The biggest and most comprehensive volume on James's contribution to philosophy published to date James wrote on many philosophical, psychological and religious topics - this will ensure strong interest from these three disciplines Explores James in relation to important interdisciplinary topics, including modernism, sociology and cognitive science William James is a central figure in 20th century philosophy and particularly North American philosophy and pragmatism, the topic he is best known for, studied on many courses Part of an exciting new series that brings fresh perspectives to bear on the work and arguments of the major philosophers

Bringing sophisticated philosophy to bear on real-life historiography, Values, Objectivity, and Explanation in Historiography rekindles and invigorates the debate on two perennials in the theory and methodology of history. One is the tension between historians' values and the ideal-or illusion-of objective historiography. The other is historical explanation. The point of departure for the treatment of values and objectivity is an exceptionally heated debate on Cold War historiography in Denmark, involving not only historians but also the political parties, the national newspapers, and the courts. The in-depth analysis that follows concludes that historians can produce accounts that deserve the label "objective," even though their descriptions are tinged by ineluctable epistemic instability. A separate chapter dissects the postmodern notion of situated truths. The second part of the book proffers a new take on historical explanation. It is based on the notion of the ideal explanatory text, which allows for not only causal-including intentional-but also nomological, structural, and functional explanations. The approach, which can accommodate narrative explanations driven by causal plots, is ecumenical but not all-encompassing. Emergent social properties and supernatural entities are excluded from the ideal explanatory text, making scientific historiography methodologically individualistic-albeit with room for explanations at higher levels when pragmatically justified-and atheist. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative License.

The articles in this volume employ source-work research to trace Kierkegaard's understanding and use of authors from the Greek tradition. A series of figures of varying importance in Kierkegaard's authorship are treated, ranging from early Greek poets to late Classical philosophical schools. In general it can be said that the Greeks collectively constitute one of the single most important body of sources for Kierkegaard's thought. He studied Greek from an early age and was profoundly inspired by what might be called the Greek spirit. Although he is generally considered a Christian thinker, he was nonetheless consistently drawn back to the Greeks for ideas and impulses on any number of topics. He frequently contrasts ancient Greek philosophy, with its emphasis on the lived experience of the individual in daily life, with the abstract German philosophy that was in vogue during his own time. It has been argued that he modeled his work on that of the ancient Greek thinkers specifically in order to contrast his own activity with that of his contemporaries.

The long period from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century supplied numerous sources for Kierkegaard's thought in any number of different fields. The present, rather heterogeneous volume covers the long period from the birth of Savonarola in 1452 through the beginning of the nineteenth century and into Kierkegaard's own time. The Danish thinker read authors representing vastly different traditions and time periods. Moreover, he also read a diverse range of genres. His interests concerned not just philosophy, theology and literature but also drama and music. The present volume consists of three tomes that are intended to cover Kierkegaard's sources in these different fields of thought. Tome III covers the sources that are relevant for literature, drama and music. Kierkegaard was well read in the European literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth century. He was captivated by the figure of Cervantes' Don Quixote, who is used as a model for humor and irony. He also enjoyed French literature, represented here by articles on Chateaubriand, Lamartine, and Merimee. French dramatists were popular on the Danish stage, and Kierkegaard demonstrated an interest in, among others, Moliere and Scribe. Although he never possessed strong English skills, this did not prevent him from familiarizing himself with English literature, primarily with the help of German translations. While there is an established body of secondary material on Kierkegaard's relation to Shakespeare, little has been said about his use of the Irish dramatist Sheridan. It is obvious from, among other things, The Concept of Irony that Kierkegaard knew in detail the works of some of the main writers of the German Romantic movement. However, his use of the leading figures of the British Romantic movement, Byron and Shelley, remains largely unexplored terrain. The classic Danish authors of the eighteenth century, Holberg, Wessel and Ewald, were influential figures who prepared the way for the Golden Age of Danish poetry. Kierkegaard constantly refers to their dramatic characters, whom he often employs to illustrate a philosophical idea with a pregnant example or turn of phrase. Finally, while Kierkegaard is not an obvious name in musicology, his analysis of Mozart's Don Giovanni shows that he had a keen interest in music on many different levels.

