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Books > Humanities > Philosophy
The diversity of Nietzsche's books, and the sheer range of his
philosophical interests, have posed daunting challenges to his
interpreters. This Oxford Handbook addresses this multiplicity by
devoting each of its 32 essays to a focused topic, picked out by
the book's systematic plan. The aim is to treat each topic at the
best current level of philosophical scholarship on Nietzsche. The
first group of papers treat selected biographical issues: his
family relations, his relations to women, and his ill health and
eventual insanity. In Part 2 the papers treat Nietzsche in
historical context: his relations back to other philosophers-the
Greeks, Kant, and Schopenhauer-and to the cultural movement of
Romanticism, as well as his own later influence in an unlikely
place, on analytic philosophy. The papers in Part 3 treat a variety
of Nietzsche's works, from early to late and in styles ranging from
the 'aphoristic' The Gay Science and Beyond Good and Evil through
the poetic-mythic Thus Spoke Zarathustra to the florid
autobiography Ecce Homo. This focus on individual works, their
internal unity, and the way issues are handled within them, is an
important complement to the final three groups of papers, which
divide up Nietzsche's philosophical thought topically. The papers
in Part 4 treat issues in Nietzsche's value theory, ranging from
his metaethical views as to what values are, to his own values of
freedom and the overman, to his insistence on 'order of rank', and
his social-political views. The fifth group of papers treat
Nietzsche's epistemology and metaphysics, including such well-known
ideas as his perspectivism, his INSERT: Included in Starkmann 40%
promotion, September-October 2014 being, and his thought of eternal
recurrence. Finally, Part 6 treats another famous idea-the will to
power-as well as two linked ideas that he uses will to power to
explain, the drives, and life. This Handbook will be a key resource
for all scholars and advanced students who work on Nietzsche.
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Brecht On Art & Politics
(Hardcover)
Bertolt Brecht; Edited by Steve Giles, Tom Kuhn; Translated by Laura Bradley, Steve Giles, …
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The first single-volume anthology of Brecht's writings on both art
and politics This volume contains new translations to extend our
image of one of the twentieth century's most entertaining and
thought provoking writers on culture, aesthetics and politics. Here
are a cross-section of Brecht's wide-ranging thoughts which offer
us an extraordinary window onto the concerns of a modern world in
four decades of economic and political disorder. The book is
designed to give wider access to the experience of a dynamic
intellect, radically engaged with social, political and cultural
processes. Each section begins with a short essay by the editors
introducing and summarising Brecht's thought in the relevant year.
In the 1950s, John Reber convinced many Californians that the best
way to solve the state's water shortage problem was to dam up the
San Francisco Bay. Against massive political pressure, Reber's
opponents persuaded lawmakers that doing so would lead to disaster.
They did this not by empirical measurement alone, but also through
the construction of a model. Simulation and Similarity explains why
this was a good strategy while simultaneously providing an account
of modeling and idealization in modern scientific practice. Michael
Weisberg focuses on concrete, mathematical, and computational
models in his consideration of the nature of models, the practice
of modeling, and nature of the relationship between models and
real-world phenomena.
In addition to a careful analysis of physical, computational, and
mathematical models, Simulation and Similarity offers a novel
account of the model/world relationship. Breaking with the dominant
tradition, which favors the analysis of this relation through
logical notions such as isomorphism, Weisberg instead presents a
similarity-based account called weighted feature matching. This
account is developed with an eye to understanding how modeling is
actually practiced. Consequently, it takes into account the ways in
which scientists' theoretical goals shape both the applications and
the analyses of their models.
Moral Motivation presents a history of the concept of moral
motivation. The book consists of ten chapters by eminent scholars
in the history of philosophy, covering Plato, Aristotle, later
Peripatetic philosophy, medieval philosophy, Spinoza, Locke, Hume,
Kant, Fichte and Hegel, and the consequentialist tradition. In
addition, four interdisciplinary "Reflections" discuss how the
topic of moral motivation arises in epic poetry, Cicero, early
opera, and Theodore Dreiser. Most contemporary philosophical
discussions of moral motivation focus on whether and how moral
beliefs by themselves motivate an agent (at least to some degree)
to act. In much of the history of the concept, especially before
Hume, the focus is rather on how to motivate people to act morally
as well as on what sort of motivation a person must act from (or
what end an agents acts for) in order to be a genuinely ethical
person or even to have done a genuinely ethical action. The book
shows the complexity of the historical treatment of moral
motivation and, moreover, how intertwined moral motivation is with
central aspects of ethical theory.
