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Books > Philosophy > Western philosophy > General
This book focuses on the work of Mircea Eliade, taking a methodological concern, but also focusing on a wider concern, trying to indicate the many facets and implications of Eliade's scholarship as a historian of religions. Chapters two and three are concerned with the work of Eliade as a historian of religions, whereas chapter four examines the theological aspects of his work. After an examination of the human situation and his understanding of God, the book goes on to discover that the key to understanding Eliade's theological reflections is the role of nostalgia. As well as the theological aspects of Eliade's work, this book looks at his participation and contribution to cross-cultural dialogue, his theory of myth, his theory of archaic ontology, his concept of power and his views on time from the perspective of his roles as both a historian of religions and a literary figure.
The distinction between the contexts of discovery and justification has had a turbulent career in philosophy of science. At times celebrated as the hallmark of philosophical approaches to science, at times condemned as ambiguous, distorting, and misleading, the distinction dominated philosophical debates from the early decades of the twentieth century to the 1980s. Until today, it informs our conception of the content, domain, and goals of philosophy of science. It is due to this fact that new trends in philosophy of experimentation and history and sociology of science have been marginalized by traditional scholarship in philosophy. To acknowledge properly this important recent work we need to re-open the debate about the nature, development, and significance of the context distinction, about its merits and flaws. The contributions to this volume provide close readings and detailed analyses of the original textual sources for the context distinction.
This historico-critical edition of Schopenhauer's manuscript remains contains Schopenhauer's entire suviving philosophical notes, from his university years until his death in 1860. Translated here into English for the first time, it provides a fascinating insight into the workings of Schopenhauer's mind and an important key to his philosophical work.Translated by E.F.J. Payne.
In recent decades, there has been much scholarly controversy as to the basic ontological commitments of the philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716). The old picture of his thought as strictly idealistic, or committed to the ultimate reduction of bodies to the activity of mind, has come under attack, but Leibniz's precise conceptualization of bodies, and the role they play in his system as a whole, is still the subject of much controversy. One thing that has become clear is that in order to understand the nature of body in Leibniz, and the role body plays in his philosophy, it is crucial to pay attention to the related concepts of organism and of corporeal substance, the former being Leibniz's account of the structure of living bodies (which turn out, for him, to be the only sort of bodies there are), and the latter being an inheritance from the Aristotelian hylomorphic tradition which Leibniz appropriates for his own ends. This volume brings together papers from many of the leading scholars of Leibniz's thought, all of which deal with the cluster of questions surrounding Leibniz's philosophy of body.
The essays collected in this volume represent, in a revised version, the pa- pers of the Wittgenstein Conference held in November 1989 at the Univer- sity ofRome 'La Sapienza' to celebrate the centenary ofhis birth. They offer a systematic account ofWittgenstein's philosophy ofmind and contribute to illuminate his later conception of perceptive, emotional and cognitive lan- guage. Some of the reasons why it seemed the right time to promote an am- pIe confrontation ofideas on Wittgenstein's mature perspective are sufficiently c1ear as they derive from the need to sum up the state of research based on the availability of the Nachlass and the publication in the last decade of a conspicuous quantity ofwritings dedicated to philosophical psychology; other reasons are more complex as they depend on the already noticed tendency in the recent epistemological debate to interpret Wittgenstein's provocative and controversial theses in a "perverse" way, in a way which has been used as a banner for epistemic relativism, subjectivism, and irrationalism. The intention of this collection of essays is to construct an image of Wittgenstein's thought, which is as faithful as possible to his philosophy of mind and language from both a theoretical and exegetical point of view. The book also strives to assess the continuity and internal coherence of the theses developed throughout the different phases of his research.
The middle decades of the nineteenth century, sometimes known as the American Renaissance, yielded some of the most enduring literary works and influential philosophical ideas in American history. The Transcendentalist movement was central to defining this period, and nineteenth-century thinkers responded to it in different ways. While Emerson and Thoreau fostered it, Hawthorne and Poe criticized it; while Melville, though never part of New England Transcendentalism, was ambivalent. The movement was not entirely original, and American Transcendentalists borrowed much from the European and Oriental traditions. This volume is a comprehensive guide to the major and minor figures who shaped Transcendentalism in New England, particularly between 1830 and the Civil War. Included are entries for some two hundred writers, philosophers, and theologians who fostered the movement or responded to it in significant ways. While most of the entries are for American thinkers, international figures who advanced Transcendentalism in New England and who were alive until at least 1830 are also covered. Entries relate the person to Transcendentalism, and each includes bibliographical references. A short bibliographical essay identifies the most important general biographical sources on American Transcendentalists.
