Spinoza's political thought has been subject to a significant revival of interest in recent years. As a response to difficult times, students and scholars have returned to this founding figure of modern philosophy as a means to help reinterpret and rethink the political present. Spinoza's Authority Volume II makes a significant contribution to this ongoing reception and utilization of Spinoza's 1670s Theologico-Political and Political treatises. By taking the concept of authority as an original framework, this books asks: How is authority related to law, memory, and conflict in Spinoza's political thought? What are the social, historical and representational processes that produce authority and resistance? And what are the conditions of effective resistance? Spinoza's Authority Volume II features a roster of internationally established theorists of Spinoza's work, and covers key elements of Spinoza's political philosophy.

Baruch Spinoza is one of the most influential and controversial political philosophers of the early modern period. Though best-known for his contributions to metaphysics, Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise (1670) and his unfinished Political Treatise (1677) were widely debated and helped to shape the political writings of philosophers as diverse as Rousseau, Kant, Marx, Nietzsche, and (although he publicly denied it) even Locke. In addition to its enormous historical importance, Spinoza's political philosophy is also strikingly contemporary in its advocacy of toleration of unpopular religious and political views and his concern with stabilizing religiously diverse democratic societies. The first Guidebook to Spinoza's political writings, The Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Spinoza on Politics covers the following key points: Spinoza's life and the background to his philosophy the key themes and arguments of the Theological-Political-Treatise and Political Treatise the continuing importance of Spinoza's work to philosophy. This book is an ideal starting point for anyone new to Spinoza and essential reading for students of political philosophy and seventeenth-century philosophy.

Kierkegaard's account of the life of faith turns on an astonishing claim: a person living faithfully continually enjoys, and takes part in, everything. What can this assertion actually mean? The pseudonymous author of Fear and Trembling, Johannes de silentio, imagines what such a human being might look like; indeed, as de silentio puts it, 'He looks just like a tax collector'. This seemingly ordinary person, in his 'movements' of faith, finds infinite significance and an absorbing joy in his environment, from moment to moment. How does he do it? This characterization of faithful comportment is unique in the Kierkegaardian corpus, and becomes the tantalizing centerpiece of an exploration of the Kierkegaardian self. Sheridan Hough embarks on a groundbreaking 'existential/ phenomenological' investigation of the uncanny abilities of the faithful life through an analysis of Kierkegaard's 'spheres of existence'; each sphere reveals a specific kind of significance, and indeed a way of 'being in the world'. Hough employs a distinctively original narrative voice, one that examines Kierkegaard's ontology from the perspective of his pseudonymous voices, and from the characters that they create. This approach is both descriptive and diagnostic: by understanding what someone living out an aesthetic, ethical, or a religious existence seeks to achieve, the phenomenon of the faithful life, and its demands, comes into sharper focus. This faith is not simply some thought about God's greatness-indeed, the 'propositional content' of faith is a central issue of the book. Instead, Hough argues that Kierkegaardian faith is the hallmark of the fullest flowering of a human life, one achieved in ways only hinted at in the demeanor of the cheerful and enigmatic 'tax collector,' an existential task in which 'temporality, finitude is what it is all about'.

Among all the great thinkers of the past two hundred years, Nietzsche continues to occupy a special place--not only for a broad range of academics but also for members of a wider public, who find some of their most pressing existential concerns addressed in his works. Central among these concerns is the question of the meaning of a life characterized by inescapable suffering, at a time when the traditional responses inspired by Christianity are increasingly losing their credibility. While most recent studies of Nietzsche's works have lost sight of this fundamental issue, Bernard Reginster's book "The Affirmation of Life" brings it sharply into focus.

Reginster identifies overcoming nihilism as a central objective of Nietzsche's philosophical project, and shows how this concern systematically animates all of his main ideas. In particular, Reginster's work develops an original and elegant interpretation of the will to power, which convincingly explains how Nietzsche uses this doctrine to mount a critique of the dominant Christian values, to overcome the nihilistic despair they produce, and to determine the conditions of a new affirmation of life. Thus, Reginster attributes to Nietzsche a compelling substantive ethical outlook based on the notions of challenge and creativity--an outlook that involves a radical reevaluation of the role and significance of suffering in human existence.