A venerable tradition in the metaphysics of science commends
ontological reduction: the practice of analysis of theoretical
entities into further and further proper parts, with the
understanding that the original entity is nothing but the sum of
these. This tradition implicitly subscribes to the principle that
all the real action of the universe (also referred to as its
"causation") happens at the smallest scales-at the scale of
microphysics. A vast majority of metaphysicians and philosophers of
science, covering a wide swath of the spectrum from reductionists
to emergentists, defend this principle. It provides one pillar of
the most prominent theory of science, to the effect that the
sciences are organized in a hierarchy, according to the scales of
measurement occupied by the phenomena they study. On this view, the
fundamentality of a science is reckoned inversely to its position
on that scale. This venerable tradition has been justly and
vigorously countered-in physics, most notably: it is countered in
quantum theory, in theories of radiation and superconduction, and
most spectacularly in renormalization theories of the structure of
matter. But these counters-and the profound revisions they
prompt-lie just below the philosophical radar. This book
illuminates these counters to the tradition principle, in order to
assemble them in support of a vaster (and at its core Aristotelian)
philosophical vision of sciences that are not organized within a
hierarchy. In so doing, the book articulates the principle that the
universe is active at absolutely all scales of measurement. This
vision, as the book shows, is warranted by philosophical treatment
of cardinal issues in the philosophy of science: fundamentality,
causation, scientific innovation, dependence and independence, and
the proprieties of explanation.
One of Aquinas's best known works after the Summa Theologica, Summa
Contra Gentiles is a theological synthesis that explains and
defends the existence and nature of God without invoking the
authority of the Bible. A detailed expository account of and
commentary on this famous work, Davies's book aims to help readers
think about the value of the Summa Contra Gentiles (SCG) for
themselves, relating the contents and teachings found in the SCG to
those of other works and other thinkers both theological and
philosophical. Following a scholarly account of Aquinas's life and
his likely intentions in writing the SCG, the volume works
systematically through all four books of the text. It is,
therefore, a solid and reflective introduction both to the SCG and
to Aquinas more generally. The book is aimed at students of
medieval philosophy and theology, and of Aquinas in particular. It
will interest teachers of medieval philosophy and theology, though
it does not presuppose previous knowledge of Aquinas or of his
works. Davies's book is the longest and most detailed account and
discussion of the SCG available in English in one volume.
When and why is it right to kill? When and why is it wrong?
Torbjoern Tannsjoe examines three theories on the ethics of killing
in this book: deontology, a libertarian moral rights theory, and
utilitarianism. The implications of each theory are worked out for
different kinds of killing: trolley-cases, murder, capital
punishment, suicide, assisted death, abortion, killing in war, and
the killing of animals. These implications are confronted with our
intuitions in relation to them, and our moral intuitions are
examined in turn. Only those intuitions that survive an
understanding of how we have come to hold them are seen as
'considered' intuitions. The idea is that the theory that can best
explain the content of our considered intuitions gains inductive
support from them. We must transcend our narrow cultural horizons
and avoid certain cognitive mistakes in order to hold considered
intuitions. In this volume, suitable for courses in ethics and
applied ethics, Tannsjoe argues that in the final analysis
utilitarianism can best account for, and explain, our considered
intuitions about all these kinds of killing.
"Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy" presents original articles
on all aspects of ancient philosophy. The articles may be of
substantial length, and include critical notices of major books.
OSAP is now published twice yearly, in both hardback and paperback.
The essays in this volume focus in particular on Plato, Aristotle
and the Stoics.
