Expressions of gratitude abound. Hardly a book is published that does not include in its preface or acknowledgments some variation on, "I am grateful to...for..." Indeed, most achievements come to be only through the help of others. We value the benevolence of others, and when we-or our loved ones-are the recipients of benevolence, our emotional response is often one of gratitude. But, are we bound to the requirement of 'repaying' our benefactors in some way? If we are, and there are-as ordinary language suggests-debts of gratitude, what kind of debts are these? Does the appropriateness of my gratitude require that my benefactor in fact intended to benefit me (in just the way she did)? Is there a difference between feeling grateful and being grateful? Is a precondition of my being grateful to another that I respect her? Do we owe a special sort of gratitude to those who have shaped us into the persons we are? What are the psychological and normative relations between gratitude the emotion, and gratitude the virtue? These are among the questions carefully addressed in The Moral Psychology of Gratitude. This volume provides readers with the state-of-the-art in research on gratitude. It does so in the form of sixteen never-before published articles on the emotion by leading voices in philosophy and the sciences of the mind.

Spinoza's guiding commitment to the thesis that nothing exists or occurs outside of the scope of nature and its necessary laws makes him one of the great seventeenth-century exemplars of both philosophical naturalism and explanatory rationalism. Nature and Necessity in Spinoza's Philosophy brings together for the first time eighteen of Don Garrett's articles on Spinoza's philosophy, ranging over the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, ethics, and political philosophy. Taken together, these influential articles provide a comprehensive interpretation of that philosophy, including Spinoza's theories of substance, thought and extension, causation, truth, knowledge, individuation, representation, consciousness, conatus, teleology, emotion, freedom, responsibility, virtue, contract, the state, and eternity-and the deep interrelations among them. Each article aims to resolve significant problems in the understanding of Spinoza's philosophy in such a way as to make evident both his reasons for his views and the enduring value of his ideas. At the same time, Garrett's articles elucidate the relations between his philosophy and those of predecessors and contemporaries like Aristotle, Hobbes, Descartes, Locke, and Leibniz. Lastly, the volume offers important and substantial replies to leading critics on four crucial topics: the necessary existence of God (Nature), substance monism, necessitarianism, and consciousness.

The volume presents illuminating research carried out by international scholars of Locke and the early modern period. The essays address the theoretical and historical contexts of Locke's analytical methodology and come together in a multidisciplinary approach that sets biblical hermeneutics in relation to his philosophical, historical, and political thought, and to the philological and doctrinal culture of his time. The contextualization of Locke's biblical hermeneutics within the contemporary reading of the Bible contributes to the analysis of the figure of Christ and the role of Paul's theology in political and religious thought from the seventeenth century to the Enlightenment. The volume sheds light on how Locke was appreciated by his contemporaries as a biblical interpreter and exegete. It also offers a reconsideration that overarches interpretations confined within specific disciplinary ambits to address Locke's thought in a global historic context.

Science is highly dependent on technologies to observe scientific objects. For example, astronomers need telescopes to observe planetary movements, and cognitive neuroscience depends on brain imaging technologies to investigate human cognition. But how do such technologies shape scientific practice, and how do new scientific objects come into being when new technologies are used in science? In How Scientific Instruments Speak, Bas de Boer develops a philosophical account of how technologies shape the reality that scientists study. We should understand scientific instruments as mediating technologies. Rather than mute tools serving pre-existing human goals, scientific instruments play an active role in shaping scientific work. De Boer uses this account to discuss how brain imaging and stimulation technologies mediate the way in which cognitive neuroscientists investigate human cognitive functions. The development of cognitive neuroscience runs parallel with the development of advanced brain imaging technologies, drawing a lot of public attention-sometimes called "neurohype"-because of its alleged capacity to demystify the human mind. By analyzing how the objects that cognitive neuroscientists study are mediated by brain imaging technologies, de Boer explicates the processes by which human cognition is investigated.