With a few exceptions, historiography has paid little attention to the impact of French economic thought during the American Revolution, focusing instead on the Revolution's links with Britain. This book outlines how, from the mid-eighteenth to the early-nineteenth century, the political and social dimension of French economic thought, and particularly of Physiocracy, spurred American Republicans to a radical shaping of American agrarian ideology. Such a perspective allows for a reconsideration of several questions that lie at the heart of contemporary historiographic debate: the connection between politics and economics; the meaning of republicanism; the foundations of representation; the role of Europe in the Atlantic world; and the interaction between national histories and global context. In particular, the research methodology adopted here makes it possible to reconstruct how American national identity, conceived as an expression of society in economic terms, emerged through a cosmopolitan way of thinking focused on the uniqueness of the new state.

This collection of essays investigates histories in the ancient world and the extent to which the producers and consumers of those histories believed them to be true. Ancient Greek historiographers repeatedly stressed the importance of truth to history; yet they also purported to believe in myth, distorted facts for nationalistic or moralizing purposes, and omitted events that modern audiences might consider crucial to a truthful account of the past. Truth and History in the Ancient World explores a pluralistic concept of truth - one in which different versions of the same historical event can all be true - or different kinds of truths and modes of belief are contingent on culture. Beginning with comparisons between historiography and aspects of belief in Greek tragedy, chapters include discussions of historiography through the works of Herodotus, Xenophon, and Ktesias, as well as Hellenistic and later historiography, material culture in Vitruvius, and Lucian's satire. Rather than investigate whether historiography incorporates elements of poetic, rhetorical, or narrative techniques to shape historical accounts, or whether cultural memory is flexible or manipulated, this volume examines pluralities of truth and belief within the ancient world - and consequences for our understanding of culture, ancient or otherwise.

The philosophy of history is an area of interest not only to philosophers, but to historians and to social scientists. It has been of central importance in continental European philosophy since the late 18th century, and for the past half-century has had a significant place in Anglo-American philosophy. Interest in the philosophy of history continues to grow. This volume offers both an introduction to contemporary discussion in the philosophy of history, and a 'reassessment' of some of the major movements in the philosophy of history since the beginning of the 20th century. Including the work of leading international scholars in the field, the book presents a wide range of perspectives from different schools in philosophy, and in political and social theory, history, and the history of ideas. Traditional questions raised in the philosophy of history are explored with fresh insight - the nature of history; historical understanding; historical objectivity; the nature of the past; the psychological factors in historical explanation; the human significance of history - alongside issues which are less frequently examined including: the role of science and mathematics in history, history as a social science, and history as an art form. As history itself remains disputed ground, it is important to consider what clues history can provide for our response to issues of contemporary concern such as political realignments and economic globalisation; this volume offers important insights from leading scholars in the philosophy of history.

The first volume to explore comprehensively the intersection of feminism, politics, and philosophy, Women in Political Theory sheds light on the contributions of women philosophers and theorists to contemporary political thought. With close attention to the work of five central thinkers-Sarah Grimke, Anna Julia Cooper, Jane Addams, Rosa Luxemburg and Hannah Arendt-this book not only offers sustained analyses of the thought of these leading figures, but also examines their relationship with established political theorists of the past, such as Locke, Machiavelli, and the ancients. Demonstrating that each of the figures covered was indeed a political theorist of her time, whilst highlighting the strength of her thought and the reasons for which it has not been accorded the attention that it merits, Women in Political Theory offers a fascinating overview of the political thought of five theorists whose work is central to an understanding of modern thought. As such, it will be of interest to scholars and students of sociology, philosophy, political and social theory, feminist thought, and gender studies.

