First published in 1928, this book reproduces the lectures and addresses that John Henry Muirhead gave on various occasions during the two and a half years he spent as Lecturer of Philosophy on the Mills Foundation at the University of California, USA. The different chapters look at the meaning and general place of Philosophy as a subject of study and the application of its leading conceptions to different areas of modern life, including science and politics. The final chapters however, present two short talks of a different nature, which were addressed to Scottish countrymen, gathered on foreign shores. This book outlines Muirhead's philosophical thoughts and conclusions to which he devoted his life.

"The concept of spontaneity is central to Kant's philosophy, yet Kant himself never dealt with it explicitly. Instead it was presented as an insoluble problem concerning human reason. The ambiguity surrounding his approach to this problem is surprising when one considers that he was a philosopher who based his theoretical programme on the critique of the faculties of knowledge, feeling and desire. However, this ambiguity seems to have avoided up to now any possible critique. This highly original book presents the first full-length study of the problem of spontaneity in Kant. Marco Sgarbi demonstrates that spontaneity is a crucial concept in relation to every aspect of Kant's thought. He begins by reconstructing the history of the concept of spontaneity in the German Enlightenment prior to Kant and goes on to define knowing, thinking, acting and feeling as spontaneous activities of the mind that in turn determine Kant's logic, ethics and aesthetics. Ultimately Sgarbi shows that the notion of spontaneity is key to understanding both Kant's theoretical and practical philosophy."

Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" is one of the most rewarding, and difficult, of all philosophical works. The text followed is that of the second edition of 1787, and a translation is also given of all first edition passages which in the second edition are either altered or omitted. For this reissue of Kemp Smith's classic 1929 edition, Gary Banham has contributed a major new Bibliography of secondary sources on Kant, including stable internet resources, journal articles and books.

"Mathematics in Kant's Critical Philosophy" provides a much needed reading (and re-reading) of Kant's theory of the construction of mathematical concepts through a fully contextualized analysis. In this work Lisa Shabel convincingly argues that it is only through an understanding of the relevant eighteenth century mathematics textbooks, and the related mathematical practice, can the material and context necessary for a successful interpretation of Kant's philosophy be provided. This is borne out through sustained readings of Euclid and Woolf in particular, which, when brought together with Kant's work, allows for the elucidation of several key issues and the reinterpretation of many hitherto opaque and long debated passages.

"To speak of evil is to speak of a gap between what is and what should be. If classical approaches to this problem often relied on a religious or metaphysical framework to structure their response, Kant's answer is typically modern in that it places within the subject the means of its own moral regeneration. And yet from his first essays on ethics to later, more rigorous writings on the issue, Kant also admits an undeniable fallibility and inherent weakness to humanity. This book explores this neglected existential side of Kant's work. It presents radical evil as vacillating between tragic and freedom, at the threshold of humanity. Through it's careful exegesis of the Kantian corpus, in gauging contemporary responses from both philosophical traditions, and by drawing from concrete examples of evil, the book offers a novel and accessible account of what is widely considered to be an intricate yet urgent problem of philosophy."

This is the second of two collections of correspondence written by early modern English women philosophers. In this volume, Jacqueline Broad presents letters from three influential thinkers of the eighteenth century: Mary Astell, Elizabeth Thomas, and Catharine Trotter Cockburn. Broad provides introductory essays for each figure and explanatory annotations to clarify unfamiliar language, content, and historical context for the modern reader. Her selections make available many letters that have never been published before or that live scattered in various archives, obscure manuscripts, and rare books. The discussions range in subject from moral theology and ethics to epistemology and metaphysics; they involve some well-known thinkers of the period, such as John Norris, George Hickes, Mary Chudleigh, John Locke, and Edmund Law. By centering epistolary correspondence, Broad's anthology works to reframe early modern philosophy, the foundation for so much of twentieth-century philosophy, as consisting of collaborative debates that women actively participated in and shaped. Together with its companion volume, Women Philosophers of Eighteenth-Century England: Selected Correspondence is an invaluable primary resource for students, scholars, and those undertaking further research in the history of women's contributions to the formation and development of early modern thought.

This book provides the first sustained attempt to extract from Kant's writings on biology, anthropology and history an account of the human sciences, their underlying unity, their presuppositions as well as their methodology; that is to say, Kant's philosophical and epistemological foundation of the human sciences.

