Debates in Modern Philosophy: Essential Readings and Contemporary Responses provides an in-depth, engaging introduction to important issues in modern philosophy. It presents 13 key interpretive debates to students, and ranges in coverage from Descartes' Meditations to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.

Debates include:

• Did Descartes have a developed and consistent view about how the mind interacts with the body?
• Was Leibniz an idealist, or did he believe in corporeal substances?
• What is Locke's theory of personal identity?
• Could there be a Berkeleian metaphysics without God?
• Did Hume believe in causal powers?
• What is Kant's transcendental idealism?

Each of the thirteen debates consists of a well known article or book chapter from a living philosopher, followed by a new response from a different scholar, specially commissioned for this volume. Every debate is prefaced by an introduction written for those coming upon the debates for the first time and followed by an annotated list for further reading. The volume starts with an introduction that explains the importance and relevance of the modern period and its key debates to philosophy and ends with a glossary that covers terms from both the modern period and the study of the history of philosophy in general.

Debates in Modern Philosophy will help students evaluate different interpretations of key texts from modern philosophy, and provide a model for constructing their own positions in these debates.

Since his death in 1997, Isaiah Berlin's writings have generated continual interest among scholars and educated readers, especially in regard to his ideas about liberalism, value pluralism, and "positive" and "negative" liberty. Most books on Berlin have examined his general political theory, but this volume uses a contemporary perspective to focus specifically on his ideas about freedom and liberty. Isaiah Berlin and the Politics of Freedom brings together an integrated collection of essays by noted and emerging political theorists that commemorate in a critical spirit the recent 50th anniversary of Isaiah Berlin's famous lecture and essay, "Two Concepts of Liberty." The contributors use Berlin's essay as an occasion to rethink the larger politics of freedom from a twenty-first century standpoint, bringing Berlin's ideas into conversation with current political problems and perspectives rooted in postcolonial theory, feminist theory, democratic theory, and critical social theory. The editors begin by surveying the influence of Berlin's essay and the range of debates about freedom that it has inspired. Contributors' chapters then offer various analyses such as competing ways to contextualize Berlin's essay, how to reconsider Berlin's ideas in light of struggles over national self-determination, European colonialism, and racism, and how to view Berlin's controversial distinction between so-called "negative liberty" and "positive liberty." By relating Berlin's thinking about freedom to competing contemporary views of the politics of freedom, this book will be significant for both scholars of Berlin as well as people who are interested in larger debates about the meaning and conditions of freedom.

Amidst prevailing debates that construe rationality and emotionality as polar opposites, this book explores the manner in which emotions shape not only prevailing conceptions of rationality, but also culture in general terms, making room for us to speak of an 'emotional culture' specific to late-modern societies. Presenting case studies involving cultural artefacts, narratives found in fictional and non-fictional literature and television programs, speech patterns and self-talk, fashion, and social networking practices, The Emotions and Cultural Analysis sheds light on the relationship between emotion and culture and the ways in which emotion can be harnessed for the purposes of cultural analysis. An interdisciplinary volume containing the latest research from sociology, philosophy, literary studies, linguistics, and communication, this book will be of interest to those working on the sociology and philosophy of emotion, cultural studies, and cultural theory.

This volume engages with translations of philosophy as complex, socially structured narratives bound by emotional, political and philosophical connections, exploring these dynamics at work in A.V. Miller's Hegel translations and retranslations published between 1969 and 1986. The book contextualises Miller's lifelong commitment to Hegel and builds on this narrative to lay the foundations for its socio-narrative, Bourdieusian and feminist theoretical frameworks, applied to the texts and paratexts of Miller's six retranslations. The volume's plurifocal sociological approach both illuminates the role of translators and publishers of philosophy in the "great transformation" of political liberalism and subsequently seeks to transform understanding about the ethical responsibilities of translators of philosophy in communicating values of diversity and change in political thinking. In highlighting the value of sociologically-grounded analyses of translations of philosophical works, this book is key reading for students and scholars in translation studies, German studies, continental and feminist-informed philosophies.