There can be no doubt that most of the thinkers who are usually associated with the existentialist tradition, whatever their actual doctrines, were in one way or another influenced by the writings of Kierkegaard. This influence is so great that it can be fairly stated that the existentialist movement was largely responsible for the major advance in Kierkegaard's international reception that took place in the twentieth century. In Kierkegaard's writings one can find a rich array of concepts such as anxiety, despair, freedom, sin, the crowd, and sickness that all came to be standard motifs in existentialist literature. Sartre played an important role in canonizing Kierkegaard as one of the forerunners of existentialism. However, recent scholarship has been attentive to his ideological use of Kierkegaard. Indeed, Sartre seemed to be exploiting Kierkegaard for his own purposes and suspicions of misrepresentation and distortions have led recent commentators to go back and reexamine the complex relation between Kierkegaard and the existentialist thinkers. The articles in the present volume feature figures from the French, German, Spanish and Russian traditions of existentialism. They examine the rich and varied use of Kierkegaard by these later thinkers, and, most importantly, they critically analyze his purported role in this famous intellectual movement.

This is the third and final volume of collected papers of A.W. Bob Coats. Coats began to collect material for this volume in the years following the publication of the second volume in 1993, but sadly died in 2007, before the work was completed. The volume has now been completed under the editorship of Roger Backhouse and Bruce Caldwell. Along with his articles, the compilation of the volume also reflects Coats' interest in and commitment to book reviews, a selection of which have been chosen for inclusion. The book also includes a comprehensive bibliography. In addition to a preface by Backhouse and Caldwell, the volume also reproduces the obituary that was published in History of Political Economy, a memoir published in 1996, and an interview with Grant Fleming, published the previous year. Together, the introductory materials, articles and reviews serve as a fitting tribute to the body of work of Bob Coats.

This volume explores in detail Kierkegaard's various relations to his German contemporaries. Kierkegaard read German fluently and made extensive use of the writings of German-speaking authors. It can certainly be argued that, apart from his contemporary Danish sources, the German sources were probably the most important in the development of his thought generally. The volume has been divided into three tomes reflecting Kierkegaard's main areas of interest with regard to the German-speaking sources, namely, philosophy, theology and a more loosely conceived category, which has here been designated "literature and aesthetics." This third tome is dedicated to the German literary sources that were significant for Kierkegaard; in particular the work of authors from German Classicism and Romanticism. Important forerunners for many of Kierkegaard's literary motifs and characters can be found in the German literature of the day. His use of pseudonyms and his interest in irony were both profoundly influenced by German Romanticism. This volume demonstrates the extent to which Kierkegaard's views of criticism and aesthetics were decisively shaped by the work of German authors.

Although Kierkegaard's reception was initially more or less limited to Scandinavia, it has for a long time now been a highly international affair. As his writings were translated into different languages his reputation spread, and he became read more and more by people increasingly distant from his native Denmark. While in Scandinavia, the attack on the Church in the last years of his life became something of a cause celebre, later, many different aspects of his work became the object of serious scholarly investigation well beyond the original northern borders. As his reputation grew, he was co-opted by a number of different philosophical and religious movements in different contexts throughout the world. The three tomes of this volume attempt to record the history of this reception according to national and linguistic categories. Tome I covers the reception of Kierkegaard in Northern and Western Europe. The articles on Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland can be said to trace Kierkegaard's influence in its more or less native Nordic Protestant context. Since the authors in these countries (with the exception of Finland) were not dependent on translations or other intermediaries, this represents the earliest tradition of Kierkegaard reception. The early German translations of his works opened the door for the next phase of the reception which expanded beyond the borders of the Nordic countries. The articles in the section on Western Europe trace his influence in Great Britain, the Netherlands and Flanders, Germany and Austria, and France. All of these countries and linguistic groups have their own extensive tradition of Kierkegaard reception.

'In a word, I shall endeavour to show how our music, having been originally a shell-fish, with its restrictive skeleton on the outside and no soul within, has been developed by the inevitable laws of evolution, through natural selection and the survival of the fittest, into something human, even divine, with the strong, logical skeleton of its science inside, the fair flesh of God-given beauty outside, and the whole, like man himself, animated by a celestial, eternal spirit....' W.J. Henderson, The Story of Music (1889) Critical writing about music and music history in nineteenth-century Britain was permeated with metaphor and analogy. Music and Metaphor examines how over-arching theories of music history were affected by reference to various figurative linguistic templates adopted from other disciplines such as art, religion, politics and science. Each section of the book discusses a wide range of musicological writings and their correspondence with the language used to convey contemporary ideas such as the sublime, the ancient and modern debate, and, in particular, the theory of evolution. Bennett Zon reveals that through their application of metaphorical frameworks taken from art, religion and science, these writers and their work shed light on nineteenth-century perceptions of music history and illuminate the ways in which these disciplines affected notions of musical development.