One of Victorian England s most famous philosophers harbored a secret: Herbert Spencer suffered from an illness so laden with stigma that he feared its revelation would ruin him. He therefore went to extraordinary lengths to hide his malady from the public. Exceptionally, he drew two of his closest friends the novelist George Eliot and her partner, G. H. Lewes into his secret. Years later, he also shared it with a remarkable neurologist, John Hughlings-Jackson, better placed than anyone else in England to understand his illness. Spencer insisted that all three support him without betraying his condition to others and two of them did so. But George Eliot, still smarting from Spencer s rejection, years earlier, of her offer of love, did not. Ingeniously, she devised a means both of nominally respecting (for their contemporaries) and of violating (for our benefit) Spencer s injunction. What she hid from her peers she reveals to us in an act of deferred, but audacious literary revenge. It s here decoded for the first time. Indeed The Complicity of Friends comprises the first disclosure of Spencer s hidden frailty but also, more importantly, of the responses it generated in the lives and works of his three notable friends. This book provides a complete rethinking of its principal figures. The novelist who emerges in these pages is a more sinuous and passionate George Eliot than the oracular Victorian we are used to hearing about. The significance of the friendship between Lewes, her irrepressible partner, and the inventive Hughlings-Jackson is outlined for the first time. And in an ironic twist, even his three farsighted confidants could not anticipate that, late in the twentieth century, certain of Spencer s own intuitions about the nature and provenance of his illness would be vindicated. Those with any interest in George Eliot, Lewes, Hughlings-Jackson, or Spencer will be compelled to re-envision their personalities after reading The Complicity of Friends."

The middle years of the nineteenth century saw two crucial develop ments in the history of modern logic: George Boole's algebraic treat ment of logic and Augustus De Morgan's formulation of the logic of relations. The former episode has been studied extensively; the latter, hardly at all. This is a pity, for the most central feature of modern logic may well be its ability to handle relational inferences. De Morgan was the first person to work out an extensive logic of relations, and the purpose of this book is to study this attempt in detail. Augustus De Morgan (1806-1871) was a British mathematician and logician who was Professor of Mathematics at the University of London (now, University College) from 1828 to 1866. A prolific but not highly original mathematician, De Morgan devoted much of his energies to the rather different field of logic. In his Formal Logic (1847) and a series of papers "On the Syllogism" (1846-1862), he attempted with great ingenuity to reformulate and extend the tradi tional syllogism and to systematize modes of reasoning that lie outside its boundaries. Chief among these is the logic of relations. De Mor gan's interest in relations culminated in his important memoir, "On the Syllogism: IV and on the Logic of Relations," read in 1860."

Published in 1884, 'The kingdom of God is within you' is perhaps Tolstoy's most significant work of non-fiction. Due to the Russian censors, it was first published in Germany, but its dominant idea of non-violence echoed across the international stage throughout the 20th century. In essence, the book is a defence by Tolstoy of the position on non-violence he adopted in 'My Religion'; and therefore also an assault on the Orthodox Church. 'Nowhere,' says Tolstoy, 'is there evidence that God or Christ founded anything like what churchmen understand by the Church.' And in what it now proclaimed, Tolstoy believed the church was wasting its time: 'The activity of the church consists in forcing, by every means in its power, upon millions Russian people, those antiquated, time-worn beliefs which have lost all significance.' Freshly informed by Quaker ideals of non-violence; and full of both story telling and rhetoric, here is Tolstoy calling for a change in consciousness in society. He does not accept that 'this social order, with its pauperism, famines, prisons, gallows, armies and wars, is necessary to society.' That which is, is not that which must be. Rooted in the Sermon on the Mount, Tolstoy's Christianity is not primarily concerned with worship or salvation, but with a new way of behaving in society - behaviour informed by the pointlessness and sin of violence. Tolstoy tellingly reflects on the army at work - whether in internal repression or in national wars - and asks: 'How can you kill people when it is written in God's commandment 'Thou shall not murder?' Gandhi was 'overwhelmed' by the book, said 'it left an abiding impression', and in time, a correspondence started between the two men. The book convinced Gandhi that Hinduism and Christianity were one and the same at their core, and informed his passive resistance first in South Africa and then India; and later, of course, that of Martin Luther King in the USA.

