Spinoza is a key figure in modern philosophy. Ethics is his most studied and well known work. Being both up-to-date and clear, this Guidebook is designed to lead the reader through this complex seminal text.
Spinoza's Ethics introduces and assess:
* Spinoza'a life, and its connection with his thought
* The text of the Ethics
* Spinoza's continuing relevence to contemporary philosophy

The present collection of papers derives from a philosophy conference organised in the Sicilian town of M ussomeli in September 1991. The con ference aimed at providing an analysis of certain aspects of the thought of Michael Dummett, whose contributions have been very influential in several aspects of the philosophical debate continuing within the analyt ical tradition. Logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the interpretation of Frege's philosophy, and metaphysics are only some of the areas within which Dummett's ideas have been fruitful over the years. The papers contained in this book, and Dummett's replies, will, it is hoped, not merely offer a partial reconstruction of a philosopher's life work, but provide an exciting and challenging vantage point from which to look at some of the main problems of contemporary philosophy. The First International Philosophy Conference of M ussomeli - this is what the conference was called - was an extraordinary event in many ways. The quality of the papers presented, the international reputa tion of many of the participants, the venue itself, together with the unavoidable, and sometimes quite funny, organisational hiccups, made that meeting memorable. Perhaps principally memorable was the warmth and sympathy of the people of Mussomeli who strongly supported and encouraged this initia tive. A special mention is also due to the City Council Administrators, who spared no effort to make the Conference a success."

"Who has the right to know?" asks Jean-Francois Lyotard. "Who has the right to eat?" asks Peter Madaka Wanyama. This book asks: "what does it mean to be a responsible academic in a 'northern' university given the incarnate connections between the university's operations and death and suffering elsewhere?" Through studies of the "neoliberal university" in Ontario, the "imperial university" in relation to East Timor, the "chauvinist university" in relation to El Salvador, and the "gendered university" in relation to the Montreal Massacre, the author challenges himself and the reader to practice intellectual citizenship everywhere from the classroom to the university commons to the street. Peter Eglin argues that the moral imperative to do so derives from the concept of incarnation. Here the idea of incarnation is removed from its Christian context and replaced with a political-economic interpretation of the embodiment of exploited labor. This embodiment is presented through the material goods that link the many's compromised right to eat with the privileged few's right to know.

Ernst Bloch is perhaps best known for his subtle and imaginative investigation of utopias and utopianism, but his work also provides a comprehensive and insightful analysis of western culture, politics and society. Yet, because he has not been one of easiest of writers to read his full contribution has not been widely acknowledged. Block developed a complex conceptual framework, and presented this in a prose style which many have found to verge on the impenetrable.
In this critical and accessible introduction to one of the most fascinating thinkers of the twentieth century, Vincent Geoghegan unravels much of the mystery of the man and his ideas.

This book offers a detailed and scholarly historical and philosophical examination of French scepticism from Descartes to the beginning of the Enlightenment by examining the views of Pierre-Daniel Huet (1630-1721). It shows the crucial role played by Huet in the modification of the early modern sceptical tradition: from a practical perspective closer to ancient scepticism, mostly presented by Montaigne and Charron, to an epistemological and metaphysical perspective strongly influenced by Descartes's doubt. The book examines and gives original interpretations of the various sceptical (and semi-sceptical) views held in the period and their connections to Huet's own scepticism. Besides known philosophers such as Descartes, Gassendi, Pascal and Bayle, the book also accesses sceptical views held by secondary figures such as La Mothe Le Vayer and Simon Foucher and others who have not thus far been connected to the sceptical tradition such as Jean-Baptiste du Hamel and Madeleine de Scudery. The book is useful for scholars in the field of early modern ideas: philosophical, religious and scientific.

Jonathan Edwards is generally acknowledged as one of the foremost American philosophers. Edwards on God offers a historically informed philosophical analysis of his arguments for the existence and nature of God. The book begins with a characterization of Edwards's intellectual profile and philosophical theology. It then explicates and evaluates his arguments from the beginning of existence, design, 'being in general', virtue as benevolence, and his account of natural and moral divine attributes. There is no other such treatment of Edwards's metaphysics of divinity. This volume will be primarily relevant to philosophers, historians and theologians.

