This volume comprises seventeen essays by Henry E. Allison, one of the world's leading Kant scholars. They cover virtually the full spectrum of Allison's work on Kant, ranging from his epistemology, metaphysics, and moral theory to his views on teleology, political philosophy, the philosophy of history, and the philosophy of religion. But most of the essays revolve around three basic themes: the nature of transcendental idealism and its relation to other aspects of Kant's thought; freedom of the will; and the concept of the purposiveness of nature. The first two themes have been prominent in Allison's work on Kant since its inception. The essays on the third theme constitute a major new contribution to the understanding of Kant's 'critical' philosophy; their primary concern is to demonstrate the central place of the third Critique in Kant's thought. Among the notable features of Allison's essays is the presence of a significant comparative dimension, which places Kant's views in their historical context and explores their contemporary relevance. To this end, these views are contrasted with those of his major predecessors and immediate successors, as well as philosophers of the present day.

Pascal's Pensees is generally acknowledged as one of the greatest masterpieces of seventeenth-century France, an unfinished work which has both inspired and perplexed readers in succeeding centuries. Playing with Truth is the first comprehensive book on Pascal to be devoted to his use of key terms depicting the central subject of the Pensees, the human condition. Nicholas Hammond explores such fundamental notions as language and order, proceeding with a detailed analysis of the words inconstance, ennui, inquietude, bonheur, felicite, and justice. Developing and challenging the most recent scholarship about the text, Hammond identifies the crucial notion of play (as exemplified in the term divertissement) which underlies all these words and applies his findings to the notoriously unstable concept of truth. Through the fragmentary nature of the Pensees and the shifting meaning of terms, Pascal is shown to be deliberately engaging the reader in a game to make sense of the text. Giving an in-depth account of a many important critical controversies of the day, as well as offering a novel and provocative insight into the persuasive purpose of the Pensees, this study will be of interest to specialist and undergraduate readers alike.

The "aphoristic form causes difficulty," Nietzsche argued in 1887, for "today this form is not taken seriously enough." Nietzsche's Aphoristic Challenge addresses this continued neglect by examining the role of the aphorism in Nietzsche's writings, the generic traditions in which he writes, the motivations behind his turn to the aphorism, and the reasons for his sustained interest in the form. This literary-philosophical study argues that while the aphorism is the paradigmatic form for Nietzsche's writing, its function shifts as his thought evolves. His turn to the aphorism in Human, All Too Human arises not out of necessity, but from the new freedoms of expression enabled by his critiques of language and his emerging interest in natural science. Yet the model interpretation of an aphorism Nietzsche offers years later in On the Genealogy of Morals tells a different story, revealing more about how the mature Nietzsche wants his earlier works read than how they were actually written. This study argues nevertheless that consistencies emerge in Nietzsche's understanding of the aphorism, and these, perhaps counter-intuitively, are best understood in terms of excess. Recognizing the changes and consistencies in Nietzsche's aphoristic mode helps establish a context that enables the reader to navigate the aphorism books and better answer the challenges they pose.

This book examines the theoretical links between Edward W. Said and Sigmund Freud as well the relationship between psychoanalysis, postcolonialism and decoloniality more broadly. The author begins by offering a comprehensive review of the literature on psychoanalysis and postcolonialism, which is contextualized within the apparatus of racialized capitalism. In the close analysis of the interconnections between the Freud and Said that follows, there is an attempt to decolonize the former and psychoanalyze the latter. He argues that decolonizing Freud does not mean canceling him; rather, he employs Freud's sharpest insights for our time, by extending his critique of modernity to coloniality. It is also advanced that psychoanalyzing Said does not mean psychologizing the man; instead the book's aim is to demonstrate the influence of psychoanalysis on Said's work. It is asserted that Said began with Freud, repressed him, and then Freud returned. Reading Freud and Said side by side allows for the theorization of what the author calls contrapuntal psychoanalysis as liberation praxis, which is discussed in-depth in the final chapters. This book, which builds on the author's previous work, Decolonial Psychoanalysis, will be a valuable text to scholars and students from across the psychology discipline with an interest in Freud, Said and the broader relationship between psychoanalysis and colonialism.

