George Berkeley was an idealist and an extraordinarily eloquent man of letters. Yet his views are traditionally regarded as wild and extravagant. He is well known for his departure from common sense, yet perversely represents himself as siding with 'the common folk', presenting a complex challenge for students. Berkeley A Guide for the Perplexed is a clear and thorough account of Berkeley's philosophy. The book covers the whole range of Berkeley's philosophical work, offering an accessible review of his views on philosophy and common sense and the nature of philosophical perplexity, together with an examination of his two major philosophical works, The Principles of Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous. Geared towards the specific requirements of students who need to reach a sound understanding of Berkeley's thought, the book provides a cogent and reliable survey of the various concepts and paradoxes of his thought. This is the ideal companion to the study of this most influential and challenging of philosophers.

Continuum's "Guides for the Perplexed" are clear, concise and accessible introductions to thinkers, writers and subjects that students and readers can find especially challenging. Concentrating specifically on what it is that makes the subject difficult to fathom, these books explain and explore key themes and ideas, guiding the reader towards a thorough understanding of demanding material. Benedict de Spinoza is a major philosopher of enduring influence and importance, whose work is encountered by all serious students of Western philosophy; his "Ethics" is one of the seminal works of moral, religious and political thought. Nevertheless, Spinoza is a considerable challenge for the modern student; his language, rooted in the vocabulary of late medieval scholasticism is frequently opaque, while the esoteric themes explored in his work often require elucidation. "Spinoza: A Guide for the Perplexed" provides that elucidation, offering a thorough account and analysis of Spinoza's key works and overall philosophical project. The text equips the reader with the necessary means to draw full and clear understanding from Spinoza's often inaccessible language and complex philosophical system and method. His "Ethics" and political treatises are covered in detail; Spinoza's 'geometrical' approach to his subject is opened up, and his obscure terminology fully explained. The book concludes with a valuable assessment of Spinoza's enduring influence and his relevance for contemporary philosophical debates and concerns. It is an excellent support resource for anyone trying to get to grips with this challenging and important philosopher.

This book provides a concise and coherent overview of Jeremy Bentham, the widely read and studied political philosopher - ideal for undergraduates who require more than just a simple introduction to his work and thought. Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), utilitarian philosopher and reformer, is a key figure in our intellectual heritage, and a far more subtle, sophisticated, and profound thinker than his popular reputation suggests. "Bentham: A Guide for the Perplexed" presents a clear account of his life and thought, and highlights his relevance to contemporary debates in philosophy, politics, and law. Key concepts and themes, including Bentham's theory of logic and language, his utilitarianism, his legal theory, his panopticon prison, and his democratic politics, together with his views on religion, sex, and torture, are lucidly explored. The book also contains an illuminating discussion of the nature of the text from the perspective of an experienced textual editor.The book will not only prove exceptionally valuable to students who need to reach a sound understanding of Bentham's ideas, serving as a clear and concise introduction to his philosophy, but also form an original contribution to Bentham studies more generally. It is the ideal companion for the study of this most influential and challenging of thinkers. "Continuum's Guides for the Perplexed" are clear, concise and accessible introductions to thinkers, writers and subjects that students and readers can find especially challenging - or indeed downright bewildering. Concentrating specifically on what it is that makes the subject difficult to grasp, these books explain and explore key themes and ideas, guiding the reader towards a thorough understanding of demanding material.

Edward Said and the Question of Subjectivity explores the notion of subjectivity implicated in and articulated by Said in his writings. Analyzing several of his major works, Pannian argues that there is a shift in Said's intellectual trajectory that takes place after the composition of Orientalism. In so doing, Said forthrightly attempts to retrieve a theoretical and political humanism, as Pannian identifies, despite the difficult and sanguinary aspects of its past. He elaborates upon Said's understanding that only after recognising the structures of violence and coming to discern strategies of interpellation, may the individual subject effectively resist them. Pannian also explores Said's ideas on exilic subjectivity, the role of intellectuals, acts of memory, critical secularism, affiliation and solidarity before dwelling on his interface with Marxist thinkers such as Antonio Gramsci, Theodor Adorno, and Raymond Williams. This engagement marks Said's own subject formation, and shapes his self-reflexive mode of knowledge production.