The period of Kierkegaard's life corresponds to Denmark's "Golden Age," which is conventionally used to refer to the period covering roughly the first half of the nineteenth century, when Denmark's most important writers, philosophers, theologians, poets, actors and artists flourished. Kierkegaard was often in dialogue with his fellow Danes on key issues of the day. His authorship would be unthinkable without reference to the Danish State Church, the Royal Theater, the University of Copenhagen or the various Danish newspapers and journals, such as The Corsair, FA|drelandet, and KjAbenhavns flyvende Post, which played an undeniable role in shaping his development. The present volume features articles that employ source-work research in order to explore the individual Danish sources of Kierkegaard's thought. The volume is divided into three tomes in order to cover the different fields of influence. Tome II is dedicated to the host of Danish theologians who played a greater or lesser role in shaping Kierkegaard's thought. In his day there were a number of competing theological trends both within the church and at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Copenhagen, and not least of all in the blossoming free church movements. These included rationalism, Grundtvigianism and Hegelianism. In this quite dynamic period in Danish ecclesial history, Kierkegaard was also exercised by a number of leading personalities in the church as they attempted to come to terms with key issues such as baptism, civil marriage, the revision of the traditional psalm book, and the relation of church and state.

Examining the political theory of anarchism from a philosophical and historical perspective, Paul McLaughlin relates anarchism to the fundamental ethical and political problem of authority. The book pays particular attention to the authority of the state and the anarchist rejection of all traditional claims made for the legitimacy of state authority, the author both explaining and defending the central tenets of the anarchist critique of the state. The founding works of anarchist thought, by Godwin, Proudhon and Stirner, are explored and anarchism is examined in its historical context, including the influence of such events as the Enlightenment and the French Revolution on anarchist thought. Finally, the major theoretical developments of anarchism from the late-nineteenth century to the present are summarized and evaluated. This book is both a highly readable account of the development of anarchist thinking and a lucid and well-reasoned defence of the anarchist philosophy.

Music as a Science of Mankind offers a philosophical and historical perspective on the intellectual representation of music in British eighteenth-century culture. From the field of natural philosophy, involving the science of sounds and acoustics, to the realm of imagination, involving resounding music and art, the branches of modern culture that were involved in the intellectual tradition of the science of music proved to be variously appealing to men of letters. Among these, a particularly rich field of investigation was the British philosophy of the mind and of human understanding, developed between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which looked at music and found in its realm a way of understanding human experience. Focussing on the world of sensation - trying to describe how the human mind could develop ideas and emotions by its means - philosophers and physicians often took their cases from art's products, be it music (sounds), painting (colours) or poetry (words as signs of sound conveying a meaning), thus looking at art from a particular point of view: that of the perceiving mind. The relationship between music and the philosophies of mind is presented here as a significant part of the construction of a Science of Man: a huge and impressive 'project' involving both the study of man's nature, to which - in David Hume's words - 'all sciences have a relation', and the creation of an ideal of what Man should be. Maria Semi sheds light on how these reflections moved towards a Science of Music: a complex and articulated vision of the discipline that was later to be known as 'musicology'; or Musikwissenschaft.

The Fiction of History sets out a number of themes in the relationship between history and fiction, emphasising the tensions and dilemmas created in this relationship and examining how various writers have dealt with these. In the first part, two chapters discuss the philosophy behind the connection between fiction and history, whether history is fiction, and the distinction between the past and history. Part two goes on to discuss the relationship between history and literature using case studies such as Virginia Woolf and Charles Dickens. Part three looks at television and film (as well as other media) through case studies such as the film Welcome to Sarajevo and Soviet and Australian films. Part four considers a particular theme that has prominence in both history and literature, postcolonial studies, focusing on the issues of fictions of nationhood and civilization and the historical novel in postcolonial contexts. Finally, the fifth section comprises two interviews with novelists Penelope Lively and Adam Thorpe and discusses the ways in which their works explore the nature of history itself.