Replete with deeply original insights on many familiar--and frequently misunderstood--Nietzschean concepts, Reginster's book will be essential to anyone approaching this towering figure of Western intellectual history.

Hegel's doctrines of absolute negativity and 'the Concept' are among his most original contributions to philosophy and they constitute the systematic core of dialectical thought. Brady Bowman explores the interrelations between these doctrines, their implications for Hegel's critical understanding of classical logic and ontology, natural science and mathematics as forms of 'finite cognition', and their role in developing a positive, 'speculative' account of consciousness and its place in nature. As a means to this end, Bowman also re-examines Hegel's relations to Kant and pre-Kantian rationalism, and to key post-Kantian figures such as Jacobi, Fichte and Schelling. His book draws from the breadth of Hegel's writings to affirm a robustly metaphysical reading of the Hegelian project, and will be of great interest to students of Hegel and of German Idealism more generally.

John Stuart Mill s On Liberty is widely regarded as one of the most influential and stirring pieces of political philosophy ever written. Ever relevant in our increasingly surveillance dominated culture, the statements made argue strongly in favour of the rights of the individual, privacy and freedom of expression. The Routledge Guidebook to Mill s On Liberty introduces the major themes in Mill s great book and aids the reader in understanding this key work, covering:

• The context of Mill s work and the background to his writing
• Each separate part of the text in relation to its goals, meanings and impact
• The reception the book received when first seen by the world
• The relevance of Mill s work to modern philosophy

With further reading included for each chapter, this text is essential reading for all students of philosophy and political theory, and all those wishing to get to grips with this classic work of political philosophy.

One of America's most celebrated poets, Emily Dickinson was virtually unpublished in her lifetime. When a slim volume of her poems emerged on the American scene in 1890, her work created shockwaves that have not subsided yet. Famously precise and sparse, Emily Dickinson's poetry is often described as philosophical, both because her poetry grapples with philosophical topics like death, spirituality, and the darkening operations of the mind, and because she approaches those topics in a characteristically philosophical manner: analyzing and extrapolating from close observation, exploring alternatives, and connecting thoughts into cumulative demonstrations. But unlike Lucretius or Pope, she cannot be accused of producing versified treatises. Many of her poems are unsettling in their lack of conclusion; their disparate insights often stand in conflict; and her logic turns crucially on imagery, juxtaposition, assonance, slant rhyme, and punctuation. The six chapters of this volume collectively argue that Dickinson is an epistemically ambitious poet, who explores fundamental questions by advancing arguments that are designed to convince. Dickinson exemplifies abstract ideas in tangible form and habituates readers into productive trains of thought-she doesn't just make philosophical claims, but demonstrates how poetry can make a distinct contribution to philosophy. All essays in this volume, drawn from both philosophers and literary theorists, serve as a counterpoint to recent critical work, which has emphasized Dickinson's anguished uncertainty, her nonconventional style, and the unsettled status of her manuscripts. On the view that emerges here, knowing is like cleaning, mending, and lacemakingL a form of hard, ongoing work, but one for which poetry is a powerful, perhaps indispensable, tool.

"Introducing The Enlightenment" is the essential guide to the giants of the Enlightenment - Voltaire, Diderot, Adam Smith, Samuel Johnson, Immanuel Kant, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson. The Enlightenment of the 18th century was a crucial time in human history - a vast moral, scientific and political movement, the work of intellectuals across Europe and the New World, who began to free themselves from despotism, bigotry and superstition and tried to change the world. "Introducing The Enlightenment" is a clear and accessible introduction to the leading thinkers of the age, the men and women who believed that rational endeavour could reveal the secrets of the universe.