Tracing the notion of 'the gift' in Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Emilio Corriero provides a new interpretation of this essential text, alongside 'the gift's' evolution as a key concept in the history of western philosophy and Christianity. The last phase of Nietzsche's thought, including his writings on the death of God, The Will to Power, the Overman, and eternal recurrence are analysed anew in Corriero's reading of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. From Nietzsche's Prologue, in which Zarathustra presents the idea of the Overman as a gift of love and wisdom, up to the fourth and final book, in which the theme of hospitality and sacrifice are inextricably linked to the concept of donation, highlighting the novelty and exceptionality of Zarathustra's gift. Building on these ideas, this book reveals how the gift of Zarathustra put forward by Nietzsche rethinks the relationships between individuals based on Christian doctrine, enabling new forms of coexistence and sociality to thrive.

The code of conduct for a leading tech company famously says "Don't Be Evil." But what exactly is evil? Is it just badness by another name-the shadow side of good? Or is it something more substantive-a malevolent force or power at work in the universe? These are some of the ontological questions that philosophers have grappled with for centuries. But evil also raises perplexing epistemic and psychological questions. Can we really know evil? Does a victim know evil differently than a perpetrator or witness? What motivates evil-doers? Satan's rebellion, Iago's machinations, and Stalin's genocides may be hard to understand in terms of ordinary reasons, intentions, beliefs, and desires. But what about the more "banal" evils performed by technocrats in a collective: how do we make sense of Adolf Eichmann's self-conception as just an effective bureaucrat deserving of a promotion? Evil: A History collects thirteen essays that tell the story of evil in western thought, starting with its origins in ancient Hebrew wisdom literature and classical Greek drama all the way to Darwinism and Holocaust theory. Thirteen interspersed reflections contextualize philosophical developments by looking at evil through the eyes of animals, poets, mystics, witches, librettists, film directors, and even a tech product manager. Evil: A History will enlighten readers about one of the most alluring and difficult topics in philosophy and intellectual life, and will challenge their assumptions about the very nature of evil.

The book identifies to what extent it is possible to speak of a democratization of knowledge in Renaissance Italy. It establishes the boundaries of the present investigation within the Aristotelian tradition, and outlines democratization as a process capable of assigning power to people. It deals with how the democratization of knowledge historically is invested equally in ideas from religion and philosophy, involving the same democratizers, moved by similar intentions, employing identical techniques of vulgarization and targeting equivalent communities of recipients.

This book critically explores the development of radical criminological thought through the social, political and cultural history of three periods in Ancient Greece: the Classical, the Hellenistic and the Greco-Roman periods. It follows on from the previous volume which examined concepts of law, legitimacy, crime, justice and deviance through a range of Ancient Greek works including epic and lyrical poetry, drama and philosophy, across different chapters. This book examines the three centuries that followed which were very important for the history of radical thinking about crime and law. It explores the socio-political struggles and how ruptures produced breaks in knowledge production and developed the field of deviance and social control. It also examines the key literature, religions and philosophers of each period. The gap between social consensus and social conflict deepened during this time and influenced the theoretical discourse on crime. These elements continue to exist in the theoretical quests of the modern age of criminology. This book examines the links between the origins of radical criminology and its future. It speaks to those interested in the (pre)history of criminology and the historical production of criminological knowledge.

Providing a solid media-philosophical groundwork, the book contributes to the theory of alterity in Performance Philosophy, while stimulating and inspiring future inquiries where studies in media, art, and literature intersect with philosophy. It collects a selective as well as productive diversity of philosophical, literary, and artistic figures of thought, attaining an exacting framework as a result of a clearly elaborated ethics of alterity, innovatively opened up by way of an aisthetics of existence: Touching upon the Aristotelian concept of aisthesis, the material, perceptual and sensory dimensions of everyday bodily existence are highlighted to move beyond what aesthetics in Modern Philosophy just specializes in, namely art and the beautiful. The notion of existence is therefore borrowed from Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who understands it as something concrete and richly interrelated, so as to avoid the dualisms both of psychological processes of consciousness and of physiological mechanisms. It is thus made explicit such that the unity of body and soul is not any arbitrarily arranged connection between “subject� and “object� but, rather, that it is enacted at every instant in the movement of existence. Imaginatively then, the book puts into writing how alterity not only can be treated theoretically but can be also made accessible through writing as well as rendered relatable through reading. That is why it deals with exemplary interpersonal encounters in the lifeworld, in the arts, and in the media, which are initially thematized as intercorporeal experiences, so as to enable an approach for an ethics of alterity by way of, in particular, sites located within a phenomenology of perception oriented towards the lived body.

