When Nietzsche announced the advent of nihilism in 1887/88, he argued that he was sketching the history of the next two centuries. For some time now, he wrote, our whole European culture has been moving as toward catastrophe : restlessly, violently, headlong, like a river that want to reach the end, that no longer reflects, that is afraid to reflect. Can we gain a ground for reflection upon our own condition? Can we heed Nietzsche's warning? Can we respond to the challenge? In this book, eleven newly commissioned essays from leading scholars offer an attempt to grasp Nietzsche's prescience through Heidegger's critique of it; attempting to think through the philosophical consequences of the last century in reading the signs of our own condition. The book also provides and fascinating and unique discussion of some of the lesser-known texts of the later Heidegger.

Henrik Ibsen's plays have long beguiled philosophically-oriented readers. From Nietzsche to Adorno to Cavell, philosophers have drawn inspiration from Ibsen. But what of Ibsen's own philosophical orientation? As part of larger European movements to reinvent drama, Ibsen and fellow playwrights grappled with contemporary philosophy. Philosophy of drama found a central place with figures such as Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Johann Gottfried Herder, but reached its mature form, in Ibsen's time, in the works of G.W.F. Hegel and Friedrich Nietzsche. Kristin Gjesdal reveals the centrality of philosophy of theater in nineteenth-century philosophy and shows how drama, as an art form, offers insight into human historicity and the conditions of modern life. The Drama of History deepens and actualizes the relationship between philosophy and drama-not by suggesting that either philosophy or drama should have the upper hand, but rather by indicating how a sustained dialogue between them brings out the meaning and intellectual power of each. Her study reveals underappreciated aspects of Hegel's and Nietzsche's works through their reception in European art and investigates the philosophical dimensions of Ibsen's drama. At the heart of this interrelation between philosophy and drama is a shared interest in exploring the existential condition of human life as lived and experienced in history.

This book is mainly concerned with elaborating an account of the unique theoretical essence and activities of philosophy. What manner of civilization should modern humans forge? On what developmental path should a nation embark? What lifestyle should each individual choose? These are the most fundamental issues of our time. Profoundly implicit in the choices outlined above is a deeper question: What are the criteria of choice? An examination of these criteria is a reflection on the premises constituting thought, or a critique of the premises underlying thought. Using a "critique of the premises underlying thought" as the basic idea and hermeneutic principle in philosophy will open a wider theoretical space for contemporary philosophy so as to avoid the predicament of being "pseudo-scientific" or "pseudo-artistic." It will also present contemporary philosophy with a realistic path of development for the task of reflecting on the criteria of choice. This book seeks to formulate concrete philosophical arguments for a critique of the basic beliefs, logic, modes, concepts, and philosophical ideas which constitute thought, with the aim of demonstrating the vigorous self-critique and inexhaustible theoretical space found in philosophical development. This book provides a new principle of interpretation for understanding philosophy and, in turn, uses this principle to develop a critique of the premises underlying thought, thereby furthering the contemporary development of philosophy. This book encompasses a critique of the premises underlying thought, which mainly includes the basic beliefs, logic, modes, concepts, and philosophical ideas constituting thought. Such a critique should comprise five aspects: First, the basic beliefs constituting thought propose a critique of the identity of thought and being; second, the basic logic constituting thought refers to a critique of the formal, intensional, and practical logic of thought; third, the basic modes constituting thought denote a critique of the basic modes by which humans comprehend the world, including commonsense, religion, art, and science; fourth, the basic concepts constituting thought entail a critique centering on being, the world, history, truth, value, and other basic concepts; and finally, the philosophical ideas constituting thought indicate a critique of philosophy itself. A critique aligned on these five aspects will provide a general philosophical overview of the premise critique of thought.

'Modern European thought' describes a wide range of philosophies, cultural programmes, and political arguments developed in Europe in the period following the French Revolution. Throughout this period, many of the wide range of 'modernisms' (and anti-modernisms) had a distinctly religious and even theological character-not least when religion was subjected to the harshest criticism. Yet for all the breadth and complexity of modern European thought and, in particular, its relations to theology, a distinct body of themes and approaches recurred in each generation. Moreover, many of the issues that took intellectual shape in Europe are now global, rather than narrowly European, and, for good or ill, they form part of Europe's bequest to the world-from colonialism and the economic theories behind globalisation through to democracy to terrorism. This volume attempts to identify and comment on some of the most important of these. The thirty chapters are grouped into six thematic parts, moving from questions of identity and the self, through discussions of the human condition, the age of revolution, the world (both natural and technological), and knowledge methodologies, concluding with a section looking explicitly at how major theological themes have developed in modern European thought. The chapters engage with major thinkers including Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Schleiermacher, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Barth, Rahner, Tillich, Bonhoeffer, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Wittgenstein, and Derrida, amongst many others. Taken together, these new essays provide a rich and reflective overview of the interchange between theology, philosophy and critical thought in Europe, over the past two hundred years.

Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, first published in 1921, has had a profound influence on modern philosophic thought. Prototractatus is a facsimile reproduction of an early version of Tractatus, only discovered in 1965. The original text has a parallel English translation and the text is edited to indicate all relevant deviations from the final version.

This book reflects the most recent research devoted to a systematized perspective and a critical (re)construction of previous theoretical attempts of explaining, justifying and continuing Kuhn's ingenious hypothesis in arts. Hofstadter, Clignet and Habermas revealed to be the most engaged scholars in solving this aesthetic "puzzled-problem". In this context, the structural similarities between science and arts are attentively evaluated, thus satisfying an older concern attributed to the historical Kuhn-Kubler dispute, extensively commented along the pages of this book. How can we track the matter of rationality and truth in art and aesthetics, inspired by scientific perspectives? Are artistic styles similar to scientific paradigms? Are we entitled to pursue paradigms and masterpieces as rational models in science, respectively in arts? On what possible grounds can we borrow from science notions such as progress and predictability, in the study of the evolution of art and its aesthetic backgrounds? Are the historical dynamics of science and art affected by political factors in the same manner? This book will be of interest to philosophers, but also to historians of science and historians of art alike in the reassessment it provides of recent debates on reshaping the art world using Kuhn's "paradigm shift".

The book explores Peirce's non standard thoughts on a synthetic continuum, topological logics, existential graphs, and relational semiotics, offering full mathematical developments on these areas. More precisely, the following new advances are offered: (1) two extensions of Peirce's existential graphs, to intuitionistic logics (a new symbol for implication), and other non-classical logics (new actions on nonplanar surfaces); (2) a complete formalization of Peirce's continuum, capturing all Peirce's original demands (genericity, supermultitudeness, reflexivity, modality), thanks to an inverse ordinally iterated sheaf of real lines; (3) an array of subformalizations and proofs of Peirce's pragmaticist maxim, through methods in category theory, HoTT techniques, and modal logics. The book will be relevant to Peirce scholars, mathematicians, and philosophers alike, thanks to thorough assessments of Peirce's mathematical heritage, compact surveys of the literature, and new perspectives offered through formal and modern mathematizations of the topics studied.

Tackling the intellectual histories of the first twenty women to earn a PhD in philosophy in the United States, this book traces their career development and influence on American intellectual life. The case studies include Eliza Ritchie, Marietta Kies, Julia Gulliver, Anna Alice Cutler, Eliza Sunderland, and many more. Editor Dorothy Rogers looks at the factors that led these women to pursue careers in academic philosophy, examines the ideas they developed, and evaluates the impact they had on the academic and social worlds they inhabited. Many of these women were active in professional academic circles, published in academic journals, and contributed to important philosophical discussions of the day: the question of free will, the nature of God in relation to self, and how to establish a just society. The most successful women earned their degrees at women-friendly institutions, yet a handful of them achieved professional distinction at institutions that refused to recognize their achievements at the time; John Hopkins and Harvard are notable examples. The women who did not develop careers in academic philosophy often moved to careers in social welfare or education. Thus, whilst looking at the academic success of some, this book also examines the policies and practices that made it difficult or impossible for others to succeed.

The place (or absence) of God in Nietzsche's thought remains central and controversial. Nietzsche's proclamation of 'the death of God' is one of the most famous (and parodied) slogans in modern philosophy, seeming to encapsulate the nineteenth-century loss of religious faith in the affirmation that God has "turned out to be our oldest lie" and yet the nature of Nietzsche's own 'theology' is far from clear. This volume engages with Nietzsche's arguments about God, theology, and religion. The volume extends the discussion to an engagement of Nietzsche with alternative models of God, with ancient Greek religions, and with discussions of diversity (race, class, gender, sex) in dis/conjunction with religion. The chapters examine Nietzsche's genealogy of religion and his claims about the place of God and theology in the history of Western thought ("that faith of the Christians, which was also Plato's faith"), as well as his engagements with alternative conceptions of God. The volume also examines the historical and contemporary reception of Nietzsche's arguments about God by religious and non-religious thinkers, asking to what extent Nietzsche's philosophy of God speaks to the challenges of today's globalized philosophy and religion.

