This book examines the true core of philosophy and metaphysics, taking account of quantum and relativity theory as it applies to physical Reality, and develops a line of reasoning that ultimately leads us to Reality as it is currently understood at the most fundamental level - the Standard Model of Elementary Particles. This book develops new formalisms for Logic that are of interest in themselves and also provide a Platonic bridge to Reality. The bridge to Reality will be explored in detail in a subsequent book, Relativistic Quantum Metaphysics: A First Principles Basis for the Standard Model of Elementary Particles. We anticipate that the current "fundamental" level of physical Reality may be based on a still lower level and/or may have additional aspects remaining to be found. However the effects of certain core features such as quantum theory and relativity theory will persist even if a lower level of Reality is found, and these core features suggest the form of a new Metaphysics of physical Reality. We have coined the phrase "Operator Metaphysics" for this new metaphysics of physical Reality. The book starts by describing aspects of Philosophy and Metaphysics relevant to the study of current physical Reality. Part of this development are new Logics, Operator Logic and Quantum Operator Logic, developed in earlier books by this author (and revised and expanded in this book). Using them we are led to develop a connection to the beginnings of The Standard Model of Elementary Particles. While mathematics is essential in the latter stages of the book we have tried to present it with sufficient text discussion to make what it is doing understandable to the non-mathematical reader. Generally we will avoid using the jargon of Philosophy, Logic and Physics as much as possible.

Truth to Post-Truth in American Detective Fiction examines questions of truth and relativism, turning to detectives, both real and imagined, from Poe's C. Auguste Dupin to Robert Mueller, to establish an oblique history of the path from a world where not believing in truth was unthinkable to the present, where it is common to believe that objective truth is a remnant of a simpler, more naive time. Examining detective stories both literary and popular including hard-boiled, postmodern, and twenty-first century novels, the book establishes that examining detective fiction allows for a unique view of this progression to post-truth since the detective's ultimate job is to take the reader from doubt to belief. David Riddle Watson shows that objectivity is intersubjectivity, arguing that the belief in multiple worlds is ultimately what sustains the illusion of relativism.

Maine de Biran's work has had an enormous influence on the development of French Philosophy - Henri Bergson called him the greatest French metaphysician since Descartes and Malebranche, Jules Lachelier referred to him as the French Kant, and Royer-Collard called him simply 'the master of us all' - and yet the philosopher and his work remain unknown to many English speaking readers. From Ravaisson and Bergson, through to the phenomenology of major figures such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Henry, and Paul Ricoeur, Biran's influence is evident and acknowledged as a major contribution. The notion of corps propre, so important to phenomenology in the twentieth century, originates in his thought. His work also had a huge impact on the distinction between the virtual and the actual as well as the concepts of effort and puissance, enormously important to the development of Deleuze's and Foucault's work. This volume, the first English translation of Maine de Biran in nearly a century, introduces Anglophone readers to the work of this seminal thinker. The Relationship Between the Physical and the Moral in Man is an expression of Biran's mature 'spiritualism' and philosophy of the will as well as perhaps the clearest articulation of his understanding of what would later come to be called the mind-body problem. In this text Biran sets out forcefully his case for the autonomy of mental or spiritual life against the reductive explanatory power of the physicalist natural sciences. The translation is accompanied by critical essays from experts in France and the United Kingdom, situating Biran's work and its reception in its proper historical and intellectual context.

Bringing together leading scholars from across the world, this is a comprehensive survey of the latest phenomenological research into the perennial philosophical problem of truth. Starting with an historical introduction chronicling the variations on truth at play in the Phenomenological tradition, the book explores how Husserls methodology equips us with the tools to thoroughly explore notions of truth, reality and knowledge. From these foundations, the book goes on to explore and extend the range of approaches that contemporary phenomenological research opens up in the face of the most profound ontological and epistemological questions raised by the tradition. In the final section, the authors go further still and explore how phenomenology relates to other variations on truth offered up by hermeneutic, deconstructive and narrative approaches.Across the 12 essays collected in this volume, Variations on Truth explores and maps a comprehensive and rigorous alternative to mainstream analytic discussions of truth, reality and understanding.

