|
Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy > Metaphysics & ontology
Originally published in 1973. This final collection of thought by
founder of the New School for Social Research in New York, Horace
M. Kallen, touches on topics from language to death and from
freedom to value. The author's treatise explores his understanding
of logic and existence.
This book, based on ethnographic research in Romania, traces the
ontological red lines that form a world in which xenophobic
landscapes are possible. The last couple hundred years in Romania's
history have been marked by change of political regimes, but this
manuscript pays equal attention to an important continuity in
Romania's ontological world: its understanding of the landscape,
and the relationship between Romanian people and their land. From
political discourses to children's books, to literature, and
explanations found for everyday events, the book follows the ways
in which the landscape of Romania has been understood as a sentient
being imbued with willpower and ability to act on the world. The
sentience specific to Romania's landscape is characterized by
xenophobia-a fear and distrust of ethno-religious others-that has
been historically interpreted by Romanians as manifesting through
acts of violence enacted by the landscape towards various groups of
humans understood as dangerous to the country's unity. The novelty
of this book lies in the fact that it is an in-depth analysis of an
ontological world in which sentient landscapes are de-romanticized
and presented in their uncomfortable complexity. The concept of
sentient xenophobic mountains can add a great deal to the current
literature on the ontological turn and ontological multiplicities,
by questioning binaries like colonized/colonizer,
indigenous/colonial, sentient landscape/industrial superpower.
Romania's history makes it a good case study for this exercise, as
the country has been at the margins of empires, both desired
because of its natural resources and rejected because of the
perceived inferiority of its people, both racialized and racist,
both neoliberal and imagining absolute sovereignty.
Antonia Lolordo presents an original interpretation of John Locke's
conception of moral agency-one that has implications both for his
metaphysics and for the foundations of his political theory. Locke
denies that species boundaries exist independently of human
convention, holds that the human mind may be either an immaterial
substance or a material one to which God has superadded the power
of thought, and insists that animals possess the ability to
perceive, will, and even reason-indeed, in some cases to reason
better than humans. Thus, he eliminates any sharp distinction
between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom. However, in his
ethical and political work Locke assumes that there is a sharp
distinction between moral agents and other beings. He thus needs to
be able to delineate the set of moral agents precisely, without
relying on the sort of metaphysical and physical facts his
predecessors appealed to. Lolordo argues that for Locke, to be a
moral agent is simply to be free, rational, and a person.
Interpreting the Lockean metaphysics of moral agency in this way
helps us to understand both Locke's over-arching philosophical
project and the details of his accounts of liberty, personhood, and
rationality.
The Use of Exodus in Hebrews illustrates how traditions and
hermeneutics have significantly determined people's valuations of
the relationship between the Old and New Covenants in Hebrews. By
showing how the author of Hebrews uses the canonical revelation
from Exodus to argue rhetorically, ontologically, and
hermeneutically that Jesus Christ is the New Covenant priest in the
heavenly tabernacle, this book offers an epistemological lens from
Exodus to identify the correct view of the relationship between the
Old and New Covenants.
The human world is in a mess. The human mind is in a mess. And now
the human species is threatening its own survival by its own
inventions and by war. For thousands of years, human beings
conducted a great debate about the human condition and human
possibilities, about philosophy and society and law. In 1516,
Thomas More, in his book Utopia, contributed to the ancient debate,
at another time of profound transformation in the human world. In
our own time, we have witnessed a collapse in intellectual life,
and a collapse in the theory and practice of education. The old
debate is, for all practical purposes, dead. In 2016, Philip
Allott's Eutopia resumes the debate about the role of philosophy
and society and law in making a better human future, responding to
a human world that More could not have imagined. And he lets us
hear the voices of some of those who contributed to the great
debate in the past, voices that still resonate today.
Weakness of will, the phenomenon of acting contrary to one's own
better judgment, has remained a prominent discussion topic of
philosophy. The history of this discussion in ancient, medieval,
and modern times has been outlined in many studies. Weakness of
Will in Renaissance and ReformationThought is, however, the first
book to cover the fascinating source materials on weakness of will
between 1350 and 1650. In addition to considering the work of a
broad range of Renaissance authors (including Petrarch, Donato
Acciaiuoli, John Mair, and Francesco Piccolomini), Risto Saarinen
explores the theologically coloured debates of the Reformation
period, such as those provided by Martin Luther, Philip
Melanchthon, John Calvin, and Lambert Daneau. He goes on to discuss
the impact of these authors on prominent figures of early
modernity, including Shakespeare, Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz.
While most of the historical research on weakness of will has
focused on the reception history of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics,
Saarinen pays attention to the Platonic and Stoic discussions and
their revival during the Renaissance and the Reformation. He also
shows the ways in which Augustine's discussion of the divided will
is intertwined with the Christian reception of ancient Greek
ethics, and argues that the theological underpinnings of early
modern authors do not rule out weakness of will, but transform the
philosophical discussion and lead it towards new solutions.
This book showcases a range of views on topics at the forefront of
current controversies in the field of metaphysics. It will give
readers a varied and alive introduction to the field, and cover
such key issues as: modality, fundamentality, composition, the
object/property distinction, and indeterminacy. The contributors
include some of the most important philosophers currently writing
on these issues. The questions and philosophers are: Are there any
individuals at the fundamental level? / (1) Shamik Dasgupta (2)
Jason Turner Is there an objective difference between essential and
accidental properties? / (1) Meghan Sullivan (2) Kris McDaniel and
Steve Steward Are there any worldly states of affairs? / (1) Daniel
Nolan (2) Joseph Melia Are there any intermediate states of
affairs? / (1) Jessica Wilson (2) Elizabeth Barnes and Ross Cameron
Do ordinary objects exist? / (1) Trenton Merricks (2) Helen Beebee
Editor Elizabeth Barnes guides readers through these controversies
(all published here for the first time), with a synthetic
introduction and succinct abstracts of each debate.
This volume collects 12 essays by various contributors on the
subject of the importance and influence of Schopenhauer's doctoral
dissertation (On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient
Reason) for both Schopenhauer's more well-known philosophy and the
ongoing discussion of the subject of the principle of sufficient
reason. The contributions deal with the historical context of
Schopenhauer's reflections, their relationship to (transcendental)
idealism, the insights they hold for Schopenhauer's views of
consciousness and sensation, and how they illuminate Schopenhauer's
theory of action. This is the first full-length, English volume on
Schopenhauer's Fourfold Root and its relevance for Schopenhauer's
philosophy. The thought-provoking essays collected in this volume
will undoubtedly enrich the burgeoning field of
Schopenhauer-studies.
|
|