This volume consists of a selection of scholarly essays from literature, philosophy and history on the conception of reality as understood by Rabindranath Tagore and Albert Einstein. The nature of reality has been a long-debated issue among scientists and philosophers. Tagore (1861-1941) met Einstein (1879-1955) at the latter's house in Kaputh, Germany on 14 July 1930 and had a long conversation on this issue. This conversation has been widely quoted and discussed by scientists, philosophers and scholars from the literary world. The important question that Tagore and Einstein discussed was whether the world is a unity dependent on humanity, or the world is a reality independent of the human factor. Einstein believed that reality is independent of the mind and the human factor. On the other hand, Tagore adopted the opposite view. Nevertheless, both Einstein and Tagore claimed to be realists - their conceptions of reality were obviously fundamentally different. Where does the difference lie? Can it be harmonized at a deeper level? This volume brings together for the first time a gamut of views on this subject from eminent scholars. It presents some key reflections on reality, language, poetry, truth, science, personality, human sciences, virtue ethics, intelligibility and creativity. It will be useful to scholars and researchers of philosophy, literature, history and political studies, as also to those interested in Tagore.

JL Austin (1911-1960) exercised in Post-war Oxford an intellectual authority similar to that of Wittgenstein in Cambridge. Although he completed no books of his own and published only seven papers, Austin became through lectures and talks one of the acknowledged leaders in what is called 'Oxford philosophy' or 'ordinary language philosophy'. Few would dispute that among analytic philosophers Austin stands out as a great and original philosophical genius. Three volumes of his writing, published after his death, have become classics in analytical philosophy: Philosophical Papers; Sense and Sensibilia; and How to Do Things with Words. First published in 1979, this book is a collection of critical essays on Austin's philosophy written by well-known philosophers, many of whom knew Austin personally. A number of essays included were especially written for this volume, but the majority have appeared previously in various journals or books, not all easy to obtain.

First published in 1999, this volume represents Kit-Man Li's attempt to wrestle with the complicated issues and ideas drawn from Habermas' theory of communicative action, Weber's studies of western civilization and Elias' insights on sociological theory. Li examines Weber, Habermas and Elias in turn in order to refine our understanding of modern Western civilization.

Fraternity is a feeling, and a moral virtue, but fraternity is also a political concept. The French Revolution proclaimed an ethical and political ideal with its three principles: liberty, equality and fraternity. Since then, western political philosophy has gone to great lengths to analyse the liberty and equality, but has ignored, and even disdained, the third part of the revolutionary triad: fraternity. Forgetting or underestimating fraternity as a political category is unjustifiable. Political fraternity can help us to overcome some of the main problems with liberal egalitarianism and theories of liberty in current social and political thought, and it contributes to a better understanding of the real significance of justice and democracy. In this book, Angel Puyol examines the theoretical and normative challenges of the political idea of fraternity, its history and meanings, its role in current political philosophy, its distinction regarding related concepts - such as relational equality, solidarity or civic friendship - the place that political fraternity should occupy in feminist criticism, and its relationship to social justice, global justice and democracy in modern-day politics.

This book brings together, for the first time, philosophers of pragmatism and economists interested in methodological questions. The main theoretical thrust of Dewey is to unite inquiry with behavior and this book's contributions assess this insight in the light of developments in modern American philosophy, social and legal theories, and the theoretical orientation of economics. This unique book contains impressive contributions from a range of different perspectives and its unique nature will make it required reading for academics involved with philosophy and economics.