"The Descartes Dictionary" is an accessible guide to the world of the seventeenth-century philosopher Rene Descartes. Meticulously researched and extensively cross-referenced, this unique book covers all his major works, ideas and influences, and provides a firm grounding in the central themes of Descartes' thought.The introduction provides a biographical sketch, a brief account of Descartes' philosophical works, and a summary of the current state of Cartesian studies, discussing trends in research over the past four decades. The A-Z entries include clear definitions of the key terms used in Descartes' writings and detailed synopses of his works. Also included are entries noting philosophical influences, of both figures that influenced Descartes and those that he in turn influenced. For anyone reading or studying Descartes, rationalism, or modern philosophy more generally, this original resource provides a wealth of useful information, analysis, and criticism. Including clear explanations of often complex terminology, "The Descartes Dictionary" covers everything that is essential to a sound understanding of Descartes' philosophy.

This is volume 16 in the "Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers" series. The Scottish philosopher Adam Smith (1723-1790) was as a pioneer of political economy. In fact, his economic thought became the foundation of classical economics and his key work, "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations", is considered to be the first modern work in economics. For Smith, a free competition environment was the best way to foster economic development that would work in accordance with natural laws. The framework he set up to explain the free market remains true to this day. "Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers" provides comprehensive accounts of the works of seminal conservative thinkers from a variety of periods, disciplines, and traditions - the first series of its kind. Even the selection of thinkers adds another aspect to conservative thinking, including not only theorists but also writers and practitioners. The series comprises twenty volumes, each including an intellectual biography, historical context, critical exposition of the thinker's work, reception and influence, contemporary relevance, bibliography including references to electronic resources, and an index.

From the early 1790s until after the turn of the century, a very productive but also controversial exchange took place between Reinhold and Fichte. Though many key aspects of post-Kantian philosophy were discussed, the philosophical confrontation between Reinhold and Fichte is most instructive for the understanding of post-Kantian philosophy. The exchange started when Fichte published his verdict on Reinhold's Elementarphilosophie and disapproved of its fundamental principle. In 1794 Fichte challenged Reinhold by presenting his Wissenschaftslehre. Reinhold was not convinced of Fichte's foundation of philosophy at first, but announced that he accepted the Wissenschaftslehre in 1797. While Reinhold and Fichte officially collaborated in the following three years, tensions concerning fundamental questions were still present. When Reinhold adopted Rational Realism, his relation to Fichte deteriorated and the exchange between the two finally ended. The contributions in the present collection focus on the central systematic issues at the different stages of the confrontation between Fichte and Reinhold, thereby illuminating questions that are essential to the understanding of the evolution of post-Kantian German philosophy.

The Body and Shame: Phenomenology, Feminism, and the Socially Shaped Body investigates the concept of body shame and explores its significance when considering philosophical accounts of embodied subjectivity. Body shame only finds its full articulation in the presence (actual or imagined) of others within a rule and norm governed milieu. As such, it bridges our personal, individual and embodied experience with the social, cultural and political world that contains us. Luna Dolezal argues that understanding body shame can shed light on how the social is embodied, that is, how the body-experienced in its phenomenological primacy by the subject-becomes a social and cultural artifact, shaped by external forces and demands. The Body and Shame introduces leading twentieth-century phenomenological and sociological accounts of embodied subjectivity through the work of Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, Michel Foucault and Norbert Elias. Dolezal examines the embodied, social and political features of body shame. contending that body shame is both a necessary and constitutive part of embodied subjectivity while simultaneously a potential site of oppression and marginalization. Exploring the cultural politics of shame, the final chapters of this work explore the phenomenology of self-presentation and a feminist analysis of shame and gender, with a critical focus on the practice of cosmetic surgery, a site where the body is literally shaped by shame. The Body and Shame will be of great interest to scholars and students in a wide variety of fields, including philosophy, phenomenology, feminist theory, women's studies, social theory, cultural studies, psychology, sociology, and medical humanities.

