This book reconnoiters the appearances of the exceptional in Plato: as erotic desire (in the Symposium and Phaedrus), as the good city (Republic), and as the philosopher (Ion, Theaetetus, Sophist, Statesman). It offers fresh and sometimes radical interpretations of these dialogues. Those exceptional elements of experience - love, city, philosopher - do not escape embodiment but rather occupy the same world that contains lamentable versions of each. Thus Pappas is depicting the philosophical ambition to intensify the concepts and experiences one normally thinks with. His investigations point beyond the fates of these particular exceptions to broader conclusions about Plato's world. Plato's Exceptional City, Love, and Philosopher will be of interest to any readers of Plato, and of ancient philosophy more broadly.

Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas III is Msgr. John Wippel's third volume dedicated to the metaphysical thought of Thomas Aquinas. After an introduction, this volume of collected essays begins with Wippel's interpretation of the discovery of the subject of metaphysics by a special kind of judgment ("separation"). In subsequent chapters, Wippel turns to the relationship between faith and reason, exploring what are known as the preambles of faith. This is followed by two chapters on the important contributions by Cornelio Fabro on Aquinas's distinction between essence and esse and on participation. The volume continues with articles on Aquinas's view of creation as a preamble of faith, Aquinas's much-disputed defense of unicity of substantial form in creatures, his account of the separated soul's natural knowledge, and Aquinas's understanding of evil in his De Malo 1. The volume concludes with an article comparing Bonaventure, Aquinas, and Godfrey of Fontaines on the metaphysical composition of angelic beings. Most of these issues were disputed during Aquinas's time by some of his contemporaries, and the proper understanding of each continues to be debated by various students of his thought today. Wippel's purpose, therefore, is to help clarify our understanding of Aquinas's thought on each of these topics, a task that requires the careful analysis of primary sources and of secondary literature and attention to the relative chronology of his writing.

This book critically assesses arguments for the existence of the God of classical theism, develops an innovative account of objects' persistence, and defends new arguments against classical theism. The authors engage the following classical theistic proofs: Aquinas's First Way, Aquinas's De Ente argument, and Feser's Aristotelian, Neo-Platonic, Augustinian, Thomistic, and Rationalist proofs. The authors also provide the first systematic treatment of the 'existential inertia thesis'. By connecting the thesis to relativity theory and recent developments in the philosophy of physics, and by developing a variety of novel existential-inertia-friendly explanations of persistence, they mount a formidable new case against classical theistic proofs. Finally, they defend new arguments against classical theism based on abstract objects and changing divine knowledge. The text appeals to students, researchers, and others interested in classical theistic proofs, the existence and nature of God, and the ultimate explanations of persistence, change, and contingency.

This book offers a systematic framework for thinking about the relationship between language and technology and an argument for interweaving thinking about technology with thinking about language. The main claim of philosophy of technology-that technologies are not mere tools and artefacts not mere things, but crucially and significantly shape what we perceive, do, and are-is re-thought in a way that accounts for the role of language in human technological experiences and practices. Engaging with work by Wittgenstein, Heidegger, McLuhan, Searle, Ihde, Latour, Ricoeur, and many others, the author critically responds to, and constructs a synthesis of, three "extreme", idealtype, untenable positions: (1) only humans speak and neither language nor technologies speak, (2) only language speaks and neither humans nor technologies speak, and (3) only technology speaks and neither humans nor language speak. The construction of this synthesis goes hand in hand with a narrative about subjects and objects that become entangled and constitute one another. Using Words and Things thus draws in central discussions from other subdisciplines in philosophy, such as philosophy of language, epistemology, and metaphysics, to offer an original theory of the relationship between language and (philosophy of) technology centered on use, performance, and narrative, and taking a transcendental turn.

This book gives the first complete, fully historicized account of Emerson's metaphysics of cause and effect and its foundational position in his philosophy as a whole. Urbas tells the story of the making of a metaphysician and in so doing breaks with the postmodern, anti-metaphysical readings that have dominated Emerson scholarship since his philosophical rehabilitation began in late 1970s. This is an intellectual biography of Emerson the metaphysician but also a chapter in the cultural life-story of a concept synonymous, in the Transcendentalist period, with life itself, the story of the principle at the origin of all being and change. Emerson's Metaphysics proposes an account of Emerson's metaphysical thought as it unfolds in his writings, as it informs his philosophy as a whole, and as it reflects the intellectual and religious culture in which he lived and moved and had his being. This book will be of interest to philosophers, literary scholars, and students of English, philosophy, and intellectual and religious history who are interested in Emerson and the American Transcendentalist movement.