The author of this book speaks out again in regard to the Enlightenment. His inspiration comes not only from new observations occasioned by own studies, but also from the recently read material as well as opinions and appraisals of the era articulated lately at academic conferences. Although they have not led the author to perform a fundamental revision of his views in regard to the nature of Enlightenment and its crucial contributions to the Western culture, they did afford a better understanding of its complexity. They also made him more aware that his interpretation and presentation of that era depends considerably on what its prominent representatives had to say, as well as on the worldview-based assumptions and methods of appraisal adopted by its later observers and interpreters.

This book explores the religious concerns of Enlightenment thinkers from Thomas Hobbes to Thomas Jefferson. Using an innovative method, the study illuminates the intellectual history of the age through interpretations of Jesus between c.1650 and c.1826. The book demonstrates the persistence of theology in modern philosophy and the projects of social reform and amelioration associated with the Enlightenment. At the core of many of these projects was a robust moral-theological realism, sometimes manifest in a natural law ethic, but always associated with Jesus and a commitment to the sovereign goodness of God. This ethical orientation in Enlightenment discourse is found in a range of different metaphysical and political identities (dualist and monist; progressive and radical) which intersect with earlier 'heretical' tendencies in Christian thought (Arianism, Pelagianism, and Marcionism). This intellectual matrix helped to produce the discourses of irenic toleration which are a legacy of the Enlightenment at its best.

In this extraordinary work, Peter Alexander Meyers shows how the centerpiece of the Enlightenment--"society "as the symbol of collective human life and as the fundamental domain of human practice--was primarily composed and animated by its most ambivalent figure: Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Displaying this new "society" as an evolving field of interdependence, "Abandoned to Ourselves" traces the emergence and moral significance of dependence itself within Rousseau's encounters with a variety of discourses of order, including theology, natural philosophy, and music. Underpinning this whole scene we discover a modernizing conception of the human Will, one that runs far deeper than Rousseau's most famous trope, the "general Will." As "Abandoned to Ourselves" weaves together historical acuity with theoretical insight, readers will find here elements for a reconstructed sociology inclusive of things and persons and, as a consequence, a new foundation for contemporary political theory.

This book offers new perspectives on the theoretical elements of the Opus postumum (OP), Kant's project of a final work which remained unknown until eighty years after his death. The contributors read the OP as a central work in establishing the relation between Kant's transcendental philosophy, his natural philosophy, practical philosophy, philosophy of religion, metaphysics, and his broader epistemology. Interpreting the OP is an important task because it helps reveal how Kant himself tried to correct and develop his critical philosophy. It also sheds light on the foundational role of the three Critiques for other philosophical inquiries, as well as the unified philosophical system that Kant sought to establish. The chapters in this volume address a range of topics relevant to the epistemological and theoretical problems raised in the OP, including the transition from the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science to physics as an answer to a deficiency in critical thought; the notion of ether and, more specifically, its transcendental deduction; self-affection and the self-positing of the subject; and the idea of God and the system of ideas in the highest standpoint of transcendental philosophy. Perspectives on Kant's Opus postumum will be of interest to upper-level students and scholars working on Kant.

Broad in its geographic scope and yet grounded in original archival research, this book situates the inception of modern aesthetic theory - the philosophical analysis of art and beauty - in theological contexts that are crucial to explaining why it arose. Simon Grote presents seminal aesthetic theories of the German and Scottish Enlightenments as outgrowths of a quintessentially Enlightenment project: the search for a natural 'foundation of morality' and a means of helping naturally self-interested human beings transcend their own self-interest. This conclusion represents an important alternative to the standard history of aesthetics as a series of preludes to the achievements of Immanuel Kant, as well as a reinterpretation of several canonical figures in the German and Scottish Enlightenments. It also offers a foundation for a transnational history of the Enlightenment without the French philosophes at its centre, while solidly endorsing historians' growing reluctance to call the Enlightenment a secularising movement.

Recent work in political philosophy and the history of ideas presents Spinoza and Hegel as the most powerful living alternatives to mainstream Enlightenment thought. Yet, for many philosophers and political theorists today, one must choose between Hegel or Spinoza. As Deleuze's influential interpretation maintains, Hegel exemplifies and promotes the modern "cults of death," while Spinoza embodies an irrepressible "appetite for living." Hegel is the figure of negation, while Spinoza is the thinker of "pure affirmation". Yet, between Hegel and Spinoza there is not only opposition. This collection of essays seeks to find the suppressed kinship between Hegel and Spinoza. Both philosophers offer vigorous and profound alternatives to the methodological individualism of classical liberalism. Likewise, they sketch portraits of reason that are context-responsive and emotionally contoured, offering an especially rich appreciation of our embodied and historical existence. The authors of this collection carefully lay the groundwork for a complex and delicate alliance between these two great iconoclasts, both within and against the Enlightenment tradition.

