Though Edmund Burke is usually identified as the first to articulate the principles of a modern conservative political tradition, he was actually preceded by a Scotsman who is better known for espousing a brilliant concept of scepticism. David Hume was undoubtedly the eighteenth-century British writer whose works were most widely known and acclaimed on the Continent during the later Enlightenment period. Hume's impact [in France] was of undeniable importance, greater even for a time than the related influence of Burke, although it represents a contribution to French counter-revolutionary thought which, unlike that of Burke, has been almost totally ignored by historians to this day.

In Phenomenology of Spirit (1806) Hegel is often held to have announced the end of history, where 'history' is to be understood as the long pursuit of ends towards which humanity had always been striving. In this, the first book in English to thoroughly critique this entrenched view, Eric Michael Dale argues that it is a misinterpretation. Dale offers a reading of his own, showing how it sits within the larger schema of Hegel's thought and makes room for an understanding of the 'end of history' as Hegel intended. Through an elegant analysis of Hegel's philosophy of history, Dale guides the reader away from the common misinterpretation of the 'end of history' to other valuable elements of Hegel's arguments which are often overlooked and deserve to endure. His book will be of great interest to scholars and advanced students of Hegel, the philosophy of history, and the history of political thought.

The novel understanding of the physical world that characterized the Scientific Revolution depended on a fundamental shift in the way its protagonists understood and described space. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, spatial phenomena were described in relation to a presupposed central point; by its end, space had become a centerless void in which phenomena could only be described by reference to arbitrary orientations. David Marshall Miller examines both the historical and philosophical aspects of this far-reaching development, including the rejection of the idea of heavenly spheres, the advent of rectilinear inertia, and the theoretical contributions of Copernicus, Gilbert, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, and Newton. His rich study shows clearly how the centered Aristotelian cosmos became the oriented Newtonian universe, and will be of great interest to students and scholars of the history and philosophy of science.

Descartes' Meditations is one of the most thoroughly analyzed of all philosophical texts. Nevertheless, central issues in Descartes' thought remain unresolved, particularly the problem of the Cartesian Circle. Most attempts to deal with that problem have weakened the force of Descartes' own doubts or weakened the goals he was seeking. In this book, Stephen I. Wagner gives Descartes' doubts their strongest force and shows how he overcomes those doubts, establishing with metaphysical certainty the existence of a non-deceiving God and the truth of his clear and distinct perceptions. Wagner's innovative and thorough reading of the text clarifies a wide range of other issues that have been left unclear by previous commentaries, including the nature of the cogito discovery and the relationship between Descartes' proofs of God's existence. His book will be of great interest to scholars and upper-level students of Descartes, early modern philosophy and theology.

Reissued in its revised 1866 second edition, this work by John Stuart Mill (1806-73) discusses the positivist views of the French philosopher and social scientist Auguste Comte (1798-1857). Comte is regarded as the founder of positivism, the doctrine that all knowledge must derive from sensory experience. The two-part text was originally printed as two articles in the Westminster Review in 1865. Part 1 offers an analysis of Comte's earlier works on positivism in the natural and social sciences, while Part 2 considers its application in areas such as religion and ethics. Mill states that Comte is the first philosopher who has attempted to extend positivism 'to all objects of human knowledge'. Despite being critical of a number of Comte's views, such as the exclusion of psychology from positivist science, Mill acknowledges his fellow philosopher's influence in the face of common negative perceptions of the positivist movement.

George Berkeley (1685-1753), Bishop of Cloyne, was an Irish philosopher and divine who pursued a number of grand causes, contributing to the fields of economics, mathematics, political theory and theology. He pioneered the theory of 'immaterialism', and his work ranges over many philosophical issues that remain of interest today. This volume offers a complete and accurate edition of Berkeley's extant correspondence, including letters written both by him and to him, supplemented by extensive explanatory and critical notes. Alexander Pope famously said 'To Berkeley every virtue under heaven', and a careful reading of the letters reveals a figure worthy of admiration, sheds new light on his personal and intellectual life, and provides insight into the broad historical and philosophical currents of his time. The volume will be an invaluable resource for philosophers, modern historians and those interested in Anglo-Irish culture.