Kierkegaard's relation to the field of philosophy is a particularly complex and disputed one. He rejected the model of philosophical inquiry that was mainstream in his day and was careful to have his pseudonymous authors repeatedly disassociate themselves from philosophy. But although it seems clear that Kierkegaard never regarded himself as a philosopher, there can be no doubt that his writings contain philosophical ideas and insights and have been profoundly influential in a number of different philosophical traditions. The tomes in this volume seek to document the different traditions of the philosophical reception of Kierkegaard's thought and the articles demonstrate the reach of Kierkegaard's writings in philosophical contexts that were often different from his own. The present volume attempts to document these different traditions of the philosophical reception of Kierkegaard's thought. The articles featured here aim to demonstrate the vast reach of Kierkegaard's writings in philosophical contexts that were often quite different from his own. Tome II is dedicated to exploring Kierkegaard's influence on Francophone philosophy. The French intellectual tradition squares well with Kierkegaard's eclectic profile since its leading figures are often difficult to classify unambiguously as philosophers, theologians, literary critics or simply writers. Kierkegaard's thinking was highly influential for many generations of French philosophers right up to the present. It was not just existentialism that tried to co-opt Kierkegaard for its own purposes; he has also been influential in the context of almost every modern school of French thought: phenomenology, feminism, structuralism, post-structuralism, semiotics, and deconstruction.

A critical anthology that re-examines Jacques Derrida's thought by way of theory and praxis, this volume reflects on his striking legacy and the future of theory. Among contemporary thinkers, Derrida challenges not only our ways of thinking but also hitherto methods of inquiry. This book captures how Derrida renovates and re-energises philosophy by questioning the fundamental assumptions of Western philosophical thought. By doing so, he exposes the intricate lie behind binaries, such as speech/writing, nature/culture, male/female, black/white, literature/criticism, etc., which have continued to shape our worldview, where a hegemonic centre is always already in place dominating or marginalising the 'other'. A significant contribution to literary theory, this book explores not only the status of Derrida's contribution as a critical thinker but also the status of critical theory as such in the contemporary milieu. The central question that it asks is whether we should dismiss Derrida as a thinker who espoused an extreme form of relativism, bordering on nihilism, or has he something fundamental to contribute to the future of theory. Could it be that deconstruction is not destruction but a possibility that casts doubts on whether the present can have faith in future? This second edition includes a new Postscript and addresses some important concerns of our times, such as religious practice, art and aesthetics, translation, sociology of philosophy, and democracy. Scholars and researchers of English literature, philosophy, sociology and cultural studies will find this work particularly interesting.

This volume analyses Virginia Woolf's novels through a philosophical lens, providing an interpretive overview of her works through Hans-Georg Gadamer's hermeneutic ontology. The text argues that interpretation itself is the central subject matter of Woolf's novels: in order to understand these novels in all of their complexity and depth, it is both useful and helpful to comprehend the interpretive pillars that inform these narratives. Indeed, interpretation became a central theme during the Modernist movement, and Woolf's novels took part in this conversation. For his part, Gadamer was in important voice in these discussions, dedicating his life's work to the concept of interpretation. Gadamer focused on the universality of interpretation, arguing that it is inescapable and irrevocably bound up with existence. In many ways, Woolf's novels represent an enactment of Gadamer's philosophy, as they emphasize the radical questionability of the world-what this interpretive imperative requires of its participants and the potential yield that may result. On the other end, Gadamer's philosophy acquires a concrete praxis when applied to Woolf's novels. His philosophy hinges on the universality of interpretation as it manifests itself in daily existence; the literary text and its interpretation participate in this universality and is shaped by it.

In this volume, Maher contextualizes the work of a group of contemporary analytic philosophers The Pittsburgh School whose work is characterized by an interest in the history of philosophy and a commitment to normative functionalism, or the insight that to identify something as a manifestation of conceptual capacities is to place it in a space of norms. Wilfrid Sellars claimed that humans are distinctive because they occupy a norm-governed "space of reasons." Along with Sellars, Robert Brandom and John McDowell have tried to work out the implications of that idea for understanding knowledge, thought, norms, language, and intentional action. The aim of this book is to introduce their shared views on those topics, while also charting a few key disputes between them.