Ludwig Heinrich von Nicolay (1737-1820) is virtually unknown in our time. Yet at the close of the eighteenth century he enjoyed a considerable reputation as a German poet of the French neo-classical orientation. He was esteemed as tutor to the Russian Emperor Paul I, as Russian State Counciller, and as President of the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences. Moreover he was a friend of the most prominent eighteenth century minds that left their imprints on modern thought. As such a man, Nicolay may be studied from several points of view, as a writer, as an educator and as an intellectual. My first preoccupation with Nicolay was of a literary natur- which resulted in a doctoral dissertation presented to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor (1960), under the title "Ludwig Heinrich von Nicolay (1737-1820) as an exponent of neo-classicism. " The existence of the Nicolay archives, now in the possession of the Countess von der Pahlen in Helsinki, was not known to me at the time. Having later gained access to the same, I discovered a vast amount of un pub lished documents and a treasury of correspondence with the leading intellectuals of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. Much of this material was to be published in conjunction with the late Count N. von der Pahlen, who unexpectedly and unfortu nately died in 1963."

Beckett's novel Molloy and the question how this work evokes a particular kind of feeling associated with its exhibition of meaninglessness, namely the feeling of the sublime, is the point of departure for this study. Kant's theory of the sublime is interpreted within the framework of his aesthetic and moral theories, suggesting a way to understand the claim to universal validity for aesthetic judgements. Kant claims that the judgement of the sublime serves morality but he fails to provide this link, so a theory of how this aesthetic judgement can contribute to the cultivation of moral character is developed. It is argued that Kant held that art, including narrative art like the novel, can be sublime. Kant's theory of the sublime is shown to be relevant for modern works of art, and the application of this Kantian framework throws new light on the discussion of the moral aspects of Beckett's literary work. According to this account, Molloy is a sublime work of art, and despite its amoral content can serve the reader's moral cultivation.

The solitary and erudite figure of Pierre Bayle occupies a position of particular interest in French letters; we are pleased to recognize in his thought the germ of the ideas which reached their fulfillment in the eighteenth century. His own age does not seem to have been quite ready to receive him. Forced into exile by the Catholics, he was censured and harassed by the Protestants in Holland. It is to be expected that his outspoken enemies would have declared him a danger to religion and morality; yet to his more moderate contemporaries, too, he was sometimes a "problem," and one senses an occasional reserve toward him even in his remaining friends. As for the general public, the Nouvelles de la Republique des lettres may indeed have received the "universal applause" Des Maizeaux said it had, yet there was voluminous criticism also. His marvelous Dictionary, which probably achieved the widest circulation of any of his works during his lifetime, also elicited the most attack, censure and discontent. Moreover, though Bayle had earned fame, he did not have in the eyes of his contemporaries particularly of those in France - the importance which he has for us today. Other figures seemed still grander than he in the closing decades of the seventeenth century: in philosophy and metaphysics, the e normous system of Malebranche, the last significant attempt in France to establish a synthesis of Christianity and reason, attracted far more admiration, or criticism, than Bayle."

Continuum's Guides for the Perplexed "are clear, concise and accessible introductions to thinkers, writers and subjects that students and readers can find especially challenging. Concentrating specifically on what it is that makes the subject difficult to fathom, these books explain and explore key themes and ideas, guiding the reader towards a thorough understanding of demanding material. David Hume is arguably one of the most important philosophers ever to have written in English. His monumental contributions to epistemology and metaphysics, represented in his two landmark works, A Treatise of Human Nature" and An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding," were hugely influential on both sides of the Atlantic. Yet he is also notorious as a puzzling and difficult thinker and students of his work and thought regularly face very particular intellectual challenges. Hume: A Guide for the Perplexed" is a clear and thorough account of Hume's philosophy, his major works and ideas, providing an ideal guide to the important and complex thought of this key philosopher. The book covers the whole range of Hume's work, offering examination of the key areas of his thought, including the origin and association of ideas, space and time, causal (inductive) reasoning, necessary connexions, free will, personal identity, and skepticism. Geared towards the specific requirements of students who need to reach a sound understanding of Hume's thought, the book provides a cogent and reliable survey of his work and ideas. This is the ideal companion to the study of this most influential and challenging of philosophers.

With renewed attention to German idealism in general and to Fichte in particular, this timely collection of new papers will be of interest to anyone concerned with transcendental philosophy, German idealism, modern German philosophy and transcendental arguments.