"What a strange invention marriage is!" wrote Kierkegaard. "Is it the expression of that inexplicable erotic sentiment, that concordant elective affinity of souls, or is it a duty or a partnership...or is it a little of all that?" Like Kierkegaard a few decades later, many of Germany's most influential thinkers at the turn of the eighteenth century wondered about the nature of marriage but rejected the easy answers provided by biology and theology. In "Uncivil Unions", Adrian Daub presents a truly interdisciplinary look at the story of a generation of philosophers, poets, and intellectuals who turned away from theology, reason, common sense, and empirical observation to provide a purely metaphysical justification of marriage. Through close readings of philosophers like Fichte and Schlegel, and novelists like Sophie Mereau and Jean Paul, Daub charts the development of this new concept of marriage with an insightful blend of philosophy, cultural studies, and theory. The author delves deeply into the lives and work of the romantic and idealist poets and thinkers whose beliefs about marriage continue to shape ideas about gender, marriage, and sex to the present day.

Behemoth is Thomas Hobbes's narrative of the English Civil Wars from the beginning of the Scottish revolution in 1637 to the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660, and is his only composition to address directly the history of the events which formed the context of his writings in Leviathan and elsewhere on sovereignty and the government of the Church. Although presented as an account of past events, it conceals a vigorous attack on the values of the religious and political establishment of Restoration England. This is the first fully scholarly edition of the work, and the first new edition of the text since 1889. Based on Hobbes's own presentation manuscript, it includes for the first time an accurate transcription of the passages which Hobbes had deleted in the text, and notes made by early readers.

Desmond M. Clarke presents new translations of three of the first feminist tracts to support explicitly the equality of the sexes. The alleged inferiority of women's nature and the corresponding roles that women were (in)capable of exercising in society were debated in Western culture from the civilization of ancient Greece to the establishment of early Christian churches. There had also been some proponents of women's superiority (in comparison with men) prior to the early modern period. In contrast with both of these claims, the seventeenth century witnessed the first publications that argued for the equality of men and women. Among the most articulate and original defenders of that view were Marie le Jars de Gournay, Anna Maria van Schurman, and Francois Poulain de la Barre. Gournay published The Equality of Men and Women in Paris in 1622, while one of her Dutch correspondents, Van Schurman, published in Latin her Dissertation in support of women's education in 1641. Poulain wrote a radical Physical and Moral Discourse concerning the Equality of Both Sexes in 1673, which he also published in Paris. These three feminist tracts transformed the language and conceptual framework in which questions about women's equality or otherwise were subsequently discussed. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, anonymous plagiarized editions and pirated translations of their works appeared in English, as 'vindications' of the rights of women. This edition includes new translations, from French and Latin, of these three key texts, and excerpts from the authors' related writings, together with an extensive introduction to the religious and philosophical context within which they argued against the traditional view of women's natural inferiority to men.

Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise was published anonymously in 1670 and immediately provoked huge debate. Its main goal was to claim that the freedom of philosophizing can be allowed in a free republic and that it cannot be abolished without also destroying the peace and piety of that republic. Spinoza criticizes the traditional claims of revelation and offers a social contract theory in which he praises democracy as the most natural form of government. This Critical Guide presents essays by well-known scholars in the field and covers a broad range of topics, including the political theory and the metaphysics of the work, religious toleration, the reception of the text by other early modern philosophers and the relation of the text to Jewish thought. It offers valuable perspectives on this important and influential work.

This study describes the origin, development and crisis of the German nineteenth-century project of theology as science. Its narrative is focused on the two predominant theological schools during this period, the Tubingen School and the Ritschl School. Their work emerges as a grand attempt to synthesize historical and systematic theology within the twin paradigms of historicism and German Idealism. Engaging in detail with the theological, historical and philosophical scholarship of the story's protagonists, Johannes Zachhuber reconstructs the basis of this scholarship as a deep belief in the eventual unity of human knowledge. This idealism clashed with the historicist principles underlying much of the scholars' actual research. The tension between these paradigms ran through the entire period and ultimately led to the disintegration of the project at the end of the century. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources, many of which have never been used in English speaking scholarship before, Zachhuber embeds the essentially theological story he presents within broader intellectual developments in nineteenth century Germany. In spite of its eventual failure, the project of theology as science in nineteenth century Germany is here described as a paradigmatic intellectual endeavour of European modernity with far-reaching significance beyond the confines of a single academic discipline.

