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Books > Philosophy > Western philosophy > General
The Dictionary of Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Dutch
Philosophers covers the 200-year period of the Dutch Republic, when
its people experienced a Golden Age in the arts, in sea trade and
in philosophy that left a lasting impression on European culture.
The Dutch witnessed nothing less than a philosophical revolution,
driven to a large extent by the migres from France, Finland,
Portugal, Britain, Switzerland, Germany and elsewhere, who provided
the Golden Age with its thinkers. As a result of the unique
position held by the Netherlands during the period, this dictionary
constitutes an anthology of European thought at large. Included are
all foreign thinkers (such as Rene Descartes and Pierre Bayle) who
exercised a major influence on the philosophical life of the Dutch
Republic and who developed their ideas through interaction with
other philosophers residing there. Among these resident
philosophers, as well as all the well-known figures such as
Benedict Spinoza, many lesser-known ones are included. Each entry
includes a bibliography listing the subject's major and minor
philosophical writings and giving guidance to further reading. A
system of cross-references makes it easy for the reader to pursue
connections and influences. In addition, the dictionary features
entries on Dutch universities, city academies, publishing houses
and journals. This work will be of interest to all students and
scholars of the period.
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'.
Peter C. Hodgson explores Hegel's bold vision of history as the
progress of the consciousness of freedom. Following an introductory
chapter on the textual sources, the key categories, and the modes
of writing history that Hegel distinguishes, Hodgson presents a new
interpretation of Hegel's conception of freedom. Freedom is not
simply a human production, but takes shape through the interweaving
of the divine idea and human passions, and such freedom defines the
purpose of historical events in the midst of apparent chaos.
Freedom is also a process that unfolds through stages of
historical/cultural development and is oriented to an end that
occurs within history (the 'kingdom of freedom'). The purpose and
the process of history are tragic, however, because history is also
a 'slaughterhouse' that shatters even the finest human creations
and requires a constant rebuilding. Hegel's God is not a supreme
being or 'large entity' but the 'true infinite' that encompasses
the finite. History manifests the rule of God ('providence'), and
it functions as the justification of God ('theodicy'). But the God
who rules in and is justified by history is a crucified God who
takes the suffering, anguish, and evil of the world into and upon
godself, accomplishing reconciliation in the midst of ongoing
estrangement and inescapable death. Shapes of Freedom addresses
these themes in the context of present-day questions about what
they mean and whether they still have validity.
The present volume has grown out of the conference held at
Princeton University on November 12-14, 2009. Its essays explore a
coherent, interrelated nexus of topics that illuminate our
understanding of the cultural transactions (social, political,
economic, religious and artistic) of the Greek East and Latin West:
unexpected cultural appropriations and forms of resistance,
continuity and change, the construction and hybridization of
traditions in a wide expanse of the eastern Mediterranean. Areas
that the volume addresses include the benefits and liabilities of
periodization, philosophical and political exchanges, monastic
syncretism between the Orthodox and Catholic faiths, issues of
romance composition, and economic currency and the currency of
fashion as East and West interact. Contributors are Roderick
Beaton, Peter Brown, Marina S. Brownlee, Giles Constable, Maria
Evangelatou, Dimitri Gondicas, Judith Herrin, Elizabeth Jeffreys,
Marc D. Lauxtermann, Stuart M. McManus, John Monfasani, Maria G.
Parani, Linda Safran, Teresa Shawcross and Alan M. Stahl.
This volume offers a much needed shift of focus in the study of
emotion in the history of philosophy. Discussion has tended to
focus on the moral relevance of emotions, and (except in ancient
philosophy) the role of emotions in cognitive life has received
little attention. Thirteen new essays investigate the continuities
between medieval and early modern thinking about the emotions, and
open up a contemporary debate on the relationship between emotions,
cognition, and reason, and the way emotions figure in our own
cognitive lives. A team of leading philosophers of the medieval,
renaissance, and early modern periods explore these ideas from the
point of view of four key themes: the situation of emotions within
the human mind; the intentionality of emotions and their role in
cognition; emotions and action; the role of emotion in
self-understanding and the social situation of individuals.
Gilles Deleuze is considered one of the most important French
philosophers of the twentieth century. Eleanor Kaufman situates
Deleuze in relation to others of his generation, such as Jean-Paul
Sartre, Pierre Klossowski, Maurice Blanchot, and Claude
Levi-Strauss, and she engages the provocative readings of Deleuze
by Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek.
"Deleuze, The Dark Precursor" is organized around three themes
that critically overlap: dialectic, structure, and being. Kaufman
argues that Deleuze's work is deeply concerned with these concepts,
even when he advocates for the seemingly opposite notions of
univocity, nonsense, and becoming. By drawing on scholastic thought
and reading somewhat against the grain, Kaufman suggests that these
often-maligned themes allow for a nuanced, even positive reflection
on apparently negative states of being, such as extreme inertia.
This attention to the negative or minor category has implications
that extend beyond philosophy and into feminist theory, film,
American studies, anthropology, and architecture.
How was Voltaire's legacy seen in France between 1830 and 1900? To
what extent did the nineteenth century reinvent Voltaire? Viewed
during these years through the distorting lens of the French
Revolution, Voltaire was vilified and venerated in roughly equal
measure: as an icon of republican anticlericalism on the one hand,
and a deeply Christian reformer on the other. This wide-ranging
study uses the rich sources of the Parisian periodical and daily
press to examine the evolution of Voltaire's legacy as it was
contested through caricature and statuary as much as through
editions and criticism of his works.