The revival of ancient Greek scepticism in the 16th and 17th centuries was of the greatest importance in changing the intellectual climate in which modern science developed, and in developing the attitude that we now call "The scientific outlook." Many streams of thought came together contributing to various facets of this crucial development. One of the most fascinating of these is that of "constructive scepticism," the history of one of whose forms is traced in this study by Prof. Van Leeuwen. The sceptical crisis that arose during the Renaissance and Refor mation challenged the fundamental principles of the many areas of man's intellectual world, in philosophy, theology, humane and moral studies, and the sciences. The devastating weapons of classical scep ticism were employed to undermine man's confidence in his ability to discover truth in any area whatsoever by use of the human faculties of the senses and reason. These sceptics indicated that there was no area in which human beings could gain any certain knowledge, and that the effort to do so was fruitless, vain, presumptuous, and perhaps even blasphemous. StaI'ting with the writings of Hen ric us Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486-1535) and Michel de Montaigne (1533-92), a thoroughly destructive sceptical movement developed, attacking both the old and the new science, philosophy and theology, and insisting that true and certain knowledge can only be gained by Revelation."

This is a collection of essays from an international team of leading Nietzsche scholars examining arguably his most important work.Nietzsche famously regarded "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" as his greatest work. However, despite Nietzsche's pervasive influence upon the philosopher and non-philosopher alike, and his own intense regard for Zarathustra, there has been relatively little serious study of Nietzsche's magnum opus.This book seeks to address this gap in the available literature by taking "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" seriously, not only with respect to its impact on the interpretation of Nietzsche's philosophy, but also in light of the broader questions of the relationships between poetry, philosophy and existence. Fifteen leading Nietzsche scholars examine the structure, method, style and sources of "Zarathustra" as a philosophical text and its relationship to methodological and metaphilosophical questions amid the broader discussions of philosophy. The book also explores the implications of the philosophical questioning, interventions and teachings of "Zarathustra" with respect to both its negative engagement with the tradition and its attempt to set forth something new under the sun in its affirmative overcoming of nihilism.

This six volume Routledge Library Edition set is dedicated to the work of key nineteenth-century German thinker, Friedrich Nietzsche, whose hugely influential work in the field of philosophy continues to be felt to this day. The six volumes, published between 1948 and 1988, represent a truly wide-ranging analysis of Nietzsche 's life and work, offering an excellent overview of the cannon of critical analysis and interpretation on Nietzsche in the twentieth century. The collection covers Nietzsche 's perspectives and influence upon a variety of sociological and philosophical debates, as well as placing his work in the context of contemporaries such as Richard Wagner, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Max Stirner.

Seventeenth-century philosophy scholars come together in this volume to address the Insiders--Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, and Hobbes--and Outsiders--Pierre Gassendi, Kenelm Digby, Theophilus Gale, Ralph Cudworth and Nicholas Malebranche--of the philosocial canon, and the ways in which reputations are created and confirmed. In their own day, these ten figures were all considered to be thinkers of substantial repute, and it took some time for the Insiders to come to be regarded as major and original philosophers. Today these Insiders all feature in the syllabi of most history of philosophy courses taught in western universities, and the papers in this collection, contrasting the stories of their receptions with those of the Outsiders, give an insight into the history of philosophy which is generally overlooked.

J. R. and Philip Milton present the first critical edition of John Locke's Essay concerning Toleration and a number of other writings on law and politics composed between 1667 and 1683. Although Locke never published any of these works himself they are of very great interest for students of his intellectual development because they are markedly different from the early works he wrote while at Oxford and show him working out ideas that were to appear in his mature political writings, the Two Treatises of Government and the Epistola de Tolerantia. The Essay concerning Toleration was written in 1667, shortly after Locke had taken up residence in the household of his patron Lord Ashley, subsequently Earl of Shaftesbury. It has been in print since the nineteenth century, but this volume contains the first critical edition based on all the extant manuscripts; it also contains a detailed account of Locke's arguments and of the contemporary debates on comprehension and toleration. Also included are a number of shorter writings on church and state, including a short set of queries on Scottish church government (1668), Locke's notes on Samuel Parker (1669), and 'Excommunication' (1674). The other two main works contained in this volume are rather different in character . One is a short tract on jury selection which was written at the time of Shaftesbury's imprisonment in 1681. The other is 'A Letter from a Person of Quality', a political pamphlet written by or for Shaftesbury in 1675 as part of his campaign against the Earl of Danby. This was published anonymously and is of disputed authorship; it was first attributed to Locke in 1720 and since then has occupied an uncertain position in the Locke canon. This volume contains the first critical edition based on contemporary printed editions and manuscripts and it includes a detailed account of the Letter's composition, authorship, and subsequent history. This volume will be an invaluable resource for all historians of early modern philosophy, of legal, political, and religious thought, and of 17th century Britain.

