This book argues that Nietzsche bases his affirmative morality on the model of individual responsiveness to otherness which he takes from the mythology of Dionysus. The subject is not free to choose to avoid such responding to the demands of the other. Nietzsche finds that the basic mode of responding is pleasure. This feeling, as a basis for morality, underlies the morality which is true to the earth and the major concepts of "will to power", "eternal return", and "amor fati". The priority of otherness makes all thought ethical and not only aesthetic. The basis of all meanings combines the fundamental impulse of responding outwards with an immediate complement in the individual interpretation-world. This is specifically ethical because the recognition of our own historical specificity arises as a result of the refusal of others to become mere differences within our notion of the Same, and through their demand that we "become who we are" in the recognition of their separate existence.

Mill's "Utilitarianism" is one of the most important texts in the teaching of ethics. Utilitarianism as an ethical philosophy is one of the competing theories at the present time and Mill's "Utilitarianism" is the classic text in this area. As such, it is a hugely important and exciting, yet challenging piece of philosophical writing. In Mill's "'Utilitarianism': A Reader's Guide", Henry R. West 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 Mill's seminal work. This is the ideal companion to study of this most influential of texts. "Continuum Reader's Guides" are clear, concise and accessible introductions to key texts in literature and philosophy. Each book explores the themes, context, criticism and influence of key works, providing a practical introduction to close reading, guiding students towards a thorough understanding of the text. They provide an essential, up-to-date resource, ideal for undergraduate students.

This book, first published in 1936, divides into roughly two parts: a re-examination of historical material; and a positive theory of causation suggested by the results of this re-examination. The historical study discloses an ambiguity in the meanings of causation and determinism; it discloses also that this ambiguity is transferred to the meaning of freedom.

Drawing on over a century of international Nietzschean scholarship, this groundbreaking book discusses some of the unexplored psychological reaches of Nietzsche's thought, as well as their implications for psychotherapeutic practice. Nietzsche's philosophy anticipated some of the most innovative cultural movements of the last century, from expressionism and surrealism to psychoanalysis, humanistic psychology and phenomenology. But his work on psychology often remains discarded, despite its many insights. Addressing this oversight, and in an age of managerialism and evidence-based practice, this book helps to redefine psychotherapy as an experiment that explores the limits and intricacies of human experience. It builds the foundations for a differentialist psychology: a life-affirming project that can deal squarely with the challenges, joys and sorrows of being human. Nietzsche and Psychotherapy will be of great interest to researchers interested in the relationship between psychotherapy and philosophy, Nietzschean scholars, as well as to clinicians grappling with the challenges of working in the so-called "post-truth" age.

A work of Nietzsche's later years, The Antichrist (1888) was written after Thus Spoke Zarathustra and shortly before the mental collapse that incapacitated him for the rest of his life. This work is both an unrestrained attack on Christianity and a further exposition of Nietzsche's will-to-power philosophy so dramatically presented in Zarathustra. Christianity, says Nietzsche, represents "everything weak, low, and botched; it has made an ideal out of antagonism towards all the self-preservative instincts of strong life". By contrast, Nietzsche defines good as: "All that enhances the feeling of power, the Will to Power, and power itself in man. What is bad? -- All that proceeds from weakness. What is happiness? -- The feeling that power is increasing, -- that resistance has been overcome". In attempting to redefine the basis of Western values by demolishing the formative influence of the Judeo-Christian tradition, The Antichrist has proved to be highly controversial and continuously stimulating to later generations of philosophers.