First published in 1998, this volume responded to and evaluated criticisms of McTaggart's atemporal philosophy of time. Established philosophical positions on time had positioned themselves in relation to either the A Series (past, present and future) or the B Series (earlier and later). McTaggart considered both series untenable and proposed his own, atemporal C Series. Beginning with an overview of McTaggart's position, Gerald Rochelle attempts to reinforce the seriousness of, and think beyond, McTaggart's attempt to describe a world without time through an assessment of McTaggart's criticisms and his suggested alternative. Rochelle argues that McTaggart's atemporal world constitutes a strong foundation for a new theory on time which breaks away from the existing philosophical models of temporality.

First published in 1999, this volume re-examines Bertrand Russell's views on modal logic and logical relevance, arguing that Russell does in fact accommodate modality and modal logic. The author, Jan Dejnozka, draws together Russell's comments and perspectives from throughout his canon in order to demonstrate a coherent view on logical modality and logical relevance. To achieve this, Dejnozka explores questions including whether Russell has a possible worlds logic, Rescher's case against Russell, Russell's three levels of modality and the motives and origins of Russell's theory of modality.

Employing an interdisciplinary approach, this book breaks new ground by considering how Robert Motherwell's abstract expressionist art is indebted to Alfred North Whitehead's highly original process metaphysics. Motherwell first encountered Whitehead and his work as a philosophy graduate student at Harvard University, and he continued to espouse Whitehead's processist theories as germane to his art throughout his life. This book examines how Whitehead's process philosophy-inspired by quantum theory and focusing on the ongoing ingenuity of dynamic forces of energy rather than traditional views of inert substances-set the stage for Motherwell's future art. This book will be of interest to scholars in twentieth-century modern art, philosophy of art and aesthetics, and art history.

This book defends a version of linguistic idealism, the thesis that the world is a product of language. In the course of defending this radical thesis, Gaskin addresses a wide range of topics in contemporary metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophical logic, and syntax theory. Starting from the context and compositionality principles, and the idea of a systematic theory of meaning in the Tarski-Davidson tradition, Gaskin argues that the sentence is the primary unit of linguistic meaning, and that the main aspects of meaning, sense and reference, are themselves theoretical posits. Ontology, which is correlative with reference, emerges as language-driven. This linguistic idealism is combined with a realism that accepts the objectivity of science, and it is accordingly distinguished from empirical pragmatism. Gaskin contends that there is a basic metaphysical level at which everything is expressible in language; but the vindication of linguistic idealism is nuanced inasmuch as there is also a derived level, asymmetrically dependant on the basic level, at which reality can break free of language and reach into the realms of the unnameable and indescribable. Language and World will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in metaphysics, philosophy of language, and linguistics.

The Unity of Oneness and Plurality in Plato's Theaetetus offers a reading of the Theaetetus that shows how the characters' failure to give an acceptable account (i.e a logos) of knowledge is really a success; the failure being a necessary result of the dialogue's implicit proof that there can never be a complete logos of knowledge. The proof of the incompatibility of knowledge and logos rests on the recognition that knowledge is always of what is, and hence is always of what is one, while logos is inherently multiple. Thus, any attempt to give a logos of what is known amounts to turning what is one into something multiple, and hence, that which is expressed by any logos must be other than that which is known. In this way The Unity of Oneness and Plurality in Plato's Theaetetus provides its readers with developed sketches of both a Platonic epistemology, and a Platonic ontology. An account of the incompleteness of all accounts is, obviously, a very slippery undertaking. Plato's mastery of his craft is on full display in the dialogue. Besides offering a reading of Plato's epistemology and ontology, The Unity of Oneness and Plurality in Plato's Theaetetus investigates the insights and difficulties that arise from a close reading of the dialogue through a sustained analysis that mirrors the movement of the dialogue, offering a commentary on each of the primary sections, and showing how these sections fit together to supply an engaged reader with a unified whole.