Modernity between Wagner and Nietzsche analyzes the operas and writings of Wagner in order to prove that the ideas on which they are based contradict and falsify the values that are fundamental to modernity. This book also analyzes the ideas that are central to the philosophy of Nietzsche, demonstrating that the values on the basis of which he breaks with Wagner and repudiates their common mentor, Schopenhauer, are those fundamental to modernity. Brayton Polka makes use of the critical distinction that Kierkegaard draws between Christianity and Christendom. Christianity represents what Nietzsche calls the faith that is presupposed in unconditionally willing the truth in saying yes to life. Christendom, in contrast, represents the bad faith of nihilism in saying no to life. Polka then shows that Wagner, in following Schopenhauer, represents Christendom with the demonstration in his operas that life is nothing but death and death is nothing but life. In other words, the purpose of the will for Wagner is to annihilate the will, since it is only in and through death that human beings are liberated from life as willfully sinful. Nietzsche, in contrast, is consistent with the biblical concept that existence is created from nothing, from nothing that is not made in the image of God, that any claim that the will can will not to will is contradictory and hence false. For not to will is, in truth, still to will nothing. There is then, Nietzsche shows, no escape from the will. Either human beings will the truth in saying yes to life as created from nothing, or in truly willing nothing, they say no to life in worshiping the God of Christendom who is dead.

'My Confession' is Tolstoy's chronicle of his journey to faith; his account of how he moved from despair to the possibility of living; from unhappy existence to 'the glow and strength of life'. It describes his spiritual and philosophical struggles up until he leaves the Orthodox Church, convinced that humans discover truth not by faith, but by reason. The story begins when at the age of 50, Tolstoy is in crisis. Having found no peace in art, science or philosophy, he is attacked by the black dog of despair, and considers suicide. His past life is reappraised and found wanting; as slowly light dawns within. 'As gradually, imperceptibly as life had decayed in me, until I reached the impossibility of living, so gradually I felt the glow and strength of life return to me... I returned to a belief in God.' Here is a quest for meaning at the close of the 19th century - a time of social, scientific and intellectual turbulence, in which old forms were under threat. Tolstoy looks around at both old and new alike, and like the author of Ecclesiastes, discovers that 'All is vanity'. His spiritual discoveries first take him into the arms of the Orthodox Church; and then force his angry departure from it. 'My Religion' carries on from where 'My Confession' left off. Describing himself as a former nihilist, Tolstoy develops his attack on the church he has left. He accuses them of hiding the true meaning of Jesus, which is to be found in the Sermon on the Mount; and most clearly, in the call not to resist evil. For Tolstoy, it is this command which has been most damaged by ecclesiastical interpretation. 'Not everyone, ' he writes, 'is able to understand the mysteries of dogmatics, homilectics, liturgics, hermeneutics, apologetics; but everyone is able and ought to understand what Christ said to the millions of simple and ignorant people who have lived and are living today.' Here is Tolstoy's religion; and non-violence is at its heart.

This book, the result of 40 years of Hegel research, gives an integral interpretation of G.W.F. Hegel's mature practical philosophy as contained in his textbook, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, published in 1820, and the courses he gave on the same subject between 1817 and 1830.

Continuum's Reader's Guides are clear, concise and accessible introductions to classic works of philosophy. Each book explores the major themes, historical and philosophical context and key passages of a major philosophical text, guiding the reader toward a thorough understanding of often demanding material. Ideal for undergraduate students, the guides provide an essential resource for anyone who needs to get to grips with a philosophical text.Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is arguably the most important work of philosophy of the last two centuries. It is a classic text that is encountered by virtually every student of philosophy. As such, this is a hugely important and exciting, yet notoriously challenging, piece of philosophical writing. In Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason': A Reader's Guide, James Luchte offers a clear and thorough account of this key philosophical work. The book offers a detailed review of the key themes and a lucid commentary that will enable readers to rapidly navigate the text. Geared towards the specific requirements of students who need to reach a sound understanding of the text as a whole, the guide explores the complex and important ideas inherent in the text and provides a cogent survey of the reception and influence of Kant's hugely important work.