George Berkeley's Principles of Human Knowledge is a crucial text in the history of empiricism and in the history of philosophy more generally. Its central and seemingly astonishing claim is that the physical world cannot exist independently of the perceiving mind. The meaning of this claim, the powerful arguments in its favour, and the system in which it is embedded, are explained in a highly lucid and readable fashion and placed in their historical context. Berkeley's philosophy is, in part, a response to the deep tensions and problems in the new philosophy of the early modern period and the reader is offered an account of this intellectual milieu. The book then follows the order and substance of the Principles whilst drawing on materials from Berkeley's other writings. This volume is the ideal introduction to Berkeley's Principles and will be of great interest to historians of philosophy in general.

"This volume comprises a new critical edition and translation of Giambattista Vico's challenging and provoking early work On the Most Ancient Wisdom of the Italians. The Latin edition faithfully reproduces Vico's original 1710 text as first printed; it is accompanied by Jason Taylor's complete, accurate, and highly readable English translation." "In an illuminating introduction to the volume, Robert Miner elucidates Vico's short but difficult work; at the same time, he allows the reader to assess the importance of that work, in absolute terms as well as relative to Vico's other writings and the work of his numerous interlocutors in the republic of letters." "Taken as a whole, this volume provides the text and guidance to support a fresh engagement with Vico's thought, especially his earliest philosophical works. It will also serve as a valuable resource for students and scholars with interests in eighteenth-century thought."--BOOK JACKET.

Charles E. Snyder considers the New Academy's attacks on Stoic epistemology through a critical re-assessment of the 3rd century philosopher, Arcesilaus of Pitane. Arguing that the standard epistemological framework used to study the ancient Academy ignores the metaphysical dimensions at stake in Arcesilaus's critique, Snyder explores new territory for the historiography of Stoic-Academic debates in the early Hellenistic period. Focusing on the dispute between the Old and New Academy, Snyder reveals the metaphysical dimensions of Arcesilaus' arguments as essential to grasping what is innovative about the so-called New Academy. Resisting the partiality for epistemology in the historical reconstructions of ancient philosophy, this book defends a new philosophical framework that re-positions Arcesilaus' attack on the early Stoa as key to his deviation from the metaphysical foundations of both Stoic and Academic virtue ethics. Drawing on a wide range of scholarship on Hellenistic philosophy in French, Italian, and German, Beyond Hellenistic Epistemology builds bridges between analytical and continental approaches to the historiography of ancient philosophy, and makes an important and disruptive contribution to the literature.

Plotinus' mysticism of henosis, unification with the One, is a highly controversial topic in Plotinian scholarship. This book presents a careful reading of the Enneads and suggests that Plotinus' mysticism be understood as mystical teaching that offers practical guidance concerning henosis. It is further argued that a rational interpretation thereof should be based on Plotinus' metaphysics, according to which the One transcends all beings but is immanent in them. The main thesis of this book is that Plotinus' mystical teaching does not help man attain henosis on his own, but serves to remind man that he fails to attain henosis because it already pertains to his original condition. Plotinus' mysticism seeks to change man's misconception about henosis, rather than his finite nature.

Available in English for the first time, this first draft of Heidegger's opus, "Being and Time", provides a unique insight into Heidegger's Phenomenology. "The Concept of Time" presents Heidegger's so-called Dilthey review, widely considered the first draft of his celebrated masterpiece, "Being and Time". Here Heidegger reveals his deep commitment to Wilhelm Dilthey and Count Yorck von Wartenburg. He agrees with them that historicity must be at the centre of the new philosophy to come. However, he also argues for an ontological approach to history. From this ontological turn he develops the so-called categories of Dasein. This work demonstrates Heidegger's indebtedness to Yorck and Dilthey and gives further evidence to the view that thought about history is the germ cell of "Being and Time". However, it also shows that Heidegger's commitment to Dilthey was not without reservations and that his analysis of Dasein actually employs Husserl's phenomenology. The work reopens the question of history in a broader sense, as Heidegger struggles to thematize history without aligning it with world-historical events. The text also provides a concise and readable summary of the main themes of "Being and Time" and as such is an ideal companion to that text.