The International Kierkegaard Commentary-For the first time in
English the world community of scholars systematically assembled
and presented 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. This is volume 7 in a series of
commentaries based upon the definitive translations of
Kierkegaard's writings published by Princeton University Press,
1980ff.
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.
"How the West Was Won" contains articles in three main areas of the
humanities. It focuses on various aspects of literary imagination,
with essays ranging from Petrarch to Voltaire; on the canon, with
essays on western history as one of shifting cultural horizons and
ideals, and including censorship; and on the Christian Middle Ages,
when an interesting combination of religion and culture stimulated
the monastic and intellectual experiments of Anselm of Canterbury
and Peter Abelard. The volume is held together by the method of
persistent questioning, in the tradition of the western church
father and icon of the self Augustine, to discover what the values
are that drive the culture of the West: where do they come from and
what is their future? This volume is a Festschrift for Burcht
Pranger of the University of Amsterdam.
On the Binding Biases of Time and Other Essays on General Semantics
and Media Ecology consists of a series of explorations into our use
of symbols, language, and media to relate to our environment, and
how our different modes of perception and communication influence
human consciousness, culture, and social organization. These essays
draw upon and integrate the perspectives of general semantics,
systems theory, and media ecology, bringing them to bear upon a
diversity of topics that include the future of consciousness,
identity and meaning, the Ten Commandments, media literacy, The
Lord of the Rings, and our relationship to time. Throughout this
volume, Strate grapples with the question of what it means to be
human, and what the prospects may be for humanity's continued
survival. As he concludes in the title essay of this book: "As a
species, we are binders of time, bound up by our biases of time; we
are moved by our consciousness of time, as we tell time, and as we
tell ourselves that only time will tell; as we play for time, and
as we pray, as we pray for time."
Primitive Man as Philosopher by Paul Radin, Ph. D. Research Fellow
of Yale University and sometime Lecturer in Ethnology in Cambridge
University editor of Crashing Thunder, the Autobiography of an
American Indian with a foreword by John Dewcy Professor of
Philosophy in Columbia University New York and London D, Appleton
and Company 1927 COPYRIGHT, 1927, D. APPLETON AND COMPANY PRINTED
IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA TO MY WIFE PREFACE When a modern
historian desires to study the civilization of any people, he
regards it as a necessary preliminary that he divest himself, so
far as possible, of all prejudice and bias. He realizes that
differences between cultures exist, but he does not feel that it is
necessarily a sign of inferiority that a people differs in customs
from his own. There seems, how ever, to be a limit to what an
historian treats as legitimate difference, a limit not always easy
to determine. On the whole it may be said that he very naturally
passes the same judgments that the majority of his fellow
countrymen do. Hence, if some of the differences between admittedly
civil ized peoples often call forth unfavorable judgments or even
provoke outbursts of horror, how much more must we expect this to
be the case where the differences are of so funda mental a nature
as those separating us from people whom we have been accustomed to
call uncivilized. The term uncivilized is a very vague one, and it
is spread over a vast medley of peoples, some of whom have
comparatively simple customs and others extremely com plex ones.
Indeed, there can be said to be but two charac teristics possessed
in common by all these peoples, the absence of a written language
and the fact of originalposses sion of the soil when the various
civilized European and Asiatic nations came into contact with them.
But among all aboriginal races appeared a number of customs which
undoubtedly seemed exceedingly strange to their European and
Asiatic conquerors. Some of these customs they had never heard of
others they recognized as similar to observ vli viii PREFACE ances
and beliefs existing among the more backward mem bers of their own
communities. Yet the judgments civilized peoples have passed on the
aborigines, we may be sure, were not initially based on any calm
evaluation of facts. If the aborigines were regarded as innately
inferior, this was due in part to the tremendous gulf in custom and
belief separating them from the con querors, in part to the
apparent simplicity of their ways, and in no small degree to the
fact that they were unable to offer any effective resistance.
Romance soon threw its distorting screen over the whole primitive
picture. Within one hundred years of the dis covery of America it
had already become an ineradicably established tradition that all
the aborigines encountered by Europeans were simple, untutored
savages from whom little more could be expected than from
uncontrolled children, individuals who were at all times the slaves
of their passions, of which the dominant one was hatred. Much of
this tradi tion, in various forms, disguised and otherwise, has
persisted to the present day. The evolutionary theory, during its
heyday in the iSyos and Sos, still further complicated and
misrepresented the situation, and from the great classic that
created modern ethnology Tylors Primitive Culture, published in
1870 future ethnologists were to imbibe the cardinal andfunda
mentally misleading doctrine that primitive peoples represent an
early stage in the history of the evolution of culture. What was,
perhaps, even more dangerous was the strange and uncritical manner
in which all primitive peoples were lumped together in ethnological
discussion simple Fuegians with the highly advanced Aztecs and
Mayans, Bushmen with the peoples of the Nigerian coast, Australians
with Poly nesians, and so on. PREFACE ix For a number of years
scholars were apparently content with the picture drawn by Tylor
and his successors...
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