Much attention has been paid to Wittgenstein's treatment of solipsism and to Cavell's treatment of skepticism. But comparatively little has been made of the striking connections between the early Wittgenstein's view on the truth of solipsism and Cavell's view on the truth of skepticism, and how that relates to the claim that the later Wittgenstein sees privacy as a constant human possibility. This book offers close readings of representative writings by both authors and argues that an adequate understanding of solipsism and skepticism requires taking into account a set of underlying difficulties related to a disappointment with finitude which might ultimately lead to the threat of solipsism. That threat is further interpreted as a wish not to bear the burden of having to constantly negotiate and nurture the fragile connections with the world and others which are the conditions of possibility for finite beings to achieve meaning and community. By presenting Wittgenstein's and Cavell's responses in an order which reflects the chronology of their writings, the result is a cohesive articulation of some under-appreciated aspects of their philosophical methodologies which has the potential of reorienting our entire reading of their work.

Alienation After Derrida rearticulates the Hegelian-Marxist theory of alienation in the light of Derrida's deconstruction of the metaphysics of presence. Simon Skempton aims to demonstrate in what way Derridian deconstruction can itself be said to be a critique of alienation. In so doing, he argues that the acceptance of Derrida's deconstructive concepts does not necessarily entail the acceptance of his interpretations of Hegel and Marx. In this way the book proposes radical reinterpretations, not only of Hegel and Marx, but of Derridian deconstruction itself. The critique of the notions of alienation and de-alienation is a key component of Derridian deconstruction that has been largely neglected by scholars to date. This important new study puts forward a unique and original argument that Derridian deconstruction can itself provide the basis for a rethinking of the concept of alienation, a concept that has received little serious philosophically engaged attention for several decades. >

This volume brings together contributions that explore the philosophy of Franz Brentano. It looks at his work both critically and in the context of contemporary philosophy. For instance, Brentano influenced the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, the theory of objects of Alexius Meinong, the early development of the Gestalt theory, the philosophy of language of Anton Marty, the works of Carl Stumpf in the psychology of tone, and many others. Readers will also learn the contributions of Brentano's work to much debated contemporary issues in philosophy of mind, ontology, and the theory of emotions. The first section deals with Brentano's conception of the history of philosophy. The next approaches his conception of empirical psychology from an empirical standpoint and in relation with competing views on psychology from the period. The third section discusses Brentano's later programme of a descriptive psychology or "descriptive phenomenology" and some of his most innovative developments, for instance in the theory of emotions. The final section examines metaphysical issues and applications of his mereology. His reism takes here an important place. The intended readership of this book comprises phenomenologists, analytic philosophers, philosophers of mind and value, as well as metaphysicians. It will appeal to both graduate and undergraduate students, professors, and researchers in philosophy and psychology.

David and Mary Norton present the definitive scholarly edition of one of the greatest philosophical works ever written. This first volume contains the critical text of David Hume's Treatise of Human Nature (1739/40), followed by the short Abstract (1740) in which Hume set out the key arguments of the larger work; the volume concludes with A Letter from a Gentleman to his Friend in Edinburgh (1745), Hume's defence of the Treatise when it was under attack from ministers seeking to prevent Hume's appointment as Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh.

Engaging with several emerging and interconnected approaches in the social sciences, including pragmatism, system theory, processual thinking and relational thinking, this book leverages John Dewey and Arthur Bentley's often misunderstood concept of trans-action to revisit and redefine our perceptions of social relations and social life. The contributors gathered here use trans-action in a more specific sense, showing why and how social scientists and philosophers might use the concept to better understand our social life and social problems. As the first collective sociological attempt to apply the concept of trans-action to contemporary social issues, this volume is a key reference for the growing audience of relational and processual thinkers in the social sciences and beyond.

This book is a consideration of Hegel's view on logic and basic logical concepts such as truth, form, validity, and contradiction, and aims to assess this view's relevance for contemporary philosophical logic. The literature on Hegel's logic is fairly rich. The attention to contemporary philosophical logic places the present research closer to those works interested in the link between Hegel's thought and analytical philosophy (Stekeler-Weithofer 1992 and 2019, Berto 2005, Rockmore 2005, Redding 2007, Nuzzo 2010 (ed.), Koch 2014, Brandom 2014, 1-15, Pippin 2016, Moyar 2017, Quante & Mooren 2018 among others). In this context, one particularity of this book consists in focusing on something that has been generally underrated in the literature: the idea that, for Hegel as well as for Aristotle and many other authors (including Frege), logic is the study of the forms of truth, i.e. the forms that our thought can (or ought to) assume in searching for truth. In this light, Hegel's thinking about logic is a fundamental reference point for anyone interested in a philosophical foundation of logic.

