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Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Western philosophy > Modern Western philosophy, c 1600 to the present > Western philosophy, from c 1900 - > General
The issue of relativism looms large in many contemporary discussions of knowledge, reality, society, religion, culture and gender. Is truth relative? To what extent is knowledge dependent on context? Are there different logics? Do different cultures and societies see the world differently? And is reality itself something that is constructed? This book offers a path through these debates. O'Grady begins by clarifying what exactly relativism is and how it differs from scepticism and pluralism. He then examines five main types of cognitive relativism: alethic relativism, logical relativism, ontological relativism; epistemological relativism, and relativism about rationality. Each is clearly distinguised and the arguments for and against each are assessed. O'Grady offers a welcome survey of recent debates, engaging with the work of Davidson, Devitt, Kuhn, Putnam, Quine, Rorty, Searle, Winch and Wittgenstein, among others, and he offers a distinct position of his own on this hotly contested issue.
First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
For many years essentialism - the view that some objects have essentially or necessarily certain properties without which they could not exist or be the things they are - was considered to be beyond the pale in philosophy, a relic of discredited Aristotelianism. This is no longer so. Kripke and Putnam have made belief in essential natures once more respectable. Harre and Madden have boldly argued against Hume's theory of causation, and developed an alternative theory based on the assumption that there are genuine causal powers in nature. Dretske, Tooley, Armstrong, Swoyer and Carroll have all developed strong alternatives to Hume's theory of the laws of nature. Shoemaker has developed a thoroughly non-Humean theory of properties. The new essentialism has evolved from these beginnings and can now reasonably claim to be a metaphysic for a modern scientific understanding of the world - one that challenges the conception of the world as comprising passive entities whose interactions are to be explained by appeal to contingent laws of nature externally imposed.
Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.;Inspired by the myth of a man condemned to ceaselessly push a rock up a mountain and watch it roll back to the valley below, The Myth of Sisyphus transformed twentieth-century philosophy with its impassioned argument for the value of life in a world without religious meaning.
Alain Badiou was born in 1937 in Rabat and Jean-Claude Milner in 1941 in Paris. They were both involved in the "Red Years" at the end of the Sixties and both were Maoists, but while Badiou was focusing all his attention on China, Milner was already taking his distance from it. Over the years, that original dispute over the destiny of gauchisme was fueled by deep, new differences between them concerning the role of philosophy and politics. In this wide-ranging and compelling dialogue, these two great thinkers explore the role of politics in today's world and consider the need for a formal theory of communist political organization. Whether they are addressing the era of revolutions, and in particular the Paris Commune and the Chinese Cultural Revolution, or discussing the infinite, the universal, the name "Jew", violence, capitalism, the left, or Europe, Jean-Claude Milner's dyed-in-the-wool skepticism constantly runs up against Alain Badiou's doctrinal passion. This extraordinary debate ultimately leads to new areas of interrogation and shows that there is no better remedy for the crushing power of media-influenced thinking than the revival of the great disputes of the mind.
This volume is the first of two containing a selection of Antonio Gramsci's political writings from the time of his initial involvement in Italian politics to his imprisonment by Mussolini in 1926. This selection culminates in the 'Red Years' of 1910-20, and also features texts by Bordiga and Tasca from their debates with Gramsci. It traces Gramsci's development as a revolutionary socialist during the First World War, his thoughts on the Russian Revolution and his involvement in the general strike and factory occupations of 1920. Also included are his reactions to the emerging fascist movement, and contributions to the early stages of the debate about the establishment of the Communist Party of Italy
This text aims to guide the reader through the complexities of Heidegger's later works. The book offers an introduction to the main themes that preoccupied Heidegger in the second part of his career: technology; Art; the history of philosophy; and the exploration of a new post-technological way of thinking. The author explores many aspects of Heidegger's later life and work, including the massive controversy surrounding his Nazism, as well as his readings of Neitzsche, the Presocratics and Holderlin. He also assesses the difficult nature of Heidegger's thought and its significance for philosophy today.
In our modern, urbanized societies, our engagement with the natural world often seems distant and superficial. Human life is now far removed from its prehistoric origins, when humans dwelt deep within the forests and depended on them for their survival. In this important book, Vladimir Bibikhin, one of Russia's most influential twentieth-century philosophers, argues that, although most humans now live far from woods and forests, our existence remains profoundly linked to them. It was Aristotle who first appreciated their primal role, even deriving his notion of 'matter'w from the Greek words for wood and forest. As timber, the woods may be seen as inanimate material, but at the same time they also constitute a living ecosystem and the source of energy and life. By opening up this duality, the woods are transformed from simple matter to a living environment, serving as a reminder that we belong to the world of biological life to a far greater extent than we usually think. The Woods will be of interest to students and scholars in philosophy and the humanities generally and to anyone concerned with the environment and our relationship to the natural world.
