With this profound final work, completed in the days leading up to his death, Michel Serres presents a vivid picture of his thinking about religion-a constant preoccupation since childhood-thereby completing Le Grand Recit, the comprehensive explanation of the world and of humanity to which he devoted the last twenty years of his life. Themes from Serres's earlier writings-energy and information, the role of the media in modern society, the anthropological function of sacrifice, the role of scientific knowledge, the problem of evil-are reinterpreted here in the light of the Old Testament accounts of Isaac and Jonah and a variety of Gospel episodes, including the Three Wise Men of the Epiphany, the Transfiguration, Peter's denying Christ, the Crucifixion, Emmaus, and the Pentecost. Monotheistic religion, Serres argues, resembles mathematical abstraction in its dazzling power to bring together the real and the virtual, the natural and the transcendent; but only in its Christian embodiment is it capable of binding together human beings in such a way that partisan attachments are dissolved and a new era of history, free for once of the lethal repetition of collective violence, can be entered into.

Ethical Politics and Modern Society introduces and critically examines British idealist philosopher, Thomas Hill Green, his practical philosophy, and its reception in China between the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. As a response to the modernity issue in Great Britain, Green's philosophy, in particular his ethical politics, anticipated a practical solution to the individual alienation issue in modern society. Witnessing the resemblance between Green's ethical politics and classical Chinese ethical and political thought, some Chinese scholars became inclined to take Green's thought as an intellectual approach to assimilate Western modernity. While Green and the Chinese scholars both intended to articulate an ethical conception of modern politics in response to the issue of modernity, their results were very different. In this book, James Jia-Hau Liu analyses why modern Chinese scholars introduced Green's philosophy to China and why the studies of Green's philosophy in China have since faded away. Modern Chinese scholars, such as Gao Yi-Han, Chin Yueh-Lin, Tang Jun-Yi, Chang Fo-Chuan, and Yin Hai-Guang, are explored in greater detail. The contradictory standings towards modernity between Green and Chinese scholars illustrate how to understand the difference forms of modernity that can be embodied therein. Ethical Politics and Modern Society is a valuable resource to scholars of political philosophy, political theory, history of social and political thought, British idealism, and the work of Thomas Hill Green.

Living at the dawn of a digital twenty-first century, people living in Western societies spend an increasing amount of time interacting with a terminal and interacting with others at the terminal. Because the self emerges out of interaction with others (humans and non-humans), this increasingly pervasive and mandatory interaction with terminals prompts a 'terminal self'-a nexus of social and psychological orientations that are adjusted to the terminal logic. In order to trace the terminal self's profile, the book examines how five unique 'default settings' of the terminal incite particular adjustments in users that transform their perceptions of reality, their experiences of self, and their relations with others. Combining traditional interactionist theory, Goffman's dramaturgy, and the French hypermodern approach, using examples from everyday life and popular culture, the book examines these adjustments, their manifestations, consequences, and resonance with broader trends of a hypermodern society organized by the 'digital apparatus.' Suggesting that these adjustments infantilize users, the author proposes strategies to confront three interrelated risks faced by the terminal self and society. These risks pertain to users' subjectivity and need for recognition, to their declining abilities in face-to-face interactions, and to their dwindling abilities to retain control over terminal technologies. An accessibly written examination of the transformation of the self in the digital age, The Terminal Self will appeal to scholars of sociology, social psychology, and cultural studies with interests in digital cultures, new technologies, social interaction, and conceptions of identity.

This unique collection of essays has two main purposes. The first is to honour the pioneering work of Cora Diamond, one of the most important living moral philosophers and certainly the most important working in the tradition inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein. The second is to develop and deepen a picture of moral philosophy by carrying out new work in what Diamond has called the realistic spirit. The contributors in this book advance a first-order moral attitude that pays close attention to actual moral life and experience. Their essays, inspired by Diamond's work, take up pressing challenges in Anglo-American moral philosophy, including Diamond's defence of the concept 'human being' in ethics, her defence of literature as a source of moral thought that does not require external sanction from philosophy, her challenge to the standard 'fact/value' dichotomy, and her exploration of non-argumentative forms of legitimate moral persuasion. There are also essays that apply this framework to new issues such as the nature of love, the connections of ethics to theology, and the implications of Wittgenstein's thought for political philosophy. Finally, the book features a new paper by Diamond in which she contests deep-rooted philosophical assumptions about language that severely limit what philosophers see as the possibilities in ethics. Morality in a Realistic Spirit offers a tribute to a great moral philosopher in the best way possible-by taking up the living ideas in her work and taking them in original and interesting directions.

