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Books > Philosophy > Western philosophy > General
Gandhi and Philosophy presents a breakthrough in philosophy by
foregrounding modern and scientific elements in Gandhi's thought,
animating the dazzling materialist concepts in his writings and
opening philosophy to the new frontier of nihilism. This
scintillating work breaks with the history of Gandhi scholarship,
removing him from the postcolonial and Hindu-nationalist axis and
disclosing him to be the enemy that the philosopher dreads and
needs. Naming the congealing systematicity of Gandhi's thoughts
with the Kantian term hypophysics, Mohan and Dwivedi develop his
ideas through a process of reason that awakens the possibilities of
concepts beyond the territorial determination of philosophical
traditions. The creation of the new method of criticalisation - the
augmentation of critique - brings Gandhi's system to its exterior
and release. It shows the points of intersection and infiltration
between Gandhian concepts and such issues as will, truth, violence,
law, anarchy, value, politics and metaphysics and compels us to
imagine Gandhi's thought anew.
Stefania Tutino shows that the hermeneutical and epistemological
anxieties that characterize our current intellectual climate are
rooted in the early modern world. Showing that post-Reformation
Catholicism did not simply usher in modernity, but indeed
postmodernity as well, her study complicates the well-established
scholarly view concerning the context of the Protestant Reformation
and the Catholic response to it. Shadows of Doubt provides a
collection of case-studies centered on the relationship between
language, the truth of men, and the Truth of theology. Most of
these case-studies illuminate little-known figures in the history
of early modern Catholicism. The militant aspects of
post-Tridentine Catholicism can be appreciated through study of
figures such as Robert Bellarmine or Cesare Baronio, the solid
pillars of the intellectual and theological structure of the Church
of Rome; however, an understanding of the more enigmatic aspects of
early modernity requires exploration of the demimonde of
post-Reformation Catholicism. Tutino examines the thinkers whom few
scholars mention and fewer read, demonstrating that
post-Reformation Catholicism was not simply a world of solid
certainties to be opposed to the Protestant falsehoods, but also a
world in which the stable Truth of theology existed alongside and
contributed to a number of far less stable truths concerning the
world of men. Post-Reformation Catholic culture was not only
concerned with articulating and affirming absolute truths, but also
with exploring and negotiating the complex links between certainty
and uncertainty. By bringing to light this fascinating and hitherto
largely unexamined side of post-Tridentine Catholicism, Tutino
reveals that post-Reformation Catholic culture was a vibrant
laboratory for many of the issues that we face today: it was a
world of fractures and fractured truths which we, with a heightened
sensitivity to discrepancies and discontinuities, are now
well-suited to understand.
In this comprehensive tour of the long history and philosophy of
expertise, from ancient Greece to the 20th century, Jamie Carlin
Watson tackles the question of expertise and why we can be
skeptical of what experts say, making a valuable contribution to
contemporary philosophical debates on authority, testimony,
disagreement and trust. His review sketches out the ancient origins
of the concept, discussing its early association with cunning,
skill and authority and covering the sort of training that ancient
thinkers believed was required for expertise. Watson looks at the
evolution of the expert in the middle ages into a type of "genius"
or "innate talent" , moving to the role of psychological research
in 16th-century Germany, the influence of Darwin, the impact of
behaviorism and its interest to computer scientists, and its
transformation into the largely cognitive concept psychologists
study today.
Jonas Olson presents a critical survey of moral error theory, the
view that there are no moral facts and so all moral claims are
false. In Part I (History), he explores the historical context of
the debate, and discusses the moral error theories of David Hume
and of some more or less influential twentieth century
philosophers, including Axel Hagerstroem, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig
Wittgenstein, and Richard Robinson. He argues that the early cases
for moral error theory are suggestive but that they would have been
stronger had they included something like J. L. Mackie's arguments
that moral properties and facts are metaphysically queer. Part II
(Critique) focuses on these arguments. Olson identifies four
queerness arguments, concerning supervenience, knowledge,
motivation, and irreducible normativity, and goes on to establish
that while the first three are not compelling, the fourth has
considerable force, especially when combined with debunking
explanations of why we tend to believe that there are moral
properties and facts when in fact there are none. One conclusion of
Part II is that a plausible error theory takes the form of an error
theory about irreducible normativity. In Part III (Defence), Olson
considers challenges according to which that kind of error theory
has problematic ramifications regarding hypothetical reasons,
epistemic reasons, and deliberation. He ends his discussion with a
consideration of the implications of moral error theory for
ordinary moral thought and talk, and for normative theorizing.
Charting a genealogy of the modern idea of the self, Felix O
Murchadha explores the accounts of self-identity expounded by key
Early Modern philosophers, Montaigne, Descartes, Pascal, Spinoza,
Hume and Kant. The question of the self as we would discuss it
today only came to the forefront of philosophical concern with
Modernity, beginning with an appeal to the inherited models of the
self found in Stoicism, Scepticism, Augustinianism and Pelagianism,
before continuing to develop as a subject of philosophical debate.
Exploring this trajectory, The Formation of the Modern Self pursues
a number of themes central to the Early Modern development of
selfhood, including, amongst others, grace and passion. It examines
on the one hand the deep-rooted dependence on the divine and the
longing for happiness and salvation and, on the other hand, the
distancing from the Stoic ideal of apatheia, as philosophers from
Descartes to Spinoza recognised the passions as essential to human
agency. Fundamental to the new question of the self was the
relation of faith and reason. Uncovering commonalities and
differences amongst Early Modern philosophers, O Murchadha traces
how the voluntarism of Modernity led to the sceptical approach to
the self in Montaigne and Hume and how this sceptical strand, in
turn, culminated in Kant's rational faith. More than a history of
the self in philosophy, The Formation of the Modern Self inspires a
fresh look at self-identity, uncovering not only how our modern
idea of selfhood developed but just how embedded the concept of
self is in external considerations: from ethics, to reason, to
religion.
2013 Winner (Gold Medal), Classical Studies/Philosophy, Independent
Publisher Book Awards -- 2013 Winner, Spirituality: General,
International Book Awards -- 2013 Winner, Science, National Indie
Excellence Awards -- 2013 Finalist, Science: General, International
Book Awards -- 2013 Finalist, Best New Non-Fiction, International
Book Awards -- 2013 Finalist, Best Cover Design: Non-Fiction,
International Book Awards -- 2013 Finalist, Philosophy, National
Indie Excellence Awards -- The Eternal Law takes the reader on a
fascinating journey through some of the most profound questions
related to our understanding of modern science. What does it mean
to say that there is an eternal mathematical law underpinning all
of physical reality? How must we expand our narrow conception of
science to include not only logic but also intuition,
consciousness, and the pursuit of beauty, symmetry, simplicity, and
unity? Is truth objective, or is it nothing more than a whimsical
projection of opinions? Why were many of the key founders of modern
science inevitably drawn to ancient Greek philosophy? Spencer's
extraordinary clarity helps to restore a sane vision of reality,
while deepening our appreciation of what Einstein called 'the
mysterious'.
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