Sjoerd van Tuinen argues for the inseparability of matter and manner in the form of a group portrait of Leibniz, Bergson, Whitehead, Souriau, Simondon, Deleuze, Stengers, and Agamben. Examining afresh the 16th-century style of mannerism, this book synthesizes philosophy and aesthetics to demonstrate not only the contemporary relevance of artists such as Michelangelo or Arcimboldo but their broader significance as incorporating a form of modal thinking and perceiving. While looking at mannerism as a style that spurned the balance and proportion of earlier Renaissance models in favour of compositional instability and tension, this book also conceives of mannerism a-historically to investigate what it can tell us about continental modal metaphysics. Whereas analytical metaphysics privileges logical essence and asks whether something is possible, real, contingent, or necessary, continental philosophy privileges existence and counts as many modes as there are ways of coming-into-being. In three main parts, van Tuinen first explores the ontological, aesthetic, and ethical ramifications of this distinction. He then develops this through an extended study of Leibniz as a modal and indeed mannerist philosopher, before outlining in the final part a (neo)-mannerist aesthetics that incorporates diagrammatics, alchemy, and contemporary technologies of speculative design.

Genealogies of Speculation looks to break the impasse between the innovations of speculative thought and the dominant strands of 20th century anti-foundationalist philosophy. Challenging emerging paradigms of philosophical history, this text re-evaluates different theoretical and political traditions such as feminism, literary theory, social geography and political theory after the speculative turn in philosophy. With contributions from leading writers in contemporary thought this book is a crucial resource for studying cultural and art-theory and continental philosophy.

A Critical Introduction to Fictionalism provides a clear and comprehensive understanding of an important alternative to realism. Drawing on questions from ethics, the philosophy of religion, art, mathematics, logic and science, this is a complete exploration of how fictionalism contrasts with other non-realist doctrines and motivates influential fictionalist treatments across a range of philosophical issues. Defending and criticizing influential as well as emerging fictionalist approaches, this accessible overview discuses physical objects, universals, God, moral properties, numbers and other fictional entities. Where possible it draws general lessons about the conditions under which a fictionalist treatment of a class of items is plausible. Distinguishing fictionalism from other views about the existence of items, it explains the central features of this key metaphysical topic. Featuring a historical survey, definitions of key terms, characterisations of important subdivisions, objections and problems for fictionalism, and contemporary fictionalist treatments of several issues, A Critical Introduction to Fictionalism is a valuable resource for students of metaphysics as well as students of philosophical methodology. It is the only book of its kind.

This book provides novel reading of the relations between two central philosophical disciplines - metaphysics and ethics. "Pragmatist Metaphysics" proposes a pragmatist re-articulation of the nature, aims and methods of metaphysics. Rather than regarding metaphysics as a 'first philosophy', an inquiry into the world independent of human perspectives, the pragmatist views metaphysics as an inquiry into categorizations of reality laden with human practices. Insofar as our categorizations of reality are practice-laden, they are also, inevitably, value-laden.Sami Pihlstrom argues that metaphysics does not, then, study the world's 'own' categorical structure, but a structure we, through our conceptual and practical activities, impose on the reality we experience and interact with. Engaging with the classical American pragmatists, in particular William James, and neopragmatists, including Hilary Putnam, the author seeks to correct long-held misconceptions regarding the nature of the relationship between metaphysics and pragmatism. He argues that a coherent metaphysical alternative to the currently fashionable realist metaphysics emerges from pragmatism and that pragmatism itself should be reinterpreted in a metaphysically serious manner. Moreover, the book argues that, from a pragmatist perspective, metaphysics must be inextricably linked with ethics.

Alain Badiou has claimed that Quentin Meillassoux's book After Finitude (Bloomsbury, 2008) "opened up a new path in the history of philosophy." And so, whether you agree or disagree with the speculative realism movement, it has to be addressed. Lacanian Realism does just that. This book reconstructs Lacanian dogma from the ground up: first, by unearthing a new reading of the Lacanian category of the real; second, by demonstrating the political and cultural ingenuity of Lacan's concept of the real, and by positioning this against the more reductive analyses of the concept by Slavoj Zizek, Alain Badiou, Saul Newman, Todd May, Joan Copjec, Jacques Ranciere, and others, and; third, by arguing that the subject exists intimately within the real. Lacanian Realism is an imaginative and timely exploration of the relationship between Lacanian psychoanalysis and contemporary continental philosophy.