Rethinking Philosophy in Light of the Bible analyzes the ideas that are central to the philosophy of Kant, Hegel, and Kierkegaard in order to show that they are biblical in origin, both ontologically and historically. Brayton Polka argues that Schopenhauer has an altogether false conception of the fundamental ideas of the Bible-creation, the Fall of Adam and Eve, and covenantal love-and of Christianity, which leaves his philosophy irredeemably contradictory, as he himself acknowledges. The aim, then, is to show that our modern values, the values that constitute modernity, are biblical in origin. It is only when we come to understand that modernity is biblical from the beginning and that the Bible is modern unto the end that we are able to overcome the opposition, so evident today, between philosophy and theology, between reason and faith, and between the secular and the religious. Polka makes central the distinction that Kierkegaard draws between Christianity and Christendom: Christianity represents the coming into historical existence of the single individual; Christendom represents Christian values that are rationalized in pagan terms. As Kierkegaard shows us, if God has always existed eternally, then he has never existed eternally, then he has never come into historical existence for the single individual. The distinction between Christianity and Christendom is the distinction not between faith and reason, but between truth and idolatry. While theology and philosophy each represent the truth of Christianity, Schopenhauer's idolatrous concepts of faith, no less than of reason, represent Christendom.

What is the nature of time? This new study engages with the philosophy of Henri Bergson on time and proposes a new way of thinking about the effects of future events on the past. According to Bergson, time is an integral feature of real things, just as much as their material or size. When a flower grows, it takes a period of real time for it to flourish, which cannot be quickened or slowed down, nor can it be eliminated from the process of growth. Bergson named this real time 'duration' and argued that everything and everyone exist as duration, and that internal processes flow into one another, with no clear boundaries that separate one phase of duration from another. According to Bergson's philosophy, the past does not disappear but smoothly flows into the present, forming an indivisible dynamic unity. But what if the causal flow of temporal reality is not unidirectional? What if not only past events influence future ones, but future ones in their turn have retrospective effect on past occurrences? The author of this book analyses these key questions, asserts that the changeability of the past follows from Bergson's theory of time and proposes a theory of embodied time that involves the retrospective enrichment of reality.

Philosophical questions regarding the nature and methodology of philosophical inquiry have garnered much attention in recent years. Perhaps nowhere are these discussions more developed than in relation to the field of metaphysics. The Routledge Handbook of Metametaphysics is an outstanding reference source to this growing subject. It comprises thirty-eight chapters written by leading international contributors, and is arranged around five themes: * The history of metametaphysics * Neo-Quineanism (and its objectors) * Alternative conceptions of metaphysics * The epistemology of metaphysics * Science and metaphysics. Essential reading for students and researchers in metaphysics, philosophical methodology, and ontology, The Routledge Handbook of Metametaphysics will also be of interest to those in closely related subjects such as philosophy of language, logic, and philosophy of science.

This volume presents twelve original papers on constructivism - some sympathetic, others critical - by a distinguished group of moral philosophers. 'Kantian constructivism holds that moral objectivity is to be understood in terms of a suitably constructed social point of view that all can accept. Apart from the procedure of constructing the principles of justice, there are no moral facts.' So wrote John Rawls in his highly influential 1980 Dewey lectures 'Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory'. Since then there has been much discussion of constructivist understandings, Kantian or otherwise, both of morality and of reason more generally. Such understandings typically seek to characterize the truth conditions of propositions in their target domain in maximally metaphysically unassuming ways, frequently in terms of the outcome of certain procedures or the passing of certain tests, procedures or tests that speak to the distinctively practical concerns of deliberating human agents living together in societies. But controversy abounds over the interpretation and the scope as well as the credibility of such constructivist ideas. The essays collected here reach to the heart of this contemporary philosophical debate, and offer a range of new approaches and perspectives.

Supposition is frequently invoked in many fields within philosophy, including aesthetics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and epistemology. However, there is a striking lack of consensus about the nature of supposition. What is supposition? Is supposition a sui generis type of mental state or is it reducible to some other type of mental state? These are the main questions Margherita Arcangeli explores in this book. She examines the characteristic features of supposition, along the dimensions of phenomenology and emotionality, among others, in a journey through the imaginative realm. An informed answer to the question "What is supposition?" must involve an analysis of imagination, since supposition is so often defined in opposition to the latter. She assesses rival explanations of supposition putting forward a novel view, according to which the proper way of seeing supposition is as a primitive type of imaginative state. Supposition and the Imaginative Realm: A Philosophical Inquiry will be of great interest to students of philosophy of psychology, aesthetics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and epistemology.

