Sartre has more to say about Evil--its origins in, effects on modern man, and how to fight it--than any other philosopher in the 20th century. In this book, the authors examine many of Sartre's literary and philosophical writings for what they have to say about the nature of Evil and its effect on our lives. From this, they evolve guidelines for those wishing to fight Evil in their own lives. Using examples from their experience with human rights violations, the authors suggest that Evil is any attempt to purposely destroy the freedom of a person, and clearly demonstrate that Sartre's work can be useful as a guide for getting along in the contemporary world.

A rare academic study on what John Rawls, Peter Singer, and Derek Parfit acknowledge as the finest book in ethics -- "The Methods of Ethics." With a rather shocking conclusion that "none of us can match Sidgwick," Mariko Nakano-Okuno lucidly analyzes Henry Sidgwick's impacts on contemporary ethics.

Political philosophy in the English-speaking world has been dominated for more than two decades by various versions of liberal theory, which holds that political inquiry should proceed without reference to religious view. Although a number of philosophers have contested this stance, no one has succeeded in dislodging liberalism from its position of dominance

The most interesting challenges to liberalism have come from those outside of the discipline of philosophy. Sociologists, legal scholars, and religious ethicists have attacked liberalism's embodiment in practice, arguing that liberal practice -- particularly in the United States -- has produced a culture which trivializes religion. This culture, they argue, is at odds with the beliefs and practices of large numbers of citizens.

In the past, disciplinary barriers have limited scholarly exchange among philosophical liberals and their theological, sociological and legal critics. Religion and Contemporary Liberalism makes an important step towards increased dialogue among these scholars. A collection of original papers by philosophers, sociologists, theologians, and legal theorists, this volume will spark considerable debate in philosophy -- debate which will be significant for all of those concerned with the place of religion within a liberal society.

In this book Eric Kramer introduces his theory of dimensional accrual/dissociation to explain the difference between modernity and postmodernity. He also argues that social scientific operational definitions are useful but very often arbitrary. Thus, realities based on them are available for creative (alternative) validities. Kramer then concentrates on the concepts of modernity and postmodernity to analyze how they have been defined and structured and, in the end, he offers clear definitions of these concepts and a better understanding of the work of those who have shaped these ideas. Kramer applies this position to the concepts of modernity and postmodernity, providing a painstaking review of the origins, key thinkers, and current status of these ideas. By reviewing the development of these ideas and providing clear definitions of these concepts, Kramer helps scholars and researchers in the social sciences and humanities better understand applications and limitations of these key approaches in late twentieth-century scholarship.

Responding to growing interest in the Kantian tradition and in issues concerning space and time, this volume offers an insightful and original contribution to the literature by bringing together analytical and phenomenological approaches in a productive exchange on topical issues such as action, perception, the body, and cognition and its limits.

This groundbreaking volume casts light on the long shadow of naturalistic monism in modern thought and culture. When monism's philosophical proposition - the unity of all matter and thought in a single, universal substance - fused with scientific empiricism and Darwinism in the mid-nineteenth century, it led to the formation of a powerful worldview articulated in the work of figures such as Ernst Haeckel. The compelling essays collected here, written by leading international scholars, investigate the articulation of monism in science, philosophy, and religion and its impact on a range of social movements, from socialism and early feminism to imperialism and eugenics. The result is a broad and comprehensive chronological, disciplinary, and geographic map of a century of monism, as well as a bellwether for innovative new directions in the interdisciplinary study of science, religion, philosophy, and culture.

Although the importance of Francisco Suarez has been, for some time already, generally recognized even outside the circles of historians of scholasticism, the wider context of his thought - i.e., the rich and diverse Renaissance and Baroque scholasticism - remains largely unexplored. This book is an attempt to contribute to the quest of putting Suarez's metaphysics (a mere fragment of the whole of his intellectual legacy) into context, historical and systematic. Being the fruit of an international conference held in Prague in October 2008, it puts together a systematically ordered selection of papers devoted to general and specific topics of Suarezian metaphysics, with special respect to its sources and further impact. Part One explores in the first place the notion of being and the nature of metaphysics in general; Part Two then deals with more specific metaphysical topics such as the problem of universals, causality, relations, and God. The book will be of value not just to Suarez-scholars, but to anyone interested in the history of ideas in general and in the the intricacies of metaphysical thought at the verge of modernity in particular.

Violent and injustice are the two major political problems the world is facing today. By, offering a fresh, innovative analysis of the concept of violence, this book presents an original insight into the nature of injustice, which forces us to rethink the scope and aims of a theory of social justice. More specifically, it explores three close related questions: What is violence? What is the relationship between violence and social justice? Can social justice be promoted through violence?