In the essays presented in this volume Bentham lays down the theoretical principles from which he develops his proposals for reform of the English poor laws in response to the perceived crisis in poor relief in the mid-1790s. These ideas were to be a significant influence on the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834.
This historico-critical edition of Schopenhauer's manuscript remains contains Schopenhauer's entire surviving philosophical notes, from his university years until his death in 1860. Translated here into English for the first time, it provides a fascinating insight into the workings of Schopenhauer's mind and an important key to his philosophical work. Translated by E.F.J. Payne
This book discusses both the philosophy of language and linguistic philosophy.
Gaston Fessard, S.J. (1897-1978), was a major mid-twentieth century French intellectual. He was a Hegel expert, but also wrote on issues of the day ranging from the Vichy regime to Christian-Marxist dialogue. The product of several decades of reflection, Fessard's work on the Dialectic of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola is the only one of its kind, a careful and penetrating study into the structure and tension of life-changing choices that Ignatius had in mind in his four week spiritual exercises. The Exercises insist on the way of making a spiritual Election, or choice in keeping with God's will for oneself and for the Christian community at a particular moment in one's existence.
The volume contains almost thirty papers by Kazimierz Twardowski (1866-1938), the founder of the Lvov-Warsaw School. The papers are published in English for the first time. The papers concern fundamental problems of philosophy: the methods of philosophizing, the boundary of psychology and semiotics, the conceptual apparatus of metaphysics, ethical skepticism, the question of free will and ethical obligation, the aesthetics of music and so on. The systematic considerations are complemented by concise but excellent sketches of the philosophical views of Socrates, Aquinas, Leibniz, Spencer, Nietzsche, and Bergson.
A concentrated study of the relationships between modernism and transformative left utopianism, this volume provides an introduction to Marx and Marxism for modernists, and an introduction to modernism for Marxists. Its guiding hypothesis is that Marx’s writing absorbed the lessons of artistic and cultural modernity as much as his legacy concretely shaped modernism across multiple media.
Morality, Moral Luck and Responsibility is a critical examination of our understanding of morality and responsibility through the questions raised by the problem of moral luck. The book considers two different approaches to moral luck, the Aristotelian vulnerability to factors outside the agent's control and the Kantian ambition to make morality immune to luck, and concludes that both approaches have more in common than previously thought. At the same time, it also considers recent developments in the field of virtue ethics and neo-kantianism. This book will appeal to anyone with an interest in normative theories and the fundamental questions surrounding moral responsibility and the attribution of praise and blame.
The central idea developed by the contributions to this book is that the split between analytic philosophy and phenomenology - perhaps the most impor tant schism in twentieth-century philosophy - resulted from a radicalization of reciprocal partialities. Both schools of thought share, in fact, the same cultural background and their same initial stimulus in the thought of Franz Brentano. And one outcome of the subsequent rift between them was the oblivion into which the figure and thought of Brentano have fallen. The first step to take in remedying this split is to return to Brentano and to reconstruct the 'map' of Brent ani sm. The second task (which has been addressed by this book) is to revive inter est in the theoretical complexity of Brentano' s thought and of his pupils and to revitalize those aspects that have been neglected by subsequent debate within the various movements of Brentanian inspiration. We have accordingly decided to organize the book into two introductory es says followed by two sections (Parts 1 and 2) which systematically examine Brentano's thought and that of his followers. The two introductory essays re construct the reasons for the 'invisibility', so to speak, of Brentano and set out of his philosophical doctrine. Part 1 of the book then ex the essential features amines six of Brentano's most outstanding pupils (Marty, Stumpf, Meinong, Ehrenfels, Husserl and Twardowski). Part 2 contains nine essays concentrating on the principal topics addressed by the Brentanians."
Drawing on a tripartite taxonomy first suggested by the so-called English School of International Relations of a Hobbesian tradition of power politics, a Grotian tradition of concern with the rules that govern relations between states; and a Kantian tradition of thinking which transcends the existence of the states system, this book discusses the thinking of central political theorists about the modern states system. Thinkers covered are Hobbes, Grotius, Kant, Vitoria, Rousseau, Smith, Burke, Hegel, Gentz and Vattel.