Wilfrid Sellars tackled the difficult problems of reconciling Pittsburgh school–style analytic thought, Husserlian phenomenology, and the Myth of the Given. This collection of essays brings into dialogue the analytic philosophy of Wilfrid Sellars—founder of the Pittsburgh school of thought—and phenomenology, with a special focus on the work of Edmund Husserl. The book’s wide-ranging discussions include the famous Myth of the Given but also more traditional problems in the philosophy of mind and phenomenology such as the status of perception and imagination nature of intentionality concept of motivation relationship between linguistic and nonlinguistic experiences relationship between conceptual and preconceptual experiences Moreover, the volume addresses the conflicts between Sellars’s manifest and scientific images of the world and Husserl’s ontology of the life-world. The volume takes as a point of departure Sellars’s criticism of the Myth of the Given, but only to show the many problems that label obscures. Contributors explain aspects of Sellars’s philosophy vis-à-vis Husserl’s phenomenology, articulating the central problems and solutions of each. The book is a must-read for scholars and students interested in learning more about Sellars and for those comparing Continental and analytic philosophical thought. Contributors Walter Hopp Wolfgang Huemer Roberta Lanfredini Danilo Manca Karl Mertens Antonio Nunziante Jacob Rump Daniele De Santis Michela Summa

Latin American and Latinx Philosophy: A Collaborative Introduction is a beginner's guide to canonical texts in Latin American and Latinx philosophy, providing the non-specialist with necessary historical and philosophical context, and demonstrating their contemporary relevance. It is written in jargon-free prose for students and professors who are interested in the subject, but who don't know where to begin. Each of the twelve chapters, written by a leading scholar in the field, examines influential texts that are readily available in English and introduces the reader to a period, topic, movement, or school that taken together provide a broad overview of the history, nature, scope, and value of Latin American and Latinx philosophy. Although this volume is primarily intended for the reader without a background in the Latin American and Latinx tradition, specialists will also benefit from its many novelties, including an introduction to Aztec ethics; a critique of "the Latino threat" narrative; the legacy of Latin American philosophy in the Chicano movement; an overview of Mexican existentialism, Liberation philosophy, and Latin American and Latinx feminisms; a philosophical critique of indigenism; a study of Latinx contributions to the philosophy of immigration; and an examination of the intersection of race and gender in Latinx identity.

This collection features eleven original essays, divided into three thematic sections, which explore the work of Wilfrid Sellars in relation to other twentieth-century thinkers. Section I analyzes Sellars's thought in light of some of his influential predecessors, specifically Ludwig Wittgenstein, Rudolf Carnap, John Cook Wilson, and Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz. The second group of essays explores from different perspectives Sellars's place within the analytic tradition, including his relation with analytic Kantianism and analytic pragmatism. The book's final section extracts some of the most significant lessons Sellars's work has to offer for contemporary philosophy. These chapters address his views on inference, his views on truth and its connection to recent discussions about truth-relativism and truth-pluralism, his conception of self-knowledge, and his theory of perceptual experience.

This landmark book, first published in 1979, met acclaim as a doubly important work of radical philosophy. Its subject, Jean-Paul Sartre, was among the twentieth century's most controversial and influential philosophers; its author, Istvan Meszaros, was himself establishing a reputation for profound contributions to the Marxian tradition, which would continue into the next century. The Work of Sartre was thus considered essential for its insights on Sartre and as a piece of Meszaros 's developing politico-philosophical project. In this completely updated and expanded volume, Meszaros examines the manifold aspects of Sartre's legacy--as novelist, playwright, philosopher, and political actor--and in so doing casts light upon the enture oeuvre, situating it within the historical and social context of Sartre's time. Although critical of aspects of Sartre's philosophy, Meszaros celebrates his unyielding commitment to the struggle against the power of capital, and elucidates what this means for the individual in their search for freedom.