Written at a time when violence has many faces and goes by many names, this collection is proof that philosophy can remain a vital partner in the twin tasks of diagnosis and action. Emerging across specters of genocide, racism, oppression, terror, poverty, or war, the threat of violence is not only concrete and urgent, but all too often throws the work of critical reflection into vulnerable paralysis. With essays by some of today's finest scholars, these pages breathe new life into the hard work of intellectual engagement. Philosophers such as Peg Birmingham, Robert Bernasconi, and Bernhard Waldenfels not only feel the distinct burden of our age but, with unflagging attention to the philosophical tradition, forge a pronounced counterweight to the violent gyre of today. The result is a stirring critique that looks outward upon the phenomena of injustice, and inward upon the instruments and assumptions of philosophical discourse itself.

John Searle (1932-) is one of the most famous living American philosophers. A pupil of J. L. Austin at Oxford in the 1950s, he is currently Mills Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Language at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1995 John Searle published "The Construction of Social Reality", a text which not only promises to disclose the institutional backdrop against which speech takes place, but initiate a new 'philosophy of society'. Since then "The Construction of Social Reality" has been subject to a flurry of criticism. While many of Searle's interlocutors share the sense that the text marks an important breakthrough, he has time and again accused critics of misunderstanding his claims. Despite Searle's characteristic crispness and clarity there remains some confusion, among both philosophers and sociologists, regarding the significance of his proposals. This book traces some of the high points of this dialogue, leveraging Searle's own clarifications to propose a new way of understanding the text. In particular, Joshua Rust looks to Max Weber in suggesting that Searle has articulated an ideal type. In locating The Construction of Social Reality under the umbrella of one of sociology's founding fathers, this book not only makes Searle's text more accessible to the readers in the social sciences, but presents Max Weber as a thinker worthy of philosophical reconsideration. Moreover, the recharacterization of Searle's claims in terms of the ideal type helps facilitate a comparison between Searle and other social theorists such as Talcott Parsons.

This book explores the philosophical writings of Gerda Walther (1897-1977). It features essays that recover large parts of Walther's oeuvre in order to show her contribution to phenomenology and philosophy. In addition, the volume contains an English translation of part of her major work on mysticism. The essays consider the interdisciplinary implications of Gerda Walther's ideas. A student of Edmund Husserl, Edith Stein, and Alexander Pfander, she wrote foundational studies on the ego, community, mysticism and religion, and consciousness. Her discussions of empathy, identification, the ego and ego-consciousness, alterity, God, mysticism, sensation, intentionality, sociality, politics, and woman are relevant not only to phenomenology and philosophy but also to scholars of religion, women's and gender studies, sociology, political science, and psychology. Gerda Walther was one of the important figures of the early phenomenological movement. However, as a woman, she could not habilitate at a German university and was, therefore, denied a position. Her complete works have yet to be published. This ground-breaking volume not only helps readers discover a vital voice but it also demonstrates the significant contributions of women to early phenomenological thinking.

"In this massive, meticulously researched work Trinkaus makes a major contribution to our understanding of the Italian humanists and the Christian Renaissance in Italy. . . . The author argues persuasively that the Italian humanists drew their inspiration more from the church fathers than from the pagan ancients. . . . [This is] the most comprehensive and most important study of Italian humanism to appear in English. It is a mine of information, offering, among other things, detailed analyses of texts which have been ignored even by Italian scholars." -Library Journal

This is the second edition of the study of Ayn Rand's first novel, which was published in 1936--ten years after she left Soviet Russia, and during America's Red Decade. Essays deal with historical, literary and philosophical themes. Essays on the history of We the Living cover: the drafts of the novel; the historical accuracy of its setting and the extent to which the novel is autobiographical; and, Rand's struggles with a hostile culture first to publish We the Living, and then to adapt it. Essays providing literary analyses include a comparison of We the Living and the fiction of Victor Hugo (Rand's favorite writer). Also covered are We the Living's plot, theme, characterization and style--what Rand, in her writings on literary aesthetics, considered the four essential attributes of a novel. The theme of We the Living is the individual against the state, and the sanctity of human life. These issues are dealt with in detail, especially in the essays which focus on philosophical topics. A number of essays in this collection make extensive use of previously unpublished material from the Ayn Rand Archives.

