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Books > Philosophy > Western philosophy > Modern Western philosophy, c 1600 to the present
Wittgenstein criticised prevailing attitudes toward the sciences. The target of his criticisms was 'scientism': what he described as 'the overestimation of science'. This collection is the first study of Wittgenstein's anti-scientism - a theme in his work that is clearly central to his thought yet strikingly neglected by the existing literature. The book explores the philosophical basis of Wittgenstein's anti-scientism; how this anti-scientism helps us understand Wittgenstein's philosophical aims; and how this underlies his later conception of philosophy and the kind of philosophy he attacked. An outstanding team of international contributors articulate and critically assess Wittgenstein's views on scientism and anti-scientism, making Wittgenstein and Scientism essential reading for students and scholars of Wittgenstein's work, on topics as varied as the philosophy of mind and psychology, philosophical practice, the nature of religious belief, and the place of science in modern culture. Contributors: Jonathan Beale, William Child, Annalisa Coliva, David E. Cooper, Ian James Kidd, James C. Klagge, Daniele Moyal-Sharrock, Rupert Read, Genia Schoenbaumsfeld, Severin Schroeder, Benedict Smith, and Chon Tejedor.
This book charts the history of the concept of nihilism in some of the most important philosophers and literary theorists of the modern and postmodern periods, including Wyndham Lewis, Heidegger, Adorno, Blanchot, Derrida, and Vattimo. Focusing in particular on the ways in which each of these thinkers produces a theory of the literary as the privileged form of resistance to nihilism, Weller offers the first in-depth analysis of nihilism's key role in the thinking of the aesthetic since Nietzsche.
Self and World is an exploration of the nature of self-awareness. Quassim Cassam challenges the widespread and influential view that we cannot be introspectively aware of ourselves as objects in the world. In opposition to the views of many empiricist and idealistic philosophers, including Hume, Kant and Wittgenstein, he argues that the self is not systematically elusive from the perspective of self-consciousness, and that consciousness of our thoughts and experiences requires a sense of our thinking, experiencing selves as shaped, located, and solid physical objects in a world of such objects. Awareness of oneself as a physical object involves forms of bodily self-awareness whose importance has seldom been properly acknowledged in philosophical accounts of the self and self-awareness. The conception of self-awareness defended in this book helps to undermins the idealist thesis that the self does not belong to the world, and also the claim that the existence of subjects or persons is only a derivative feature of reality. In the final part of the book, Cassam argues that the existence of persons is a substantial fact about the world, and that it is not possible to give a complete description of reality without claiming that persons exist. This clear, original, and challenging treatment of one of the deepest intellectual problems will demand the attention of all philosophers and cognitive scientists who are concerned with the self.
Hegel and the Future of Systematic Philosophy critically rethinks and extends Hegel's project for systematic philosophy without foundations, engaging the most important contemporary debates concerning logic, epistemology, metaphysics, nature, mind, economic justice, political freedom, globalization, and literary theory.
The long tradition of Kierkegaard studies has made it impossible for individual scholars to have a complete overview of the vast field of Kierkegaard research. The large and ever increasing number of publications on Kierkegaard in the languages of the world can be simply bewildering even for experienced scholars. The present work constitutes a systematic bibliography which aims to help students and researchers navigate the seemingly endless mass of publications. The volume is divided into two large sections. Part I, which covers Tomes I-V, is dedicated to individual bibliographies organized according to specific language. This includes extensive bibliographies of works on Kierkegaard in some 41 different languages. Part II, which covers Tomes VI-VII, is dedicated to shorter, individual bibliographies organized according to specific figures who are in some way relevant for Kierkegaard. The goal has been to create the most exhaustive bibliography of Kierkegaard literature possible, and thus the bibliography is not limited to any specific time period but instead spans the entire history of Kierkegaard studies.