Philip Pettit has drawn together here a series of interconnected
essays on three subjects to which he has made notable
contributions. The first part of the book discusses the
rule-following character of thought. The second considers how
choice can be responsive to different sorts of factors, while still
being under the control of thought and the reasons that thought
marshals. The third examines the implications of this view of
choice and rationality for the normative regulation of social
behaviour.
Despite its place in the humanities, the career prospects and
numbers of women in philosophy much more closely resemble those
found in the sciences and engineering. This book collects a series
of critical essays by female philosophers pursuing the question of
why philosophy continues to be inhospitable to women and what can
be done to change it. By examining the social and institutional
conditions of contemporary academic philosophy in the Anglophone
world as well as its methods, culture, and characteristic
commitments, the volume provides a case study in interpretation of
one academic discipline in which women's progress seems to have
stalled since initial gains made in the 1980s. Some contributors
make use of concepts developed in other contexts to explain women's
under-representation, including the effects of unconscious biases,
stereotype threat, and micro-inequities. Other chapters draw on the
resources of feminist philosophy to challenge everyday
understandings of time, communication, authority and merit, as
these shape effective but often unrecognized forms of
discrimination and exclusion. Often it is assumed that women need
to change to fit existing institutions. This book instead offers
concrete reflections on the way in which philosophy needs to
change, in order to accommodate and benefit from the important
contribution women's full participation makes to the discipline.
Kafka's novel The Trial, written from 1914 to 1915 and published in
1925, is a multi-faceted, notoriously difficult manifestation of
European literary modernism, and one of the most emblematic books
of the 20th Century. It tells the story of Josef K., a man accused
of a crime he has no recollection of committing and whose nature is
never revealed to him. The novel is often interpreted theologically
as an expression of radical nihilism and a world abandoned by God.
It is also read as a parable of the cold, inhumane rationality of
modern bureaucratization. Like many other novels of this turbulent
period, it offers a tragic quest-narrative in which the hero
searches for truth and clarity (whether about himself, or the
anonymous system he is facing), only to fall into greater and
greater confusion. This collection of nine new essays and an
editor's introduction brings together Kafka experts, intellectual
historians, literary scholars, and philosophers in order to explore
the novel's philosophical and theological significance. Authors
pursue the novel's central concerns of justice, law, resistance,
ethics, alienation, and subjectivity. Few novels display human
uncertainty and skepticism in the face of rapid modernization, or
the metaphysical as it intersects with the most mundane aspects of
everyday life, more insistently than The Trial. Ultimately, the
essays in this collection focus on how Kafka's text is in fact
philosophical in the ways in which it achieves its literary aims.
Rather than considering ideas as externally related to the text,
the text is considered philosophical at the very level of literary
form and technique.
The Oxford Handbook of German Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century
is the first collective critical study of this important period in
intellectual history. The volume is divided into four parts. The
first part explores individual philosophers, including Fichte,
Hegel, Schopenhauer, Marx, and Nietzsche, amongst other great
thinkers of the period. The second addresses key philosophical
movements: Idealism, Romanticism, Neo-Kantianism, and
Existentialism. The essays in the third part engage with different
areas of philosophy that received particular attention at this
time, including philosophy of nature, philosophy of mind,
philosophy of language, philosophy of history, and hermeneutics.
Finally, the contributors turn to discuss central philosophical
topics, from skepticism to mat-erialism, from dialectics to ideas
of historical and cultural Otherness, and from the reception of
antiquity to atheism. Written by a team of leading experts, this
Handbook will be an essential resource for anyone working in the
area and will lead the direction of future research.