This monograph details the entire scientific thought of an influential natural philosopher whose contributions, unfortunately, have become obscured by the pages of history. Readers will discover an important thinker: Burchard de Volder. He was instrumental in founding the first experimental cabinet at a European University in 1675. The author goes beyond the familiar image of De Volder as a forerunner of Newtonianism in Continental Europe. He consults neglected materials, including handwritten sources, and takes into account new historiographical categories. His investigation maps the thought of an author who did not sit with an univocal philosophical school, but critically dealt with all the 'major' philosophers and scientists of his age: from Descartes to Newton, via Spinoza, Boyle, Huygens, Bernoulli, and Leibniz. It explores the way De Volder's un-systematic thought used, rejected, and re-shaped their theories and approaches. In addition, the title includes transcriptions of De Volder's teaching materials: disputations, dictations, and notes. Insightful analysis combined with a trove of primary source material will help readers gain a new perspective on a thinker so far mostly ignored by scholars. They will find a thoughtful figure who engaged with early modern science and developed a place that fostered experimental philosophy.

Science is knowledge gained and justified methodically. It is achieved by research and theory formation. But what is a methodical procedure and what are methodically established justifications? What kind of principles must be observed in order to obtain the degree of objectivity that is generally claimed by science? What is the relation between science in the research mode and science in presentation mode, i.e., in its theoretical form? Do the same principles hold here? And how are they justified? Is it even possible to speak of justification in a theoretical sense? Or do we have to be content with less - with corroboration and confirmation? Is the distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification the last word in methodical and theoretical matters? And how does this distinction relate to that between research and presentation - the constitution of (scientific) objects on the one hand and (theoretical) propositions about them on the other? The analyses and constructions in this book take up these questions. They are explicitly intended as philosophical contributions, not only in the sense implied by the disciplinary use of the term philosophy of science, but also in the sense of a reflection on science that, alongside more technical aspects of methodologies and elements of theories, also has an eye for anthropological and cultural aspects.

This book brings together papers from a conference that took place in the city of L'Aquila, 4-6 April 2019, to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the earthquake that struck on 6 April 2009. Philosophers and scientists from diverse fields of research debated the problem that, on 6 April 1922, divided Einstein and Bergson: the nature of time. For Einstein, scientific time is the only time that matters and the only time we can rely on. Bergson, however, believes that scientific time is derived by abstraction, even in the sense of extraction, from a more fundamental time. The plurality of times envisaged by the theory of Relativity does not, for him, contradict the philosophical intuition of the existence of a single time. But how do things stand today? What can we say about the relationship between the quantitative and qualitative dimensions of time in the light of contemporary science? What do quantum mechanics, biology and neuroscience teach us about the nature of time? The essays collected here take up the question that pitted Einstein against Bergson, science against philosophy, in an attempt to reverse the outcome of their monologue in two voices, with a multilogue in several voices.

Jacques Ranciere: An Introduction offers the first comprehensive introduction to the thought of one of today's most important and influential theorists. Joseph Tanke situates Ranciere's distinctive approach against the backdrop of Continental philosophy and extends his insights into current discussions of art and politics. Tanke explains how Ranciere's ideas allow us to understand art as having a deeper social role than is customarily assigned to it, as well as how political opposition can be revitalized. The book presents Ranciere's body of work as a coherent whole, tracing key notions such as the distribution of the sensible, the aesthetics of politics, and the supposition of equality from his earliest writings through to his most recent interventions. Tanke concludes with a series of critical questions for Ranciere's work, indicating how contemporary thought might proceed after its encounter with him. The book provides readers new to Ranciere with a clear overview of his enormous intellectual output. Engaging with many un-translated and unpublished sources, the book will also be of interest to Ranciere's long-time readers. >