What is fair? How and when can punishment be legitimate? Is there recompense for human suffering? How can we understand ideas about immortality or an afterlife in the context of critical thinking on the human condition? In this book L. E. Goodman presents the first general theory of justice in this century to make systematic use of the Jewish sources and to bring them into a philosophical dialogue with the leading ethical and political texts of the Western tradition. Goodman takes an ontological approach to questions of natural and human justice, developing a theory of community and of nonvindictive yet retributive punishment that is grounded in careful analysis of various Jewish sources-biblical, rabbinic, and philosophical, His exegesis of these sources allow Plato, Kant, and Rawls to join in a discourse with Spinoza and medieval rationalists, such as Saasidah and Maimonides, who speak in a very different idiom but address many of the same themes. Drawing on sources old and new, Jewish and non-Jewish, Goodman offers fresh perspectives on important moral and theological issues that will be of interest to both Jewish and secular philosophers.
Henry Sidgwick's The Methods of Ethics challenges comparison, as no other work in moral philosophy, with Aristotle's Ethics in the depth of its understanding of practical rationality, and in its architectural coherence it rivals the work of Kant. In this historical, rather than critical study, Professor Schneewind shows how Sidgwick's arguments and conclusions represent rational developments of the work of Sidgwick's predecessors, and brings out the nature and structure of the reasoning underlying his position.
What follows is a translation of Volume X in the Husserliana series, the critical edition of the works of Edmund HusserI. I Volume X was published in 1966. Its editor, Rudolf Boehm, provided the title: Zur Phiinomen%gie des inneren Zeitbewusst- seins (1893-1917). Some of the texts included in Volume X were published during HusserI's lifetime, but the majority were not. Given the fact that the materials assembled in Volume X do not constitute a single and previously published Husserlian work, some acquaintance with their history and chronology is indis- pensable to understanding them. These introductory remarks are intended to provide the outlines of such an acquaintance, together with a brief account of the main themes that appear in the texts. The Status of the Texts In 1928, HusserI's "Vorlesungen zur Phanomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins" appeared in the Jahrbuch fur Philoso- I Edmund Husserl, Zur Phiinomen%gie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins (1893~1917) [On the phenomenology of the consciousness of internal time (l893~1917)I, herausgegeben von Rudolf Boehm, Husserliana X (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966). The references in Roman numerals that occur in parentheses in this Introduction are to Rudolf Boehm's "Editor's Introduction" to Husserliana X. References in Arabic numerals, unless otherwise noted, will be to this translation. Corresponding page numbers of Husserliana X will be found in the margins of the translation. The translation includes Parts A and B of Husserliana X, with Boehm's notes.
Max Weber and The Protestant Ethic: Twin Histories presents an entirely new portrait of Max Weber, one of the most prestigious social theorists in recent history, using his most famous work, The Protestant Ethic and the "Spirit" of Capitalism, as its central point of reference. It offers an intellectual biography of Weber framed along historical lines - something which has never been done before. It re-evaluates The Protestant Ethic - a text surprisingly neglected by scholars - supplying a missing intellectual and chronological centre to Weber's life and work. Peter Ghosh suggests that The Protestant Ethic is the link which unites the earlier (pre-1900) and later (post-1910) phases of his career. He offers a series of fresh perspectives on Weber's thought in various areas - charisma, capitalism, law, politics, rationality, bourgeois life, and (not least) Weber's unusual religious thinking, which was 'remote from god' yet based on close dialogue with Christian theology. This approach produces a convincing view of Max Weber as a whole; while previously the sheer breadth of his intellectual interests has caused him to be read in a fragmentary way according to a series of specialized viewpoints, this volume seeks to put him back together again as a real individual.
