What are the reasons for believing scientific theories to be true? The contemporary debate around scientific realism exposes questions about the very nature of scientific knowledge. A Critical Introduction to Scientific Realism explores and advances the main topics of the debate, allowing epistemologists to make new connections with the philosophy of science. Moving from its origins in logical positivism to some of the most recent issues discussed in the literature, this critical introduction covers the no-miracles argument, the pessimistic meta-induction and structural realism. Placing arguments in their historical context, Paul Dicken approaches scientific realism debate as a particular instance of our more general epistemological investigations. The recurrent theme is that the scientific realism debate is in fact a pseudo-philosophical question. Concerned with the methodology of the scientific realism debate, Dicken asks what it means to offer an epistemological assessment of our scientific practices. Taking those practices as a guide to our epistemological reflections, A Critical Introduction to Scientific Realism fills a gap in current introductory texts and presents a fresh approach to understanding a crucial debate.

By drawing on the opposing ideas of Carl Jung and Karl Marx, James Driscoll's develops fresh perspectives on urgent contemporary problems. Jung and Marx as thinkers, Driscoll contends, carry the projections of archetypal complexes that go back to the hostile Old Testament brothers Cain and Abel, whose enduring tensions shape our postmodern era. Because Marxism elevates the group over the individual, it is made to order for bureaucrats and bureaucracy's patron archetype, Leviathan. Jungian individuation offers a corrective rooted in the Judeo-Christian ethic's affirmation of the ultimate value of free individuals. Although Marxism's promise of justice gives it demagogic appeal, the party betrays that promise through opportunism and a primitive ethic of retribution. Marxism's supplanting the Judeo-Christian ethic with bureaucracy's "only following orders," Driscoll maintains, has created the moral paralysis of our time. As Jung and writers like Hannah Arendt, George Orwell, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Elias Canetti have warned us, the influence of our ever-expanding bureaucracies is a grave threat to the survival of civilized humanity. The primary issues Driscoll addresses include the natures of justice and the soul, individuation and freedom, and mankind's responsibilities within the planetary ecology. Religion, ethics, economics, science, class divisions, immigration, financial fraud, abortion, and affirmative action are also explored in his analysis of the powerful archetypes moving behind Jung and Marx.

In Pride, Manners, and Morals: Bernard Mandeville's Anatomy of Honour Andrea Branchi offers a reading of the Anglo-Dutch physician and thinker's philosophical project from the hitherto neglected perspective of his lifelong interest in the theme of honour. Through an examination of Mandeville's anatomy of early eighteenth-century beliefs, practices and manners in terms of motivating passions, the book traces the development of his thought on human nature and the origin of sociability. By making honour and its roots in the desire for recognition the central thread of Mandeville's theory of society, Andrea Branchi offers a unified reading of his work and highlights his relevance as a thinker far beyond the moral problem of commercial societies, opening up new perspectives in Mandeville's studies.

Marking the 50th anniversary of one among this philosopher’s most distinguished pieces, Blumenberg’s Rhetoric proffers a decidedly diversified interaction with the essai polyvalently entitled ‘Anthropological Approach to the Topicality (or Currency, Relevance, even actualitas) of Rhetoric’ ("Anthropologische Annäherung an die Aktualität der Rhetorik"), first published in 1971. Following Blumenberg’s lead, the contributors consider and tackle their topics rhetorically—treating (inter alia) the variegated discourses of Phenomenology and Truthcraft, of Intellectual History and Anthropology, as well as the interplay of methods, from a plurality of viewpoints. The diachronically extensive, disciplinarily diverse essays of this publication—notably in the current lingua franca—will facilitate, and are to conduce to, further scholarship with respect to Blumenberg and the art of rhetoric. With contributions by Sonja Feger, Simon Godart, Joachim Küpper, DS Mayfield, Heinrich Niehues-Pröbsting, Daniel Rudy Hiller, Katrin Trüstedt, Alexander Waszynski, Friedrich Weber-Steinhaus, Nicola Zambon.

Solidarity Beyond Borders is a collection on international ethics by a multidisciplinary team of scholars from four continents. The volume explores ethical and political dimensions of transnational solidarity in the emerging multipolar world. Analyzing global challenges of the world plagued by poverty, diseases, injustice, inequality and environmental degradation, the contributors - rooted in diverse cultures and ethical traditions - voice their support for 'solidarity beyond borders'. Bringing to light both universally shared ethical insights as well as the irreducible diversity of ethical perceptions of particular problems helps the reader to appreciate the chances and the challenges that the global community - more interconnected and yet more ideologically fragmented than ever before - faces in the coming decades. Solidarity Beyond Borders exemplifies an innovative approach to the key issues of global ethics which takes into account the processes of economic globalization, leading to an ever deeper interdependence of peoples and states, as well as the increasing cultural and ideological fragmentation which characterize the emerging multipolar world order.