Since the publication of Victor Farias's Heidegger and Nazism, the discussion about the political significance of Martin Heidegger's thinking has been distorted. Because of his association with the Third Reich, some have dismissed Heidegger out of hand while others have sought to explain away certain connections. What is often lost in the writing of critics and advocates alike is an honest assessment of Heidegger as a political thinker and a frank interest in understanding his work. Martin Heidegger: Paths Taken, Paths Opened takes Heidegger's philosophy on its own terms and explores the pivotal significance of his phenomenology for political theory. Heidegger opposed, at the deepest level, everything that informs the global, technological civilization that seems to be the fate of humanity. Yet even in the liberal and technologically oriented West we cannot proceed without a confrontation with his thought. In this timely addition to the 20th Century Political Thinkers series, Gregory Bruce Smith shows Heidegger's thought to be an inescapable challenge to our current ethical habits and contemporary political institutions. In this path-breaking work, Smith establishes the centrality of Heidegger's thought, even to those who would claim to be his most ardent critics. Smith also addresses difficult interpretative questions regarding the relationship of Heidegger's early and later work and the status of political ideas with respect to Heidegger's phenomenological project. A work of broad interpretative breadth and keen political insight, Martin Heidegger: Paths Taken, Paths Opened establishes the undeniable importance of Heidegger's thought for the future of the tradition of political philosophy.

Filling a genuine gap in Zizek interpretation - through examining his relationship with Martin Heidegger, the author offers a new and useful overview of Zizek's work."Zizek and Heidegger" offers a radical new interpretation of the work of Slavoj Zizek, one of the world's leading contemporary thinkers, through a study of his relationship with the work of Martin Heidegger. Thomas Brockelman argues that Zizek's oeuvre is largely a response to Heidegger's philosophy of finitude, an immanent critique of it which pulls it in the direction of revolutionary praxis. Brockelman also finds limitations in Zizek's relationship with Heidegger, specifically in his ambivalence about Heidegger's technophobia.Brockelman's critique of Zizek departs from this ambivalence - a fundamental tension in Zizek's work between a historicist critical theory of techno-capitalism and an anti-historicist theory of revolutionary change. In addition to clarifying what Zizek has to say about our world and about the possibility of radical change in it, "Zizek and Heidegger" explores the various ways in which this split at the center of his thought appears within it - in Zizek's views on history or on the relationship between the revolutionary leader and the proletariat or between the analyst and the analysand.

As an analyst, philosopher and militant, Felix Guattari anticipated decentralized forms of political activism that have become increasingly evident around the world since the events of Seattle in 1999. Lines of Flight offers an exciting introduction to the sometimes difficult and dense thinking of an increasingly important 20th century thinker. An editorial introduction by Andrew Goffey links the text to Guattari's long-standing involvement with institutional analysis, his writings with Deleuze, and his consistent emphasis on the importance of group practice - his work with CERFI in the early 1970s in particular. Considering CERFI's work on the 'genealogy of capital' it also points towards the ways in which Lines of Flight anticipates Guattari's later work on Integrated World Capitalism and on ecosophy. Providing a detailed and clearly documented account of his micropolitical critique of psychoanalytic, semiological and linguistic accounts of meaning and subjectivity, this work offers an astonishingly fresh set of conceptual tools for imaginative and engaged thinking about capitalism and effective forms of resistance to it.

This book sheds new light on the history of the philosophically crucial notion of intentionality, which accounts for one of the most distinctive aspects of our mental life: the fact that our thoughts are about objects. Intentionality is often described as a certain kind of relation. Focusing on Franz Brentano, who introduced the notion into contemporary philosophy, and on the Aristotelian tradition, which was Brentano's main source of inspiration, the book reveals a rich history of debate on precisely the relational nature of intentionality. It shows that Brentano and the Aristotelian authors from which he drew not only addressed the question whether intentionality is a relation, but also devoted extensive discussions to what kind of relation it is, if any. The book aims to show that Brentano distinguishes the intentional relation from two other relations with which it might be confused, namely, causality and reference, which also hold between thoughts and their objects. Intentionality accounts for the aboutness of a thought; causality, by contrast, explains how the thought is generated, and reference, understood as a sort of similarity, occurs when the object towards which the thought is directed exists. Brentano claims to find some anticipation of his views in Aristotle. This book argues that, whether or not Brentano's interpretation of Aristotle is correct, his claim is true of the Aristotelian tradition as a whole, since followers of Aristotle more or less explicitly made some or all of Brentano's distinctions. This is demonstrated through examination of some major figures of the Aristotelian tradition (broadly understood), including Alexander of Aphrodisias, the Neoplatonic commentators, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and Francisco Suarez. This book combines a longue duree approach - focusing on the long-term evolution of philosophical concepts rather than restricting itself to a specific author or period - with systematic analysis in the history of philosophy. By studying Brentano and the Aristotelian authors with theoretical sensitivity, it also aims to contribute to our understanding of intentionality and cognate features of the mind.