The question of relativism is a perennial one, and as fundamental and far reaching as the question of truth itself. Is truth absolute and universal, the same everywhere and for everyone? Or is truth historically, culturally, biologically, or otherwise relative, varying from one epoch or species to another? Although the issues surrounding relativism have attracted especially intense interest of late, they continue to spark heated controversies and to pose problems lacking an obvious resolution. On the side of one prevalent form of relativism, it is argued that we must finally recognize the historical and cultural contingency of our available means of cognition, and therefore abandon as naIve the absolute conception of truth dear to traditional philosophy. According to this line of thinking, even if there were univer sally valid principles, knowledge of them would not be possible for us, and thus an absolute conception of truth must be rejected in light of the demands of critical epistemology. However, when truth is accordingly relativized to some contingent subjective cognitive background, new difficulties arise. One of the most infamous of these is the logical inconsistency of the resulting thesis of relativism itself. Yet an even more serious problem is that the relativization of truth makes truth itself contingent, thereby undermining the motivation for preferring one belief or value to another, or even to its opposite."
New essays providing an up-to-date picture of the engagement of artists, philosophers, and critics with Kafka's work. The topic of "Kafka after Kafka" is a fascinating one: the engagement of artists, philosophers, and critics in dialogical exchange with Kafka's works. The present collection of new essays highlights the engagement of lesser knownartists and commentators with Kafka, and represents those who are well known, such as Arendt, Blanchot, Nabokov, and Coetzee, from new perspectives. The eleven essays contained here represent the most recent scholarly engagements with this topic. An essay on major trends in current Kafka criticism provides background for several essays on novelists, philosophers, and critics whose relationship to Kafka is not very well known. A section devoted to Kafka from an Israeli perspective includes artists not commonly known in the US or Europe (Ya'acov Shteinberg, Hezi Leskly, Sayed Kashua), as well as an essay on the recent trial in Israel regarding the fate of Kafka's literary legacy. A final section addresses important contemporary approaches to Kafka in film studies, animal studies, the graphic novel, and in postmodern culture and counterculture. Contributors: Iris Bruce, Stanley Corngold, AmirEngel, Mark H. Gelber, Sander L. Gilman, Caroline Jessen, Tali Latowicki, Michael G. Levine, Ido Lewit, Vivian Liska, Alana Sobelman. Iris Bruce is Associate Professor of German at McMaster University. Mark H. Gelber is Senior Professor and Director of the Center for Austrian and German Studies at Ben-Gurion University.
Wittgenstein and Contemporary Philosophy of Mind aims to reassess the work of Wittgenstein in terms of its importance to contemporary debates surrounding the philosophy of mind.The first part of this study examines Wittgenstein in the context of current views on the human mind in relation to the body and behavior. The arguments confront the views of Quine and Dennett, as well as functionalism, eliminative materialism, and the current debate about consciousness. The essays that make up the second part focus on a particular psychological concept, thinking, imagining, sensation, knowledge, and reason. This study takes a fresh look at this established thinker and demonstrates both the relevance and power of his arguments in the 21st century.
This book has two parts. The first part is chiefly concerned with critically establishing the universally necessary order of the various steps of transcendental phenomenological method; the second part provides specific cases of phenomenological analysis that illustrate and test the method established in the first part. More than this, and perhaps even more important in the long run, the phenomeno logical analyses reported in the second part purport a foundation for drawing phenomenological-philosophical conclusions about prob lems of space perception, "other minds," and time perception. The non-analytical, that is, the literary, sources of this book are many. Principal among them are the writings of Husserl (which will be accorded a special methodological function) as well as the writings of his students of the Gottingen and Freiburg years. Of the latter especially important are the writings and, when memory serves, the lectures of Dorion Cairns and Aron Gurwitsch. Of the former especially significant are the writings of Heinrich Hofmann, Wilhelm Schapp, and Hedwig COlilrad-Martius."