This study attempts to elucidate a possible meeting point of the traditions of Eastern and Western metaphysical thinking. In discussing Whitehead's and Aurobindo's views on being and becoming, it seeks the possibility of a better engagement between the East and the West in the light of the philosophical insights. It is an initiation into the Sitz im Leben of Whitehead's philosophy and his general thought pattern. It carries a perceptive analysis to show the clear primacy of Becoming or Process in Whitehead that extends even to the Divine. It also highlights Aurobindo as a unique Indian Philosopher, who articulated Indian thought in Western categories. He was able to integrate the evolutionary theory of the West with the Indian understanding of becoming. The relationship between God and Creativity and Sachchidananda and the Supermind is studied within the context of Enlightenment and Modernity and the way of doing philosophy in the West and in the East.

This book examines the possibility and necessity of critical thinking in religious education through the lenses of critical realism and the Christian doctrine of sensus fidei ('sense of faith'). Drawing on Bhaskar's original critical realism and data from a survey of over a thousand teachers in the Philippines, the author argues for a view of critical thinking based on components of 'disposition' and 'competence'. As such, critical thinking becomes the expression of a commitment to judgemental rationality and, in a Christian religious education, is guided by the individual's sensus fidei. A philosophical and theological discussion of the process of coming to know in the religious domain, Religious Education from a Critical Realist Perspective also offers concrete recommendations on how to promote the practice of religious critical thinking in confessional religious education classrooms. As such, it will appeal to scholars of philosophy, theology and pedagogy with interests in religious education and curriculum development.

Scientists studying the burning of stars, the evolution of species, DNA, the brain, the economy, and social change, all frequently describe their work as searching for mechanisms. Despite this fact, for much of the twentieth century philosophical discussions of the nature of mechanisms remained outside philosophy of science. The Routledge Handbook of Mechanisms and Mechanical Philosophy is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, problems, and debates in this exciting subject and is the first collection of its kind. Comprising over thirty chapters by a team of international contributors, the Handbook is divided into four Parts: Historical perspectives on mechanisms The nature of mechanisms Mechanisms and the philosophy of science Disciplinary perspectives on mechanisms. Within these Parts central topics and problems are examined, including the rise of mechanical philosophy in the seventeenth century; what mechanisms are made of and how they are organized; mechanisms and laws and regularities; how mechanisms are discovered and explained; dynamical systems theory; and disciplinary perspectives from physics, chemistry, biology, biomedicine, ecology, neuroscience, and the social sciences. Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of science, the Handbook will also be of interest to those in related fields, such as metaphysics, philosophy of psychology, and history of science.

Scientific realism is a central, long-standing, and hotly debated topic in philosophy of science. Debates about scientific realism concern the very nature and extent of scientific knowledge and progress. Scientific realists defend a positive epistemic attitude towards our best theories and models regarding how they represent the world that is unobservable to our naked senses. Various realist theses are under sceptical fire from scientific antirealists, e.g. empiricists and instrumentalists. The different dimensions of the ensuing debate centrally connect to numerous other topics in philosophy of science and beyond. The Routledge Handbook of Scientific Realism is an outstanding reference source - the first collection of its kind - to the key issues, positions, and arguments in this important topic. Its thirty-four chapters, written by a team of international experts, are divided into five parts: Historical development of the realist stance Classic debate: core issues and positions Perspectives on contemporary debates The realism debate in disciplinary context Broader reflections In these sections, the core issues and debates presented, analysed, and set into broader historical and disciplinary contexts. The central issues covered include motivations and arguments for realism; challenges to realism from underdetermination and history of science; different variants of realism; the connection of realism to relativism and perspectivism; and the relationship between realism, metaphysics, and epistemology. The Routledge Handbook of Scientific Realism is essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of science. It will also be very useful for anyone interested in the nature and extent of scientific knowledge.

Philosophers have long been concerned about what we know and how we know it. Increasingly, however, a related question has gained prominence in philosophical discussion: what should we believe and why? This volume brings together twelve new essays that address different aspects of this question. The essays examine foundational questions about reasons for belief, and use new research on reasons for belief to address traditional epistemological concerns such as knowledge, justification and perceptually acquired beliefs. This book will be of interest to philosophers working on epistemology, theoretical reason, rationality, perception and ethics. It will also be of interest to cognitive scientists and psychologists who wish to gain deeper insight into normative questions about belief and knowledge.

