thematic sections. The first set of chapters addresses the historical background of epistemological disjunctivism. It features essays on ancient epistemology, Immanuel Kant, J.L. Austin, Edmund Husserl, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. The second section tackles a number contemporary issues related to epistemological disjunctivism, including its relationship with perceptual disjunctivism, radical skepticism, and reasons for belief. Finally, the third group of essays extends the framework of epistemological disjunctivism to other forms of knowledge, such as testimonial knowledge, knowledge of other minds, and self-knowledge. Epistemological Disjunctivism is a timely collection that engages with an increasingly important topic in philosophy. It will appeal to researches and graduate students working in epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of perception.

Social robotics is a cutting edge research area gathering researchers and stakeholders from various disciplines and organizations. The transformational potential that these machines, in the form of, for example, caregiving, entertainment or partner robots, pose to our societies and to us as individuals seems to be limited by our technical limitations and phantasy alone. This collection contributes to the field of social robotics by exploring its boundaries from a philosophically informed standpoint. It constructively outlines central potentials and challenges and thereby also provides a stable fundament for further research of empirical, qualitative or methodological nature.

This volume brings Cassirer's work into the arena of contemporary debates both within and outside of philosophy. All articles offer a fresh and contemporary look at one of the most prolific and important philosophers of the 20th century. The papers are authored by a wide array of scholars working in different areas, such as epistemology, philosophy of culture, sociology, psychopathology, philosophy of science and aesthetics.

Enrique Ambrosini Dussel is and has been one of the most prolific Latin American philosophers of the last 100 years. He has written over fifty books, and over three hundred articles ranging over the history of the Latin American philosophy, political philosophy, church history, theology, ethics, and occasional pieces on the state of Latin American countries. Dussel is first and foremost a moral philosopher, a philosopher of liberation. But for him, philosophy must be liberated so that it may contribute to social liberation. In one sense, 'beyond philosophy' means to go beyond contemporary, academicized, professionalized, and 'civilized' philosophy by turning to all that demystifies the autonomy of philosophy and turns our attention to its sources. 'Beyond philosophy, ' also means to go beyond philosophy in the Marxian sense of abolishing philosophy by realizing it. This is the definitive English language collection of Dussel's enormous body of work. It will allow the reader to get a good sense of the breath and depth of Dussel's opus, covering four major areas: ethics, economics, history, and liberation theology.

Modern/Postmodern: Society, Philosophy, Literature offers new definitions of modernism and postmodernism by presenting an original theoretical system of thought that explains the differences between these two key movements. Taking a contrastive approach, Peter V. Zima identifies three key concepts in the relationship between modernism and postmodernism - ambiguity, ambivalence and indifference. Zima defines modernism and postmodernism as problematics, as opposed to aesthetics, stylistics or ideologies. Unlike modernism, which is grounded in an increasing ambivalence towards social norms and values, postmodernity is presented as an era of indifference, i.e. of interchangeable norms, values and perspectives. Taking an historical, interdisciplinary and intercultural approach that engages with Anglo-American and European debates, the book describes the transition from late modernist ambivalence to postmodern indifference in the contexts of philosophy, literature and sociology. This is the ideal guide to the relationship between modernism and postmodernism for students and scholars throughout the humanities.

This book is an analysis of an Iranian philosopher's engagement with a British philosopher. The author compares the ideas of these philosophers within the context of European and Iranian intellectual traditions. This is the first book of its kind, as no one has yet looked at Allama Jafari's thought in relation to Sir Bertrand Russell's. East and West will be a useful work for anyone who is interested in comparative philosophical and sociological studies.