In Frege's Conception of Logic Patricia A. Blanchette explores the
relationship between Gottlob Frege's understanding of conceptual
analysis and his understanding of logic. She argues that the
fruitfulness of Frege's conception of logic, and the illuminating
differences between that conception and those more modern views
that have largely supplanted it, are best understood against the
backdrop of a clear account of the role of conceptual analysis in
logical investigation. The first part of the book locates the role
of conceptual analysis in Frege's logicist project. Blanchette
argues that despite a number of difficulties, Frege's use of
analysis in the service of logicism is a powerful and coherent
tool. As a result of coming to grips with his use of that tool, we
can see that there is, despite appearances, no conflict between
Frege's intention to demonstrate the grounds of ordinary arithmetic
and the fact that the numerals of his derived sentences fail to
co-refer with ordinary numerals. In the second part of the book,
Blanchette explores the resulting conception of logic itself, and
some of the straightforward ways in which Frege's conception
differs from its now-familiar descendants. In particular,
Blanchette argues that consistency, as Frege understands it,
differs significantly from the kind of consistency demonstrable via
the construction of models. To appreciate this difference is to
appreciate the extent to which Frege was right in his debate with
Hilbert over consistency- and independence-proofs in geometry. For
similar reasons, modern results such as the completeness of formal
systems and the categoricity of theories do not have for Frege the
same importance they are commonly taken to have by his
post-Tarskian descendants. These differences, together with the
coherence of Frege's position, provide reason for caution with
respect to the appeal to formal systems and their properties in the
treatment of fundamental logical properties and relations.
How to raise children to be moral, responsible, and productive citizens is one of the most debated issues in society today. In this elegantly written and passionate book, Vigen Guroian argues that our most beloved fairy tales and classic and contemporary fantasy stories written for children have enormous power to awaken the moral imagination.
Modern states claim rights of jurisdiction and control over
particular geographical areas and their associated natural
resources. Boundaries of Authority explores the possible moral
bases for such territorial claims by states, in the process arguing
that many of these territorial claims in fact lack any moral
justification. The book maintains throughout that the requirement
of states' justified authority over persons has normative priority
over, and as a result severely restricts, the kinds of territorial
rights that states can justifiably claim, and it argues that the
mere effective administration of justice within a geographical area
is insufficient to ground moral authority over residents of that
area. The book argues that only a theory of territorial rights that
takes seriously the morality of the actual history of states'
acquisitions of power over land and the land's residents can
adequately explain the nature and extent of states' moral rights
over particular territories. Part I of the book examines the
interconnections between states' claimed rights of authority over
particular sets of subject persons and states' claimed authority to
control particular territories. It contains an extended critique of
the dominant "Kantian functionalist " approach to such issues. Part
II organizes, explains, and criticizes the full range of extant
theories of states' territorial rights, arguing that a
little-appreciated Lockean approach to territorial rights is in
fact far better able to meet the principal desiderata for such
theories. Where the first two parts of the book concern primarily
states' claims to jurisdiction over territories, Part III of the
book looks closely at the more property-like territorial rights
that states claim - in particular, their claimed rights to control
over the natural resources on and beneath their territories and
their claimed rights to control and restrict movement across
(including immigration over) their territorial borders.
The thirteen essays by Allen Buchanan collected here are arranged
in such a way as to make evident their thematic interconnections:
the important and hitherto unappreciated relationships among the
nature and grounding of human rights, the legitimacy of
international institutions, and the justification for using
military force across borders. Each of these three topics has
spawned a significant literature, but unfortunately has been
treated in isolation. In this volume Buchanan makes the case for a
holistic, systematic approach, and in so doing constitutes a major
contribution at the intersection of International Political
Philosophy and International Legal Theory.
A major theme of Buchanan's book is the need to combine the
philosopher's normative analysis with the political scientist's
focus on institutions. Instead of thinking first about norms and
then about institutions, if at all, only as mechanisms for
implementing norms, it is necessary to consider alternative
"packages" consisting of norms and institutions. Whether a
particular norm is acceptable can depend upon the institutional
context in which it is supposed to be instantiated, and whether a
particular institutional arrangement is acceptable can depend on
whether it realizes norms of legitimacy or of justice, or at least
has a tendency to foster the conditions under which such norms can
be realized. In order to evaluate institutions it is necessary not
only to consider how well they implement norms that are now
considered valid but also their capacity for fostering the
epistemic conditions under which norms can be contested, revised,
and improved.
