In Moral Creativity, John Wall argues that moral life and thought are inherently and radically creative. Human beings are called by their own primordially created depths to exceed historical evil and tragedy through the ongoing creative transformation of their world. This thesis challenges ancient Greek and biblical separations of ethics and poetic image-making, as well as contemporary conceptions of moral life as grounded in abstract principles or preconstituted traditions. Taking as his point of departure the poetics of the will of Paul Ricoeur, and ranging widely into critical conversations with Continental, narrative, feminist, and liberationist ethics, Wall uncovers the profound senses in which moral practice and thought involve tension, catharsis, excess, and renewal. In the process, he draws new connections between sin and tragedy, practice and poetics, and morality and myth. Rather than proposing a complete ethics, Moral Creativity is a meta-ethical work investigating the creative capability as part of what it means, morally, to be human. This capability is explored around four dimensions of ontology, teleology, deontology, and social practice. In each case, Wall examines a traditional perspective on the relation of ethics to poetics, critiques it using resources from contemporary phenomenology, and develops a conception of a more original poetics of moral life. In the end, moral creativity is a human capability for inhabiting tensions among others and in social systems and, in the image of a Creator, creating together an ever more radically inclusive moral world.

The old philosophical discipline of metaphysics - after having been pronounced dead by many - has enjoyed a significant revival within the last thirty years, due to the application of the methods of analytic philosophy. One of the major contributors to this revival is the outstanding American metaphysician Peter van Inwagen. This volume brings together twenty-two scholars, who, in commemoration of Prof. van Inwagen's 75th birthday, ponder the future prospects of metaphysics in all the richness to which it has now returned. It is only natural that logical and epistemological reflections on the significance of metaphysics - sometimes called "meta-metaphysics" - play a considerable role in most of these papers. The volume is further enriched by an interview with Peter van Inwagen himself.

For centuries debates about reason and its Other have animated and informed philosophy, art, science and politics throughout Western civilization - but nowhere, arguably as deeply and turbulently as in Germany. Reason, the legacy of the Enlightenment, has been claimed, rejected and redefined by influential German thinkers from Kant to Nietzsche to Habermas. In our own time - more than 200 years after Kant's Critique of Pure Reason - the status of reason and the irrational, what is and what should be excluded from reason, what qualifies as a critique of reason, are all still central philosophical issues in Germany as well as throughout the West.

Ranging from Antiquity to contemporary analytic philosophy, it provides a concise but thorough analysis of the arguments developed by some of the most outstanding philosophers of all times. Besides the aesthetics of music proper, the volume touches upon metaphysics, ethics, philosophy of language, psychology, anthropology, and scientific developments that have influenced the philosophical explanations of music. Starting from the very origins of philosophy in Western thought (Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle) the book talks about what music is according to Augustine, Descartes, Leibniz, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, the Romantics, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Susanne Langer, Bloch, Adorno, and many others. Recent developments within the analytic tradition are illustrated with particular attention to the ontology of the musical artwork and to the problem of music and emotions. A fascinating idea which recurs throughout the book is that philosophers allow for a sort of a secret kinship between music and philosophy, as means to reveal complementary aspects of truth.

This book presents an anti-intellectualist view of how the cognitive-mental dimension of human intellect is rooted in and interwoven with our embodied-internal components including emotion, perception, desire, etc., by investigating practical forms of thinking such as deliberation, planning, decision-making, etc. With many thought-provoking statements, the book revises some classical notions of rationality with new interpretation: we are "rational animals", which means we have both rational capabilities, such as calculation, evaluation, justification, etc., and more animal aspects, like desire, emotion, and the senses. According to the traditional position of rationalism, we use well-grounded reason as the fundamental basis of our actions. But this book argues that we simply perform our practical intellect intuitively and spontaneously, just like playing music. By this the author turns the dominant metaphor of "architecture" in understanding of human rationality to that of "music-playing". This book presents a groundbreaking and compelling critique of today's pervasively reflective-intellectual culture, just as Bernard Williams, Charles Taylor and other philosophers diagnose, and makes any detached notion of rationality and formalized understanding of human intellect highly problematic.Methodologically, it not only reconciles the phenomenological-hermeneutic tradition with analytical approaches, but also integrates various theories, such as moral psychology, emotional studies, action theory, decision theory, performativity studies, music philosophy, tacit knowledge, collective epistemology and media theory. Further, its use of everyday cases, metaphors, folk stories and references to movies and literature make the book easy to read and appealing for a broad readership.