On the Pleasure of Hating, William Hazlitt's classic contemplation of human hatred, is in this edition accompanied by several of his finest essays. As one of England's most distinguished wits of the early 19th century, William Hazlitt was an accomplished author, painter and critic whose barbed prose was notorious in literary circles at the time. Hazlitt wrote the titular essay of this collection in 1826, when his personal circumstances were strained; we thus find his tone both markedly resentful and embittered. On the Pleasure of Hating is, however, among the finest and most consistently insightful and lucid works Hazlitt ever wrote. Perhaps Hazlitt's greatest claim to prowess was his ability to produce succinct and quotable passages. Each of the six essays in this compendium contain prime examples of the perceptive phrases and summations which Hazlitt regularly produced in his prime.

What do traditional Indigenous institutions of governance offer to our understanding of the contemporary challenges faced by the Navajo Nation today and tomorrow? Guided by the Mountains looks at the tensions between Indigenous political philosophy and the challenges faced by Indigenous nations in building political institutions that address contemporary problems and enact "good governance." Specifically, it looks at Navajo, or Dine, political thought, focusing on traditional Dine institutions that offer "a new (old) understanding of contemporary governance challenges" facing the Navajo Nation. Arguing not only for the existence but also the persistence of traditional Navajo political thought and policy, Guided by the Mountains asserts that "traditional" Indigenous philosophy provides a model for creating effective governance institutions that address current issues faced by Indigenous nations. Incorporating both visual interpretations and narrative accounts of traditional and contemporary Dine institutions of government from Dine philosophers, the book is the first to represent Indigenous philosophy as the foundation behind traditional and contemporary governance. It also explains how Dine governance institutions operated during Pre-Contact and Post-Contact times. This path-breaking book stands as the first-time normative account of Dine philosophy.

Jobymon Skaria, an Indian St Thomas Christian Scholar, offers a critique of Indian Christian theology and suggests that constructive dialogues between Biblical and dissenting Dalit voices - such as Chokhamela, Karmamela, Ravidas, Kabir, Nandanar and Narayana Guru - could set right the imbalance within Dalit theology, and could establish dialogical partnerships between Dalit Theologians, non-Dalit Christians and Syrian Christians. Drawing on Biblical and socio-historical resources, this book examines a radical, yet overlooked aspect of Dalit cultural and religious history which would empower the Dalits in their everyday existences.

This first of a two-volume work provides a new understanding of Western subjectivity as theorized in the Augustinian Rule. A theopolitical synthesis of Antiquity, the Rule is a humble, yet extremely influential example of subjectivity production. In these volumes, Jodra argues that the Classical and Late-Ancient communitarian practices along the Mediterranean provide historical proof of a worldview in which the self and the other are not disjunctive components, but mutually inclusive forces. The Augustinian Rule is a culmination of this process and also the beginning of something new: the paradigm of the monastic self as protagonist of the new, medieval worldview. In this volume, Jodra takes one of the most influential and pervasive commons experiments-Augustine's Rule-and gives us its Mediterranean backstory, with an eye to solving at last the riddle of socialism. In volume two, he will present his solution in full, as a kind of Augustinian communitarianism for today. These volumes therefore restore the unity of the Hellenistic and Judaic world as found by the first Christians, proving that the self and the other are two essential pieces in the construction of our world.

This book endeavors to fill the conceptual gap in theorizing about embodied cognition. The theories of mind and cognition which one could generally call "situated" or "embodied cognition" have gained much attention in the recent decades. However, it has been mostly phenomenology (Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, etc.), which has served as a philosophical background for their research program. The main goal of this book is to bring the philosophy of classical American pragmatism firmly into play. Although pragmatism has been arguably the first intellectual current which systematically built its theories of knowledge, mind and valuation upon the model of a bodily interaction between an organism and its environment, as the editors and authors argue, it has not been given sufficient attention in the debate and, consequently, its conceptual resources for enriching the embodied mind project are far from being exhausted. In this book, the authors propose concrete subject-areas in which the philosophy of pragmatism can be of help when dealing with particular problems the philosophy of the embodied mind nowadays faces - a prominent example being the inevitable tension between bodily situatedness and the potential universality of symbolic meaning.