In this wide-ranging and compelling set of essays, Nigel Tubbs illustrates how a philosophical notion of education lies at the heart of Hegelian philosophy and employs it to critique some of the stereotypes and misreadings from which Hegel often suffers. With chapters on philosophical education in relation to life and death, self and other, subject and substance, and to Derrida and Levinas in particular, Tubbs brings Hegelian education - read as recollection - to bear on modern social and political relations. He argues, in sum, that Hegelian philosophy comprehended in terms of education yields a theory of self and other that can inform and reform relations between rich and poor, West and East. Finally, the book addresses the most controversial aspect of any defence of Hegel, namely the comprehension of the absolute and its imperialist implications for Western history. The author argues passionately that through a notion of philosophical education Hegel teaches us not to avoid the dilemmas that are endemic to modern Western power and mastery when trying to comprehend some of our most pressing human concerns. >

"Encountering Derrida" explores the points of engagement between Jacques Derrida and a host of other European thinkers, past and present, in order to counter recent claims that the era of deconstruction is finally drawing to a close. The book rereads Derrida in order to renew deconstruction's various conceptions of language, poetry, philosophy, institutions, difference and the future.This impressive collection of essays from the world's leading Derrida scholars re-evaluates Derrida's legacy and looks forward to the possible futures of deconstruction by confronting various challenges to Derrida's thought. Collectively, the essays argue that Derrida must be read alongside others, an approach that produces some surprising new accounts of this challenging critical thinker.

Martin Heidegger's Impact on Psychotherapy is the first comprehensive presentation in English of the background, theory and practice of Daseinsanalysis, the analysis of human existence. It is the work of the co-founding member of a radical re-envisioning of psychoanalysis initiated by the work of the Swiss psychiatrist, Medard Boss (1903-1990). Originally published in 1998, this new edition of Gion Condrau's (1919-2006) book acquaints new generations of psychotherapists, psychiatrists and psychoanalysts with an alternative to psychodynamic, humanistic and existential forms of the therapy of the word that is currently experience a renaissance of interest, especially in the United States and the UK. The volume presents the basic ideas of Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) that made possible this unique approach to psychotherapy. It is arranged in sections on (1) the foundations of Daseinsanalysis in Heidegger's thought, (2) understanding psychopathology, (3) daseinsanalytic psychotherapy in practice, (4) working with the dying person, and (5) the preparation of the professional Daseinsanalyst. Several extended cases are presented to illustrate daseinsanalytic practice at work (narcissistic personality disorder and obsessive compulsive personality disorder). Since dreaming and dream life are central to Daseinsanalysis, a number of dreams are analyzed from its perspective. Daseinsanalysis originated as a form of psychoanalysis and retains a number of its features: free association, optional use of the couch, and attention to dreams. It differs from psychoanalysis by abandoning the natural science perspective which understands human experience and behavior in terms of causality. Instead, human existence is seen to be utterly different from every other kind of sentient animal life. Taking a phenomenological perspective, Daseinsanalysis is based on letting the existence of the human being in all his or her uniqueness show itself. In practice, Daseinsanalysis avoids intervening in the life of the person in favor of maximizing the conditions in which existence can come into its own with maximum freedom.

John Locke is widely regarded as one of the foundational thinkers of modern western society. His contributions to a huge range of philosophical debates are as important and influential now as they were in the seventeenth century. Covering all the key concepts of his work, Starting with Locke provides an accessible introduction to the ideas of this hugely significant thinker. Clearly structured according to Locke's central ideas, the book leads the reader through a thorough overview of the development of his thought. Offering comprehensive coverage of the historical events and philosophical issues at play during this period, the book explores his understanding of faith and his contributions to political philosophy in his theories of natural law, natural rights and the right to rebellion. Crucially the book introduces the major historical and philosophical events that proved influential in the development of Locke's thought, including the violent social conflicts of late seventeenth-century England to which his political theory was primarily responding.