In the famous Correspondence with Clarke, which took place during the last year of Leibniz s life, Leibniz advanced several arguments purporting to refute the absolute theory of space and time that was held by Newton and his followers. The main aim of this book is to reassess Leibniz s attack on the Newtonian theory in so far as he relied on the principle of the identity of indiscernibles. The theological side of the controversy is not ignored but isolated and discussed in the last three chapters, which deal with problems connected with the notions of omnipotence and omniscience."

Analytic philosophy has leveled many challenges to Kant's ascription of necessary properties and relations to objects in his Critique of Pure Reason. Some of these challenges can be answered, it is argued here, largely in terms of techniques belonging to analytic philosophy itself, in particular, to its philosophy of language. This Kantian response is the primary objective of this book. It takes the form of a compromise between the real existence of the objects that we can intuit and that get our knowledge started - dubbed initiators - and the ideality of the necessary properties and relations that Kant ascribes to our sensible representations of initiators, which he entitles appearances. Whereas the real existence of initiators is independent of us and our senses, the necessity of these properties and relations of appearances is due to their origins in the mind. The Kantian compromise between real existence and ideal necessity is formulated in terms of David Kaplan's interpretation of de re necessity in his article, "Quantifying In" - his response to Quine's concern that a commitment to such a necessity leads to an acceptance of an unwanted traditional Aristotelian essentialism. In addition, the book first abstracts and then departs from its interpretation of Kant to provide a realistic account of the relation between existence and de re necessity.

This is an exceptional volume which expands upon the World Phenomenology Institute's recent research: the study of the beautiful intertwining of the skies and the cosmos with the human pursuits of philosophy, literature and the arts. The relationship of humans to the cosmos is examined through the exploration of phenomenology, metaphysics and the arts. The authors of this volume write on a variety of topics which all seek to open the reader's eyes to the relationship of humans and our perception of our place in the cosmos. This volume offers a framework in which to present a rich panorama; a variety of perspectives illustrating how the perception of the interplay between human beings and the celestial realm advances in common experience and worldviews. This attempt to uncover our cosmic position is a great and worthwhile intellectual challenge. Philosophy as well as literature and the arts are nourished by this human quest for knowledge and understanding.

This book presents the early existential phenomenology of Martin Heidegger as a way to reformulate academic disability studies and activist disability politics. It redresses the almost categorical neglect of human difference in the philosophy of Heidegger. It proceeds by applying a revised version of his phenomenology to social policy aimed to get disabled persons to work and to methods in rehabilitation science intended to be more 'client friendly'. Phenomenological philosophy is extended to the topic of disability, while, at the same time, two key concerns facing disability studies are addressed: the roles of capitalism in disablement, and of medical practice in the lives of disabled persons. By reframing disability as a lived way of being in the world, rather than bodily malfunction, the book asks how we might rethink medicine and capitalism in democratic ways. It aims to transform Heidegger's work in light of his troubling politics to produce a democratic social theory of human difference.

Philosophical logic has been, and continues to be, a driving force behind much progress and development in philosophy more broadly. This collection by up-and-coming philosophical logicians deals with a broad range of topics, including, for example, proof-theory, probability, context-sensitivity, dialetheism and dynamic semantics.

Peg Rawes examines a "minor tradition" of aesthetic geometries in ontological philosophy. Developed through Kant's aesthetic subject she explores a trajectory of geometric thinking and geometric figurations--reflective subjects, folds, passages, plenums, envelopes and horizons--in ancient Greek, post-Cartesian and twentieth-century Continental philosophies, through which productive understandings of space and embodies subjectivities are constructed.
Six chapters, explore the construction of these aesthetic geometric methods and figures in a series of "geometric" texts by Kant, Plato, Proclus, Spinoza, Leibniz, Bergson, Husserl and Deleuze. In each text, geometry is expressed as a uniquely embodies "aesthetic" activity because each respective geometric method and figure is imbued with aesthetic "sensibility" and geometric "sense" (rather than as disembodies scientific methods). An ontology of aesthetic geometric methods and figures is therefore traced from Kant's Critical writings, back to Plato and Proclus Greek philosophy, Spinoza and Leibniz's post-Cartesian philosophies, and forwards to Bergson's "duration" and Husserl's "horizons" towards Deleuze's philosophy of sense.

Globalization and consumerism are two of the buzzwords of the early twenty-first century. In Consuming Cultures, renowned scholars explore the links between modernity and consumption. The book fills a gap in contemporary thinking on the subject by approaching it from a truly global point-of-view. It draws on case studies from around the world, with Africa, Asia and Central America featuring as prominently as Western countries. A transnational perspective allows the authors to investigate the diversity of consumer cultures and the interaction between them. The authors look at the genealogy of the modern consumer and the development of consumer cultures, from the porcelain trade and consumption in Britain and China in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to post Second World War developments in America and Japan, and the contemporary consumer politics of cosmopolitan citizenship. Challenging and pioneering, Consuming Cultures problematizes popular accounts of globalization and consumerism, decentring the West and concentrating on putting history back into these accounts.