Galen of Pergamum (AD 129 c.216) was the most influential doctor of later antiquity, whose work was to influence medical theory and practice for more than fifteen hundred years. He was a prolific writer on anatomy, physiology, diagnosis and prognosis, pulse-doctrine, pharmacology, therapeutics, and the theory of medicine; but he also wrote extensively on philosophical topics, making original contributions to logic and the philosophy of science, and outlining a scientific epistemology which married a deep respect for empirical adequacy with a commitment to rigorous rational exposition and demonstration. He was also a vigorous polemicist, deeply involved in the doctrinal disputes among the medical schools of his day. This volume offers an introduction to and overview of Galen's achievement in all these fields, while seeking also to evaluate that achievement in the light of the advances made in Galen scholarship over the past thirty years."

This volume is a collection of original essays focusing on a wide range of topics in the History and Philosophy of Science. It is a festschrift for Peter Machamer, which includes contributions from scholars who, at one time or another, were his students. The essays bring together analyses of issues and debates spanning from early modern science and philosophy through the 21st century. Machamer's influence is reflected in the volume's broad range of topics. These include: underdetermination, scientific practice, scientific models, mechanistic explanation in contemporary and historical science, values in science, the relationship between philosophy and psychology, experimentation, supervenience and reductionism.

For decades Foucault was mostly known for his diagnosis of modernity as a form of entrapment, both in our modes of thought and our behaviors. This book argues that Foucault's reappraisal of modernity occurs with the 1978 and 1979 lectures, in which he sketches modern power as governmentality and neoliberalism. From this perspective, Foucault's once surprising studies on the Greeks' constitution of the 'self' can be seen as a continuation of his diagnosis of late modernity, and as an attempt to retrieve a form of autonomy for our modern selves. One finds in the late Foucault a postmodern conception of reason and not a destruction of reason; but this is possible only if postmodernity is seen as a critical exercise of reason in the analysis of norms.

This book continues Rescher's longstanding practice of publishing groups of philosophical essays. Notwithstanding their thematic diversity, these discussions exhibit a uniformity of method in addressing philosophical issues via a mixture of historical contextualization, analytical scrutiny, and common-sensical concern. Their interest, such as it is, lies not just in what they do but in how they do it.

This volume contains essays that examine infinity in early modern philosophy. The essays not only consider the ways that key figures viewed the concept. They also detail how these different beliefs about infinity influenced major philosophical systems throughout the era. These domains include mathematics, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, science, and theology. Coverage begins with an introduction that outlines the overall importance of infinity to early modern philosophy. It then moves from a general background of infinity (before early modern thought) up through Kant. Readers will learn about the place of infinity in the writings of key early modern thinkers. The contributors profile the work of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Kant. Debates over infinity significantly influenced philosophical discussion regarding the human condition and the extent and limits of human knowledge. Questions about the infinity of space, for instance, helped lead to the introduction of a heliocentric solar system as well as the discovery of calculus. This volume offers readers an insightful look into all this and more. It provides a broad perspective that will help advance the present state of knowledge on this important but often overlooked topic.

This book examines the unique views of philosopher Jacob Sigismund Beck, a student of Immanuel Kant who devoted himself to an exploration of his teacher's doctrine and to showing that Kant s transcendental idealism is, contra to the common view, both internally consistent and is not a form of subjective idealism. In his attempt to explain away certain apparent contradictions found in Kant's system, Beck put forward a new reading of Kant s critical theory, a view, which came to be known as the "Standpunctslehre, the "Doctrine of the Standpoint.