The Kantian Aesthetic explains the kind of perceptual knowledge involved in aesthetic judgments. It does so by linking Kant's aesthetics to a critically upgraded account of his theory of knowledge. This upgraded theory emphasizes those conceptual and imaginative structures which Kant terms, respectively, "categories" and "schemata." By describing examples of aesthetic judgment, it is shown that these judgments must involve categories and fundamental schemata (even though Kant himself, and most commentators after him, have not fully appreciated the fact). It is argued, in turn, that this shows the aesthetic to be not just one kind of pleasurable experience amongst others, but one based on factors necessary to objective knowledge and personal identity, and which, indeed, itself plays a role in how these capacities develop.
In order to explain how individual aesthetic judgments are justified, and the aesthetic basis of art, however, the Kantian position just outlined has to be developed further. This is done by exploring some of his other ideas concerning how critical comparisons inform our cultivation of taste, and art's relation to genius. By linking the points made earlier to a more developed account of this horizon of critical comparisons, a Kantian approach can be shown to be both a satisfying and comprehensive explanation of the cognitive basis of aesthetic experiences. It is shown also that the approach can even cover some of the kinds of avant-garde works which were thought previously to limit its relevance.

The Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung (MTNF) presents outstanding monographic interpretations by scholars, active in various academic fields, of Nietzsche's work as a whole or of specific themes and aspects. These works are written mostly from a philosophical, literary, communication science, sociological or historical perspective. The publications reflect the current state of research on Nietzsche's philosophy, on his sources, on his relationship with his predecessors and contemporaries and on the influence of his writings. The volumes are peer-reviewed.

Scientia is the term that early modern philosophers applied to a certain kind of demonstrative knowledge, the kind whose starting points were appropriate first principles. In pre-modern philosophy, too, scientia was the name for demonstrative knowledge from first principles. But pre-modern and early modern conceptions differ systematically from one another. This book offers a variety of glimpses of this difference by exploring the works of individual philosophers as well as philosophical movements and groupings of the period. Some of the figures are transitional, falling neatly on neither side of the allegiances usually marked by the scholastic/modern distinction. Among the philosophers whose views on scientia are surveyed are Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Gassendi, Locke, and Jungius. The contributors are among the best-known and most influential historians of early modern philosophy.

A beautiful, profound series of reflections on the body by one of the most prominent and consequential philosophers of continental Europe This landmark volume brings into English Jean-Luc Nancy’s last completed work and concludes his remarkable philosophical reflections on the body, a project he began almost thirty years ago. Taking the body as an intersection of pulsing life and destructive cruelty on a global scale, Nancy’s account becomes more vivid, more physical, than ever, even as it ventures into language that is as lyrical as it is profound. This vividness is manifest in blood: as it flows, in all its pulsing and forceful circulation, and as it spills, in the cruelty of existences confronted daily by countless destructions. This can be described as sanguis and cruor, the two Latin words for blood’s intermingled but distinct aspects. This distinction allows Nancy to highlight an almost mystical sense of the body (yet one that remains soberly on this side of its manifest insistence), alongside the cruelty that pervades our world—a world whose very existence is threatened by its reduction to mere objects. The exceptional writings brought together in Corpus III comprise a masterful work of philosophy that marries rigorous erudition—on Freud, Nietzsche, and others—with rich poetic language and an actual poem. Nancy’s thought opens the body onto its own unaccountable origins, its plural singularities, its enmeshed instantiations, and its excessive irreducibles, which are also the elusive excesses of language. Whereas in earlier texts Nancy has referred to this excess as poetry, here he performs it in the form of a poem, in the extraordinary hymn entitled Stoma. While the publication of a poem by Nancy is a notable event, equally noteworthy is a remarkable essay entitled “Scandalous Death,” in which Nancy meditated on a subject that was to come to him too soon after. Above all, the book is crucial for bringing into English Cruor, the very last book Nancy completed before his death, an evocative meditation offered by a great thinker on the complex conditions of his own—and our—singular survival.

Revealing, in an original and provocative study, the mystical contents of the works of famous atheists Virginia Woolf and Iris Murdoch, Donna Lazenby shows how these thinkers' refusal to construe worldviews on available reductive models brought them to offer radically alternative pictures of life which maintain its mysteriousness, and promote a mystical way of knowing. A Mystical Philosophy contributes to the contemporary resurgence of interest in Spirituality, but from an entirely new direction. This book provides a warning against reductive scientific and philosophical models that impoverish our understanding of ourselves and the world, and a powerful endorsement of ways of knowing that give art, and a restored concept of contemplation, their consummative place.