This volume is a popular presentation of Nietzsche's thought. Hoover's analysis comes from the viewpoint of a Christian operating within a Thomist framework. An early chapter focuses on Nietzsche's life; the following chapters weave autobiographical materials into the treatment of his philosophical system, showing the close relationship between his life and thought. Hoover's study includes an analysis of Nietzsche's perspectivism, his contribution to propaganda theory, the demonstration of a deep and fundamental contradiction in his epistemology, and an analysis of his critique of anti-body idealism.
twentieth-century literature about the distinction between explanation and und- standing)? Second, can we do justice to a particular writer's notion of that category by taking at face value what he writes about his own motivation for adopting it? In response to both types of questions, there is by now a consensus amongst many historians of science and of philosophy that (a) intellectual history - like other kinds of history - has to be careful not to uncritically adopt actors' categories, and (b) more generally, even the actors' own thinking about a particular issue has to be contextualized vis-a-vis their other intellectual commitments and interests, as well as the complex conditions that make the totality of their commitments possible. Such conditions include cognitive as well as practical, institutional, and cultural factors. The articles in this volume respond to these challenges in several ways. For example, one author (Christopher Pincock) seeks to read some of the nineteen- century philosophical writings about Erklaren and Verstehen as standing for a more fundamental problem, which he terms the problem of the "unity of experience.""
Dick Popkin and James Force have attended a number of recent conferences where it was apparent that much new and important research was being done in the fields of interpreting Newton's and Spinoza's contributions as biblical scholars and of the relationship between their biblical scholarship and other aspects of their particular philosophies. This collection represents the best current research in this area. It stands alone as the only work to bring together the best current work on these topics. Its primary audience is specialised scholars of the thought of Newton and Spinoza as well as historians of the philosophical ideas of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
Is it possible, given culturally incongruent perspectives, to validate any common standards of behaviour? How can cultural relativity be a genuine problem if cultures are porous and inter-penetrable? Is it possible to implement human rights in societies without incorporating the idea into their fabric of culture? Is it possible for cultural communities to survive in the contemporary world without rights protection? This book addresses questions like these in the light of an inventive and original understanding of culture.
In Philosophy as Frustration: Happiness Found and Feigned from Greek Antiquity to Present Bruce Silver analyzes important views of happiness from Greek antiquity into the present. He argues that in many cases philosophers and positive psychologists do a poor job of defending the views of happiness they promote. Too often the philosophical approaches to what constitutes happiness are at odds with themselves and with possibilities for living happily. In some cases readers discover that the phrase "happy human being" is oxymoronic and that the most a person can expect is a life that is a measure of calm.
Leibniz's earliest philosophy and its importance for his mature philosophy have not been examined in detail, particularly in the level of detail that one can achieve by placing Leibniz's philosophy in the context of the sources for two of the most basic concerns of his philosophical career: his metaphysics of individuals and the principle oftheir individuation. In this book I provide for the first time a detailed examination of these two Leibnizian themes and trace its implications for how we should interpret other major Leibnizian themes and for how we should read Leibniz and other philosophers of the sixteenth and later centuries as 'modem' philosophers. Leibniz began his philosophical career more than 300 years ago, a fact that shapes fundamentally my attempt in the pages that follow to come to terms now with the texts that he left us. Leibniz's did not do philosophy in a way wholly congenial to twentieth century philosophical methodologies, especially those that have enjoyed some prominence in recent Anglo-American philosophy. Moreover, as we shall see, Leibniz is not a modem philosopher, when 'modem' is understood to mean making a sharp break with medieval philosophy. Indeed, I shall argue, scholars should discard such terms as 'modem' from historical philosophical scholarship, so that old texts can be allowed to remain old - to stand on their own in and from times now long past.
This book is an encounter between Deleuze the philosopher, Proust
the novelist, and Beckett the writer creating interdisciplinary and
inter-aesthetic bridges between them, covering textual, visual,
sonic and performative phenomena, including provocative speculation
about how Proust might have responded to Deleuze and Beckett.
After his failure to replace metaphysics by a linguistic approach, Ludwig Boltzmann came to identify the philosophy of science with methodology which, in turn, he considered to be part of science itself, and thus not part of philosophy at all. His definition of philosophy as metaphysics meant that, from his point of view, all philosophers were metaphysicians, himself included. Boltzmann the philosopher was advised on the improvement of his Weltanschauung by Franz Brentano; to such effect that, by the summer of 1905, Boltzmann appeared to be close to a form of critical realism. However, the stronger this realism became, the more inconsistent it seemed to be with his Mach plus pictures' methodology of science. During this period, he planned to write a book, first on metaphysics and then later on what he called A priori probability' and what he considered to be its shortcomings. Apparently, the book was never completed. All know Boltzmann the great physicist. Much less widely known is that he was an original philosopher: one who had a great impact on early 20th Century Viennese philosophy, beginning with Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle and extending even to Popper and Feyerabend. Blackmore's delving into Boltzmann's correspondence, coupled with his unparalleled knowledge of Boltzmann's final years, allows him to present Boltzmann in an entirely new light to readers in the English language. For physicists, philosophers and historians. |
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