After his final attack on Shakespeare, the "Lettre de Monsieur de Voltaire a Messieurs de l'Academie francaise", Voltaire composed "Irene" as a demonstration of the supremacy of French theatre. Whereas he had previously failed to win Marie Antoinette's favour with his divertissement, "L'Hote et l'hotesse", "Irene" finally granted him a triumphant return to Paris shortly before his death. During the years 1776-1777, Voltaire continued his fight against serfdom in the Jura region through his "Supplique a M. Turgot", the "Lettre du reverend pere Polycarpe" and the "Lettre d'un benedictin de Franche-Comte", while his "Dialogue de Maxime de Madaure, entre Sophronime et Adelos" reveals a preoccupation with mortality at the close of his life.

Lancees six ans apres le "Dictionnaire philosophique", les "Questions sur l'Encyclopedie" sont un des derniers chefs-d'oeuvre de Voltaire. OEuvre alphabetique, oeuvre polemique comme le "Dictionnaire", les "Questions" offrent une richesse thematique sans equivalent et constituent un veritable condense des idees de Voltaire sur une impressionnante diversite de sujets. La nouvelle edition des "Questions" en sept volumes de la Voltaire Foundation est la premiere edition fidele au texte original a paraitre apres plus de deux siecles. Pour la premiere fois, dans cette edition critique integrale, les experts explorent a fond les relations entre les "Questions" et l'objet avoue sur lequel elles se centrent - l'"Encyclopedie" de Diderot et D'Alembert. Collaborateurs: Christophe Cave, Nicholas Cronk, Olivier Ferret, Russell Goulbourne, Antonio Gurrado, James Hanrahan, Christiane Mervaud, Michel Mervaud, Francois Moureau, Christophe Paillard, Gillian Pink, John Renwick, Gerhardt Stenger.

Descartes's Meditations on First Philosophy remains one of the most widely studied works of Western philosophy. This volume is a refreshed and updated edition of John Cottingham's bestselling 1996 edition, based on his translation in the acclaimed three-volume Cambridge edition of The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. It presents the complete text of Descartes's central metaphysical masterpiece, the Meditations, in clear, readable modern English, and it offers the reader additional material in a thematic abridgement of the Objections and Replies, providing a deeper understanding of how Descartes developed and clarified his arguments in response to critics. Cottingham also provides an updated introduction, together with a substantially revised bibliography, taking into account recent literature and developments in Descartes studies. The volume will be a vital resource for students reading the Meditations, as well as those studying Descartes and early modern philosophy.

Anik Waldow develops an account of embodied experience that extends from Descartes' conception of the human body as firmly integrated into the causal play of nature, to Kant's understanding of anthropology as a discipline that provides us with guidance in our lives as embodied creatures. Waldow defends the claim that during the early modern period, the debate on experience not only focused on questions arising from the subjectivity of our thinking and feeling, it also foregrounded the essentially embodied dimension of our lives as humans. By taking this approach, Waldow departs from the traditional epistemological route dominant in treatments of early-modern conceptions of experience. She makes the case that reflections on experience took center stage in a debate that was moral in nature, because it raised questions about the developmental potential of human beings and their capacity to instantiate the principles of self-determined agency in their lives. These questions emerged for many early modern authors since they understood that the fact that humans are embodied entailed that they are similarly responsive and causally-determined like other non-human animals. While this perspective made it possible to acknowledge that humans are part of the causal dynamics of nature, it called into question their ability to act in accordance with the principles of free, rational agency. Experience Embodied reveals how early modern authors responded to this challenge, offering a new perspective on the centrality of the concept of experience in comprehending the uniquely human place in nature.

At the apex of his influence, from about 1860 up to the start of World War I, Schopenhauer was known first and foremost as a philosopher of pessimism. Still today, his main reputation is as one of the few philosophers to have argued that it would have been better never to have been. Sandra Shapshay aims to complicate and challenge this predominant picture of Schopenhauer's ethical thought, arguing that while the pessimistic, resigned Schopenhauer represents one side of the thinker, there is another, more hopeful side that is equally important to his legacy and essential to fully understanding his philosophy. Schopenhauer's ethical thought contains a hopeful, progressive strand, and the main task of this book is to reconstruct it. The resulting position, which Shapshay terms "compassionate moral realism," offers a hybrid Kantian moral realist/sentimentalist theory and a Schopenhauerian value ontology of degrees of inherent value. The reconstruction is novel in three main ways. First, it views Schopenhauer as a more faithful Kantian than most commentators have been apt to recognize. Second, it sees Schopenhauer's philosophy as an evolving rather than static body of thought, especially with respect to the place of the Platonic Ideas in his system; Schopenhauer's views in the philosophy of nature changed as he encountered proto-Darwinian thought, and this change weakens Schopenhauer's own grounds for pessimism. A third novelty is the claim, concerning his ethical thought, that there are really two Schopenhauers rather than one: the "Knight of Despair" and the "Knight of Hope" distinction introduced in this book helps to capture the incompatibility between the resignationist and the compassionate moral realist sides of Schopenhauer's ethical thought.