Our imagination reveals our experience of ourselves and our world. The late philosopher of science and poetry Gaston Bachelard introduced the notion that each image that comes to mind spontaneously is a visual representation of the cognitive and affective pattern that is moving us at the time - often unconsciously. When such a mental image inspires a picture or text, it evokes in the mind of the reader or beholder a replication of the internal pattern that originally inspired the artist or writer. Thus mental images are rarely empty phantasies. Whereas intellectual concepts are conscious constructions of abstracted relations, mental images evoked by texts and pictures often point - like dreams - to pre-verbal experience that patterns itself through multiplying associations and analogies. These mental images can also manifest their own limits, pointing indirectly to experiences beyond what can be expressed and communicated. The six essays in this volume seek to uncover the dynamic patterns in verbal and pictorial images and to evaluate their potentialities and limitations. Thematically ordered according to their specific focus, the essays begin with material images and move on to increasing degrees of immateriality. The subjects treated are: verbal descriptions of an icon and of a statue; imaginative visions and auditions evoked by material depictions; verbal imagery describing imagined sculptures and scenes as compared with drawings of a moving historical pageant; drawings of symbolic figures representing subtle relationships between verbal expositions that cannot be syntactically represented; dream images that precipitate actual healing; and aural patterns in a sounded text that are experienced as 'images' of affective dynamisms.

Jurisdiction in Deleuze: The Expression and Representation of Law explores an affinity between the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and jurisprudence as a tradition of technical legal thought. The author addresses and reopens a central aesthetic problem in jurisprudence: the difference between the expression and the representation of law. Deleuze is taken as offering not just an important methodological recovery of an 'expressionism' in philosophy - specifically through Nietzsche and Spinoza - but also a surprisingly practical jurisprudence which recasts the major technical terms of jurisdiction (persons, things and actions) in terms of their distinctively expressive or performative modalities. In paying attention to law's expression, Deleuze is thus shown to offer an account of how meaning may attach to the instrument and medium of law and how legal desire may be registered within the texture and technology of jurisdiction. Contributing both to a renewed transposition of Deleuze into contemporary legal theory, as well as to an emerging interest in law's technology, institution and instrumentality in critical legal studies, Jurisdiction in Deleuze will be of considerable interest.

The notion of "feminist pragmatism" or "pragmatist feminism" has been around since Charlene Haddock Seigfried introduced it two decades ago. However, the bulk of the work in this field has been directed toward recovering the feminist strain of classical American philosophy, largely through renewed interest in the work of Jane Addams. This exploration of the origins of feminism and pragmatism has been fruitful in building a foundation for theoretical considerations. The editors of this volume believe the next logical step is the contemporary application to both theory and experience. Contemporary Feminist Pragmatism is the first book to address the modern significance of the nexus of feminism and pragmatism. The issues explored here include the relationship between community and identity, particularly around the impact of gender and race; reframing political practice regarding feminist pragmatist commitments including education, sustainability movements, and local efforts like community gardens; and the association between ethics and inquiry including explorations of Buddhism, hospitality, and animal-human relationships.

The definitive exploration of C.S. Lewis's philosophical thought, and its connection with his theological and literary work Arguably one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, C.S. Lewis is widely hailed as a literary giant, his seven-volume Chronicles of Narnia having sold over 65 million copies in print worldwide. A prolific author and scholar whose intellectual contributions transcend the realm of children's fantasy literature, Lewis is commonly read and studied as a significant theological figure in his own right. What is often overlooked is that Lewis first loved and was academically trained in philosophy. In this newest addition to the Blackwell Great Minds series, well-known philosopher and Lewis authority Stewart Goetz discusses Lewis's philosophical thought and illustrates how it informs his theological and literary work. Drawing from Lewis's published writing and private correspondence, including unpublished materials, C.S. Lewis is the first book to develop a cohesive and holistic understanding of Lewis as a philosopher. In this groundbreaking project, Goetz explores how Lewis's views on topics of lasting interest such as happiness, morality, the soul, human freedom, reason, and imagination shape his understanding of myth and his use of it in his own stories, establishing new connections between Lewis's philosophical convictions and his wider body of published work. Written in a scholarly yet accessible style, this short, engaging book makes a significant contribution to Lewis scholarship while remaining suitable for readers who have only read his stories, offering new insight into the intellectual life of this figure of enduring popular interest.