This book examines Kant's contributions to the theory of knowledge and studies how his writings can be applied to address contemporary epistemological issues. The volume delves into the Kantian ideas of transcendental idealism, space, naturalism, epistemic normativity, communication, and systematic unity. The essays in the volume study Kant's theories from a fresh perspective and offer new arguments for assenting that knowledge cannot account for itself without acknowledging the fundamental role of the cognitive subject. In doing so, they suggest that we reconsider Kant's views as a powerful alternative to naturalism. Featuring readings by well-known Kant specialists and emerging scholars with unorthodox approaches to Kant's philosophy, the volume fills a significant gap in the existing scholarship on the philosopher and his works. It will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of knowledge, philosophy, and epistemology.

John Locke's influence on American political culture has been largely misunderstood by his commentators. Though often regarded as the architect of a rationally-ordered and civilized liberalism, this book demonstrates that Locke's thought is culpable for the rather uncivilized expressions of political engagement seen recently in America. By relying upon Eric Voegelin's concept of pneumopathology, Locke is shown to be subtly constructing a liberal ideology and thereby individuals who approach liberalism as closed-minded ideologues, not as deeply responsible and mature citizens. Because Locke's citizens will be slogan chanters instead of deep thinkers, Locke's work does not create a liberalism that provides the best possible regime for humans, but a mere shadow of the best possible regime. In order to demonstrate this, nearly the entirety of Locke's political and other theoretical writings are analyzed, and a picture of Lockean individuals as irrationally selfish and incapable of communal dedication emerges. The problem with liberalism is not liberalism, but merely how it is advocated by Locke. Recommendations for improving the civility of political expression in liberal societies - and thereby liberalism itself - conclude this analysis of Locke's political thought and its effect on America today.

In most Western societies, guilt is widely regarded as a vital moral emotion. In addition to playing a central role in moral development and progress, many take the capacity to feel guilt as a defining feature of morality itself: no truly moral person escapes the pang of guilt when she has done something wrong. But proponents of guilt's importance face important challenges, such as distinguishing healthy from pathological forms of guilt, and accounting for the fact that not all cultures value guilt in the same way, if at all. In this volume, philosophers and psychologists come together to think more systematically about the nature and value of guilt. The book begins with chapters on the biological origins and psychological nature of guilt and moves on to discuss the culturally enriched conceptions of guilt and its value that we find in various eastern and western philosophic traditions. In addition, numerous chapters discuss healthy or morally valuable forms guilt and their pathological or irrational shadows.

We share the capacity for knowledge with animals, but it is the nature and the scope of what we may rationally believe that makes us human. Yet what kind of beliefs do qualify as 'rational'? This challenging and refreshingly innovative book addresses certain fundamental questions concerning rational legitimacy of some widely held beliefs and provides argument-based answers to such questions, while at the same time encouraging the reader to actively engage with the views put forward and form his/her own judgement. The book is typically discursive rather than simply informative, and introduces philosophy by doing it.