This book synthesizes Jacques Derrida's hauntology and spectrality with affect theory, in order to create a rhetorical framework analyzing the felt absences and hauntings of written and oral texts. The book opens with a history of hauntology, spectrality, and affect theory and how each of those ideas have been applied. The book then moves into discussing the unique elements of the rhetorical framework known as the rhetorrectional situation. Three case studies taken from the Christian tradition, serve to demonstrate how spectral rhetoric works. The first is fictional, C.S. Lewis 'The Great Divorce. The second is non-fiction, Tim Jennings 'The God Shaped Brain. The final one is taken from homiletics, Bishop Michael Curry's royal wedding 2018 sermon. After the case studies conclusion offers the reader a summary and ideas future applications for spectral rhetoric.

It is widely believed in philosophy of science that nobody can claim that any verdict of science is forced upon us by the effects of a physical world upon our sense organs and instruments. The Quine-Duhem problem supposedly allows us to resist any conclusion. Views on language aside, Quine is supposed to have shown this decisively. But it is just false. In many scientific examples, there is simply no room to doubt that a particular hypothesis is responsible for a refutation or established by the observations. Fault Tracing shows how to play independently established hypotheses against each other to determine whether an arbitrary hypothesis needs to be altered in the light of (apparently) refuting evidence. It analyses real examples from natural science, as well as simpler cases. It argues that, when scientific theories have a structure that prevents them from using this method, the theory looks wrong, and is subject to serious criticism. This is a new, and potentially far-reaching, theory of empirical justification.

This book is concerned with the evaluation of natural argumentative discourse, and, in particular, with the language in which arguments are expressed. It introduces a systematic procedure for the analysis and assessment of arguments, which is designed to be a practical tool, and may be considered a pseudo-algorithm for argument evaluation. The first half of the book lays the theoretical groundwork, with a thorough examination of both the nature of language and the nature of argument. This leads to a definition of argumentation as reasoning expressed within a procedure, which itself yields the three frames of analysis used in the evaluation procedure: Process, Reasoning, and Expression. The second half begins with a detailed discussion of the concept of fallacy, with particular attention on fallacies of language, their origin and their effects. A new way of looking at fallacies emerges from these chapters, and it is that conception, together with the understanding of the nature of argumentation described in earlier sections, which ultimately provides the support for the Comprehensive Assessment Procedure for Natural Argumentation. The first two levels of this innovative procedure are outlined, while the third, that dealing with language, and involving the development of an Informal Argument Semantics, is fully described. The use of the system, and its power of analysis, are illustrated through the evaluation of a variety of examples of argumentative texts.

Offering a careful and incisive examination of Gilles Deleuze's engagement with his contemporaries in the continental and analytic traditions, this analysis focuses on the recasting of the Western philosophical tradition. Each chapter considers the relationship between Deleuze and other great philosophers, such as Immanuel Kant, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jean-Francois Lyotard, on a range of topics the include science, ethics, and metaphysics.

Fictional character is an ontologically ambivalent category - at once a formal construct and a quasi-person - which lies at the heart of the life of textual fictions of all kinds. Character and Person explores that ambivalence by investigating not only the kinds of thing that character is but how it works to engage readers and the range of typologies through which it has been constructed in very different periods, media, and genres. John Frow seeks to explore the ways in which character is person-like, and through that the question of what it means to be a social person. His focus is thus on the interaction between its two major categories, and its method involves a constant play back and forth between them: from philosophical theories of face to an account of the mask in the New Comedy; from an exploration of medieval beliefs about the body's existence in the afterlife to a reading of Dante's Purgatorio; from the history of humoral medicine to the figure of the melancholic in Jacobean drama; and from Proust and Pessoa to cognitive science. What develops from this methodological commitment to fusing the categories of character and person is an extended analysis of the schemata that underpin each of them in their distinct but mutually constitutive spheres of operation

This book examines the cogency and value of Nietzsche's idea of eternal recurrence, as an antidote to the nihilism resulting from the catastrophic event of 'the death of God'. Its significance to Nietzsche's philosophy as a whole (when presented either as an imaginative thought experiment, a cosmological hypothesis, or a poetic metaphor) is analysed, alongside the manifold criticisms the idea has attracted. In this original reading of eternal recurrence, McNeil explores the strength of metaphorical meaning contained within Heraclitean and Stoic cosmologies, revealing their influence on Nietzsche's own cosmology, along with their holistic approach to life which Nietzsche endorsed. Furthermore, an extensive critique of Heidegger's interpretation of eternal recurrence is given. McNeil argues that Heidegger ignores not only the life-affirming Dionysian aspects of the concept, but also the Heraclitean sense of play evident in the cosmology, and the importance of this for developing a positive, celebratory attitude towards our lives and creative projects.

