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Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy
The Nyayasutravivarana, written in the first centuries of the 2nd
millennium CE, provides the most accessible introduction to the
core teachings of old Nyaya. Excerpting from the two earliest and
most important treatises of this tradition-the Nyayabhasya and
Nyayavarttika-Gambhiravamsaja created a comprehensive yet concise
digest. The present work contains not only a critical edition of
the first chapter based on all known textual sources but also a
complete documentation of the variants, a comprehensive study of
the parallel passages, a detailed discussion of the preparation and
processing of the text-critical data, and a detailed documentation
of the Grantha Tamil, Telugu and Kannada scripts.
This book looks into different forms of social exclusion in
different societies or contexts. It is important to note that in
some cases, social exclusion is fueled by the deprivation of
economic resources, political and social rights. In contrast,
social constructs or cultural norms constitute significant factors
in other cases. At the subject (macro) level, this book opens up an
avenue where researchers from different subjects can look into how
central issues of their subject can be understood through the
lenses of social exclusion. For example, historical perspectives of
social exclusion, sociological perspectives of social exclusion,
religiosity and social exclusion, gender perspectives of social
exclusion, educational perspectives of social exclusion, etc. At
the thematic (micro) level, this book looks into how specific
themes like racism, the corona virus pandemic, albinism, media,
sexuality and gender intersect with social exclusion. In doing all
these, the book also provides a much-needed multidisciplinary and
methodological understanding of issues of social exclusion.
Marx's early work is well known and widely available, but it
usually interpreted as at best a kind of stepping-stone to the Marx
of Capital. This book offers something completely different; it
reconstructs, from his first writings spanning from 1835 to 1846, a
coherent and well-rounded political philosophy. The influence of
Engels upon the development of that philosophy is discussed. This,
it is argued, was a philosophy that Marx could have presented had
he put the ideas together, as he hinted was his eventual intention.
Had he done so, this first Marx would have made an even greater
contribution to social and political philosophy than is generally
acknowledged today. Arguments regarding revolutionary change,
contradiction and other topics such as production, alienation and
emancipation contribute to a powerful analysis in the early works
of Marx, one which is worthy of discussion on its own merits. This
analysis is distributed among a range of books, papers, letters and
other writings, and is gathered here for the first time. Marx's
work of the period was driven by his commitment to emancipation.
Moreover, as is discussed in the conclusion to this book, his
emancipatory philosophy continues to have resonance today. This new
book presents Marx in a unique, new light and will be indispensable
reading for all studying and following his work.
The doctrine of the atonement is the distinctive doctrine of
Christianity. Over the course of many centuries of reflection,
highly diverse interpretations of the doctrine have been proposed.
In the context of this history of interpretation, Eleonore Stump
considers the doctrine afresh with philosophical care. Whatever
exactly the atonement is, it is supposed to include a solution to
the problems of the human condition, especially its guilt and
shame. Stump canvasses the major interpretations of the doctrine
that attempt to explain this solution and argues that all of them
have serious shortcomings. In their place, she argues for an
interpretation that is both novel and yet traditional and that has
significant advantages over other interpretations, including
Anselms well-known account of the doctrine. In the process, she
also discusses love, union, guilt, shame, forgiveness, retribution,
punishment, shared attention, mind-reading, empathy, and various
other issues in moral psychology and ethics.
Nietzsche's famous attack upon established Christianity and
religion is brought to the reader in this superb hardcover edition
of The Antichrist, introduced and translated by H.L. Mencken. The
incendiary tone throughout The Antichrist separates it from most
other well-regarded philosophical texts; even in comparison to
Nietzsche's earlier works, the tone of indignation and conviction
behind each argument made is evident. There is little lofty
ponderousness; the book presents its arguments and points at a
blistering pace, placing itself among the most accessible and
comprehensive works of philosophy. The Antichrist comprises a total
of sixty-two short chapters, each with distinct philosophical
arguments or angle upon the targets of Christianity, organised
religion, and those who masquerade as faithful but are in actuality
anything but. Pointedly opposed to notions of Christian morality
and virtue, Nietzsche vehemently sets out a case for the faith's
redundancy and lack of necessity in human life.