In this book, Wynne Walker Moskop addresses the practical and theoretical problem of how unequal political friendships evolve toward arrangements the parties consider reciprocal and just, a problem neglected by scholars of democracy who associate reciprocity and justice only with equal parties. Jane Addams insisted that Hull House was not a charity with philanthropic aspirations; rather it had to bring "two classes" to a shared purpose and more egalitarian relation. The problem was, and still is, how? Drawing on several bodies of scholarship-including Addams's writings, secondary works about her collaborations, literature on Aristotelian political friendship, and feminist scholarship on the global migration of care workers-Moskop shows the importance of Addams's practices to the continuing relevance of unequal economic relations for shaping political friendship. Contributing to a lively conversation about Addams's work as a pragmatist thinker and social reformer that began three decades ago, Jane Addams on Inequality and Political Friendship is an invaluable resource to students of democratic theory, feminist political theory and philosophy, and American pragmatism. It illuminates the importance of overlooked conditions for friendship and justice in unequal relations, given people's ongoing subordination because of race, class, gender, and citizenship status in the U.S. and transnationally.

A. Kiarina Kordela steps beyond extant commentaries on Marx's theory of commodity fetishism-from A. Sohn-Rethel to L. Althusser, E. Balibar, Slavoj Zizek, and others-to show that in capitalism value is the manifestation of the homology between thought and being, while their other aspect-power-is foreclosed and becomes the object of biopower. Using monistic Marxian/Lacanian structuralism as an alternative to dominant models from Plato and Kant to phenomenological accounts, deconstruction, and other contemporary approaches, Kordela expertly argues that Marx's theory of commodity fetishism is a reformulation of the Spinozian thesis that thought (mind) and things (bodies or extension) are manifestations of one and the same being or substance. Kordela's link between Spinoza and Marx shows that being consists of two aspects, value and power, the former leading to structuralist thought, the latter becoming the object of contemporary biopower. Epistemontology in Spinoza-Marx-Freud-Lacan intervenes between two dominant lines of thought in the reception of Marx today: on the one hand, an approach that relates Marxian thought to psychoanalysis from a Hegelian/dialectical perspective and, on the other hand, an approach that links Marxism to Spinozian monism, at the total exclusion of psychoanalysis. This book will interest scholars and researchers who study Marxism, (post)structuralism, psychoanalysis, critical theory, ontology, epistemology and theories of representation, theoreticians of cultural studies and comparative literature, aesthetic theory, including the relation of art to economy and politics, and biopolitics.

For a good part of the 20th century, the classic Pragmatists-Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey-and pragmatism in general were largely ignored by analytic philosophers. They were said to hold such untenable views as whatever best satisfies our needs is true and that the end justifies the means. Despite a recent revival of interest in these figures, spurred largely by the work of Richard Rorty, it is not uncommon to continue to hear claims that pragmatism is a subjectivist, anti-realist position that denies that there is a mind-independent world, and fails to place objective constraints on inquiry. In this book, Robert Schwartz dispels these traditional views by examining the empiricist and constructivist orientation of the classic pragmatists. Based on updated and expanded versions of his influential papers, as well as a number of previously unpublished essays, in this book Schwartz demonstrates the relevance of pragmatic thought to a wide range of issues beyond concerns over truth and realism that currently dominate discussions. The individual essays elaborate and defend pragmatic, instrumentalist, and constructivist conceptions of truth and inquiry, moral discourse and ethical statements, perception, art, and worldmaking. Pragmatic Perspectives will appeal to scholars interested in the history of American philosophy and pragmatic approaches to contemporary issues in analytic philosophy.

