'the oldest biography of Spinoza', La Vie de Mr. Spinosa, which in the manuscript copies is often followed by L'Esprit de M. Spinosa. Margaret Jacob, in her Radical Enlightenment, contended that the Traite was written by a radical group of Freemasons in The Hague in the early eighteenth century. Silvia Berti has offered evidence it was written by Jan Vroesen. Various discussions in the early eighteenth century consider many possi ble authors from the Renaissance onwards to whom the work might be attributed. The Trois imposteurs has attracted quite a bit of recent attention as one of the most significant irreligious clandestine writings available in the Enlightenment, which is most important for understanding the develop ment of religious scepticism, radical deism, and even atheism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Scholars for the last couple of decades have been trying to assess when the work was actually written or compiled and by whom. In view of the widespread distribution of manu scripts of the work all over Europe, they have also been seeking to find out who was influenced by the work, and what it represented for its time. Hitherto unknown manuscripts are being turned up in public and private libraries all over Europe and the United States."

The father of psychoanalysis believed in ghosts, and Frederick Engles attended seances. These theoretical essays evaluate these facts and consider the importance of the metaphor of haunting as it has appeared in literature, culture, and philosophy. Haunting is considered as both a literal and figurative term that encapsulates social anxieties and concerns. The collection includes discussions of 19th-century spiritualism, gothic and postcolonial ghost stories, and popular film, with essays on important theoretical writers including Freud, Derrida, Adorno, and Walter Benjamin. This study is intended for departments of literature, cultural studies, media studies, philosophy, and cultural history.

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797), author and pioneering feminist, answers Edmund Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution in France" in this, her first stirring political pamphlet. In "A Vindication of the Rights of Men" (1790), Wollstonecraft refutes Burke's assertions that human liberties are an "entailed inheritance," that the alliance between church and state is necessary for civil order, and that civil authority should be restricted to men "of permanent property." Rather, liberties are rights which all human beings "inherit at their birth, as rational creatures".

The goal of the present volume is to shed light on a number of traditions of Maimonideanism that have hitherto little been explored. Maimonides (1138 - 1204) was the most important medieval Jewish philosopher and also made lasting contributions to many other fields. The essays in the first part examine aspects of his work in medicine, Jewish law, and liturgy. The essays in the second part look at how Maimonides was read, misread, and creatively reinvented in a wide range of contexts in the East and in the West-from medieval Cairo to Crown Heights in Brooklyn. Written by a group of leading scholars, the essays illustrate the breadth of Maimonides' work and the fascinating history of its reception from the 13th century to the present.

This book introduces the reader to Whitehead's complex and often misunderstood metaphysics by showing that it deals with questions about the nature of causation originally raised by the philosophy of Leibniz. Whitehead's philosophy is an attempt at rehabilitating Leibniz's theory of monads by recasting it in terms of novel ontological categories.

The 11 essays collected here have been composed by members of the North American Spinoza Society. They exhibit the fruits of the research, investigation and erudition of an array of established scholars and newer students whose interpretations of Spinoza's philosophical doctrines are receiving critical acclaim. This is the first collection in the English language dedicated exclusively to topics, problems or questions raised by the teachings found in Baruch Spinoza's Tractatus theologico-politicus. Divided into the themes of piety, peace, and the freedom to philosophize, the essays treat Spinoza's views on faith and philosophy, miracles, the light of Scripture, political power, religion, the state, the body politic, the idea of tolerance, and philosophic communication, as well as his connections to Walter Benjamin, Blaise Pascal, David Hume, and his Jewish heritage. Readership: An excellent collection for students and scholars studying Spinoza, the history of early modern philosophy, political philosophy, philosophy of religion, and those concerned with theologico-political questions.

From Descartes to Hume, philosophers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries developed a dialectic of radically conflicting claims about the nature of the self. In the Paralogisms of The Critique of Pure Reason, Kant comes to terms with this dialectic, and with the character of the experiencing self. Powell seeks to elucidate these difficult texts, in part by applying to the Paralogisms insights drawn from Kant's Transcendental Deduction. His reading shows that the structure of the Paralogisms provides an essential key to understanding both Kant's critique of `rational psychology' and his theory of self-consciousness. As Kant realized, the ways in which we must represent ourselves to ourselves have import not only for epistemology, but for our view of persons and of our own immortality, and for moral philosophy as well. Kant's theory of self-consciousness is also shown to have implications for contemporary discussions of the problem of other minds, functionalism, and the problem of indexical self-reference.

Critically examines the concept of nature in the tradition of German Western Marxism often known as Critical Theory. Focuses on the work of Luk cs, Horkheimer and Adorno, Marcuse, and Habermas. Argues that the concept has been problematic from the beginning, and that resolving it can bring insight i

In this unique exploration of Nietzsche's life and behavior, Dr. Richard Schain challenges the widely held view that this important philosopher's actions and erratic writings were due to general paresis, or syphilis of the brain. The author offers a detailed biography of Nietzsche's life, at each major turning point offering his own thoughts regarding why the diagnosis of syphilis is unsatisfactory to explain Nietszche's behavioral and thought patterns. With an accessible writing style and close attention to detail, Schain offers important reasons for one to reevaluate the claims made regarding Nietzsche's mental illness.

Schain also explores another common diagnosis, namely, that of schizophrenia. While this diagnosis, seems more plausible than that of general paresis, it is still inadequate to fully explain the aberrant behavior and eventual mental deterioration of one of the leading Western philosophers of our time. By examining Nietzsche's life and challenging the medical opinions of the time, Schain lays the foundation for rigorous reexamination of the diagnoses of both general paresis and schizophrenia as causes for Nietzsche's actions, thoughts, and philosophies.