For centuries it has been assumed that democracy must refer to the
empowerment of the People's voice. In this pioneering book, Jeffrey
Edward Green makes the case for considering the People as an ocular
entity rather than a vocal one. Green argues that it is both
possible and desirable to understand democracy in terms of what the
People gets to see instead of the traditional focus on what it gets
to say. The Eyes of the People examines democracy from the
perspective of everyday citizens in their everyday lives. While it
is customary to understand the citizen as a decision-maker, in fact
most citizens rarely engage in decision-making and do not even have
clear views on most political issues. The ordinary citizen is not a
decision-maker but a spectator who watches and listens to the
select few empowered to decide. Grounded on this everyday
phenomenon of spectatorship, The Eyes of the People constructs a
democratic theory applicable to the way democracy is actually
experienced by most people most of the time. In approaching
democracy from the perspective of the People's eyes, Green
rediscovers and rehabilitates a forgotten "plebiscitarian"
alternative within the history of democratic thought. Building off
the contributions of a wide range of thinkers-including Aristotle,
Shakespeare, Benjamin Constant, Max Weber, Joseph Schumpeter, and
many others-Green outlines a novel democratic paradigm centered on
empowering the People's gaze through forcing politicians to appear
in public under conditions they do not fully control. The Eyes of
the People is at once a sweeping overview of the state of
democratic theory and a call to rethink the meaning of democracy
within the sociological and technological conditions of the
twenty-first century. In addition to political scientists and
students of democracy, the book likely will be of interest to
political journalists, theorists of visual culture, and anyone in
search of political principles that acknowledge, rather than
repress, the pathologies of political life in contemporary mass
society.
Could low-level exposure to polluting chemicals be analogous to
exercise-a beneficial source of stress that strengthens the body?
Some scientists studying the phenomenon of hormesis (beneficial or
stimulatory effects caused by low-dose exposure to toxic
substances) claim that that this may be the case. Is A Little
Pollution Good For You? critically examines the current evidence
for hormesis. In the process, it highlights the range of
methodological and interpretive judgments involved in environmental
research: choices about what questions to ask and how to study
them, decisions about how to categorize and describe new
information, judgments about how to interpret and evaluate
ambiguous evidence, and questions about how to formulate public
policy in response to debated scientific findings. The book also
uncovers the ways that interest groups with deep pockets attempt to
influence these scientific judgments for their benefit. Several
chapters suggest ways to counter these influences and incorporate a
broader array of societal values in environmental research: (1)
moving beyond conflict-of-interest policies to develop new ways of
safeguarding academic research from potential biases; (2) creating
deliberative forums in which multiple stakeholders can discuss the
judgments involved in policy-relevant research; and (3) developing
ethical guidelines that can assist scientific experts in
disseminating debated and controversial phenomena to the public.
Kevin C. Elliott illustrates these strategies in the hormesis case,
as well as in two additional case studies involving contemporary
environmental research: endocrine disruption and multiple chemical
sensitivity. This book should be of interest to a wide variety of
readers, including scientists, philosophers, policy makers,
environmental ethicists and activists, research ethicists, industry
leaders, and concerned citizens. "This is a timely, well-researched
and compelling book .Elliott admirably combines insights and
strategies from philosophy of science with those of applied ethics
to carefully analyze contemporary science and science policy around
pollutants and human health. There is a growing interest in the
philosophy of science community in bringing the work of
philosophers to bear on contemporary social issues. This book
stands out as a model for how to do just that." - Sandra D.
Mitchell, Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh Is A Little
Pollution Good For You? is a wonderfully clear and insightful book
dealing with the interplay between social values and economic and
political interests in scientific research. He articulates an
account of how societal values should and should not enter into
science and illustrates his views with an extended discussion of
research on hormesis-the hypothesis that chemicals that are toxic
at high doses may be benign or even beneficial at low doses. The
chemical industry has a strong financial interest in promoting
scientific acceptance of hormesis, as this could convince
regulatory agencies to loosen up restrictions on allowable
exposures to pesticides and other chemicals. Elliott argues that
because scientists have an obligation to minimize the harmful
effects of their research, they must be mindful of the social
context of their work and how it may be interpreted and applied by
private companies or interest groups, to the potential detriment of
public and environmental health. Elliott's book is a must read for
researchers, scholars, and students who are interested in the
relationship between science, industry, and society." - David B.