Little known outside his native Australia, David Stove was one of the most illuminating and brilliant philosophical essayists of the postwar era. A fearless attacker of intellectual and cultural orthodoxies, Stove left powerful critiques of scientific irrationalism, Darwinian theories of human behavior, and philosophical idealism. He was also an occasional essayist of considerable charm and polemical snap. Stove's writing is both rigorous and immensely readable. It is, in the words of Roger Kimball, "an invigorating blend of analytic lucidity, mordant humor, and an amount of common sense too great to be called 'common.'" Against the Idols of the Age brings together a representative selection of Stove's writing and is an ideal introduction to his work. The book opens with some of Stove's most important attacks on irrationalism in the philosophy of science. He exposes the roots of this fashionable attitude, tracing it through writers like Paul Feyerabend and Thomas Kuhn to Karl Popper. Stove was a born controversialist, so it is not surprising that when he turned his attention to contemporary affairs he said things that are politically incorrect. The topical essays that make up the second part of the book show Stove at his most withering and combative. Whether the subject is race, feminism, the Enlightenment, or the demand for "non-coercive philosophy", Stove is on the mark with a battery of impressive arguments expressed in sharp, uncompromising prose. Against the Idols of the Age concludes with a generous sampling of his blistering attacks on Darwinism. David Stove's writings are an undiscovered treasure. Although readers may disagree with some of his opinions, they will find itdifficult to dismiss his razor-sharp arguments. Against the Idols of the Age is the first book to make the full range of this important thinker available to the general reader.
This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.
This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.
This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.
This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.
In this novel re-examination of the archetype construct, philosopher Jon Mills and psychiatrist Erik Goodwyn engage in spirited dialogue on the origins, nature, and scope of what archetypes actually constitute, their relation to the greater questions of psyche and worldhood, and their relevance for Jungian studies and analytical psychology today. Arguably the most definitive feature of Jung's metapsychology is his theory of archetypes. It is the fulcrum on which his analytical depth psychology rests. With recent trends in post-Jungian and neo-Jungian perspectives that have embraced developmental, relational, social justice, and postmodern paradigms, classical archetype theory has largely become a drowning genre. Despite the archetypal school of James Hillman and his contemporaries and the archetype debates that captured our attention over two decades ago, contemporary Jungians are preoccupied with the lived reality of the existential subject and the personal unconscious over the collective transpersonal forces derived from archaic ontology. Archetypal Ontology will be of interest to psychoanalysts, philosophers, transpersonal psychologists, cultural theorists, anthropologists, religious scholars, and many disciplines in the arts and humanities, analytical psychology, and post-Jungian studies.
This is the first introduction to the ideas of the British philosopher, Peter Winch (1926-97). Although author of the hugely influential "The Idea of a Social Science" (1958) much of Winch's other work has been neglected as philosophical fashions have changed. Recently, however, philosophers are again seeing the importance of Winch's ideas and their relevance to current philosophical concerns. In charting the development of Winch's ideas, Lyas engages with many of the major preoccupations of philosophy of the past forty years. The range of Winch's ideas becomes apparent and his importance clearly underlined. Lyas offers more than an assessment of the work of one man: it introduces in a sympathetic and judicious way a powerful representative of an important and demanding conception of philosophy.
This volume is a collection of public writings and insights of the German poststructuralist, Friedrich A. Kittler. It merges the discourse of literature, war and technology into a unified theme. His research results in a vision of the future in which the distinction between mediums is erased. The introduction by John Johnston explicates the theoretical and practical consequences of Kittler's insights into the social and psychological effects of the processes by which metaphor in one medium is made real by another.
This collection of essays looks at analytic philosophy in its historical context. It argues that analytic philosophy is in a state of crisis - having to deal with its self-image, its relationship with philosophical alternatives, its fruitfulness and even legitimacy in the general philosophical community. This crisis manifests itself both within analytic philosophy, as we can see with the discussions and debates concerning the interpretation of its origins and key players (such as Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein), as well as in its evaluation by philosophers of different bents (such as postmodernists and Continental philosophers). This book examines the the crisis with a view to interpreting it. It tells the story of analytic philosophy, presenting its "raison d'etre" and the motivations, methods, and results of its eminent figures. |
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