With its pessimistic vision and bleak message of world-denial, it has often been difficult to know how to engage with Schopenhauer's philosophy. Schopenhauer's arguments have seemed flawed and his doctrines marred by inconsistencies; his very pessimism almost too flamboyant to be believable. Yet a way of redrawing this engagement stands open, Sophia Vasalou argues, if we attend more closely to the visionary power of Schopenhauer's work. The aim of this book is to place the aesthetic character of Schopenhauer's standpoint at the heart of the way we read his philosophy and the way we answer the question: why read Schopenhauer - and how? Approaching his philosophy as an enactment of the sublime with a longer history in the ancient philosophical tradition, Vasalou provides a fresh way of assessing Schopenhauer's relevance in critical terms. This book will be valuable for students and scholars with an interest in post-Kantian philosophy and ancient ethics.

Offering more detailed explanatory notes than earlier versions, this edition reprints together for the first time all of Paine's introductions to the versions published in his lifetime. In his own richly informed Introduction, Claeys elucidates the historical context and the subsequent influence of Paine's text, as well as the major problems in interpreting Paine's theory. Instructors will find this new edition a worthy counterpoint to the Hackett edition of Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, edited by J. G. A. Pocock.

Against the background of early modernism - a period that justified punishment by general deterrence - Kant is usually thought to represent a radical turn towards retributivism. For Kant, and later for Fichte and Hegel, a just punishment respects the humanity inherent in the criminal, and serves no external ends - it is instituted only because the criminal deserves it. In this original study, Jean-Christophe Merle uses close analysis of texts to show that these philosophers did not in fact hold a retributivist position, or even a mixed position; instead he traces in their work the gradual emergence of views in favour of deterrence and resocialisation. He also examines Nietzsche's view that morality rests on the rejection of retribution. His final chapter offers a challenge to the retributivist position, and a defence of resocialisation, in the context of current legal theory and practice concerning the punishment of crimes against humanity.

Garrett Sullivan explores the changing impact of Aristotelian conceptions of vitality and humanness on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literature before and after the rise of Descartes. Aristotle's tripartite soul is usually considered in relation to concepts of psychology and physiology. However, Sullivan argues that its significance is much greater, constituting a theory of vitality that simultaneously distinguishes man from, and connects him to, other forms of life. He contends that, in works such as Sidney's Old Arcadia, Shakespeare's Henry IV and Henry V, Spenser's Faerie Queene, Milton's Paradise Lost and Dryden's All for Love, the genres of epic and romance, whose operations are informed by Aristotle's theory, provide the raw materials for exploring different models of humanness; and that sleep is the vehicle for such exploration as it blurs distinctions among man, plant and animal.

The early modern era produced the Scientific Revolution, which originated our present understanding of the natural world. Concurrently, philosophers established the conceptual foundations of modernity. This rich and comprehensive volume surveys and illuminates the numerous and complicated interconnections between philosophical and scientific thought as both were radically transformed from the late sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth century. The chapters explore reciprocal influences between philosophy and physics, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, and other disciplines, and show how thinkers responded to an immense range of intellectual, material, and institutional influences. The volume offers a unique perspicuity, viewing the entire landscape of early modern philosophy and science, and also marks an epoch in contemporary scholarship, surveying recent contributions and suggesting future investigations for the next generation of scholars and students.

Kierkegaard's writings are interspersed with remarkable stories of love, commonly understood as a literary device that illustrates the problematic nature of aesthetic and ethical forms of life, and the contrasting desirability of the life of faith. Sharon Krishek argues that for Kierkegaard the connection between love and faith is far from being merely illustrative. Rather, love and faith have a common structure, and are involved with one another in a way that makes it impossible to love well without faith. Remarkably, this applies to romantic love no less than to neighbourly love. Krishek's original and compelling interpretation of the Works of Love in the light of Kierkegaard's famous analysis of the paradoxicality of faith in Fear and Trembling shows that preferential love, and in particular romantic love, plays a much more important and positive role in his thinking than has usually been assumed.

Descartes's Meditations on First Philosophy, published in Latin in 1641, is one of the most widely studied philosophical texts of all time, and inaugurates many of the key themes that have remained central to philosophy ever since. In his original Latin text Descartes expresses himself with great lucidity and elegance, and there is enormous interest, even for those who are not fluent in Latin, in seeing how the famous concepts and arguments of his great masterpiece unfold in the original language. John Cottingham's acclaimed English translation of the work is presented here in a facing-page edition alongside the original Latin text. Students of classical philosophy have long had the benefit of dual-language editions, and the availability of such a resource for the canonical works of the early-modern period is long overdue. This volume now makes available, in an invaluable dual-language format, one of the most seminal texts of Western philosophy.