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Nietzsche and Jewish Political Theology is the first book to explore the impact of Friedrich Nietzsche's work on the formation of Jewish political theology during the first half of the twentieth century. It maps the many ways in which early Jewish thinkers grappled with Nietzsche's powerful ideas about politics, morality, and religion in the process of forging a new and modern Jewish culture. The book explores the stories of some of the most important Jewish thinkers who utilized Nietzsche's writings in crafting the intellectual foundations of Jewish modern political theology. These figures' political convictions ranged from orthodox conservatism to pacifist anarchism, and their attitude towards Nietzsche's ideas varied from enthusiastic embrace to ambivalence and outright rejection. By bringing these diverse figures together, the book makes a convincing argument about Nietzsche's importance for key figures of early Zionism and modern Jewish political thought. The present study offers a new interpretation of a particular theological position which is called "heretical religiosity." Only with modernity and, paradoxically, with rapid secularization, did one find "heretical religiosity" at full strength. Nietzsche enabled intellectual Jews to transform the foundation of their political existence. It provides a new perspective on the adaptation of Nietzsche's philosophy in the age of Jewish national politics, and at the same time is a case study in the intellectual history of the modern Jewry. This new reading on Nietzsche's work is a valuable resource for students and researchers interested in philosophy, Jewish history and political theology.

Human rights are thought to guarantee pluralism by protecting individual liberty from imposed religious conceptions of virtue. Yet critics often argue that this secular focus on merely avoiding violations can also enable unfettered individualism and undermine appeals to the common good. This book uncovers in secular rights pioneer Hugo Grotius a rights theory that points toward the enlargement of individual responsibility. It grounds this connection in Grotius' unexplored theological corpus, which reveals a dual metaethics and jurisprudence. Here a deontological natural law undergirds a secular theory of rights that is self-aware of its own limitations. A teleological practical reason then guides the exercise of these rights, so as not to compromise the political order that defends them. The book then illustrates this symbiosis of rights and responsibilities in five areas: consent theories of government, rights of rebellion, criminal punishment, war and international responsibility, and Atonement theology. This reassesses Grotius' legacy as a secularist opponent of classical political thought, and suggests that modern liberalism and universal human rights are compatible with a world of resurgent religion.

This book" "provides a novel treatment of Immanuel Kant's views on proper natural science and biology. The status of biology in Kant's system of science is often taken to be problematic. By analyzing Kant's philosophy of biology in relation to his conception of proper science, the present book determines Kant's views on the scientific status of biology. Combining a broad "ideengeschichtlich" approach with a detailed historical reconstruction of philosophical and scientific texts, the book establishes important interconnections between Kant's philosophy of science, his views on biology, and his reception of late 18th century biological theories. It discusses Kant's views on science and biology as articulated in his published writings and in the "Opus postumum." The book shows that although biology is a non-mathematical science and the relation between biology and other natural sciences is not specified, Kant did allow for the possibility of providing scientific explanations in biology and assigned biology a specific domain of investigation. "

"

Marx After Marxism" encourages readers to understand Karl Marx in new ways, unencumbered by political Marxist interpretations that have long dominated the discussions of both Marxists and non-Marxists. This volume gives a broad and accessible account of Marx's philosophy and emphasizes his relationship to Hegel.

Marxism has always claimed and still claims a privileged relation to Marx's theories. It typically presents a view of Marx that is widely accepted by Marxists, non-Marxists, and even anti-Marxists, unfortunately without careful scrutiny. This book argues that political Marxist influence obscures, transforms, distorts, and renders inaccessible Marx's basic philosophical insights. It concentrates on recovering Marx's philosophical ideas not in opposition to, but rather within, the larger Hegelian framework.

Now that we have seen the end of political Marxism's peak global influence, it is possible, for perhaps the first time, to depict Marx as a philosopher who began to think within, and remained within, the German philosophical tradition.

One of the most iconoclastic philosophers of all time, Nietzsche dramatically rejected notions of good and evil, truth and God. Beyond Good and Evil demonstrates that the world is steeped in false piety and infected with a 'slave morality'. With wit and subversive energy, Nietzsche demands that the individual impose their own 'will to power' upon the world.