Noam Chomsky is among the most influential contemporary thinkers. Peter Wilkin looks in particular at the philosophical basis of his social and political thought, especially his ideal about power, knowledge and human nature. He shows how Chomsky's ideas can help to defend naturalism as in social and political thought. Chomsky's critical writings of social inquiry and his normative ideas on libertarian socialism and human emancipation are interpreted as synthesising a number of important ideas and approaches at a time when these ideas have fallen out of favour.

The Place of the Mosque: Genealogies of Space, Knowledge, and Power extends Foucault's analysis Of Other Spaces and the "ideological conflicts which underlie the controversies of our day [that] take place between pious descendants of time and tenacious inhabitants of space." The book uses this framework to illuminate how mosques have been threatened in the past, from the Cordoba Mosque in the eighth century to the development of Moorish aesthetics in nineteenth-century United States to the clashes surrounding the building of mosques in the West in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Foucault's genealogy allows us to elaborate and study the subjects that are caught in the emergence of a battle-the social and political will to power, the networks of power and the rituals of power-in the interstitial space which define the subjects and clears a space ruling both the body and space. In going beyond individual buildings to broader geographical and genealogical dimensions of the power struggles, The Place of the Mosque reconciles the public space experience, governmentality, and micro powers, paving the way for a new philosophical language. Expanding architectural and urban regional approaches, Kahera shows the biopolitical significance of the problem of space.

The Times Biography of the Year
Winner of the Hawthornden Prize 2019
Shortlisted for the HWA Non-Fiction Prize 2019
Longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2019
Longlisted for the Cundhill History Prize 2019

'Outstanding.' The Sunday Times

'A revelation.' Guardian

'Wonderful.' The Times

'Riveting.' New Statesman

Friedrich Nietzsche's work rocked the foundation of Western thinking and continues to permeate our culture, high and low - yet he is one of history's most misunderstood philosophers. Sue Prideaux's myth-shattering book brings readers into the world of a brilliant, eccentric and deeply troubled man, illuminating the events and people that shaped his life and work. I Am Dynamite! is the essential biography for anyone seeking to understand Nietzsche, the philosopher who foresaw - and sought solutions to - our own troubled times.

Bringing together active neuroscientists, neurophilosophers, and scholars this volume considers the prospects of a neuroscientifically-informed pragmatism and a pragmatically-informed neuroscience on issues ranging from the nature of mental life to the implications of neuroscience for education and ethics.

With one exception, all of the papers in this volume were originally presented at a conference held in April, 1978, at The Ohio State University. The excep tion is the paper by Wilfrid Sellars, which is a revised version of a paper he originally published in the Journal of Philosophy, 1973. However, the present version of Sellars' paper is so thoroughly changed from its original, that it is now virtually a new paper. None of the other nine papers has been published previously. The bibliography, prepared by Nancy Kelsik, is very extensive and it is tempting to think that it is complete. But I believe that virtual com pleteness is more likely to prove correct. The conference was made possible by grants from the College of Human ities and the Graduate School, Ohio State University, as well as by a grant from the Philosophy Department. On behalf of the contributors, I want to thank these institutions for their support. I also want to thank Marshall Swain and Robert Turnbu l for early help and encouragement; Bette Hellinger for assistance in setting up the confer ence; and Mary Raines and Virginia Foster for considerable aid in the pre paration of papers and many other conference matters. The friendly advice of the late James Cornman was also importantly helpful. April,1979 GEORGE S. PAPPAS ix INTRODUCTION The papers in this volume deal in different ways with the related issues of epistemic justification or warrant, and the analysis of factual knowledge."

Bertrand Russell was not only one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century, he was also a humanitarian and activist who fought for many moral, social, and political causes. During his lifetime, the general public knew him for his activism and popular works, in which he tackled such diverse topics as sexual ethics, religion, war, and nuclear disarmament. Besides the great achievements in mathematical logic on which his reputation rests, Russell was a pioneer in moral philosophy, and his work in this area informed and guided his activism. Russell created one of the first versions of a meta-ethical theory known as emotivism (sometimes also called the 'boo-hooray' theory, later popularized by A.J. Ayer and C.L. Stevenson) which maintains that ethical statements cannot be true or false - they are simply expressions of emotional attitudes. That Russell could hold such a theory while being at the same time an ardent activist is one feat. That his version was superior to more popular versions of emotivism is another. Yet, despite the fact that Russell held on to some form of emotivism for most of his professional life, and despite the fact that the theory is present in some of his best-known books, it was virtually ignored until the late 1990s. Michael K. Potter's book brings an important new dimension to our understanding of Russell's life, his activism, and his contribution to moral philosophy.