First published in 1924, this book examines one of the main philosophical debates of the period. Focusing on Kant's proof of causality, A.C. Ewing promotes its validity not only for the physical but also for the "psychological" sphere. The subject is of importance, for the problem of causality for Kant constituted the crucial test of his philosophy, the most significant of the Kantian categories. The author believes that Kant's statement of his proof, while too much bound up with other parts of his particular system of philosophy, may be restated "in a form which it can stand by itself and make a good claim for acceptance on all schools of thought".

First published in 1929, this book explores the crucial, ethical question of the objects and the justification of punishment. Dr. A. C. Ewing considers both the retributive theory and the deterrent theory on the subject whilst remaining commendably unprejudiced. The book examines the views which emphasize the reformation of the offender and the education of the community as objects of punishment. It also deals with a theory of reward as a compliment to a theory of punishment. Dr. Ewing's treatment of the topics is philosophical yet he takes in to account the practical considerations that should determine the nature and the amount of the punishment to be inflicted in different types of cases. This book will be of great interest to students of philosophy, teachers and those who are interested in the concrete problems of punishment by the state. It is an original contribution to the study of a subject of great theoretical and practical importance.

This book provides the first comprehensive account of Hume's conception of objects in Book I of "A" "Treatise of Human Nature." What, according to Hume, are objects? Ideas? Impressions? Mind-independent objects? All three? None of the above? Through a close textual analysis, Rocknak shows that Hume thought that objects are imagined ideas. But, she argues, he struggled with two accounts of how and when we imagine such ideas. On the one hand, Hume believed that we always and universally imagine that objects are the causes of our perceptions. On the other hand, he thought that we only imagine such causes when we reach a "philosophical" level of thought. This tension manifests itself in Hume's account of personal identity; a tension that, Rocknak argues, Hume acknowledges in the Appendix to the "Treatise." As a result of Rocknak's detailed account of Hume's conception of objects, we are forced to accommodate new interpretations of, at least, Hume's notions of belief, personal identity, justification and causality.

Michael Payne introduces the principal writings of Roland Barthes, Michael Foucault and Louis Althusser by means of a detailed focus on their common interest in the forms and conditions of knowledge. His careful reading reveals their profound commitment to a critical understanding of how truth, meaning, and value are constituted in language and in non-verbal texts.

In his first three chapters, Payne examines in considerable detail brief texts by Barthes, Foucault, and Althusser that seem to be their own strategically designed introductions to their projects. The next three chapters take up the most important books by each of these writers: Foucault's "The Order of Things," Barthes's "S/Z," and Althusser's "Reading Capital." Chapter 7 examines a specific text by each author writing on one of the visual arts, in an effort to investigate the assumption that knowledge - whether as theory, enlightenment, vision, illumination, or insight - is in some sense visual. The last chapter briefly examines the work of Gilles Deleuze.

Payne writes here with the same lucidity and acuity to be found in his highly successful companion to this volume, "Reading Theory: An Introduction to Lacan, Derrida, and Kristeva" (1993).