For the first time in English the world community of scholars is systematically assembling and presenting the results of recent research in the vast literature of Soren Kierkegaard. Based on the definitive English edition of Kierkegaard's works by Princeton University Press, this series of commentaries addresses all the published texts of the influential Danish philosopher and theologian.

"The Other Adam Smith" represents the next wave of critical thinking about the still under-examined work of this paradigmatic Enlightenment thinker. Not simply another book about Adam Smith, it allows and even necessitates his inclusion in the realm of theory in the broadest sense. Moving beyond his usual economic and moral philosophical texts, Mike Hill and Warren Montag take seriously Smith's entire corpus, his writing on knowledge, affect, sociability and government, and political economy, as constituting a comprehensive--though highly contestable--system of thought. We meet not just Smith the economist, but Smith the philosopher, Smith the literary critic, Smith the historian, and Smith the anthropologist. Placed in relation to key thinkers such as Hume, Lord Kames, Fielding, Hayek, Von Mises, and Agamben, this other Adam Smith, far from being localized in the history of eighteenth-century economic thought or ideas, stands at the center of the most vibrant and contentious debates of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

A knowledge of Heidegger's Sein und Zeit is essential for anyone who wishes to understand a great deal of recent continental work in theology as well as philosophy. Yet until this translation first appeared in 1962, this fundamental work of one of the most influential European thinkers of the century remained inaccessible to English readers. In fact the difficulty of Heidegger's thought was considered to be almost insuperable in the medium of a foreign language, especially English. That this view was unduly pessimistic is proved by the impressive work of John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson who have succeeded in clothing Heidegger's thought in English without sacrificing the richness and poetic subtlety of the original.

This is a comprehensive chronological survey of the political thought of post-reformation Britain, integrated around the theme of confrontation between political thought and political action. G. Burgess looks at a wide range of thinkers, including individual discussion of Hobbes and Locke.

This book introduces student to the three major figures of modern philosophy known as the rationalists. It is not for complete beginners, but it is an accessible account of their thought. By concerning itself with metaphysics, and in particular substance, the book relates an important historical debate largely neglected by the contemporary debates in the once again popular area of traditional metaphysics. in philosophy. (Do Not USE)

eBook available with sample pages: 0203002288

First published in English in 1933, this detailled philosophical examination of the contemporary state and nature of mankind is a seminal work by influential German philsopher Karl Jaspers. Elucidating his theories on a variety of topics pertaining to contemporary and future human existence, Man in the Modern Age is a key text by a man whose influence in the field continues to be felt.

This book draws upon the phenomenological tradition of Husserl and Heidegger in order to provide an alternative elaboration of John McDowell's thesis that in order to understand how self-conscious subjectivity relates to the world, perception must be understood as a genuine unity of spontaneity ('concept') and receptivity ('intuition'). This alternative elaboration permits clarification of McDowell's critique of Donald Davidson and development of an alternative conception of perceptual experience giving clear sense to McDowell's claim that self-conscious subjectivity is so inherently in touch with its world that scepticism about the latter must be incoherent. It also permits development of a more accurate, historically oriented critique of the metaphysics constraining one to construe perceptual experience in ways which misrepresent how self-conscious subjectivity bears upon the world. It shows that many of McDowell's meta-philosophical views are implicitly Husserlian and that had McDowell developed them further, he would have avoided the paradoxical meta-philosophy he adopts from Wittgenstein. In conclusion, it intimates the central weakness in Husserl's position which takes one from Husserl to Heidegger. The book is written in terms accessible to analytic philosophers and will thus enable them to see the central differences between analytic and phenomenological approaches to intentionality and self-consciousness.

This book introduces readers to the concept of the Axial Age and its relevance for a world in crisis. Scholars have become increasingly interested in philosopher Karl Jaspers' thesis that a spiritual revolution in consciousness during the first millennium BCE decisively shaped world history. Axial ideas of transcendence develop into ideologies for world religions and civilizations, in turn coalescing into a Eurasian world-system that spreads globally to become the foundation of our contemporary world. Alongside ideas and ideologies, the Axial Age also taught spiritual practices critically resisting the new scale of civilizational power: in small counter-cultural communities on the margins of society, they turn our conscious focus inward to transform ourselves and overcome the destructive potentials within human nature. Axial spiritualities offer humanity a practical wisdom, a profound psychology, and deep hope: to transform despair into resilience, helping us face with courage the ecological and political challenges confronting us today.