Best known as the Saducismus triumphatus (1681), Joseph Glanvill's book on witchcraft is among the most frequently published from the seventeenth century, and its arguments for the reality of diabolic witchcraft elicited passionate responses from critics and supporters alike. Davies untangles the intricate development of this text and explores how Glanvill's roles as theologian, philosopher and advocate for the Royal Society of London converge in its pages. Glanvill's broader philosophical method and unique approach to the supernatural provide a case study that enables the exploration of the interaction between the rise of experimental science and changing attitudes to witchcraft.

Christian Discourses contains some of Kierkegaard's most constructive religious and social thought, founded on his deepening appreciation of the ambiguity of our common human situation before a loving yet commanding God. ""Christian Discourses"" is a collection of provocative arguments and insights which should redefine the approach to Kierkegaard's 'attack on Christendom' and provoke a useful debate about the significance of his 'second literature'.

This book presents the first accessible analysis of Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-politicus, situating the work in the context of Spinoza's general philosophy and its 17th-century historical background. According to Spinoza it is impossible for a being to be infinitely perfect and to have a legislative will. This idea, demonstrated in the Ethics, is presupposed and further elaborated in the Tractatus Theologico-politicus. It implies not only that on the level of truth all revealed religion is false, but also that all authority is of human origin and that all obedience is rooted in a political structure. The consequences for authority as it is used in a religious context are explored: the authority of Scripture, the authority of particular interpretations of Scripture, and the authority of the Church. Verbeek also explores the work of two other philosophers of the period - Hobbes and Descartes - to highlight certain peculiarities of Spinoza's position, and to show the contrasts between their theories.

Hegel's debts to ancient philosophy are widely acknowledged by scholars, and by the philosopher himself. Roughly half of his Lectures on the History of Philosophy is devoted to ancient philosophy, and throughout his work Hegel frequently frames his positions in relation to the thinkers and movements of antiquity. This volume presents original essays from leading scholars dealing with Hegel's debts to ancient thinkers, as well as his own, often problematic readings of ancient philosophy. While around half of the chapters discuss Hegel's treatment of Aristotle-a topic that has long been at the forefront of scholarship-the other half explore his relationship to such ancient figures as Xenophanes, Anaxagoras, Socrates, Plato, Sextus Empiricus, and the Stoics. The essays challenge a number of longstanding scholarly assumptions regarding, for example, Hegel's denigration of the "mythical," his developmentalist approach to ancient thought, his conception of the state in relation to the Greek polis, his "hermeneutic" of the Platonic dialogues, and his use of Aristotelian concepts in arguments concerning the psyche, the body, and their unity and distinction.

In this book, author Lucas Murrey argues that the thinking of the modern German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1944-1900) is not only more grounded in antiquity than previously understood, but is also based on the Dionysian spirit of Greece which scholars have still to confront. This book demonstrates that Nietzsche's philosophy is unique within Western thought as it retrieves the politics of a Dionysiac model and language to challenge the alienation of humans from nature and one another. Murrey develops here a new picture of Greece, reminding readers how money emerged and rapidly developed in Greece during the sixth century B.C.E. The event of monetization created the new art form of tragedy: money-tyrants struggling against the forces of earth and communities who consequently suffered isolation, blindness, and death. As Murrey points out, Nietzsche (unconsciously) retrieves the battle among money, nature, and community and adapts its lessons to our time. Additionally, Nietzsche's philosophy not only adapts the wisdom of Dionysus to question the unlimited "glow and fuel" of a "ponderous herd" of money-tyrants today, but it also draws attention to Greece's warnings about the lethal danger of the eyes in myth, cult, and theatre. This work introduces a much needed vision of Nietzschean thought, and it emphasizes the relevance of an interdisciplinary approach combining philosophy with literary studies and psychology with religious and visual/media studies. When applied to our present circumstance, the approach of this book reveals how a dangerous visual culture, through its support of the limitlessness of money, is harming our relationship with nature and each other.