Hilary Putnam is one of America's most important living philosophers. This book offers an introduction to and overview of Putnam's ideas, his writings and his contributions to the various fields of philosophy.Hilary Putnam is one of America's most important and influential contemporary philosophers. He has made considerable contributions to the philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, logic, metaphysics and ethics. In many of these areas he has been not only an active participant, but a foundational thinker. This book offers an overview of Putnam's ideas, his key writings and his contributions to the various fields of philosophy.Thematically organized, the book begins with Putnam's work in the philosophy of language and shows how his theory of semantic externalism serves as a lynchpin for understanding his thought as a whole. Crucially, Lance P. Hickey also examines the ways in which Putnam has shifted his position on some key philosophical issues and argues that there is in fact more unity to Putnam's thought than is widely believed. This is the ideal companion to study of this hugely influential thinker." The Continuum Contemporary American Thinkers" series offers concise and accessible introductions to the most important and influential thinkers at work in philosophy today. Designed specifically to meet the needs of students and readers encountering these thinkers for the first time, these informative books provide a coherent overview and analysis of each thinker's vital contribution to the field of philosophy. The series is the ideal companion to the study of these most inspiring and challenging of thinkers.

When careful consideration is given to Nietzsche's critique of Platonism and to what he wrote about Bismarck, Kaiser Wilhelm, and to Germany's place in "international relations" (die Grosse Politik), the philosopher's carefully cultivated "pose of untimeliness" is revealed to be an imposture. As William H. F. Altman demonstrates, Nietzsche should be recognized as the paradigmatic philosopher of the Second Reich, the short-lived and equally complex German Empire that vanished in World War One. Since Nietzsche is a brilliant stylist whose seemingly disconnected aphorisms have made him notoriously difficult for scholars to analyze, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche is presented in Nietzsche's own style in a series of 155 brief sections arranged in five discrete "Books," a structure modeled on Daybreak. All of Nietzsche's books are considered in the context of the close and revealing relationship between "Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche" (named by his patriotic father after the King of Prussia) and the Second Reich. In "Preface to 'A German Trilogy,'" Altman joins this book to two others already published by Lexington Books: Martin Heidegger and the First World War: Being and Time as Funeral Oration and The German Stranger: Leo Strauss and National Socialism.

This book examines the ways in which religious communities experimentally engage the world and function as fallible inquisitive agents, despite frequent protests to the contrary. Using the philosophy of inquiry and semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce, it develops unique naturalist conceptions of religious meaning and ultimate orientation while also arguing for a reappraisal of the ways in which the world's venerable religious traditions enable novel forms of communal inquiry into what Peirce termed "vital matters." Pragmatic inquiry, it argues, is a ubiquitous and continuous phenomenon. Thus, religious participation, though cautiously conservative in many ways, is best understood as a variety of inhabited experimentation. Religious communities embody historically mediated hypotheses about how best to engage the world and curate networks of semiotic resources for rendering those engagements meaningful. Religions best fulfill their inquisitive function when they both deploy and reform their sign systems as they learn better to engage reality.

One of the basic insights of the book is that there is a notion of non-relational linguistic representation which can fruitfully be employed in a systematic approach to literary fiction. This notion allows us to develop an improved understanding of the ontological nature of fictional entities. A related insight is that the customary distinction between extra-fictional and intra-fictional contexts has only a secondary theoretical importance. This distinction plays a central role in nearly all contemporary theories of literary fiction. There is a tendency among researchers to take it as obvious that the contrast between these two types of contexts is crucial for understanding the boundary that divides fiction from non-fiction. Seen from the perspective of non-relational representation, the key question is rather how representational networks come into being and how consumers of literary texts can, and do, engage with these networks. As a whole, the book provides, for the first time, a comprehensive artefactualist account of the nature of fictional entities.