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.

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 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.

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.

Offering new and original readings of literature, poetry, and education as interpreted through the conceptual lens of Heidegger's later philosophy of the "Turn", this book helps readers understand Heidegger's later thought and presents new takes on how to engage the themes that emerged from his later writing. Suggesting novel ways to consider Heidegger's ideas on literature, poetry, and education, Magrini and Schwieler provide a deep understanding of the "Turn," a topic not often explored in contemporary Heideggerian scholarship. Their inter- and extra-disciplinary postmodern approaches offer a nuanced examination, taking into account Heidegger's controversial place in history, and filling a gap in educational research.

Nature and Normativity argues that the problem of the place of norms in nature has been essentially misunderstood when it has been articulated in terms of the relation of human language and thought, on the one hand, and the world described by physics on the other. Rather, if we concentrate on the facts that speaking and thinking are activities of organic agents, then the problem of the place of the normative in nature becomes refocused on three related questions. First, is there a sense in which biological processes and the behavior of organisms can be legitimately subject to normative evaluation? Second, is there some sense in which, in addition to having ordinary causal explanations, organic phenomena can also legitimately be seen to happen because they should happen in that way, in some naturalistically comprehensible sense of 'should', or that organic phenomena happen in order to achieve some result, because that result should occur? And third, is it possible to naturalistically understand how human thought and language can be legitimately seen as the normatively evaluable behavior of a particular species of organism, behavior that occurs in order to satisfy some class of norms? This book develops, articulates, and defends positive answers to each of these questions.

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.

Heidegger, Ethics and the Practice of Ontology presents an important new examination of ethics and ontology in Heidegger. There remains a basic conviction throughout Heidegger's thought that the event by which Being is given or disclosed is somehow 'prior' to our relation to the many beings we meet in our everyday lives. This priority makes it possible to talk about Being 'as such'. It also sanctions the relegation of ethics to a secondary position with respect to ontology. However, Heidegger's acknowledgement that ontology itself must remain intimately bound to concrete existence problematises the priority accorded to the ontological dimension. David Webb takes this bond as a key point of reference and goes on to develop critical perspectives that open up from within Heidegger's own thought, particularly in relation to Heidegger's debt to Aristotelian physics and ethics. Webb examines the theme of continuity and its role in the constitution of the 'as such' in Heidegger's ontology and argues that to address ontology is to engage in an ethical practice and vice versa.

Questions concerning free will are intertwined with issues in almost every area of philosophy, from metaphysics to philosophy of mind to moral philosophy, and are also informed by work in different areas of science (principally physics, neuroscience and social psychology). Free will is also a perennial concern of serious thinkers in theology and in non-western traditions. Because free will can be approached from so many different perspectives and has implications for so many debates, a comprehensive survey needs to encompass an enormous range of approaches. This book is the first to draw together leading experts on every aspect of free will, from those who are central to the current philosophical debates, to non-western perspectives, to scientific contributions and to those who know the rich history of the subject. Chapter 37 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tandfbis/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9781138795815_oachapter37.pdf

George Berkeley notoriously claimed that his immaterialist metaphysics was not only consistent with common sense but that it was also integral to its defense. Roberts argues that understanding the basic connection between Berkeley's philosophy and common sense requires that we develop a better understanding of the four principle components of Berkeley's positive metaphysics: The nature of being, the divine language thesis, the active/passive distinction, and the nature of spirits.
Roberts begins by focusing on Berkeley's view of the nature of being. He elucidates Berkeley's view on Locke and the Cartesians and by examining Berkeley's views about related concepts such as unity and simplicity. From there he moves on to Berkeley's philosophy of language arguing that scrutiny of the famous "Introduction" to the Principles of Human Knowledge reveals that Berkeley identified the ideational theory of meaning and understanding as the root cause of some of the worst of man's intellectual errors, not "abstract ideas." Abstract ideas are, rather, the most debilitating symptom of this underlying ailment. In place of the ideational theory, Berkeley defends a rudimentary "use theory" of meaning. This understanding of Berkeley's approach to semantics is then applied to the divine language thesis and is shown to have important consequences for Berkeley's pragmatic approach to the ontology of natural objects and for his approach to our knowledge of, and relation to other minds, including God's. Turning next to Berkeley's much aligned account of spirits, the author defends the coherence of Berkeley's view of spirits by way of providing an interpretation of the active/passive distinction as marking anormative distinction and by focusing on the role that divine language plays in letting Berkeley identify the soul with the will. With these four principles of Berkeley's philosophy in hand, he then returns to the topic of common sense and offers a defense of Berkeley's philosophy as built upon and expressive of the deepest metaphysical commitments of mainstream Christianity.
Roberts' reappraisal of this important figure should appeal to all historians of philosophy as well as scholars in metaphysics and philosophy of language.