"Contemporary Caribbean Writing and Deleuze" maps a new intellectual and literary history of postcolonial Caribbean writing and thought spanning from the 1930s surrealist movement to the present, crossing the region's language blocs, and focused on the interconnected principles of creativity and commemoration. Exploring the work of Rene Menil, Edouard Glissant, Wilson Harris, Derek
Walcott, Antonio Benitez-Rojo, Pauline Melville, Robert Antoni and Nalo Hopkinson, this study reveals the explicit and implicit engagement with Deleuzian thought at work in contemporary Caribbean writing.Uniting for the first time two major schools of contemporary thought - postcolonialism and post-continental philosophy - this study establishes a new and innovative critical discourse for Caribbean studies and postcolonial theory beyond the oppositional dialectic of colonizer and colonized. Drawing
from Deleuze's writings on Bergson, Nietzsche and Spinoza, this study interrogates the postcolonial tropes of newness, becoming, relationality and a philosophical concept of immanence that lie at the heart of a little-observed dialogue between contemporary Caribbean writers and Deleuze.

This revised edition of Sir Anthony Kenny's classic work on Wittgenstein contains a new introduction which covers developments in Wittgenstein scholarship since the book was first published.
Widely praised for providing a lucid and historically informed account of Wittgenstein's core philosophical concerns.
Demonstrates the continuity between Wittgenstein's early and later writings.
Provides a persuasive argument for the unity of Wittgenstein's thought.
Kenny also assesses Wittgenstein's influence in the latter part of the twentieth century.

Derrida's work is controversial, its interpretation hotly contested. Derrida: Ethics Under Erasure offers a new way of thinking about ethics from a Derridean perspective, linking the most abstract theoretical implications of his writing on deconstruction and on justice and responsibility to representations of the practice of ethical paradoxes in everyday life. The book presents the development of Derrida's thinking on ethics by demonstrating that the ethical was a focus of Derrida's work at every stage of his career. In connecting Derrida's earlier work on language with the ethics implicated in his later work on justice and responsibility, Nicole Anderson traverses literary, linguistic, philosophical and ethical interpretative movements, thus recontextualising Derrida's entire oeuvre for a contemporary readership. She explores the positive ethical implications of Derrida's work for representation and practice and asks the reader to consider how this new ethical reading of Derrida's work might be applied to concrete instances of his or her own ethical experience.

In this original contribution to the American philosophical tradition, Patrick Shade makes a strong argument for the necessity of hope in a cynical world that too often rejects it as foolish. While most accounts of hope situate it in a theological context, Shade presents a theory rooted in the pragmatic thought of such American philosophers as C. S. Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. Shade first discusses the particular hopes we pursue and then turns to the habits of hope - persistence, resourcefulness, and courage - that are vital to their realization. Indeed, habits of hope are the basis for developing hopefulness, a complex habit that nurtures and sustains us even when we fail to realize particular hopes. Hopefulness, Shade maintains, enables us to avoid the paralysis of despair. Throughout the discussion, Shade gleans insights from a variety of sources, most notably John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and Stephen King's novella ""Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption,"" but also from the real-life experiences of such heroes as Cedric Jennings and Martha Manning. These examples embody and illuminate the concept of hope and offer incentive and illustrations for developing a hopeful life. Shade's account shows how we can make hoping practical without forfeiting its unique capacity to help us grow.

This is the first collection of original essays entirely devoted to a detailed study of the Pyrrhonian tradition. The twelve contributions collected in the present volume combine to offer a historical and systematic analysis of the form of skepticism known as "Pyrrhonism". They discuss whether the Pyrrhonist is an ethically engaged agent, whether he can claim to search for truth, and other thorny questions concerning ancient Pyrrhonism; explore its influence on certain modern thinkers such as Pierre Bayle and David Hume; and examine Pyrrhonian skepticism in relation to contemporary analytic philosophy.

Nietzsche's metaphor of the spider that spins its cobweb expresses his critique of the metaphysical use of language - but it also suggests that we, spiders , are able to spin different, life-affirming, healthier, non-metaphysical cobwebs. This book is a collection of 12 essays that focus not only on Nietzsche's critique of the metaphysical assumptions of language, but also on his effort to use language in a different way, i.e., to create a new language . It is from this viewpoint that the book considers such themes as consciousness, the self, metaphor, instinct, affectivity, style, morality, truth, and knowledge. The authors invited to contribute to this volume are Nietzsche scholars who belong to some of the most important research centers of the European Nietzsche-Research: Centro Colli-Montinari (Italy), GIRN (Europhilosphie), SEDEN (Spain), Greifswald Research Group (Germany), NIL (Portugal). In 2011 Joao Constancio and Maria Joao Mayer Branco edited Nietzsche on Instinct and Language, also published by Walter de Gruyter. The two books complement each other.