Frederick C. Beiser presents a study of the two most important idealist philosophers in Germany after Hegel: Adolf Trendelenburg and Rudolf Lotze. Trendelenburg and Lotze dominated philosophy in Germany in the second half of the nineteenth century. They were important influences on the generation after them, on Frege, Brentano, Dilthey, Kierkegaard, Cohen, Windelband and Rickert. Late German Idealism is the first book on this significant but neglected chapter in European philosophical history. It provides a general introduction to every aspect of the philosophy of Trendelenburg and Lotze-their logic, metaphysics, ethics and aesthetics; but it is also a study of their intellectual development, from their youth until their death. Their philosophy is placed in the context of their lives and culture.

This book makes the argument that Machado de Assis, hailed as one of Latin American literature's greatest writers, was also a major theoretician of the modern novel form. Steeped in the works of Western literature and an imaginative reader of French Symbolist poetry, Machado creates, between 1880 and 1908, a 'new narrative,' one that will presage the groundbreaking theories of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure by showing how even the language of narrative cannot escape being elusive and ambiguous in terms of meaning. It is from this discovery about the nature of language as a self-referential semiotic system that Machado crafts his 'new narrative.' Long celebrated in Brazil as a dazzlingly original writer, Machado has struggled to gain respect and attention outside the Luso-Brazilian ken. He is the epitome of the 'outsider' or 'marginal,' the iconoclastic and wildly innovative genius who hails from a culture rarely studied in the Western literary hierarchy and so consigned to the status of 'eccentric.' Had the Brazilian master written not in Portuguese but English, French, or German, he would today be regarded as one of the true exemplars of the modern novel, in expression as well as in theory.

Kierkegaard is a fascinating author. Living shortly after the dawn of modernity in the Enlightenment, he restates classical Christianity in dynamic fashion. His Lutheran heritage is vital here as he places 'faith' over against 'reason'. Yet Kierkegaard also holds decidedly pre-modern epistemological presuppositions that are supportive of his endeavour.
After an initial chapter on Kierkegaard's intellectual milieu, the book expounds with reference to their philosophical and historical context seven of his major texts, ranging over theological, ethical, social and political questions. A final chapter, on an autobiographical text, allows of an estimate of Kierkegaard as a person.
The book does not however simply depict Kierkegaard. In the 'Critique' with which each chapter concludes Hampson carries on a lively debate with Kierkegaard. Questions range from his indifference to biblical historical criticism, his lack of a sense for causality and for the regularity of nature, and his early a-political outlook.
Whatever one's theological evaluation, Kierkegaard has insights that are abiding; into the nature of the self in relation to God, the manner of according dignity to others, and the need to prioritise rightly in life. Quoted extensively in this book, Kierkegaard, a writer of distinction, enthrals the reader with his flair, wit and never failing perspicacity.
A provocative and original book, while accessible to those approaching these texts for the first time, it should also be of interest to the seasoned Kierkegaard scholar, illuminating as has no previous work the importance of comprehending the structure of Lutheran faith for grasping Kierkegaard's thought.

The Oxford Handbook of British Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century comprises twenty-six new essays by leading experts in the field. This unique scholarly resource provides advanced students and scholars with a comprehensive overview of the issues that are informing research on the subject, while at the same time offering new directions for research to take. The volume is ambitious in scope: it covers the whole of the seventeenth century, ranging from Francis Bacon to John Locke and Isaac Newton. The Handbook contains five parts: the introductory Part I examines the state of the discipline and the nature of its practitioners as the century unfolded; Part II discusses the leading natural philosophers and the philosophy of nature, including Bacon, Boyle, and Newton; Part III covers knowledge and the human faculty of the understanding; Part IV explores the leading topics in British moral philosophy from the period; and Part V concerns political philosophy. In addition to dealing with canonical authors and celebrated texts, such as Thomas Hobbes and his Leviathan, the Handbook discusses many less well-known figures and debates from the period, whose importance is only now being appreciated.