In western philosophy today, the three leading approaches to normative ethics are those of Kantian ethics, virtue ethics and utilitarianism. In recent years the debate between Kantian ethicists and virtue ethicists has assumed an especially prominent position. The twelve newly commissioned essays in this volume, by leading scholars in both traditions, explore key aspects of each approach as related to the debate, and identify new common ground but also real and lasting differences between these approaches. The volume provides a rich overview of the continuing debate between two powerful forms of enquiry, and will be valuable for a wide range of students and scholars working in these fields.

Leibniz states that 'metaphysics is natural theology', and this is especially true of his metaphysics of modality. In this book, Michael V. Griffin examines the deep connection between the two and the philosophical consequences which follow from it. Grounding many of Leibniz's modal conceptions in his theology, Griffin develops a new interpretation of the ontological argument in Leibniz and Descartes. This interpretation demonstrates that their understanding God's necessary existence cannot be construed in contemporary modal logical terms. He goes on to develop a necessitarian interpretation of Leibniz, arguing that Leibniz, like Spinoza, is committed to the thesis that everything actual is metaphysically necessary, but that Leibniz rejects Spinoza's denial of God's moral perfection. His book will appeal to scholars of early modern philosophy and philosophers interested in modal metaphysics and the philosophy of religion.

Many philosophers and scientists over the course of history have held that the world is alive. It has a soul, which governs it and binds it together. This suggestion, once so wide-spread, may strike many of us today as strange and antiquated-in fact, there are few other concepts that, on their face, so capture the sheer distance between us and our philosophical inheritance. But the idea of a world soul has held so strong a grip upon philosophers' imaginations for over 2,000 years, that it continues to underpin and even structure how we conceive of time and space. The concept of the world soul is difficult to understand in large part because over the course of history it has been invoked to very different ends and within the frameworks of very different ontologies and philosophical systems, with varying concepts of the world soul emerging as a result. This volume brings together eleven chapters by leading philosophers in their respective fields that collectively explore the various ways in which this concept has been understood and employed, covering the following philosophical areas: Platonism, Stoicism, Medieval, Indian or Vedantic, Kabbalah, Renaissance, Early Modern, German Romanticism, German Idealism, American Transcendentalism, and contemporary quantum mechanics and panpsychism theories. In addition, short reflections illuminate the impact the concept of the world soul has had on a small selection of areas outside of philosophy, such as harmony, the biological concept of spontaneous generation, Henry Purcell, psychoanalysis, and Gaia theories.

This study shows how Kierkegaard's mature theological writings reflect his engagement with the wide range of theological positions which he encountered as a student, including German and Danish Romanticism, Hegelianism and the writings of Fichte and Schleiermacher. George Pattison draws on both major and lesser-known works to show the complexity and nuances of Kierkegaard's theological position, which remained closer to Schleiermacher's affirmation of religion as a 'feeling of absolute dependence' than to the Barthian denial of any 'point of contact', with which he is often associated. Pattison also explores ways in which Kierkegaard's theological thought can be related to thinkers such as Heidegger and John Henry Newman, and its continuing relevance to present-day debates about secular faith. His volume will be of great interest to scholars and students of philosophy and theology.

There can be little doubt that without Spinoza, German Idealism would have been just as impossible as it would have been without Kant. Yet the precise nature of Spinoza's influence on the German Idealists has hardly been studied in detail. This volume of essays by leading scholars sheds light on how the appropriation of Spinoza by Fichte, Schelling and Hegel grew out of the reception of his philosophy by, among others, Lessing, Mendelssohn, Jacobi, Herder, Goethe, Schleiermacher, Maimon and, of course, Kant. The volume thus not only illuminates the history of Spinoza's thought, but also initiates a genuine philosophical dialogue between the ideas of Spinoza and those of the German Idealists. The issues at stake - the value of humanity; the possibility and importance of self-negation; the nature and value of reason and imagination; human freedom; teleology; intuitive knowledge; the nature of God - remain of the highest philosophical importance today.

Originally printed in 1906 as a limited edition of two hundred and fifty copies, this book contains the essays of Francis Bacon, drawn from the edition of 1625. Bacon covers a variety of topics in his essays, including cunning, atheism, love and goodness. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Bacon's work or seventeenth-century philosophy.