Kurt Gödel (1906-1978) was the most outstanding logician of the twentieth century. This second volume of a comprehensive edition of Gödel's works collects the remainder of his published work, covering the period 1938-1974. (Volume I included all of his publications from 1929-1936). Each article or closely related group of articles is preceded by an introductory note that elucidates it and places it in historical context. The aim is to make the full body of Gödel's work as accessible and useful to as wide an audience as possible, without in any way sacrificing the requirements of historical and scientific accuracy.

The Metaphysical Presuppositions of Being-in-the-World brings St. Thomas Aquinas and Martin Heidegger into dialogue and argues for the necessity of Christian philosophy. Through the confrontation of Heideggerian and Thomist thought, it offers an original and comprehensive rethinking of the nature of temporality and the origins of metaphysical inquiry. The book is a careful treatment of the inception and deterioration of the four-fold presuppositions of Thomistic metaphysics: intentionality, causality, finitude, ananke stenai. The analysis of the four-fold has never before been done and it is a central and original contribution of Gilson's book. The four-fold penetrates the issues between the phenomenological approach and the metaphysical vision to arrive at their core and irreconcilable difference. Heidegger's attempt to utilize the fourfold to extrude theology from ontology provides the necessary interpretive impetus to revisit the radical and often misunderstood metaphysics of St. Thomas, through such problems as aeviternity, non-being and tragedy.

From Ego to Eco - Mapping Shifts from Anthropocentrism to Ecocentrism investigates philosophical, political and aesthetic formations of ecocentrism. Representing a variety of disciplines and testing a broad scope of critical approaches, the contributors of this volume argue that anthropocentrism is not - as often claimed - a predominant world view but, rather, a widely contested concept. Within various historical and national contexts, the individual contributors of this book discuss the significance and relevance of ecocentrism and offer new avenues to emerging discourses in the humanities. Contributors are: Darrell Arnold, Roman Bartosch, Aengus Daly, Gearoid Denvir, Elisabeth Jutten, Karla McManus, Sabine Lenore Muller, Maureen O' Connor, Lillis O Laoire, Helen Phelan, Tina-Karen Pusse, and Christian Schmitt-Kilb.

Vigorous and controversial, this book develops a sustained argument for a realist interpretation of science, based on a new analysis of the concept of predictive novelty. Identifying a form of success achieved in science--the successful prediction of novel empirical results--which can be explained only by attributing some measure of truth to the theories that yield it, Jarrett Leplin demonstrates the incapacity of nonrealist accounts to accommodate novel success and constructs a deft realist explanation of novelty. To test the applicability of novel success as a standard of warrant for theories, Leplin examines current directions in theoretical physics, fashioning a powerful critique of currently developing standards of evaluation.
Arguing that explanatory uniqueness warrants inference, and exposing flaws in contending philosophical positions that sever explanatory power from epistemic justification, Leplin holds that abductive, or explanatory, inference is as fundamental as enumerative or eliminative inference, and contends that neither induction nor abduction can proceed without the other on pain of generating paradoxes.
Leplin's conception of novelty has two basic components: an independence condition, ensuring that a result novel for a theory have no essential role, even indirectly, in the theory's provenance; and a uniqueness condition, ensuring that no competing theory provides a basis for predicting the same result. Showing that alternative approaches to novelty fall short in both respects, Leplin proceeds to a series of test cases, engaging prominent scientific theories from nineteenth-century accounts of light to modern cosmology in an effort to demonstrate theepistemological superiority of his view.
Ambitious and tightly argued, A Novel Defense of Scientific Realism advances new positions on major topics in philosophy of science and offers a version of realism as original as it is compelling, making it essential reading for philosophers of science, epistemologists, and scholars in science studies.