Author Lior Nitzan reconstructs, step by step, the historical development of Beck s doctrine. He shows how Beck's unique view is drastically different from that of his contemporaries and presents the relevance of Beck to contemporary debates about the proper interpretation of Kant s notion of objectivity, the refutation of idealism and the role of the thing in itself in Kant s transcendental idealism. In doing so, Nitzan presents a defense of Beck's radical perspective of Kant s theory and claims that some of Kant s negative responses to it may in fact be due more to the adversary academic environment at the time than to Kant s true, well considered, opinion.

"Jacob Sigismund Beck s "Standpunctslehre challenges the two dominant schools in the interpretation of Kant s transcendental idealism the "two world" and the "two aspect" view. It presents a new way of understanding Kant s transcendental idealism, according to which the thing in itself plays no positive role in relation to the possibility of experience. Moreover, it claims that eliminating the thing in itself as the ultimate object of knowledge is not to admit idealism but in fact is the only way to consistently uphold realism. In addition, the book also addresses the question why, assuming that the proposed interpretation is correct, Kant had chosen not to make his true intentions clear."

Grant ackowledges that Christian theology owes much to the philosophy of the classical world, but he believes the remarkable tenacity of Christian inspiration resulted from the revelation of the Trinity. From the philosophical background of Christian doctrine, especially Middle Platonism and the writings of Numenius of Apamea, Grant traces the development of God the Father, Creator, and Preserver of the universe.

As the crises of capitalism continue to intensify, radical thinkers must conjure realistic and inspirational alternative futures beyond this failing social order. This book presents a stimulating array of essays exploring such post-capitalist futures. With contributions and perspectives from the Global North and Global South, central topics include ecosocialism, ecofeminism, degrowth, community economies, and the Green New Deal. There are also chapters offering analyses of land, energy, technology, universal basic services, and (re)localisation of economies. The book is in three parts. The first presents various alternative paradigms for thinking about - and working toward - post-capitalist futures. The second section offers perspectives on alternative governance strategies and approaches for post-capitalist futures. The closing section gathers various analyses of post-capitalist geographies and resistance. Going beyond critique and instead envisioning alternative imaginaries, this collection should challenge and inspire readers to think and act upon the range of possibilities immanent in our crisis-ridden present.

This book suggests that applied linguistics research is inherently concerned with complexity, emergence and causality, and because of this it also requires a robust social ontology. The book identifies and unpacks a range of conceptual issues in applied linguistics from a social realist perspective, and provides a critique of successionism and interpretivism as two dominant and enduring empiricist tendencies in the field. From this critique, it considers the emergence of complex dynamic system theory as viable yet not entirely unproblematic conceptual sophistication of current applied linguistics research. Although the growing popularity of complex dynamic system theory is undeniable and understandable, this book argues that its integration within a social realist ontology is necessary for further developments in the field. The book will be of interest to applied linguists and social scientists interested in language-related issues including language learning and teaching, language change, language policy and planning, bilingualism/multilingualism, and language and identity.

This book presents, for the first time in English, a comprehensive anthology of essays on Christian Wolff's psychology written by leading international scholars. Christian Wolff is one of the towering figures in 18th-century Western thought. In the last decades, the publication of Wolff's Gesammelte Werke by Jean Ecole and collaborators has aroused new interest in his ideas, but the meaning, scope, and impact of his psychological program have remained open to close and comprehensive analysis and discussion. That is what this volume aims to do. This is the first volume in English completely devoted to Wolff's efforts to systematize empirical and rational psychology, against the background of his understanding of scientific method in metaphysics. Wolff thereby paved the way to the very idea of a scientific psychology. The book is divided into two parts. The first one covers the theoretical and historical meaning and scope of Wolff's psychology, both in its internal structure and in its relation to other parts of his philosophical system, such as logic, cosmology, aesthetics, or practical philosophy. The second part deals with the reception and impact of Wolff's psychology, starting with early reactions from his disciples and opponents, and moving on to Kant, Hegel, and Wundt. The Force of an Idea: New Essays on Christian Wolff's Psychology shows not only that Wolff's psychological ideas have been misinterpreted, but also that they are historically more significant than traditional wisdom has it. The book, therefore, will be of interest to historians and philosophers of science, historians of philosophy and psychology, as well as to philosophers and psychologists interested in understanding the roots of scientific psychology in 18th and 19th century German philosophy.