This volume offers critical responses to philosophical naturalism from the perspectives of four different yet fundamentally interconnected philosophical traditions: Kantian idealism, Hegelian idealism, British idealism, and American pragmatism. In bringing these rich perspectives into conversation with each other, the book illuminates the distinctive set of metaphilosophical assumptions underpinning each tradition's conception of the relationship between the human and natural sciences. The individual essays investigate the affinities and the divergences between Kant, Hegel, Collingwood, and the American pragmatists in their responses to philosophical naturalism. The ultimate aim of Responses to Naturalism is to help us understand how human beings can be committed to the idea of scientific progress without renouncing their humanistic explanations of the world. It will appeal to scholars interested in the role idealist and pragmatist perspectives play in contemporary debates about naturalism.

In this book, Stephen Acreman follows the development and reception of a hitherto under-analyzed concept central to modern and postmodern political theory: the Kantian ein erweiterte Denkungsart, or enlarged mentality. While the enlarged mentality plays a major role in a number of key texts underpinning contemporary democratic theory, including works by Arendt, Gadamer, Habermas, and Lyotard, this is the first in-depth study of the concept encompassing and bringing together its full range of expressions. A number of attempts to place the enlarged mentality at the service of particular ideals-the politics of empathy, of consensus, of agonistic contest, or of moral righteousness-are challenged and redirected. In its exploration of the enlarged mentality, the book asks what it means to assume a properly political stance, and, in giving as the answer 'facing reality together', it uncovers a political theory attentive to the facts and events that concern us, and uniquely well suited to the ecological politics of our time.

The Bloomsbury Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century German Philosophers is a landmark work. Covering one of the most innovative centuries for philosophical investigation, it features more than 650 entries on the eighteenth-century philosophers, theologians, jurists, physicians, scholars, writers, literary critics and historians whose work has had lasting philosophical significance. Alongside well-known German philosophers of that era-Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Immanuel Kant, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel-the Dictionary provides rare insights into the lives and minds of lesser-known individuals who influenced the shape of philosophy. Each entry discusses a particular philosopher's life, contributions to the world of thought, and later influences, focusing not only on their most important published writings, but on relevant minor works as well. Bibliographical references to primary and secondary source material are included at the end of entries to encourage further reading, while extensive cross-referencing allows comparisons to be easily made between different thinkers' ideas and practices. For anyone looking to understand more about the century when enlightenment thinking arrived in Germany and established conceits were challenged, The Bloomsbury Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century German Philosophers is a valuable, unparalleled resource.

Dan Webb explores an undervalued topic in the formal discipline of Political Theory (and political science, more broadly): the urban as a level of political analysis and political struggles in urban space. Because the city and urban space is so prominent in other critical disciplines, most notably, geography and sociology, a driving question of the book is: what kind of distinct contribution can political theory make to the already existing critical urban literature? The answer is to be found in what Webb calls the "properly political" approach to understanding political conflict as developed in the work of thinkers like Chantal Mouffe, Jodi Dean, and Slavoj Zizek. This "properly political" analysis is contrasted with and a curative to the predominant "ethical" or "post-political" understanding of the urban found in so much of the geographical and sociological critical urban theory literature. In order to illustrate this primary theoretical argument of the book, Webb suggests that "common property" is the most useful category for conceiving the city as a site of the "properly political." When the city and urban space are framed within this theoretical framework, critical urbanists are provided a powerful tool for understanding urban political struggles, in particular, anti-gentrification movements in the inner city.

John McDowell is one of the most widely read philosophers in recent years. His engagement with a philosophy of language, mind and ethics and with philosophers ranging from Aristotle and Wittgenstein to Hegel and Gadamer make him one of the most original and outstanding philosophical thinkers of the post-war period. In this clear and engaging book, Tim Thornton introduces and examines the full range of McDowell's thought. After a helpful introduction setting out McDowell's general view of philosophy, Thornton introduces and explains the following topics: Wittgenstein on philosophy, normativity and understanding; value judgements; theories of meaning and sense; singular thought and Cartesianism; perceptual experience and knowledge, disjunctivism and openness to the world; Mind and World, the content of perceptual experience and idealism; action and the debate with Hubert Dreyfus on conceptual content and skilled coping. This second edition has been significantly revised and expanded to include new sections on: McDowell's work on disjunctivism and criticisms of it; a new chapter on McDowell's modification of his account of perceptual experience and conceptual content, and criticisms by Charles Travis; and a new chapter on action and McDowell's engagement with Hubert Dreyfus and the debate concerning skilled coping and mindedness. The addition of a glossary and suggestions for further reading makes John McDowell, second edition essential reading for those studying McDowell, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, ethics and epistemology, as well as for students of the recent history of analytical philosophy generally.