This is the first comprehensive book-length introduction to the philosophy of Western music that fully integrates consideration of popular music and hybrid musical forms, especially song. Its author, Andrew Kania, begins by asking whether Bob Dylan should even have been eligible for the Nobel Prize in Literature, given that he is a musician. This motivates a discussion of music as an artistic medium, and what philosophy has to contribute to our thinking about music. Chapters 2-5 investigate the most commonly defended sources of musical value: its emotional power, its form, and specifically musical features (such as pitch, rhythm, and harmony). In chapters 6-9, Kania explores issues arising from different musical practices, particularly work-performance (with a focus on classical music), improvisation (with a focus on jazz), and recording (with a focus on rock and pop). Chapter 10 examines the intersection of music and morality. The book ends with a consideration of what, ultimately, music is. Key Features Uses popular-song examples throughout, but also discusses a range of musical traditions (notably, rock, pop, classical, and jazz) Explains both philosophical and musical terms when they are first introduced Provides publicly accessible Spotify playlists of the musical examples discussed in the book Each chapter begins with an overview and ends with questions for testing comprehension and stimulating further thought, along with suggestions for further reading

This volume contains twenty-four essays by the British/Australian analytic metaphysician, Brian Garrett. These essays are followed by four short dialogues that emphasize and summarize some of the main points of the essays and discuss new perspectives that have emerged since their original publication. The volume covers topics on the metaphysics of time, the nature of identity, and the nature and importance of persons and human beings. The chapters constitute the fruits of almost four decades of philosophical research, from Brian's two award-winning essays, published in Analysis in 1983 and The Philosophical Quarterly in 1992, to his latest ideas about Fatalism and the Grandfather Paradox. This book will be of interest to students and professional philosophers in the field of analytic philosophy.

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant famously criticizes traditional metaphysics and its proofs of immortality, free will and God's existence. What is often overlooked is that Kant also explains why rational beings must ask metaphysical questions about 'unconditioned' objects such as souls, uncaused causes or God, and why answers to these questions will appear rationally compelling to them. In this book, Marcus Willaschek reconstructs and defends Kant's account of the rational sources of metaphysics. After carefully explaining Kant's conceptions of reason and metaphysics, he offers detailed interpretations of the relevant passages from the Critique of Pure Reason (in particular, the 'Transcendental Dialectic') in which Kant explains why reason seeks 'the unconditioned'. Willaschek offers a novel interpretation of the Transcendental Dialectic, pointing up its 'positive' side, while at the same time it uncovers a highly original account of metaphysical thinking that will be relevant to contemporary philosophical debates.

The renowned philosopher John Searle reveals the fundamental nature of social reality. What kinds of things are money, property, governments, nations, marriages, cocktail parties, and football games? Searle explains the key role played by language in the creation, constitution, and maintenance of social reality. We make statements about social facts that are completely objective, for example: Barack Obama is President of the United States, the piece of paper in my hand is a twenty-dollar bill, I got married in London, etc. And yet these facts only exist because we think they exist. How is it possible that we can have factual objective knowledge of a reality that is created by subjective opinions? This is part of a much larger question: How can we give an account of ourselves, with our peculiar human traits - mind, reason, freedom, society - in a world that we know independently consists of mindless, meaningless particles? How can we account for our social and mental existence in a realm of brute physical facts? In answering this question, Searle avoids postulating different realms of being, a mental and a physical, or worse yet, a mental, a physical, and a social. There is just one reality: Searle shows how the human reality fits into that one reality. Mind, language, and civilization are natural products of the basic facts of the physical world described by physics, chemistry and biology. Searle explains how language creates and maintains the elaborate structures of human social institutions. These institutions serve to create and distribute power relations that are pervasive and often invisible. These power relations motivate human actions in a way that provides the glue that holds human civilization together. Searle shows how this account illuminates human rationality, free will, political power, and human rights. Our social world is a world created and maintained by language.

The classic conception of human transcendental consciousness assumes its self-supporting existential status within the horizon of life-world, nature and earth.Yet this assumed absoluteness does not entail the nature of its powers, neither their constitutive force. This latter call for an existential source reaching beyond the generative life-world network. Transcendental consciousness, having lost its absolute status (its point of reference) it is the role of the logos to lay down the harmonious positioning in the cosmic sphere of the all, establishing an original foundation of phenomenology in the primogenital ontopoiesis of life. "