The practice of medicine in the days before the development of anaesthetics could often be a brutal and painful experience. Many procedures, especially those involving surgery, must have proved almost as distressing to the doctor as to the patient. Yet in order to cure, the medical practitioner was often required to inflict pain and the patient to endure it. Some level of detachment has always been required of the doctor and especially, of the surgeon. It is the construction of this detachment, or dispassion, in early modern England, with which this work is concerned. The book explores the idea of medical dispassion and shows how practitioners developed the intellectual, verbal and manual skill of being able to replace passion with equanimity and distance. As the skill of 'dispassion' became more widespread it was both enthusiastically promoted and vehemently attacked by scientific and literary writers throughout the early modern period. To explain why the practice was so controversial and aroused such furor, this study takes into account not only patterns of medical education and clinical practice but wider debates concerning social, philosophical and religious ideas.

While Kierkegaard's use of the Greek authors, particularly Plato and Aristotle, has attracted considerable attention over the years, his use of the Roman authors has, by contrast, remained sadly neglected. This neglect is somewhat surprising given the fact that Kierkegaard was extremely well read in Latin from his early youth when he attended the Borgerdyd School in Copenhagen. Kierkegaard's interest in the Roman authors is perhaps best evidenced by his book collection. In his private library he had a long list of Latin titles and Danish translations of the standard Roman authors in any number of different genres. His extensive and frequent use of writers such as Cicero, Horace, Terence, Seneca, Suetonius and Ovid clearly warrants placing them in the select group of his major sources. The chapters in this volume demonstrate that Kierkegaard made use of the Roman sources in a number of different ways. His readings from the Borgerdyd school seem to have stuck with him as an adult. He constantly refers to Roman authors, such as Livy, Nepos, and Suetonius for colourful stories and anecdotes. In addition, he avails himself of pregnant sayings or formulations from the Roman authors, when appropriate. But his use of these authors is not merely as a rhetorical source. He is also profoundly interested in the Roman philosophy of Cicero, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius. Similarly, just as he is fascinated by Tacitus' portrayal of the early Christians, so also he is amused by the humour of Terence and Apuleius. In short, the Roman authors serve to enrich any number of different aspects of Kierkegaard's authorship with respect to both content and form.

The name of Hippocrates has been invoked as an inspiration of medicine since antiquity, and medical practitioners have turned to Hippocrates for ethical and social standards. While most modern commentators accept that medicine has sometimes fallen short of Hippocratic ideals, these ideals are usually portrayed as having a timeless appeal, departure from which is viewed as an aberration that only a return to Hippocratic values will correct. Recent historical work has begun to question such an image of Hippocrates and his medicine. Instead of examining Hippocratic ideals and values as an unchanging legacy passed to us from antiquity, historians have increasingly come to explore the many different ways in which Hippocrates and his medicine have been constructed and reconstructed over time. Thus scholars have tended to abandon attempts to extract a real Hippocrates from the mass of conflicting opinions about him. Rather, they tend to ask why he was portrayed in particular ways, by particular groups, at particular times. This volume explores the multiple uses, constructions, and meanings of Hippocrates and Hippocratic medicine since the Renaissance, and elucidates the cultural and social circumstances that shaped their development. Recent research has suggested that whilst the process of constructing and reconstructing Hippocrates began during antiquity, it was during the sixteenth century that the modern picture emerged. Many scholastic endeavours today, it is claimed, are attempts to answer Hippocratic questions first posed in the sixteenth century. This book provides an opportunity to begin to evaluate such claims, and to explore their relevance in areas beyond those of classical scholarship.