The idea of the Enlightenment has become a touchstone for emotive and often contradictory articulations of contemporary western values. Enlightenment Shadows is a study of the place of Enlightenment thought in intellectual history and of its continued relevance. Genevieve Lloyd focuses especially on what is distinctive in ideas of intellectual character offered by key Enlightenment thinkers-on their attitudes to belief and scepticism; on their optimism about the future; and on the uncertainties and instabilities which nonetheless often lurk beneath their use of imagery of light. The book is organized around interconnected close readings of a range of texts: Montesquieu's Persian Letters; Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary; Hume's essay The Sceptic; Adam Smith's treatment of sympathy and imagination in Theory of Moral Sentiments; d'Alembert's Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia-together with Diderot's entry on Encyclopedia; Diderot's Rameau's Nephew; and Kant's essay Perpetual Peace. Throughout, the readings highlight ways in which Enlightenment thinkers enacted in their writing-and reflected on-the interplay of intellect, imagination, and emotion. Recurring themes include: the nature of judgement-its relations with imagination and with ideals of objectivity; issues of truth and relativism; the ethical significance of imagining one's self into the situations of others; cosmopolitanism; tolerance; and the idea of the secular.

Franz Brentano (1838-1917) led an intellectual revolution that sought to revitalize German-language philosophy and to reverse its post-Kantian direction. His philosophy laid the groundwork for philosophy of science as it came to fruition in the Vienna Circle, and for phenomenology in the work of such figures as his student Edmund Husserl. This volume brings together newly commissioned chapters on his important work in theory of judgement, the reform of syllogistic logic, theory of intentionality, empirical descriptive psychology and phenomenology, theory of knowledge, metaphysics and ontology, value theory, and natural theology. It also offers a critical evaluation of Brentano's significance in his historical context, and of his impact on contemporary philosophy in both the analytic and the continental traditions.

Over the last thirty years, postcolonial critiques of European imperial practices have transformed our understanding of colonial ideology, resistance, and cultural contact. The Enlightenment has played a complex but often unacknowledged role in this discussion, alternately reviled and venerated as the harbinger of colonial dominion and avatar of liberation, as target and shield, as shadow and light. This volume brings together two arenas - eighteenth-century studies and postcolonial theory - in order to interrogate the role and reputation of Enlightenment in the context of early European colonial ambitions and postcolonial interrogations of Western imperial aspirations. With essays by leading scholars in the field, Postcolonial Enlightenment address issues central not only to literature and philosophy but also to natural history, religion, law, and the emerging sciences of man. The contributors situate a range of writers - from Hobbes and Herder, Behn and Burke, to Defoe and Diderot - in relation both to eighteenth-century colonial practices and to key concepts within current postcolonial theory concerning race, globalization, human rights, sovereignty, and national and personal identity. By enlarging the temporal and geographic framework through which we read, the essays in this volume open up alternate genealogies for categories, events and ideas central to the emergence of global modernity.

This is a step-by-step guide to Kant's first work on moral philosophy. "Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals" is considered a standard text in the history of moral philosophy as well as a classic work of moral philosophy in its own right. This guide provides a paragraph-by-paragraph account of the main themes of Kant's moral philosophy and a clear statement of his overall philosophical aims and arguments. It is an essential toolkit for anyone approaching Kant for the first time.

