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Books > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy
The Court and the Country (1969) offers a fresh view and synthesis
of the English revolution of 1640. It describes the origin and
development of the revolution, and gives an account of the various
factors - political, social and religious - that produced the
revolution and conditioned its course. It explains the revolution
primarily as a result of the breakdown of the unity of the
governing class around the monarchy into the contending sides of
the Court and the Country. A principal theme is the formation
within the governing class of an opposition movement to the Crown.
The role of Puritanism and of the towns is examined, and the
resistance to Charles I is considered in relation to other European
revolutions of the period.
The Italian Pragmatists were a group of philosophers in the early
20th century, most notably including Giovanni Vailati, Mario
Calderoni, Giovanni Papini and Giuseppe Prezzolini. They gathered
around the journal Leonardo, published in Florence. The Italian
philosophers were in contact with the American Pragmatists,
especially with C.S.V. Peirce and W. James, and developed many
original and provocative ideas that made the Italian Pragmatists
allies and enemies. Critics have often stressed the differences
between their versions of Pragmatism. This volume emphasizes what
they shared, and their value for philosophy and culture.
Ibn Wasil (d. 1298), perhaps better known today as a historian and
an emissary to the court of King Manfred in southern Italy, was
also an eminent logician. The present work is a critical edition of
his main work in the field, a commentary on his teacher Khunaji's
(d. 1248) handbook al-Jumal. The work helped consolidate the logic
of the "later scholars" (such as Khunaji). It also shows that
commentators did much more than merely explain the original work
and instead regularly discussed and assessed received views. Ibn
Wasil's work was an influential contribution to a particularly
dynamic chapter in the history of Arabic logic.
Reading Augustine is a new line of books offering personal readings
of St. Augustine of Hippo from leading philosophers and religious
scholars. The aim of the series is to make clear Augustine's
importance to contemporary thought and to present Augustine not
only or primarily as a pre-eminent Christian thinker but as a
philosophical, spiritual, literary and intellectual icon of the
West. Why did the ancients come to adopt monotheism and
Christianity? On God, The Soul, Evil and the Rise of Christianity
introduces possible answers to that question by looking closely at
the development of the thought of Augustine of Hippo, whose complex
spiritual trajectory included Gnosticism, academic skepticism,
pagan Platonism, and orthodox Christianity. What was so compelling
about Christianity and how did Augustine become convinced that his
soul could enter into communion with a transcendent God? The
apparently sudden shift of ancient culture to monotheism and
Christianity was momentous, defining the subsequent nature of
Western religion and thought. John Peter Kenney shows us that
Augustine offers an unusually clear vantage point to understand the
essential ideas that drove that transition.
Cromwell and Communism (1930) examines the English revolution
against the absolute monarchy of Charles I. It looks at the
economic and social conditions prevailing at the time, the first
beginnings of dissent and the religious and political aims of the
Parliamentarian side in the revolution and subsequent civil war.
The various sects are examined, including the Levellers and their
democratic, atheistic and communistic ideals.
In Workers' Self-Management in Argentina, Marcelo Vieta homes in on
the history, consolidation, and socio-political dimensions of
Argentina's empresas recuperadas por sus trabajadores
(worker-recuperated enterprises), a worker-led company occupation
movement that has surged since the turn-of-the-millennium and the
country's neo-liberal crisis.
The Futility of Philosophical Ethics puts forward a novel account
of the grounds of moral feeling with fundamental implications for
philosophical ethics. It examines the grounds of moral feeling by
both the phenomenology of that feeling, and the facts of moral
feeling in operation - particularly in forms such as moral luck,
vicious virtues, and moral disgust - that appear paradoxical from
the point of view of systematic ethics. Using an analytic approach,
James Kirwan engages in the ongoing debates among contemporary
philosophers within metaethics and normative ethics. Instead of
trying to erase the variety of moral responses that exist in
philosophical analysis under one totalizing system, Kirwan argues
that such moral theorizing is futile. His analysis counters
currently prevalent arguments that seek to render the origins of
moral experience unproblematic by finding substitutes for realism
in various forms of noncognitivism. In reasserting the problematic
nature of moral experience, and offering a theory of the origins of
that experience in unavoidable individual desires, Kirwan accounts
for the diverse manifestations of moral feeling and demonstrates
why so many arguments in metaethics and normative ethics are
necessarily irresolvable.
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