The works of Foucault and Bentham have been regularly examined in isolation, yet rarely has the relationship between them been discussed. This study traces the full breadth of that relationship within the fields of sexuality, criminology, ethics, economics and governance.

"William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, the author of this small, paradigm-shifting book, was a brilliant polymath, a pioneering historian and sociologist, a fierce advocate for racial justice, and a towering social philosopher, widely regarded as one of the greatest black geniuses of the modern era. In The Souls of Black Folk, he sought to synthesize the different modes of inquiry that he was trained in-philosophy, history, rhetoric, and sociology-in order to produce a sweeping mural of epic history and local color telling the story of black life in America." -JESSE MCCARTHY, from the Introduction

There continues to be a remarkable revival in academic interest in Carl Schmitt's thought within politics and social theory but this is the first book to address his thought from an explicitly legal theoretical perspective. Transcending the prevailing one-sided and purely historical focus on Schmitt's significance for debates that took place in the Weimar Republic 1919-1933, this book addresses the actual and potential significance of Schmitt's thought for controversies within contemporary Anglo-American legal theory that have emerged during the past three decades. These include: the critique of liberal forms of legal positivism; the relative 'indeterminacy' of legal doctrine and the need for an explicitly interpretative approach to its range of meanings, their scope and policy rationale; the centrality of discretion and judicial law-making within the legal process; the important role played by ideological prejudices and assumptions in legal reasoning; the reinterpretation of law as a form of strategically disguised politics; the legal theoretical critique of universalistic approaches to "human" rights and associated liberal-cosmopolitan 'ideologies of humanity,' including the rhetoric of 'humanitarian intervention'; and the limitations of liberal constitutionalism and liberalism more generally as an approach to law. In Carl Schmitt: Law as Politics, Ideology and Strategic Myth, the author provides an overview and assessment of Schmitt's thought, as well as a consideration of its relevance for contemporary legal thought and debates.

A century after 'On Denoting' was published, the debate it initiated continues to rage. On the one hand, there is a mass of new historical scholarship, about both Russell and Meinong, which has not circulated very far beyond specialist scholars. On the other hand, there are continuing problems and controversies concerning contemporary Russellian and Meinongian theories, many of them involving issues that simply did not occur to the original protagonists. This work provides an overview of the latest historical scholarship on the two philosophers as well as detailed accounts of some of the problems facing the current incarnations of their theories.

Throughout his career, French philosopher Pierre Bourdieu sought to interrogate what he described as the "social unconscious," the means by which power is held and transmitted across generations. Bourdieu's work has been hugely influential across the social sciences and humanities for decades, yet this book argues that few scholars are using his work to its full potential. Drawing on recently released lectures, this is a systematic account of Bourdieu's full body of work, from his early research in Algiers to his last lectures in Paris, showing how Bourdieu he continued to develop his concepts of habitus, field, capital, power and socio-cultural reproduction well into his later years. It also offers a nuanced reading of Bourdieu's thinking about education, class, language, knowledge and culture.

This book argues that critical realism offers the theory of cognitive rationality a real way of overcoming the limitations of methodological individualism by recognising both the agents' - and the social structure's - causal powers and liabilities. Cynthia Lins Hamlin persuasively argues that critical realism represents a better safeguard against the relativism which springs from the conflation of social reality and our ideas about it. This is an important book for sociologists and anyone working in the social sciences, and for all those concerned with the methodology, and philosophy, of social science.

The central argument of this book is that Hannah Arendt's deserved place in the history of Western philosophy has been overlooked, and recognition of her contribution is long overdue. In part a result of Arendt's own insistence on calling herself a 'political thinker' throughout her career, this is also due to a common tendency in philosophy to denigrate the political. This book explores the indisputable philosophical dimensions of her work. In particular, it examines Arendt's theoretical commitment to recognizing humanity as a plurality, which avoids the common mistake in Western philosophy of theoretically overemphasizing the self in isolation. Arendt's own personal dealings with aspects of her identity, namely her Jewishness and her womanhood, work to inform us of this position against solipsism.