This book is the first to provide a critical history of analytic philosophy from its inception in the late nineteenth century to the present day. Quentin Smith focuses on the connections between the four leading movements in analytic philosophy -- logical realism, logical positivism, ordinary language analysis, and linguistic essentialism -- and corresponding twentieth-century theories of ethics and of religion. Through a critical evaluation of each school's theoretical positions, Smith counters the widespread view of analytic philosophy as indifferent to important questions about fight and wrong and human meaning. He argues that analytic philosophy throughout its history has revolved around the central issues of existence, and he offers a new ethics and philosophy of religion.

The author develops a positive ethical theory based on a method of ethics first formulated by Robert Adams. Smith's theory belongs to the tradition of perfectionism or self-realization ethics and builds on Thomas Hurka's recent theory of perfectionism. In his consideration of philosophy of religion, Smith concludes that there is a sound "logical argument from evil" that takes into account Alvin Plantinga's free-will defense and undermines monotheism, paving the way to a naturalistic pantheism.

"Smith's book is original not only in intent but frequently in the detailed argument involved in evaluating the merits of the philosophies of language and their implications for ethics and philosophy of religion". -- John F. Post, Vanderbilt University

This book aims to create a Christian theology of wisdom for the present day, in discussion with two sets of conversation-partners. The first are writers of the 'wisdom literature' in ancient Israel and the Jewish community in Alexandria. Here, special attention is given to the biblical books of Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes. The second conversation-partners are philosophers and thinkers of the late-modern age, among them Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas, Julia Kristeva, Paul Ricoeur and Hannah Arendt. In the late-modern period there has been a reaction against an inherited conception of the conscious and rational self as mastering and even subjugating the world around, and there has been an attempt to overcome the consequent split between the subject and objects of observation. Paul S. Fiddes enters into dialogue with these late-modern concerns about the relation between the self and the world, proposing that the wisdom which is indicated by the ancient Hebraic concept of hokmah integrates a 'practical wisdom' of handling daily experience with the kind of wisdom which is 'attunement' to the world and ultimately to God as creator and sustainer of all. Fiddes brings detailed exegesis of texts from the ancient wisdom literature into interaction with an account of the subject in late-modern thought, in order to form a theology in which seeing the world is knowing a God whose transcendent reality is always immanent in the signs and bodies of the world. He thus argues that participation in a triune, relational God shapes a wisdom that addresses problems of a dominating self, and opens the human person to others.

Is it impossible to assess dignity, which is the faculty or agency of autonomy and equality of rights under the current rule of law, when we are met by global challenges like climate change, financial crisis, food crisis, natural disasters, inequality, violent conflicts and trade disputes? Drawing on European philosophical enlightenment to rethink dominant theories of contemporary Western Human Rights, Stephan P. Leher explores the philosophical foundation of the concept of "dignity" and Human Rights. Using specific examples from Africa and Latin America to explain these concepts as social realizations in the world, Leher demonstrates the link between justice and peace and contends that dignity, freedom and Human Rights law rule are social realizations and claims by all people. With the help of language philosophy, he argues that sentences and propositions about social choices and realizations of real life expressed in ordinary language constitute the basic elements of the foundation and protection of human dignity and Human Rights. The social choice to claim one's freedom and rights can be considered the dignity agency of the individual. Dignity and Human Rights sheds new light on the academic assessment of dignity, the agency of autonomy and the equality of rights under the rule of law, in a time of changes and challenges to Human Rights policies and politics.

Mono no Aware and Gender as Affect in Japanese Aesthetics and American Pragmatism places the naturalistic pragmatism of John Dewey in conversation with Motoori Norinaga's mono no aware, a Japanese aesthetic theory of experience, to examine gender as a felt experience of an aware, or an affective quality of persons. By treating gender as an affect, Johnathan Charles Flowers argues that the experience of gendering and being gendered is a result of the affective perception of the organization of the body in line with cultural aesthetics embodied in Deweyan habit or Japanese kata broadly understood as culturally mediated transactions with the world. On this view, how the felt sense of identity aligns with the affective organization of society determines the nature of the possible social transactions between individuals. As such, this book intervenes in questions of personhood broadly-and identity specifically-by treating personhood itself as an affective sense. In doing so, this book demonstrates how questions of personhood and identity are themselves affective judgments. By treating gender and other identities as aware, this book advocates an expanded recognition of the how to be in the world through cultivating new ways of perceiving the affective organization of persons.