Written between 1910 and 1929, Traces is considered Ernst Bloch's most important work next to The Principle of Hope and The Spirit of Utopia. This book, which collects aphorisms, essays, stories, and anecdotes, enacts Bloch's interest in showing how attention to "traces"—to the marks people make or to natural marks—can serve as a mode of philosophizing. In an elegant example of how the literary can become a privileged medium for philosophy, Bloch's chief philosophical invention is to begin with what gives an observer pause—what seems strange and astonishing. He then follows such traces into an awareness of the individual's relations to himself or herself and to history, conceived as a thinking into the unknown, the "not yet," and thus as utopian in essence. Traces, a masterwork of twentieth-century philosophy, is the most modest and beautiful proof of Bloch's utopian hermeneutics, taking as its source and its result the simplest, most familiar, and yet most striking stories and anecdotes.

In 1998, the first edition of Anthony Kenny's comprehensive history of Western philosophy was published, to be met with immediate praise and critical acclaim. As the first book since Bertrand Russell's 1945 A History of Western Philosophy to offer a concise single-author review of the complete history of philosophy from the pre-Socratics to the modern masters of the 20th century, Kenny's work fills a critical gap in the modern philosophy reading list and offers valuable guidance for the general reader of philosophy--an ideal starting point for anyone with an interest in great thinkers and the family lines of philosophical evolution. Widely considered to be one of the most thorough and accessible historical reviews in philosophy, An Illustrated Brief History of Western Philosophy has earned an estimable and distinctive reputation, both for the compelling writing style of Anthony Kenny, one of the most respected and accomplished living philosophers, and for the rich collection of paintings, illustrations, maps, and photos included with every chapter to complement this review of 2,500 years of philosophical thought. Newly revised and expanded for a special 20th anniversary publication, the latest edition of An Illustrated Brief History of Western Philosophy contains all of Kenny's original writings on the history of Western philosophy from ancient to modern, along with new writings on the philosophy of the mid-20th century, covering important contributions from continental philosophers and philosophers of the post-Wittgenstein anglophone tradition, including the work of many women who have too often been neglected by the historical record.

Philosophy: Key Themes is a beginner's guide to understanding and critiquing philosophical arguments. Each chapter introduces one of the major themes in philosophy. Baggini's approach combines explanation with summary while encouraging the reader to question the arguments and positions presented.

Essays on philosophy and intellectual history, focusing in particular on John Locke. This collection of essays by well-known international scholars working in the history of philosophy and intellectual history honours the distinguished career of John Yolton, their subjects reflecting many of his central interests,particularly John Locke. Topics include Locke and his idea of thinking matter; the recovery of Locke's library; his understanding of the Law of Nature and its implications; Berkeley's philosophy and his conception of common sense; the connection between reason and revelation in some early eighteenth-century writers; and the post-modernist crude misrepresentation of the Enlightenment. G.A.J. ROGERS is Professor of Philosophy at Keele University; SYLVANA TOMASELLIis a former research fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge. Contributors: SYLVANA TOMASELLI, FRANCOIS DUCHESNEAU, RICHARD H. POPKIN, G.A.J. ROGERS, PETER LASLETT, MICHAEL AYRES, GENVIEVE BRYKMAN, M.A. STEWART, ARTHUR WAINWRIGHT, JOHN STEPHENS, JOHN P. WRIGHT, SHADIA B. DRURY

Published in 1998, this is a fundamental re-assessment of the world-view of the alchemists, natural philosophers and intelligencers of the mid 17th century. Based almost entirely upon the extensive and hitherto little-researched manuscript archive of Samuel Hartlib, it charts and contextualises the personal and intellectual history of Johann Moriaen (c.1592-1668), a Dutch-German alchemist and natural philosopher. Moriaen was closely acquainted with many of the leading thinkers and experimenters of his time, including Rene Descartes, J.A. Comenius, J.R. Glauber and J.S. KA1/4ffler. His detailed reports of relations with these figures and his response to their work provide a uniquely informed insight into the world of alchemy and natural philosophy. This study also illuminates the nature and mechanisms of intellectual and technological exchanges between Germany, The Netherlands and England.