Transatlantic studies, especially during the enlightenment period, is of increasing critical interest amongst scholars. But was there an Atlantic Enlightenment? This interdisciplinary collection harnesses the work of some of the most prominent figures in the fields of literature; intellectual, cultural, and social history; geography; and political science to examine the emergence of the Atlantic as one of the key conceptual paradigms of eighteenth century studies. In this spirit, the contributors offer new insights into the conditions that generated a major transatlantic genre of writing; addressing questions of race, political economy, and the transmission of Enlightenment ideas in literary, political, historical, and religious contexts. Whether examining John Witherspoon's evolution from Calvinist theologian to Revolutionary theorist, or Adam Smith's reception in the antebellum United States, the essays remind us that the transatlantic traffic in ideas moved from west to east, from east to west, and in patterns that both complicate and enrich what we thought we knew about the vectors of transmission in this pivotal period.

Bringing to bear his expertise in the early modern emblem tradition, William E. Engel traces a series of self-reflective organizational schemes associated with baroque artifice in the work of Herman Melville and Edgar Allan Poe. While other scholars have remarked on the influence of seventeenth-century literature on Melville and Poe, this is the first book to explore how their close readings of early modern texts influenced their decisions about compositional practice, especially as it relates to public performance and the exigencies of publication. Engel's discussion of the narrative structure and emblematic aspects of Melville's Piazza Tales and Poe's "The Raven" serve as case studies that demonstrate the authors' debt to the past. Focusing principally on the overlapping rhetorical and iconic assumptions of the Art of Memory and its relation to chiasmus, Engel avoids engaging in a simple account of what these authors read and incorporated into their own writings. Instead, through an examination of their predisposition toward an earlier model of pattern recognition, he offers fresh insight into the writers' understandings of mourning and loss, their use of allegory, and what they gained from their use of pseudonyms.

Drawing on philosophical, neurological and cultural answers to the question of what constitutes a body, this book explores the interaction between mechanistic beliefs about human bodies and the successive technologies that have established and illustrated these beliefs. At the same time, it draws upon newer perspectives on technology and embodied human thought in order to highlight the limitations and inadequacies of such beliefs and suggest alternative perspectives. In so doing, it provides a position from which widely held assumptions about our relationship with technology can be understood and questioned, by both showing how these presuppositions have emerged and developed, and examining the extent to which they are dependent upon our grasp of specific technologies. Illustrated with examples from the Renaissance and Enlightenment periods, as well as the industrial age and the recent eras of informatics, gene science and nanotechnology, Embodiment and Mechanisation highlights the ways in which technological changes have led to shifts in the definition of machine and body, investigating their shared underlying belief that all matter can be reduced to a common substance. From clockwork and cadavers to engines and energy, this volume reveals our long-standing fascination with and enduring commitment to the idea that bodies are machines and that machines are in some sense bodies. As such, it will appeal to scholars across the humanities and social sciences with interests in the sociology of science and technology, embodiment, cultural studies and the history of ideas.

While scholars have long recognized Kierkegaard's important contributions to fields such as ethics, aesthetics, philosophy of religion, philosophical psychology, and hermeneutics, it was usually thought that he had nothing meaningful to say about society or politics. Kierkegaard has been traditionally characterized as a Christian writer who placed supreme importance on the inward religious life of each individual believer. His radical view seemed to many to undermine any meaningful conception of the community, society or the state. In recent years, however, scholars have begun to correct this image of Kierkegaard as an apolitical thinker. The present volume attempts to document the use of Kierkegaard by later thinkers in the context of social-political thought. It shows how his ideas have been employed by very different kinds of writers and activists with very different political goals and agendas. Many of the articles show that, although Kierkegaard has been criticized for his reactionary views on some social and political questions, he has been appropriated as a source of insight and inspiration by a number of later thinkers with very progressive, indeed, visionary political views.

Kierkegaard has long been known as a philosopher and theologian, but his contributions to psychology, anthropology and sociology have also made an important impact on these fields. In many of the works of his complex authorship, Kierkegaard presents his intriguing and unique vision of the nature and mental life of human beings individually and collectively. The articles featured in the present volume explore the reception of Kierkegaard's thought in the social sciences. Of these fields Kierkegaard is perhaps best known in psychology, where The Concept of Anxiety and The Sickness unto Death have been the two most influential texts. With regard to the field of sociology, social criticism, or social theory, Kierkegaard's Literary Review of Two Ages has also been regarded as offering valuable insights about some important dynamics of modern society..