This is an important monograph presenting a critique of the work of Theodor W. Adorno, a founding member of the Frankfurt School. "Adorno's Poetics of Critique" is a critical study of the Marxist culture-critic Theodor W. Adorno, a founding member of the Frankfurt school and widely regarded today as its most brilliant exponent. Steven Helmling is centrally concerned with Adorno's notoriously difficult writing, a feature most commentators acknowledge only to set it aside on the way to an expository account of 'what Adorno is saying'. By contrast, Adorno's complex writing is the central focus of this study, which includes detailed analysis of Adorno's most complex texts, in particular his most famous and complicated work, co-authored with Max Horkheimer, "Dialectic of Enlightenment".Helmling argues that Adorno's key motifs - dialectic, concept, negation, immanent critique, constellation - are prescriptions not merely for critical thinking, but also for critical writing. For Adorno the efficacy of critique is conditioned on how the writing of critique is written. Both in theory and in practice, Adorno urges a 'poetics of critique' that is every bit as critical as anything else in his 'critical theory.

This book repairs and revives the Theory of Knowledge research program of Russell's Principia era. Chapter 1, 'Introduction and Overview', explains the program's agenda. Inspired by the non-Fregean logicism of Principia Mathematica, it endorses the revolution within mathematics presenting it as a study of relations. The synthetic a priori logic of Principia is the essence of philosophy considered as a science which exposes the dogmatisms about abstract particulars and metaphysical necessities that create prisons that fetter the mind. Incipient in The Problems of Philosophy, the program's acquaintance epistemology embraced a multiple-relation theory of belief. It reached an impasse in 1913, having been itself retrofitted with abstract particular logical forms to address problems of direction and compositionality. With its acquaintance epistemology in limbo, Scientific Method in Philosophy became the sequel to Problems. Chapter 2 explains Russell's feeling intellectually dishonest. Wittgenstein's demand that logic exclude nonsense belief played no role. The 1919 neutral monist era ensued, but Russell found no epistemology for the logic essential to philosophy. Repairing, Chapters 4-6 solve the impasse. Reviving, Chapters 3 and 7 vigorously defend the facts about Principia. Studies of modality and entailment are viable while Principia remains a universal logic above the civil wars of the metaphysicians.

Sren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) is simultaneously one of the most obscure philosophers of the Western world and one of the most influential. His writings have influenced atheists and faithful alike. Yet despite his now pervasive influence, there is still widespread disagreement on many of the most important aspects of his thought. Kierkegaard was deliberately obscure in his philosophical writings, forcing his reader to interpret and reflect. But at the same time that Kierkegaard produced his esoteric, pseudonymous philosophical writings, he was also producing simpler, direct religious writings. Since his death the connections between these two sets of writings have been debated, ignored or denied by commentators. Here W. Glenn Kirkconnell undertakes a thorough examination of the two halves of Kierkegaard's authorship, demonstrating their ethical and religious relationship and the unifying themes of the signed and pseudonymous works. In particular the book examines Kierkegaard's understanding of the fall of the self and its recovery and the implications of his entire corpus for the life of the individual.

Excursions with Thoreau is a major new exploration of Thoreau's writing and thought that is philosophical yet sensitive to the literary and religious. Edward F. Mooney's excursions through passages from Walden, Cape Cod, and his late essay "Walking" reveal Thoreau as a miraculous writer, artist, and religious adept. Of course Thoreau remains the familiar political activist and environmental philosopher, but in these fifteen excursions we discover new terrain. Among the notable themes that emerge are Thoreau's grappling with underlying affliction; his pursuit of wonder as ameliorating affliction; his use of the enigmatic image of "a child of the mist"; his exalting "sympathy with intelligence" over plain knowledge; and his preferring "befitting reverie"-not argument-as the way to be carried to better, cleaner perceptions of reality. Mooney's aim is bring alive Thoreau's moments of reverie and insight, and to frame his philosophy as poetic and episodic rather than discursive and systematic.