Emily Grosholz offers an original investigation of demonstration in mathematics and science, examining how it works and why it is persuasive. Focusing on geometrical demonstration, she shows the roles that representation and ambiguity play in mathematical discovery. She presents a wide range of case studies in mechanics, topology, algebra, logic, and chemistry, from ancient Greece to the present day, but focusing particularly on the seventeenth and twentieth centuries. She argues that reductive methods are effective not because they diminish but because they multiply and juxtapose modes of representation. Such problem-solving is, she argues, best understood in terms of Leibnizian "analysis"--the search for conditions of intelligibility. Discovery and justification are then two aspects of one rational way of proceeding, which produces the mathematician's formal experience.
Grosholz defends the importance of iconic, as well as symbolic and indexical, signs in mathematical representation, and argues that pragmatic, as well as syntactic and semantic, considerations are indispensable fore mathematical reasoning. By taking a close look at the way results are presented on the page in mathematical (and biological, chemical, and mechanical) texts, she shows that when two or more traditions combine in the service of problem solving, notations and diagrams are subtly altered, multiplied, and juxtaposed, and surrounded by prose in natural language which explains the novel combination. Viewed this way, the texts yield striking examples of language and notation that are irreducibly ambiguous and productive because they are ambiguous. Grosholtz's arguments, which invoke Descartes, Locke, Hume, and Kant, will be of considerable interest to philosophers and historians of mathematics and science, and also have far-reaching consequences for epistemology and philosophy of language.

This book engages in a broad reading of Rousseau's writings on educational and political thought in order to explore and address the competing demands of the enculturation and individuation of the young in Western societies. Although Rousseau's Emile has been frequently utilised in educational debate, much of his other work has been largely neglected, as too has the relationship between his educational and political thinking, which this work seeks to redress. Drawing on the thinking of philosophers Foucault and Richard Rorty, the book considers the public and private conflicts of education and politics in modern societies, treating them as the tension between the demands of truth and freedom. This tension exists across a range of educational and political systems, such as teaching in and by the family, school, the government and, separately, for women. Wain suggests that the conflict between truth and freedom began with Rousseau and remains a central challenge in our contemporary world of political and educational thought. This book's examination of the public and private roles in education and politics can enhance our understanding of modern educational systems and current political nihilism. Between Truth and Freedom provides an analysis of Rousseau's position on the politics of education, arguing that his thoughts were much wider and more sophisticated than the ideas presented in Emile imply. This new consideration of the work of a classic figure will appeal to researchers and academics in the fields of the philosophy of education and political education.

This title, first published in 1943, aims to discover and discuss the convictions which the philosopher Thomas Carlyle believed to be of importance for his time, and the ways in which he personally entertained these ideas. In doing this F. A. Lea has concentrated attention on the works which Carlyle himself regarded as containing all that was essential to his message. This title will be of interest to students of philosophy and history.

This volume explores the themes of vanishing matter, matter and the laws of nature, the qualities of matter, and the diversity of the debates about matter in the early modern period. Chapters are unified by a number of interlocking themes which together enable some of the broader contours of the philosophy of matter to be charted in new ways. Part I concerns Cartesian Matter; Part II covers Matter, Mechanism and Medicine; Part III covers Matter and the Laws of Motion; and Part IV covers Leibniz and Hume. Bringing together some of the world's leading scholars of early modern philosophy, as well as some exciting new researchers, Vanishing Matter and the Laws of Motion stakes out new territory that all serious scholars of early modern philosophy and science will want to traverse.

Why is there a material world? Why is it fundamentally mathematical? Matter Matters explores a seventeenth-century answer to these questions as it emerged from the works of Descartes and Leibniz. The "mathematization" of the physics is shown to have been conceptually underwritten by two methods of philosophizing, namely, analysis and synthesis. The connection between these things--mathematics, matter, and the methods of analysis and synthesis--has thus far gone unexplored by scholars. The book is in four Parts: Part I works out the context in which the theory of modern matter arose. Part II develops the method of analysis, showing how it aligns with Descartes's famous doctrine of clear and distinct ideas. Part III develops the method of synthesis, focusing primarily on Leibniz, showing how it establishes the very conditions necessary and sufficient for mathematics. Analysis and synthesis turn out to establish isomorphic conceptual systems, which turn out to be isomorphic to what mathematicians today call a group. The group concept expresses the conditions underwriting all of mathematics. Part IV examines several relatively new interpretations of Descartes--the realist and idealist readings--which appear to be at odds with one another. The examination shows the sense in which these readings are actually compatible, and together reveal a richer picture of Descartes's position on the reality of matter. Ultimately, Matter Matters establishes the claim that mathematics is intelligible if, and only if, matter exists.