Fichte ist - trotz fabelhafter Gesamtausgabe - der am meisten interpretationsbedurftige Kopf der nachkantischen Philosophie. Sein Werk bildet fur unsere Zeit den interessantesten Teil der sogenannten klassischen deutschen Philosophie von Kant zu Fichte, Schelling und Hegel. Gerd Irrlitz sieht das Rebellierende - und manchmal auch Geblendete - eines grossen deutschen Reformdenkers, der national dachte, weil der Absolutismus die Internationalitat war, und weil er eine antifeudale Bewegung des Volkes beobachtete, die ihm aufgrund der Schwache des deutschen Absolutismus und durch die antinapoleonische Bewegung der "Freiheitskriege" moeglich erschien. Die neuzeitliche europaische Philosophie war ploetzlich mit dem Ton der Empoerung und dem Anspruch des einfachen Volkes konfrontiert. Beides mundete nach dem Erfolg des antinapoleonischen Feldzugs in die Verfassungsbewegung. Dieses Buch behandelt nach einem einfuhrenden UEberblick und einer ausfuhrlichen Biographie alle Themenbereiche der Philosophie Fichtes: die Wissenschaftslehre, die Philosophie des Rechts, der Moral und der Religion (die 1799 zur Entlassung an der Jenaer Universitat fuhrte), die Sozialreform, die beiden fruhen Schriften zur Franzoesischen Revolution und die nationale Thematik in den "Reden an die deutsche Nation" (1808).

Early German Romanticism sought to respond to a comprehensive sense of spiritual crisis that characterised the late eighteenth century. The study demonstrates how the Romantics sought to bring together the new post-Kantian idealist philosophy with the inheritance of the realist Platonic-Christian tradition. With idealism they continued to champion the individual, while from Platonism they took the notion that all reality, including the self, participated in absolute being. This insight was expressed, not in the language of theology or philosophy, but through aesthetics, which recognised the potentiality of all creation, including artistic creation, to disclose the divine. In explicating the religious vision of Romanticism, this study offers a new historical appreciation of the movement, and furthermore demonstrates its importance for our understanding of religion today.

Kant is a pivotal thinker in Adornoa s intellectual world. Yet although he wrote monographs on Hegel, Husserl and Kierkegaard, the closest he came to an extended discussion of Kant are two lecture courses, one concentrating on the Critique of Pure Reason and the other on the Critique of Practical Reason. This new volume by Adorno comprises his lectures on the former. Adorno attempts to make Kanta s thought comprehensible to students by focusing on what he regards as problematic aspects of Kanta s philosophy. Adorno examines his dualism and what he calls the Kantian a blocka : the contradictions arising from Kanta s resistance to the idealism that his successors, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, saw as the inevitable outcome of his ideas. But these lectures also provide an accessible introduction to and rationale for Adornoa s own philosophy as expounded in Negative Dialectics and his other major writings. Adornoa s view of Kant forms an integral part of his own philosophy, since he argues that the way out of the Kantian contradictions is to show the necessity of the dialectical thinking that Kant himself spurned. This in turn enables Adorno to criticize Anglo--Saxon scientistic or positivist thought, as well as the philosophy of existentialism. This book will be of great interest to those working in philosophy and in social and political thought, and it will be essential reading for anyone interested in the foundations of Adornoa s own work.

Nietzsche, Naturalism, and Normativity comprises ten original essays which critically engage with one of the western canon's most controversial ethical thinkers. Bringing together an internationally renowned line-up of Nietzsche specialists and mainstream moral philosophers, the volume provides a timely and distinctive contribution to our understanding of both Nietzsche and his significance for ethical thought more generally. As well as clarifying Nietzsche's own views, both critical and positive, ethical and meta-ethical, the articles connect Nietzsche's philosophical concerns to contemporary debates in and about ethics, normativity, and value. The volume's topics include: the nature and scope of Nietzsche's critique of morality; the character of the positive ideals Nietzsche advances in light of that critique; the meta-ethical commitments underpinning the substantive views he variously opposes and espouses; his conception of human psychology and its relation to normativity and value; and, more generally, the relation between Nietzsche's revaluative ambitions and the naturalistic worldview it has become common to attribute to him. With an editors' introduction providing a comprehensive and accessible background to these topics, including a state-of-the-art overview of the interpretative and philosophical controversies Nietzsche's normative and naturalistic endeavours raise, Nietzsche, Naturalism, and Normativity stands at the cutting edge of current work in the field and is essential reading for anyone interested in the challenges Nietzsche poses for dominant models of moral philosophy.