What does Lyotard's thought offer contemporary theory? By focusing on key concepts and themes from his later texts, such as affect, aesthetics, Andre Malraux, St Paul, nihilism, infancy, space and writing, Rereading Jean-FranAois Lyotard: Essays on His Later Works explores the impact and relevance of Lyotard's largely undiscussed late philosophical works for contemporary theoretical debates. In his works produced from 1990 until his death in 1998, Lyotard addresses a number of themes that both revisit and move beyond those from his earlier work. These include: art and aesthetics; affect; ethics and politics; modernity and the subject. Despite designating these texts as part of a 'late period', the chapters do not exclude a wider engagement with Lyotard's thought and often seek to engage in connections, resonances and developments across his many texts. Each chapter within this book places Lyotard as a figure with much to offer current theoretical debates, reasserts Lyotard as an important thinker for developments in social thought, and draws out the many links between his philosophical work and broader social questions. This is the first work in English to focus on Lyotard's later writings and will therefore be a key text to all scholars of his ideas.

Twenty-First Century Intelligence collects the thinking of some of the foremost experts on the future of intelligence in our new century. The essays contained in this volume are set against the backdrop of the transforming events of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Intelligence plays a central and highly visible role in the global war on terror, and in new doctrines of global pre-emption of threats. Yet the challenges for intelligence services are great as the twenty-first century unfolds.
This collection will inform and stimulate new thinking about the current strengths and weaknesses of intelligence services, and about the future paths that they may follow. Behind the controversies of the present over intelligence performance, lie critical questions about how the past and future of an often mysterious but critical arm of the state are linked.
This book was previously published as a special issue of the journal Intelligence and National Security.

This work, first published in 1985, offers a general interpretation of Hume's Treatise of Human Nature. Most Hume scholarship has either neglected or downplayed an important aspect of Hume's position - his scepticism. This book puts that right, examining in close detail the sceptical arguments in Hume's philosophy.

This edition of George Berkeley's Philosophical Commentaries, first published in 1989, provides an accurate transcription of Berkeley's manuscript, and introduction to set it in perspective, extensive notes to aid in interpreting it, and a full index to facilitate the use of it.

This book, first published in 1987, is a study of the development of Sartre's political thought from the late 1920s to the liberation of France in 1944, concentrating particularly upon his concept of freedom. It is argued that the evolution of Sartre's thinking can be regarded as constituting a series of problematics each of which has a corresponding notion of freedom, and these problematics are elucidated in turn.

Social philosophy oscillates between two opposing ideas: that individuals fashion society, and that society fashions individuals. The concept of 'situation' was elaborated by the French existentialist thinkers to avoid this dilemma. Individuals are seen as actively situating themselves in society at the same time as being situated by it. This book, first published in 1990, traces the development of the concept of situation through the work of Gabriel Marcel, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It shows how it illuminates questions of self or subjectivity, embodiment and gender, society and history, and argues that it goes far beyond the currently fashionable notions of the 'death of the subject'.

This book, first published in 1987, is an extended examination of Merleau-Ponty's political philosophy. It describes and critically elucidates the main political themes to be found in his writings, and shows how his political ideas are related to his general phenomenological philosophy.

Berkeley's critique of abstract ideas in the Introduction to Principles of Human Knowledge has provoked a great deal of commentary of various sorts. This anthology, first published in 1989, presents a selection of historically important and philosophically interesting discussions on Berkeley's theories.

This book, first published in 1965, is a critical exposition of the philosophical doctrines of Jean-Paul Sartre. His contribution to ethical and political theory, and to metaphysics and ontology, is reviewed against the background of German idealism and phenomenology, and his arguments are presented clearly so that readers may assess their philosophical value in their own right.