Resnik, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences,
National Institutes of Health, author of Playing Politics With
Science: Balancing Scientific Independence And Government
Embodiment-defined as having, being in, or being associated with a
body-is a feature of the existence of many entities, perhaps even
of all entities. Why entities should find themselves in this
condition is the central concern of the present volume. The problem
includes, but also goes beyond, the philosophical problem of body:
that is, what the essence of a body is, and how, if at all, it
differs from matter. On some understandings there may exist bodies,
such as stones or asteroids, that are not the bodies of any
particular subjects. To speak of embodiment by contrast is always
to speak of a subject that variously inhabits, or captains, or is
coextensive with, or even is imprisoned within, a body. The subject
may in the end be identical to, or an emergent product of, the
body. That is, a materialist account of embodied subjects may be
the correct one. But insofar as there is a philosophical problem of
embodiment, the identity of the embodied subject with the body
stands in need of an argument and cannot simply be assumed. The
reasons, nature, and consequences of the embodiment of subjects as
conceived in the long history of philosophy in Europe as well as in
the broader Mediterranean region and in South and East Asia, with
forays into religion, art, medicine, and other domains of culture,
form the focus of these essays. More precisely, the contributors to
this volume shine light on a number of questions that have driven
reflection on embodiment throughout the history of philosophy. What
is the historical and conceptual relationship between the idea of
embodiment and the idea of subjecthood? Am I who I am principally
in virtue of the fact that I have the body I have? Relatedly, what
is the relationship of embodiment to being and to individuality? Is
embodiment a necessary condition of being? Of being an individual?
What are the theological dimensions of embodiment? To what extent
has the concept of embodiment been deployed in the history of
philosophy to contrast the created world with the state of
existence enjoyed by God? What are the normative dimensions of
theories of embodiment? To what extent is the problem of embodiment
a distinctly western preoccupation? Is it the result of a
particular local and contingent history, or does it impose itself
as a universal problem, wherever and whenever human beings begin to
reflect on the conditions of their existence? Ultimately, to what
extent can natural science help us to resolve philosophical
questions about embodiment, many of which are vastly older than the
particular scientific research programs we now believe to hold the
greatest promise for revealing to us the bodily basis, or the
ultimate physical causes, of who we really are?
Plato's "Phaedo", Hegel's "Phenomenology of Spirit" and Heidegger's
"Being and Time" are three of the most profound meditations on
variations of the ideas that to practice philosophy is to practice
how to die. This study traces how these variations are connected
with each other and with the reflections of this idea to be found
in the works of other ancient and modern philosophers - including
Neitzsche, Husserl, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and levinas. The book
also shows how this philosophical thanatology motivates or is
motivated by experiences documented in psychoanalysis and in the
anthropology of Western and Oriental religions and myths.
This is the first of two volumes of the only English edition of
Hegel's Aesthetics, the work in which he gives full expression to
his seminal theory of art. The substantial Introduction is his best
exposition of his general philosophy of art. In Part I he considers
the general nature of art as a spiritual experience, distinguishes
the beauty of art and the beauty of nature, and examines artistic
genius and originality. Part II surveys the history of art from the
ancient world through to the end of the eighteenth century, probing
the meaning and significance of major works. Part III (in the
second volume) deals individually with architecture, sculpture,
painting, music, and literature; a rich array of examples makes
vivid his exposition of his theory.
According to Taoist philosophy, every body—not to mention
everything in the cosmos—possesses quantities of the five
elements: Fire, Earth, Metal, Water, and Wood. Each element has an
emotional component (water, for example, is associated with fear),
a meridian in the body that can be worked on through somatic
exercises like massage, and a moral imperative. Camellia Lee, an
energy worker with a family lineage of healing going back
generations to Taiwan, explains elements of Taoist philosophy,
traditional Chinese medicine, and other related studies through the
lens of the Five Elements in an easy-to-understand and enjoyable
way. This is a Five-Element plan—with plenty of exercises for
introspection, healing, and enlightenment—that anyone can commit
to in order to restore order to their bodies, minds, and spirits.
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