In his Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals Immanuel Kant outlined the structure of moral reasoning, but to reach this critical point in his philosophy he had to demonstrate how reasoning about ethics could emerge. While the Critique of Pure Reason offers the foundation for his theories of knowledge and reality and the manner in which we come to possess ideas about the world, Kant's Critique of Practical Reason shows how these mental processes are linkedhow the mind moves from a formal understanding of reasoning in general to moral reasoning in particular.

This book explores the imaginative possibilities for philosophy created by Nietzsche's sustained reflection on the phenomenon of ecstasy. From The Birth of Tragedy to his experimental "physiology of art," Nietzsche examines the aesthetic, erotic, and sacred dimensions of rapture, hinting at how an ecstatic philosophy is realized in his elusive doctrine of Eternal Return. Jill Marsden pursues the implications of this legacy for contemporary Continental thought via analyses of such voyages in ecstasy as Kant, Schopenhauer, Schreber, and Bataille.

Walter Benjamin holds a unique fascination for students and scholars interested in the question of modernity. The most original thinker of Weimar Germany, Benjamin has become something of a cultural icon and his works are often regarded with awe rather than critical scrutiny. This book offers surprising new insights from a number of perspectives -- sociology, history, women's studies, literary and cultural studies -- and investigates unexplored areas of Benjamin scholarship to arrive at a critically balanced perception of his work.
There are four main sections:
- a critical re-evaluation of Benjamin's concepts of history and modernity in light of postmodernist discourses;
- a discussion of aspects of Benjamin's literary scholarship;
- a re-evaluation of Benjamin's writings on media and performance theories; and
- an investigation of Benjamin's peculiar 'utopianism' which includes a critical consideration of sexual/gender politics.

Naturalism and Pragmatism offers reflections on the pragmatic tradition from a fresh perspective: that of a working neuroscientist. Though naturalism and evolution are not the only topics of discussions, they are important themes of the book. Both pragmatism and modern behavioral science grew up in the wake of Darwin's theory of evolution. Indeed it is impossible to imagine either without evolutionary theory and the more general nineteenth-century trend of naturalism from which modern evolutionary theory emerged. And yet, for a variety of reasons, these common origins have not ensured a close affinity between pragmatic philosophy and the behavioral sciences. Among the wide diversity of scientific theories of human cognition and its evolutionary origins, only a few are congenial to pragmatism in its original or classical' form, which embraces the full range of human experience

B. W. Young describes and analyses the intellectual culture of the eighteenth-century Church of England, in particular relation to those developments traditionally described as constituting the Enlightenment. It challenges conventional perceptions of an intellectually moribund institution by contextualising the polemical and scholarly debates in which churchmen engaged. In particular, it delineates the vigorous clerical culture in which much eighteenth-century thought evolved. The book traces the creation of a self-consciously enlightened tradition within Anglicanism, which drew on Erasmianism, seventeenth-century eirenicism and the legacy of Locke. By emphasizing the variety of its intellectual life, the book challenges those notions of Enlightenment which advance predominantly political interpretations of this period. Thus, eighteenth-century critics of the Enlightenment, notably those who contributed to a burgeoning interest in mysticism, are equally integral to this study.

Graham Priest presents an original exploration of philosophical questions concerning the one and the many. He covers a wide range of issues in metaphysics-including unity, identity, grounding, mereology, universals, being, intentionality, and nothingness-and deploys the techniques of paraconsistent logic in order to offer a radically new treatment of unity. Priest brings together traditions of Western and Asian thought that are usually kept separate in academic philosophy: he draws on ideas from Plato, Heidegger, and Nagarjuna, among other philosophers.

This award-winning book investigates the critique of psychoanalysis formulated by the psychiatrist and philosopher Karl Jaspers (1883-1969) over some five decades, systematically examining Jasper 's arguments against Freud and his followers. The book traces the medico-historical roots of Jasper 's criticism of psychoanalysis and places it within the framework of scientific theory before devoting itself extensively to medico-ethical aspects of the controversy, which are ultimately treated in terms of a history of mentalities.

People act for reasons. That is how we understand ourselves. But what is it to act for a reason? This is what Fred Schueler investigates. He rejects the dominant view that the beliefs and desires that constitute our reasons for acting simply cause us to act as we do, and argues instead for a view centred on practical deliberation, our ability to evaluate the reasons we accept. Schueler's account of 'reasons explanations' emphasizes the relation between reasons and purposes, and the fact that the reasons for an action are not always good reasons.

Shows how Hegel gradually discovers philosophy and the necessiy of personal commitment as a philosopher.

This book reconstructs key aspects of the early career of Descartes from 1618 to 1633; that is, up through the point of his composing his first system of natural philosophy, "Le Monde, " in 1629-33. It focuses upon the overlapping and intertwined development of Descartes projects in physico-mathematics, analytical mathematics, universal method, and, finally, systematic corpuscular-mechanical natural philosophy. The concern is not simply with the conceptual and technical aspects of these projects; but, with Descartes agendas within them and his construction and presentation of his intellectual identity in relation to them.

Descartes technical projects, agendas and senses of identity shifted over time, entangled and displayed great successes and deep failures, as he morphed from a mathematically competent, Jesuit trained graduate in neo-Scholastic Aristotelianism to aspiring prophet of a systematised corpuscular-mechanism, passing through stages of being a committed "physico-mathematicus," advocate of a putative universal mathematics, and projector of a grand methodological dream. In all three dimensions projects, agendas and identity concerns the young Descartes struggled and contended, with himself and with real or virtual peers and competitors, hence the title "Descartes-Agonistes" .

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