Understanding the motivations behind those who partake in extreme sports can be difficult for some. If the popular conception holds that the incentive behind extreme sports participation is entirely to do with risking one's life, then this confusion will continue to exist. However, an in-depth examination of the phenomenology of the extreme sport experience yields a much more complex picture. This book revisits the definition of extreme sports as those activities where a mismanaged mistake or accident would most likely result in death. Extreme sports are not necessarily synonymous with risk and participation may not be about risk-taking. Participants report deep inner transformations that influence world views and meaningfulness, feelings of coming home and authentic integration as well as a freedom beyond the everyday. Phenomenologically, these experiences have been interpreted as transcendent of time, other, space and body. Extreme sport participation therefore points to a more potent, life-enhancing endeavour worthy of further investigation. This book adopts a broad hermeneutic phenomenological approach to critique the assumed relationship to risk-taking, the death wish and the concept of "No Fear" in extreme sports, and repositions the experience in a previously unexplored manner. This is valuable reading for students and academics interested in Sports Psychology, Social Psychology, Health Psychology, Tourism, Leisure Studies and the practical applications of phenomenology.
Intuitionism is one of the main foundations for mathematics proposed in the twentieth century and its views on logic have also notably become important with the development of theoretical computer science. This book reviews and completes the historical account of intuitionism. It also presents recent philosophical work on intuitionism and gives examples of new technical advances and applications. It brings together 21 contributions from today's leading authors on intuitionism.
This book is dedicated to the consolidation and to the expansion of theoretic systems thinking as a necessary integration of the general reductionist and analytical attitude dominant in our culture. Reductionism and analytical approaches have produced significant results in many fields of contemporary knowledge giving a great contribution to relevant scientific discoveries and to their technological application, but their validity has been improperly universalized as the only and best methods of knowledge in every domain. It is nowadays clear that analytical or mereological approaches are inadequate to solve many problems and that we should introduce - or support the diffusion of - new concepts and different research attitudes. A good candidate to support such a shift is the well known theoretical approach based on the concept of "system" that no more considers the elementary constituents of an object, but the entity emerging from the relations and interactions among its elementary parts. It becomes possible to reconstruct several domains, both philosophical and scientific, from the systemic point of view, introducing fresh ideas in the research in view of a general rational vision of the world on more comprehensive basis. This book contributes to the diffusion and evolution of systemic thinking by focusing on two main objectives: developing and updating the systemic approach in disciplines currently using it and introducing the systemic perspective in humanistic disciplines, where the approach is not widely used. The Systemic Turn in Human and Natural Sciences: A Rock in the Pond is comprised of ten chapters. The chapter authors adopt a trans-disciplinary perspective, consisting in the recognition and harmonization of the special outlooks that together, within the general systemic paradigm, gives an ideal unity to the book.
The Raymond Tallis Reader provides a comprehensive survey of the work of this passionate, perceptive and often controversial thinker. Key selections from Tallis's major works are supplemented by Michael Grant's detailed introduction and linking commentary. From nihilism to Theorrhoea, from literary theory to the role of the unconscious, The Raymond Tallis Reader guides us through the panoptic sweep of Tallis's critical insights and reveals a way of thinking for the twenty-first century.
Rationality and Feminist Philosophy argues that the Enlightenment conception of rationality that feminists are fond of attacking is no longer a live concept. Deborah K. Heikes shows how contemporary theories of rationality are consonant with many feminist concerns and proposes that feminists need a substantive theory of rationality, which she argues should be a virtue theory of rationality. Within both feminist and non-feminist philosophical circles, our understanding of rationality depends upon the concept's history. Heikes traces the development of theories of rationality from Descartes through to the present day, examining the work of representative philosophers of the Enlightenment and twentieth and twenty-first centuries. She discusses feminist concerns with rationality as understood by each philosopher discussed and also focuses on the deeper problems that lie outside specifically feminist issues. She goes on to consider how each conception of rationality serves to ground the broadly conceived feminist philosophical goals of asserting the reality and injustice of oppression. She ultimately concludes that a virtue rationality may serve feminist needs well, without the accompanying baggage of Enlightenment rationality. >
Expressionism, Deleuze's philosophical commentary on Spinoza, is a critically important work because its conclusions provide the foundations for Deleuze's later metaphysical speculations on the nature of power, the body, difference and singularities. Deleuze and Spinoza is the first book to examine Deleuze's philosophical assessment of Spinoza and appraise his arguments concerning the Absolute, the philosophy of mind, epistemology and moral and political philosophy. The author respects and disagrees with Deleuze the philosopher and suggests that his arguments not only lead to eliminativism and an Hobbesian politics but that they also cast a mystifying spell.