Our era is profoundly marked by the phenomenon of exile and it is has become increasingly urgent to rethink the concept of exile and our stance towards it. This renewed reflection on the problem of exile brings to the fore a number of questions regarding the traditionally negative connotation of exile. Is there not another way to understand the condition of exile? Permeated with references to the 'stranger', the 'other' and 'exteriority', the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas signifies a positive understanding of exile. This original and compelling book distills from Levinas's philosophy a wisdom of exile, for the first time shedding a positive light on the condition of exile itself. Abi Doukhan argues that Levinas's philosophy can be understood as a comprehensive philosophy of exile, from his ethics to his thoughts on society, love, knowledge, spirituality and art, thereby presenting a comprehensive view of the philosophy of Levinas himself as well as a renewed understanding of the wealth and contribution of exile to a given society.

[This book] offers lucid and thorough explications of key Sartrean concepts and even phrases, and it contains revealing accounts of the numerous thinkers and writers who influenced Sartre...This book will open doors.-David Pugmire, Department of Philosophy, University of Southampton, UK The Sartre Dictionary is a comprehensive and accessible guide to the world of Jean- Paul Sartre. Meticulously researched and extensively cross-referenced, this unique book covers all of his major works, ideas and influences and provides a firm grounding in the central themes of Sartres thought. Students will discover a wealth of useful information, analysis and criticism. More than 350 A-Z entries include clear definitions of all the key terms used in Sartres writings and detailed synopses of his key works, novels and plays. The Dictionary also includes entries on Sartres major philosophical influences, from Descartes to Heidegger, and his contemporaries, including de Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty. It covers everything that is essential to a sound understanding of Sartres existentialism, offering clear explanations of often complex terminology.

This is an introduction to one of Nietzsche's most important works - a key text in nineteenth-century philosophy. Friedrich Nietzsche was arguably the most important and influential thinker of the nineteenth century. "The Birth of Tragedy", his first published work, is a classic text that remains an essential read for those seeking to understand the development of Nietzsche's ideas. Indeed, it is difficult to make sense of Nietzsche as a philosopher and writer without a thorough understanding of "The Birth of Tragedy", without doubt one of his most influential texts. "Nietzsche's 'The Birth of Tragedy': A Reader's Guide" offers a concise and accessible introduction to this hugely important and yet challenging work. Written specifically to meet the needs of students coming to Nietzsche for the first time, the book offers guidance on: philosophical and historical context; key themes; reading the text; reception and influence; and, further reading. "Continuum Reader's Guides" are clear, concise and accessible introductions to key texts in literature and philosophy. Each book explores the themes, context, criticism and influence of key works, providing a practical introduction to close reading, guiding students towards a thorough understanding of the text. They provide an essential, up-to-date resource, ideal for undergraduate students.

Deleuze's concept of 'becoming' provides the key to his notoriously complex metaphysics, yet it has not been systematized until now. Bankston tracks the concept of becoming and its underlying temporal processes across Deleuze's writings, arguing that expressions of becoming(s) appear in two modes of temporality: an appropriation of Nietzsche's eternal return (the becoming of the event), and Bergsonian duration (the becoming of sensation). Overturning the criticisms launched by Zizek and Badiou, with conceptual encounters between Bergson, Nietzsche, Leibniz, Borges, Klossowski, and Proust, the newly charted concept of double becoming provides a roadmap to the totality of Deleuze's philosophy. Bankston systematizes Deleuze's multi-mirrored universe where form and content infinitely refract in a vital kaleidoscope of becoming.