In light of the fact that Francis Hutcheson was one of the most influential philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment, it is remarkable that there has never been an edition of his correspondence.
Hutcheson's epistolary offerings include letters published in journals in England, Ireland, and the Netherlands. These letters and occasional writings exhibit his polemical skills in controversy, his differences with Presbyterian orthodoxy, his preoccupation with religious and intellectual liberty, and his loyalty and lasting affection for his friends.
These incidental writings provide valuable insight into Hutcheson's more substantial treatises. His private correspondence and such documents as his will and the declaration he made upon becoming a professor at the University of Glasgow give the reader an impression of Hutcheson's personality and his various life experiences. The volume includes Hutcheson's letters to the "London Journal" previewing his first philosophical work, "An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue," and his philosophical critiques of Thomas Hobbes and Bernard Mandeville.
Hutcheson's private correspondence includes nineteen letters written to the Reverend Thomas Drennan concerning Hutcheson's frustrations with theological orthodoxy in Glasgow and academia in Scotland, thirteen letters from his cousin William Bruce, the famous letters from David Hume, and the letter that Hutcheson wrote to his father in July 1726 on the subject of church government.
Francis Hutcheson was a crucial link between the continental European natural law tradition and the emerging Scottish Enlightenment. Hence, he is a pivotal figure in the Natural Law and Enlightenment Classics series. A contemporary of Lord Kames and George Turnbull, an acquaintance of David Hume, and the teacher of Adam Smith, Hutcheson was arguably the leading figure in making Scotland distinctive within the general European Enlightenment.
James Moore is Emeritus Professor of Political Science at Concordia University in Montreal.
M. A. Stewart is Honorary Research Professor in the History of Philosophy at the Universities of Lancaster and Aberdeen.
Knud Haakonssen is Professor of Intellectual History and Director of the Centre for Intellectual History at the University of Sussex, England.

The 1760s was a pivotal decade for the philosophes. In the late 1750s their cause had been at a low ebb, but it was transformed in the eyes of public opinion by such events as the Calas affair in the early 1760s. By the end of the decade, the philosophes were dominant in key literary institutions such as the Comedie-Francaise and the Academie francaise, and their enlightened programme became more widely accepted. Many of the essays in this volume focus on Voltaire, revealing him as a writer of fiction and polemic who, during this period, became increasingly interested in questions of justice and jurisprudence. Other essays examine the literary activities of Voltaire's contemporaries, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Chamfort, Retif, Sedaine and Marmontel. It is no exaggeration to describe the 1760s as Voltaire's decade. It is he more than any other author who set the agenda and held the public's attention during this seminal period for the development of Enlightenment ideas and values. Voltaire's dominance of the 1760s can be summed up in a single phrase: it is in these years that he became the 'patriarch of Ferney'.

This book situates John Locke's philosophy of knowledge and his political theory within his engagement in British monetary debates of the 17th and 18th century. Anchored in extensive archival research, George Caffentzis offers the most expansive reading of Locke's economic thought to date, contextualizing it within the expansion of capitalist accumulation on a world scale and the universality of money as a medium of exchange. Updated with a new introduction by Paul Rekret, a new foreword by Harry Cleaver and new material by the author, Clipped Coins, Abused Words, and Civil Government continues to make a significant intervention in contemporary debates around the history of capitalism, colonialism and philosophy.

Descartes characterisation of the mind as a 'thinking thing marks the beginning of modern philosophy of mind. It is also the point of departure for Descartes own system in which the mind is the first object of knowledge for those who reason in an 'orderly way. This ground-breaking book shows that the Cartesian mind has been widely misunderstood: typically treated as simply the subject of phenomenal consciousness, ignoring its deeply intellectual character. James Hill argues that this interpretation has gone hand in hand with a misreading of Descartes method of doubt which treats it as all-inclusive and universal in scope. In fact, the sceptical arguments of the First Meditation aim to lead the mind away from the senses and towards the intellectual 'notions that the mind has within it, and which are never the subject of doubt. Hill also places Descartes concept of mind into the wider setting of his science of nature, showing how he wished to reveal a mental subject that would able to comprehend the new physics necessitated by Copernicus heliocentrism.

This book suggests that to know how Wittgenstein's post-Tractarian philosophy could have developed from the work of Kant is to know how they relate to each other. The development from the latter to the former is invoked heuristically as a means of interpretation, rather than a historical process or direct influence of Kant on Wittgenstein. Ritter provides a detailed treatment of transcendentalism, idealism, and the concept of illusion in Kant's and Wittgenstein's criticism of metaphysics. Notably, it is through the conceptions of transcendentalism and idealism that Wittgenstein's philosophy can be viewed as a transformation of Kantianism. This transformation involves a deflationary conception of transcendental idealism along with the abandonment of both the idea that there can be a priori 'conditions of possibility' logically detachable from what they condition, and the appeal to an original 'constitution' of experience. The closeness of Kant and post-Tractarian Wittgenstein does not exist between their arguments or the views they upheld, but rather in their affiliation against forms of transcendental realism and empirical idealism. Ritter skilfully challenges several dominant views on the relationship of Kant and Wittgenstein, especially concerning the cogency of Wittgenstein-inspired criticism focusing on the role of language in the first Critique, and Kant's alleged commitment to a representationalist conception of empirical intuition.