A new approach to reading Frege's notations that adheres to the modern view that terms and well-formed formulas are any disjoint syntactic categories. On this new approach, we can at last read Frege's notations in their original form revealing striking new solutions to many of the outstanding problems of interpreting his philosophy.

This book is a philosophical examination of the main stages in our journey from hominid to human. It deals with the nature and origin of language, the self, self-consciousness, and the religious ideal of a return to Eden. It approaches these topics through a philosophical anthropology derived from the later writings of Wittgenstein. The result is an account of our place in nature consistent with both a hard-headed empiricism and a this-worldy but religiously significant mysticism.

Theopoetics of the Word weaves together Christian theology, continental philosophy and cultural studies to present a new theology of language and technology for the 21st century. It is the final work of the famed death-of-God theologian Gabriel Vahanian completed only weeks before his death in 2012. It radicalizes his pioneering, iconoclastic work in contemporary religious thought by addressing issues of identity, Christology, secularity and the legacy of the Protestant West. The book continues Vahanian's longtime engagement with the thought of Paul Tillich and Jacques Ellul, and opens new pathways for thought in the work of Elisabeth Roudinesco and Francois Laurelle. Vahanian's is a prophetic and timely voice who has forged reputation as one of the most original and poetic religious thinkers of our time, who tells us here, 'You can only forget what you need to be reminded of. Read what follows in this book. And forget it.'

William James (1842-1910) was one of the most original and influential American thinkers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As a professor at Harvard University he published many works that had a wide-ranging impact on both psychology and philosophy. His "Principles of Psychology" was the most important English-language work on the mind since Locke's "Essay Concerning Human Understanding." His "Varieties of Religious Experience "practically inaugurated the field of psychology of religion, and it also remains a major inspiration for philosophy of religion. Perhaps most importantly, James publicized the movement of pragmatism and supplied much of its powerful momentum.
This book covers the primary topics for which James is still closely studied: the nature of experience; the functions of the mind; the criteria for knowledge; the definition of "truth"; the ethical life; and the religious life. His notable terms, still resonating in their respective fields, are all here, from the "stream of consciousness" and "pure experience" to the "will to believe," the "cash-value of truth," and the distinction between the religiously "healthy soul" and the "sick soul."
This volume's eighteen selections receive the bulk of the attention and citation from scholars, provide excellent coverage of core topics, and have a broad appeal across many academic disciplines. This well-organized compilation of James's important writings offers an exciting and fascinating tour for both the casual reader and the dedicated student interested in philosophy, psychology, religious studies, American studies, or any related field.

Concentrating mainly on the process philosophy developed by Alfred North Whitehead, this series of essays brings together some of the newest developments in the application of process thinking to the physical and social sciences. These essays, by established scholars in the field, demonstrate how a wider and deeper understanding of the world can be obtained using process philosophical concepts, how the distortions and blockages inevitably inherent in substantivist talk can be set aside, and how new and fertile lines of research in the sciences can be opened as a result.

This volume explores recent developments in the practice of hospitality, as well as the curious, precarious relationship between guests and their hosts. Drawing from personal interactions with an aging innkeeper called Herr Klaus and modern Airbnb hostess Gretchen, Amitai Touval offers a touching and illuminating account of how the rise of Airbnb has forged new standards of generosity, hostility, and accountability. An Anthropological Study of Hospitality is a must-read for anyone who has wondered about the intricate social cues involved in such a seemingly simple exchange.

Arguing that our attachment to Aristotelian modes of discourse makes a revision of their conceptual foundations long overdue, the author proposes the consideration of unacknowledged factors that play a central role in argument itself. These are in particular the subjective imprint and the dynamics of argumentation. Their inclusion in a four-dimensional framework (subjective-objective, structural-procedural) and the focus on thesis validity allow for a more realistic view of our discourse practice. Exhaustive analyses of fascinating historical and contemporary arguments are provided. These range from Columbus s advocacy of the Western Passage to India, over the trial of King Louis XVI during the French Revolution, to today s highly charged controversies surrounding euthanasia and embryo research.

Excavating foundational issues such as the purpose of argument itself (assent of an audience or critical examination of validity claims) and the contested role of argument as a generator of knowledge, the book culminates in a discussion of the relationship between rationality and reasonableness and criticizes the restrictions of rational argument relying on fixed logical, economic or cultural criteria that in reality are mutable. Here, a true, open argument requires the infusion of Paul Lorenzen s principle of transsubjectivity, which recognizes but transcends the partiality of the individual and which can be seen in the pragmatic and expanding consensus that humanity can control itself to safeguard the future of a fragile, damaged world."