Why read Montaigne today? Richard Scholar argues that Montaigne, whose essays were read by Shakespeare and remain a landmark of European culture, is above all a masterful exponent of the art of free-thinking. Montaigne invites his readers to follow the twists and turns of his mind, and challenges them to embark on an inner adventure of their own. Free-thinking is an art every bit as difficult to practice today as it was in sixteenth-century France, but it remains equally crucial to a fulfilled life and to a healthy body politic, and Montaigne offers his readers a master-class in that art.

Written substantially in the late 1740s and published between 1747 and 1749, the three contes which are collected in this volume are among the best known of Voltaire's works. They were composed at a time when Voltaire had abandoned the tranquillity of Cirey for the tumult of Paris and Versailles, and was enjoying new recognition from members of the court and the learned societies. The three contes in the present volume, "Zadig", "Memnon" and "Le Monde comme il va", mark a new departure for Voltaire. They are the first of his fictional writings to be composed especially for the general reading public. Secure in his official prestige by the late 1740s, Voltaire felt free to publish these fictional experiments which adapt the popular mode of oriental fiction, parodying and pastiching the works of other writers - while at the same time offering serious criticisms of French society and his reflections on the nature of human happiness and the problem of evil.

In this classic work of intellectual history, Ernst Cassirer provides both a cogent synthesis and a penetrating analysis of one of history's greatest intellectual epochs: the Enlightenment. Arguing that there was a common foundation beneath the diverse strands of thought of this period, he shows how Enlightenment philosophers drew upon the ideas of the preceding centuries even while radically transforming them to fit the modern world. In Cassirer's view, the Enlightenment liberated philosophy from the realm of pure thought and restored it to its true place as an active and creative force through which knowledge of the world is achieved.

In a new foreword, Peter Gay considers "The Philosophy of the Enlightenment" in the context in which it was written--Germany in 1932, on the precipice of the Nazi seizure of power and one of the greatest assaults on the ideals of the Enlightenment. He also argues that Cassirer's work remains a trenchant defense against enemies of the Enlightenment in the twenty-first century.

A major new history of how the Enlightenment transformed people's everyday lives The Secular Enlightenment is a panoramic account of the radical ways that life began to change for ordinary people in the age of Locke, Voltaire, and Rousseau. In this landmark book, familiar Enlightenment figures share places with voices that have remained largely unheard until now, from freethinkers and freemasons to French materialists, anticlerical Catholics, pantheists, pornographers, readers, and travelers. Margaret Jacob, one of our most esteemed historians of the Enlightenment, reveals how this newly secular outlook was not a wholesale rejection of Christianity but rather a new mental space in which to encounter the world on its own terms. She takes readers from London and Amsterdam to Berlin, Vienna, Turin, and Naples, drawing on rare archival materials to show how ideas central to the emergence of secular democracy touched all facets of daily life. Human frailties once attributed to sin were now viewed through the lens of the newly conceived social sciences. People entered churches not to pray but to admire the architecture, and spent their Sunday mornings reading a newspaper or even a risque book. The secular-minded pursued their own temporal and commercial well-being without concern for the life hereafter, regarding their successes as the rewards for their actions, their failures as the result of blind economic forces. A majestic work of intellectual and cultural history, The Secular Enlightenment demonstrates how secular values and pursuits took hold of eighteenth-century Europe, spilled into the American colonies, and left their lasting imprint on the Western world for generations to come.

Immanuel Kant is strict about the limits of self-knowledge: our inner sense gives us only appearances, never the reality, of ourselves. Kant may seem to begin his inquiries with an uncritical conception of cognitive limits, but in Kant and the Subject of Critique, Avery Goldman argues that, even for Kant, a reflective act must take place before any judgment occurs. Building on Kant's metaphysics, which uses the soul, the world, and God as regulative principles, Goldman demonstrates how Kant can open doors to reflection, analysis, language, sensibility, and understanding. By establishing a regulative self, Goldman offers a way to bring unity to the subject through Kant's seemingly circular reasoning, allowing for critique and, ultimately, knowledge. -- Indiana University Press

Slavoj Zizek gives us a reading of a philosophical giant that changes our way of thinking about our new posthuman era. No ordinary study of Hegel, Hegel in a Wired Brain investigates what he might have had to say about the idea of the 'wired brain' - what happens when a direct link between our mental processes and a digital machine emerges. Zizek explores the phenomenon of a wired brain effect, and what might happen when we can share our thoughts directly with others. He hones in on the key question of how it shapes our experience and status as 'free' individuals and asks what it means to be human when a machine can read our minds. With characteristic verve and enjoyment of the unexpected, Zizek connects Hegel to the world we live in now, shows why he is much more fun than anyone gives him credit for, and why the 21st century might just be Hegelian.

This volume contains two works of 1777. The "Prix de la justice et de l'humanite" is a summation of Voltaire's opinions over a lifetime about the confusions and cruelties in the contemporary justice system. The "Commentaire sur l'Esprit des lois de Montesquieu" resulted from Condorcet's criticisms of Voltaire's disparaging comments about Montesquieu. At first Voltaire had regarded Montesquieu as an ally in the fight against Church-led oppression, but by 1777 he associated him with republicanism, arguing that L'Esprit des lois 'aurait du etre intitule L'Esprit republicain'.