The problem of whether we should love ourselves - and if so how - has particular resonance within Christian thought and is an important yet underinvestigated theme in the writings of Soren Kierkegaard. In Works of Love, Kierkegaard argues that the friendships and romantic relationships which we typically treasure most are often merely disguised forms of 'selfish' self-love. Yet in this nuanced and subtle account, John Lippitt shows that Kierkegaard also provides valuable resources for responding to the challenge of how we can love ourselves, as well as others. Lippitt relates what it means to love oneself properly to such topics as love of God and neighbour, friendship, romantic love, self-denial and self-sacrifice, trust, hope and forgiveness. The book engages in detail with Works of Love, related Kierkegaard texts and important recent studies, and also addresses a wealth of wider literature in ethics, moral psychology and philosophy of religion.

First published in 1990. The aim of this thesis is to show that the way to understand the central claims of Kant's ethics is to accept the idea that morality is a distinctive form of rationality; that the moral "ought" belongs to a system of imperatives based in practical reason; and that moral judgment, therefore, is a species of rational assessment of agents' actions. It argues, in effect, that you cannot understand Kant's views about morality if you read him with Humean assumptions about rationality. This title will be of interest to students of philosophy.

In On Tocqueville, Alan Ryan brilliantly illuminates the observations of the French sociologist Alexis de Tocqueville, who first journeyed to the United States in 1831 and went on to catalog the unique features of the American social contract in his two-volume masterpiece, Democracy in America. Often thought of as the father of "American Exceptionalism," Tocqueville sought to observe the social conditions of emerging political equality in America, "a river that may be channeled but cannot be stopped in its course." In choosing America, he posed a central question of how a moderate, stable, and constitutional government is to be maintained in the wake of a revolution. As a dispassionate visitor, Tocqueville wanted to discover the social, moral, and economic arrangements that made liberty and self-government possible.

In doing so, Tocqueville made a number of prescient observations about American life whether it be the contrast between equality and liberty or Americans belief that they all belong to the middle class that remain as relevant today as when they were first written. While Tocqueville is often praised by both conservatives and liberals, either for his distrust of big government and fondness for decentralized power or for his concern with association and community, both tend to overlook his contempt for the coarse appearance of the individual members of Congress as well as his enthusiasm for the brutal nature of our prison system. Alan Ryan examines the often complicated and elusive Democracy in America, tracing the influence of writers such as Rousseau, Montesquieu, and Guizot, and explaining Tocqueville s original conceptions of equality and individualism within their historical context. In Ryan s hands, On Tocqueville becomes the perfect introduction and guide to Democracy in America.

On Tocqueville: Democracy and America features:

a chronology of Alexis de Tocqueville's life

an introduction and text by Alan Ryan that provides crucial context and cogent analysis

key excerpts from Democracy in America"

Originally published in 1950, this book contains an edited version of the French text of Ernest Renan's 1871 work La reforme intellectuelle et morale, in which Renan makes suggestions intended to improve France in the wake of its defeat by Germany in the Franco-Prussian War. Charvet supplies a biographical note at the beginning of the book explaining Renan's life and opinions. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in French history and the work of Renan.

Debates over the 'end of art' have tended to obscure Hegel's work on the arts themselves. Benjamin Rutter opens this study with a defence of art's indispensability to Hegel's conception of modernity; he then seeks to reorient discussion toward the distinctive values of painting, poetry, and the novel. Working carefully through Hegel's four lecture series on aesthetics, he identifies the expressive possibilities particular to each medium. Thus, Dutch genre scenes animate the everyday with an appearance of vitality; metaphor frees language from prose; and Goethe's lyrics revive the banal routines of love with imagination and wit. Rutter's important study reconstructs Hegel's view not only of modern art but of modern life and will appeal to philosophers, literary theorists, and art historians alike.

The concept of autonomy is one of Kant's central legacies for contemporary moral thought. We often invoke autonomy as both a moral ideal and a human right, especially a right to determine oneself independently of foreign determinants; indeed, to violate a person's autonomy is considered to be a serious moral offence. Yet while contemporary philosophy claims Kant as the originator of its notion of autonomy, Kant's own conception of the term seems to differ in important respects from our present-day interpretation. Kant on Moral Autonomy brings together a distinguished group of scholars who explore the following questions: what is Kant's conception of autonomy? What is its history and its influence on contemporary conceptions? And what is its moral significance? Their essays will be of interest both to scholars and students working on Kantian moral philosophy and to anyone interested in the subject of autonomy.