Contrary to the long-cherished opinion of John Locke's infatuation with natural law, there is abundant proof that the amount of intellectual energy Locke devoted to his philosophical views was nowhere as narrow as the attempt to justify a natural law outlook. John Locke's Moral Revolution critiques two traditional approaches to John Locke's philosophy. The first approach interprets John Locke as committed to justifying his early his early Christian / Aristotelian views of the law of nature. The second approach sees Locke attempting to manage a cluster of inconsistent moral views. In this new work, author Samuel Zinaich, Jr. argues that Locke attempts to establish a solid underpinning for religious, moral, and political ideas upon the philosophy of corpuscularism.

Kant once famously declared in the Prolegomena that "it was the objection of David Hume that first, many years ago, interrupted my dogmatic slumber." Abraham Anderson here offers an interpretation of this utterance, arguing that Hume roused Kant not (as has often been thought) by challenging the principle that "every event has a cause" which governs experience, but rather by attacking the principle of sufficient reason, the basis of both rationalist metaphysics and the cosmological proof of the existence of God. This suggestion, Anderson proposes, allows us to reconcile Kant's declaration with his later assertion that it was the Antinomy of pure reason - the clash of opposing theses - that first woke him from dogmatic slumber. For the Antinomy suspends the dogmatic principle of sufficient reason; in doing so, Anderson proposes, it is extending Hume's attack on that principle. This reading of Kant also explains why Kant speaks of "the objection of David Hume" after mentioning Hume's attack on metaphysics. The "objection" that Kant has in mind, Anderson argues, is a challenge to metaphysics, rather than to the foundations of empirical knowledge. Consequently, Anderson's analysis issues a new view of Hume himself-as primarily interested, not in the foundations of experience, but in the problem of metaphysics and theology. It thereby positions Kant and Hume as champions of the Enlightenment in its struggle with superstition. Shedding new light on the connection between two of the most influential figures in the history of philosophy, this volume will appeal not only to scholars of Kant, Hume, and early modern philosophy, but to philosophers and students interested in the history of philosophy and metaphysics generally.

This book introduces architects to a philosopher, Immanuel Kant, whose work was constantly informed by a concern for the world as an evolving whole. According to Kant, in this interconnected and dynamic world, humans should act as mutually dependent and responsible subjects. Given his future-oriented and ethico-politically concerned thinking, Kant is a thinker who clearly speaks to architects. This introduction demonstrates how his ideas bear pertinently and creatively upon the world in which we live now and for which we should care thoughtfully. Kant grounded his enlightened vision of philosophy's mission using an architectural metaphor: of the modest 'dwelling-house'. Far from constructing speculative 'castles in the sky' or vertiginous 'towers which reach to the heavens', he tells us that his humble aim is rather to build a 'secure home for ourselves', one which appropriately corresponds at once to the limited material resources available on our planet, and to our need for firm and solid principles to live by. This book also explores Kant's notions of cosmopolitics, which attempts to think politics from a global perspective by taking into account the geographical fact that the earth is a sphere with limited land mass and natural resources. Given the urgent topicality of sustainable development, these Kantian texts are of particular interest for architects of today. Students of architecture, who are necessarily trained in negotiating between theory and practice, gain much from considering Kant, whose critical project also consisted of testing and exploring the viability of ideas, so as to ascertain to what extent, and crucially, how ideas can have a constructive effect on the whole world, and on us as active agents therein.