Where did the idea of sin arise from? In this meticulously argued
book, David Konstan takes a close look at classical Greek and Roman
texts, as well as the Bible and early Judaic and Christian
writings, and argues that the fundamental idea of "sin" arose in
the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, although this original
meaning was obscured in later Jewish and Christian interpretations.
Through close philological examination of the words for "sin," in
particular the Hebrew hata' and the Greek hamartia, he traces their
uses over the centuries in four chapters, and concludes that the
common modern definition of sin as a violation of divine law indeed
has antecedents in classical Greco-Roman conceptions, but acquired
a wholly different sense in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament.
In Marx and Social Justice, George E. McCarthy presents a detailed
and comprehensive overview of the ethical, political, and economic
foundations of Marx's theory of social justice in his early and
later writings. What is distinctive about Marx's theory is that he
rejects the views of justice in liberalism and reform socialism
based on legal rights and fair distribution by balancing ancient
Greek philosophy with nineteenth-century political economy. Relying
on Aristotle's definition of social justice grounded in ethics and
politics, virtue and democracy, Marx applies it to a broader range
of issues, including workers' control and creativity, producer
associations, human rights and human needs, fairness and
reciprocity in exchange, wealth distribution, political
emancipation, economic and ecological crises, and economic
democracy. Each chapter in the book represents a different aspect
of social justice. Unlike Locke and Hegel, Marx is able to
integrate natural law and natural rights, as he constructs a
classical vision of self-government 'of the people, by the people'.
The topic of this book is mental representation, a theoretical
concept that lies at the core of cognitive science. Together with
the idea that thinking is analogous to computational processing,
this concept is responsible for the "cognitive turn" in the
sciences of the mind and brain since the 1950s. Conceiving of
cognitive processes (such as perception, reasoning, and motor
control) as consisting of the manipulation of contentful vehicles
that represent the world has led to tremendous empirical
advancements in our explanations of behaviour. Perhaps the most
famous discovery that explains behavior by appealing to the notion
of mental representations was the discovery of 'place' cells that
underlie spatial navigation and positioning, which earned
researchers John O'Keefe, May-Britt Moser, and Edvard I. Moser a
joint Nobel Prize in 2014. And yet, despite the empirical
importance of the concept, there is no agreed definition or
theoretical understanding of mental representation. This book
constitutes a state-of-the-art overview on the topic of mental
representation, assembling some of the leading experts in the field
and allowing them to engage in meaningful exchanges over some of
the most contentious questions. The collection gathers both
proponents and critics of the notion, making room for debates
dealing with the theoretical and ontological status of
representations, the possibility of formulating a general account
of mental representation which would fit our best explanatory
practices, and the possibility of delivering such an account in
fully naturalistic terms. Some contributors explore the relation
between mutually incompatible notions of mental representation,
stemming from the different disciplines composing the cognitive
sciences (such as neuroscience, psychology, and computer science).
Others question the ontological status and explanatory usefulness
of the notion. And finally, some try to sketch a general theory of
mental representations that could face the challenges outlined in
the more critical chapters of the volume.
As the economic crash of 2007-8 and its sequels developed,
neoliberal economists often said that economic theory can never
cope with such eruptions, and left-minded economists and political
economists struggled to find answers. This book documents
discussions as they developed; an introduction and an afterword
tell the story of the crisis, and offer syntheses and angles on
some of the debated issues. What were the chief imbalances in the
world economy? Is US hegemony breaking down? Were falling profit
rates at the root of the crash, and if so why were they falling?
How does "financialisation" reshape capitalism? Why did
neoliberalism prove so resilient? How might the repercussions lead
to it being subverted from the right or from the left? Contributors
are Robert Brenner, Dick Bryan, Trevor Evans, Barry Finger, Daniela
Gabor, Andrew Gamble, Michel Husson, Andrew Kliman, Costas
Lapavitsas, Simon Mohun, Fred Moseley, Leo Panitch, Hugo Radice,
and Alfredo Saad-Filho.
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