This volumes aim is to provide an introduction to Carnaps book from a historical and philosophical perspective, each chapter focusing on one specific issue. The book will be of interest not only to Carnap scholars but to all those interested in the history of analytical philosophy.
This book explores the complexity of two philosophical traditions, extending from their origins to the current developments in neopragmatism. Chapters deal with the first encounters of these traditions and beyond, looking at metaphysics and the Vienna circle as well as semantics and the principle of tolerance. There is a general consensus that North-American (neo-)pragmatism and European Logical Empiricism were converging philosophical traditions, especially after the forced migration of the European Philosophers. But readers will discover a pluralist image of this relation and interaction with an obvious family resemblance. This work clarifies and specifies the common features and differences of these currents since the beginning of their mutual scientific communication in the 19th century. The book draws on collaboration between authors and philosophers from Vienna, Tubingen, and Helsinki, and their networks. It will appeal to philosophers, scholars in the history of philosophy, philosophers of science, pragmatists and beyond.
This title offers an introduction to Berkeley's seminal text, a key text in the history of philosophy that is very widely studied at undergraduate level."Berkeley's Principles of Human Knowledge" is a key text in the history of British Empiricism and 18th - century thought. As a free-standing systematic exposition of Berkeley's ideas, this is a hugely important and influential text, central to any undergraduate's study of the history of philosophy.In "Berkeley's 'Principles of Human Knowledge': A Reader's Guide", Alasdair Richmond provides a clear and accessible introduction to Berkeley's seminal text, offering guidance on: philosophical and historical context; key themes; reading the text; and, 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.
Human knowing is examined as it emerges from classical empirical psychology, with its ramifications into language, computing, science, and scholarship. While the discussion takes empirical support from a wide range, claims for the significance of logic and rules are challenged throughout. Highlights of the discussion: knowing is a matter of habits or dispositions that guide the person's stream of consciousness; rules of language have no significance in language production and understanding, being descriptions of linguistic styles; statements that may be true or false enter into ordinary linguistic activity, not as elements of messages, but merely as summaries of situations, with a view to action; in computer programming the significance of logic, proof, and formalized description, is incidental and subject to the programmer's personality; analysis of computer modelling of the mental activity shows that in describing human knowing the computer is irrelevant; in accounting for the scholarly/scientific activity, logic and rules are impotent; a novel theory: scholarship and science have coherent descriptions as their core. The discussion addresses questions that are basic to advanced applications of computers and to students of language and science.
This volume is relevant to Islamicists, phenomenologists, comparatists, metaphysicians, philosophers of religion, and historians of ideas. This book is the first volume in a new and unique book series: Islamic Philosophy and Occidental Phenomenology in Dialogue. The main aim of this series is to engage in a philosophical exploration, bringing back to the philosophical arena key philosophical issues presently forgotten.
What do we mean when we speak about and advocate for 'nature'? Do inanimate beings possess agency, and if so what is its structure? What role does metaphor play in our understanding of and relation to the environment? How does nature contribute to human well-being? By bringing the concerns and methods of phenomenology to bear on questions such as these, this book seeks to redefine how environmental issues are perceived and discussed and demonstrates the relevance of phenomenological inquiry to a broader audience in environmental studies. The book examines what phenomenology must be like to address the practical and philosophical issues that emerge within environmental philosophy, what practical contributions phenomenology might make to environmental studies and policy making more generally, and the nature of our human relationship with the environment and the best way for us to engage with it. |
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