'Capitalist critique and proletarian reasoning fit for our time' - Peter Linebaugh Taking the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume as its subject, this book breaks new ground in focusing its lens on a little-studied aspect of Hume's thinking: his understanding of money. George Caffentzis makes both an intervention in the field of monetary philosophy and into Marxian conceptions of the relation between philosophy and capitalist development. He vividly charts the ways in which Hume's philosophy directly informed the project of 'civilizing' the people of the Scottish Highlands and pacifying the English proletariat in response to the revolts of both groups at the heart of the empire. Built on careful historical and philosophical detective work, Civilizing Money offers a stimulating and radical political reading of the ways in which Hume's fundamental philosophical claims performed concrete political functions.

An internationally famous philosopher and best-selling author during his lifetime, Georg Simmel has been marginalized in contemporary intellectual and cultural history. This neglect belies his pathbreaking role in revealing the theoretical significance of phenomena-including money, gender, urban life, and technology-that subsequently became established arenas of inquiry in cultural theory. It further ignores his philosophical impact on thinkers as diverse as Benjamin, Musil, and Heidegger. Integrating intellectual biography, philosophical interpretation, and a critical examination of the history of academic disciplines, this book restores Simmel to his rightful place as a major figure and challenges the frameworks through which his contributions to modern thought have been at once remembered and forgotten.

Blindness and Enlightenment presents a reading and translation of Diderots Letter on the Blind for Use by the Sighted (the first translation into English since the eighteenth-century). Diderot was the founder and editor of the Encyclopdie, a novelist, a philosopher and an active proponent of democratic ideals. His Letter on the Blind is essential reading for anyone interested in Enlightenment philosophy or eighteenth-century literature. By discussing the blind, Diderot undercuts a central assumption of the Enlightenment, present in the very term itself in its reference to light, namely that moral and philosophical insight was dependent on seeing.

An internationally famous philosopher and best-selling author during his lifetime, Georg Simmel has been marginalized in contemporary intellectual and cultural history. This neglect belies his pathbreaking role in revealing the theoretical significance of phenomena-including money, gender, urban life, and technology-that subsequently became established arenas of inquiry in cultural theory. It further ignores his philosophical impact on thinkers as diverse as Benjamin, Musil, and Heidegger. Integrating intellectual biography, philosophical interpretation, and a critical examination of the history of academic disciplines, this book restores Simmel to his rightful place as a major figure and challenges the frameworks through which his contributions to modern thought have been at once remembered and forgotten.

In June 2019, in an interview given to the Financial Times, Russian President Vladimir Putin baldly declared that the liberal idea had outlived its purpose as the public turned against immigration, open borders and multiculturalism. If liberalism has indeed come into conflict with the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population then evidence should show that it is in retreat. Ipso facto, so should Enlightenment values that underpin liberal democracy. A key aim of the book is to garner evidence. Is the liberal idea characterised by Putin accurate or rather a caricature divorced from reality? Modern Europe and the Enlightenment explores whether the policy stance on the issues outlined above, and a host of similar topics being tackled by European governments, are consonant with Enlightenment values. The Enlightenment covered an array of issues on every aspect of life wherein reason was rigorously applied to solve problems, gain understanding and discover facts. It was a successor to the scientific revolution. The assumption is that the Enlightenment left a profound legacy on Western Europe, which lingers till the present day. The following broad areas of Enlightenment values are covered: reason, human rights, religion and secularism, freedom of expression, political and economic open-mindedness, race, and womens issues. The book examines the extent to which Enlightenment values are adhered to in various parts of modern Europe delineated into Western Europe, the progenitor of the Enlightenment; former communist countries that have joined the European Union; and former communist countries that are not in the EU. Discussion also focuses on the modern Counter-Enlightenment movement.