Contemporary French Environmental Thought in the Post-COVID-19 Era is focused on the fields of biosemiotics, linguistics, ecocriticism, and environmental ethics. Closely aligning with Sustainable Development Goal 13.1, Keith Moser's study aims to strengthen resilience to climate-related hazards by drawing on ecological theories developed by French philosophers in conversation with biosemiotic principles. Not only does the novel theoretical framework offered by biosemiotic interpretations of the universe and our place in it represent an indispensable conceptual tool for understanding the unprecedented medical challenges at the dawn of a new millennium, but it also beckons us to think harder about the environmental crisis that threatens the continued existence of all sentient beings who call the biosphere home. This book also highlights the richness, diversity, and utility of the ecological theories developed by the French philosophers Michel Serres, Edgar Morin, Jacques Derrida, Dominique Lestel, and Michel Onfray in addition to how they engage with biosemiotic principles. Taken together, the book probes the scientific, linguistic, philosophical, and ethical implications of biosemiotic theories in a post-pandemic world from an environmental and medical perspective.

This book charts an interdisciplinary narrative of literary pragmatism and creative democracy across the writings of African American women, from the works of nineteenth-century philosophers to the novels and short stories of Harlem Renaissance authors. The book argues that this critically neglected narrative forms a genealogy of black feminist intersectionality and a major contribution to the development of American pragmatism. Bringing together the philosophical writings of Maria Stewart, Anna Julia Cooper, and Mary Church Terrell and the fictional works of Jessie Fauset, Nella Larsen, and Zora Neale Hurston, this text provides a literary pragmatist study of the archetypes, tropes, settings, and modes of resistance that populate the narrative of creative democracy. Above all, this book considers how these philosophers and authors construct democracy as a lived experience that gains meaning not through state institutions but through communities founded on relationships among black women and their shared understandings of culture, knowledge, experience, and rebellion.

In this, the first full-length study of Vico's highly original autobiography, Verene discusses its place in the history of autobiography generally, and shows it to be the first work of modern intellectual autobiography which uses a genetic method. The author views the autobiography as a work in which Vico applies the principles of human history discussed in New Science, making the telling of his own life an application and verification of his own philosophy. He places Vico's autobiography within the general development of the genre, considering it in relation to Augustine's Confessions, Descartes's Discourse, and Rousseau's Confessions. The author shows Vico to be not only the founder of the philosophy of history, but also the originator of a philosophical art of self-narrative which is the response by a modern thinker to the ancient problem of self-knowledge.

Mainstream and Formal Epistemology provides the first, easily accessible, yet erudite and original analysis of the meeting point between mainstream and formal theories of knowledge. These two strands of thinking have traditionally proceeded in isolation from one another, but in this book, Vincent F. Hendricks brings them together for a systematic comparative treatment. He demonstrates how mainstream and formal epistemology may significantly benefit from one another, paving the way for a new unifying program of "plethoric" epistemology. His book will both define and further the debate between philosophers from two very different sides of the epistemological spectrum.

This book re-conceptualizes teaching through an engagement with Jean-Paul Sartre's early existentialist thought. Against the grain of teacher accountability, it turns to the demanding account of being human in Sartre's thought, on the basis of which an alternative account of teaching can be developed. It builds upon Sartre's key concepts related to the self, freedom, bad faith, and the Other, such that they might open up original ways of thinking about the practices of teaching. Indeed, given the everyday complexities that characterize teaching, as well as the vulnerabilities and uncertainty that it so often involves, this book ultimately aims to create a space in which to reimagine forms of accounting that move from technicist ways of thinking to existential sensitivity in relation to one's practice as a teacher.