In Kant and Theodicy: A Search for an Answer to the Problem of Evil, George Huxford proves that Kant's engagement with theodicy was career-long and not confined to his short treatise of 1791, On the Failure of All Attempted Philosophical Theodicies, which dealt explicitly with the subject. Huxford treats Kant's developing thought on theodicy in three periods, each with its own special character: pre-Critical (exploration), early-Critical (transition), and late-Critical (conclusion). Illustrating the advantage of approaching Kant through this innovative route, Huxford argues that Kant's stance developed through his career, from an essentially Leibnizian starting point to his own unique authentic theodicy; Kant rejected so-called philosophical theodicies based on theoretical/speculative reason but advanced authentic theodicy grounded in practical reason, finding a middle ground between philosophical theodicy and fideism, both of which he rejected; Kant's work in natural science and his Critical epistemology served to constrain his theodicy; and Metaphysical Evil conceived as limitation and Kant's Radical Evil perform the same function, namely providing the ground for the possibility of moral evil in the world. nevertheless, Huxford concludes that Kant's authentic theodicy fails because it fails to meet his own definition of a theodicy.

Lancees six ans apres le "Dictionnaire philosophique", les "Questions sur l'Encyclopedie" sont un des derniers chefs-d'oeuvre de Voltaire. OEuvre alphabetique, oeuvre polemique comme le "Dictionnaire", les "Questions" offrent une richesse thematique sans equivalent et constituent un veritable condense des idees de Voltaire sur une impressionnante diversite de sujets. La nouvelle edition des "Questions" en sept volumes de la Voltaire Foundation est la premiere edition fidele au texte original a paraitre apres plus de deux siecles. Pour la premiere fois, dans cette edition critique integrale, les experts explorent a fond les relations entre les "Questions" et l'objet avoue sur lequel elles se centrent - l'"Encyclopedie" de Diderot et D'Alembert. Collaborateurs: David Adams, Christophe Cave, Nicholas Cronk, Olivier Ferret, Russell Goulbourne, Antonio Gurrado, James Hanrahan, Laurence Mace, Myrtille Mericam-Bourdet, Christiane Mervaud, Michel Mervaud, Francois Moureau, Christophe Paillard, Gillian Pink, John Renwick, Gerhardt Stenger, Claire Trevien.

The Enlightenment era saw European thinkers increasingly concerned with what it meant to be human. This collection of essays traces the concept of 'humanity' through revolutionary politics, feminist biography, portraiture, explorer narratives, libertine and orientalist fiction, the philosophy of conversation, and musicology.

This collection of reading and essays on the Standard of Taste offers a much needed resource for students and scholars of philosophical aesthetics, political reflection, value and judgments, economics, and art. The authors include experts in the philosophy of art, aesthetics, history of philosophy as well as the history of science. This much needed volume on David Hume will enrich scholars across all levels of university study and research.

Le monde doit le premier manifeste d'envergure contre la torture et la peine de mort a Cesare Beccaria. Son livre "Dei delitti e delle pene" retentit dans toute l'Europe au dix-huitieme siecle. L'edition critique du "Commentaire" de Voltaire 'sur le livre des delits et des peines' permet d'apprecier pleinement l'importance de cette rencontre de deux grands esprits des Lumieres. "L'Avis au public sur les parricides" en defense des Sirven, les ecrits pour le compte des 'natifs' de Geneve et un trio de textes deistes viennent etoffer le concept de la justice chez Voltaire.

A central concern in Hume scholarship is that of the relationship between Hume's early Treatise of Human Nature and his later Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Is the Enquiry merely a simplified restatement of the contents of Book 1 of the Treatise, or do the two substantially differ? Another vital issue is as follows: how can we reconcile Hume's seemingly destructive skepticism with his constructive, naturalistic program for a science of human nature? Hsueh M. Qu provides here a new interpretation of Hume's epistemology, addressing these perennial and central questions of Hume scholarship, and showing them as intimately related. He argues that the Enquiry indeed differs from the Treatise because Hume changes his response to skepticism between the two works. With this understanding, Qu clarifies a host of enduring questions about the works. Because the Treatise has as its primary focus the psychological naturalistic project, its treatment of epistemological issues is helter-skelter, arising unsystematically from the results of the central psychological investigation. Consequently, Hume finds himself forced into a response to skepticism founded on the Title Principle. However, this response is deeply problematic, as Hume himself seems to recognize. In contrast to the Treatise, the Enquiry emphasizes the epistemological aspects of Hume's project, and offers a radically different and more sophisticated epistemology that takes the form of an internalist reliabilism. Hume's Epistemological Evolution establishes the Enquiry as far more than a watered-down version of the Treatise, and as a worthy object of philosophical study in its own right. Qu offers a broader, master narrative encompassing both the Treatise and the Enquiry that stakes out a narrative of evolution across the two works-a narrative that explains some of the most central interpretive questions in Hume scholarship.

Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) was one of the most important philosophers of all time; he was also one of the most radical and controversial. The story of Spinoza's life takes the reader into the heart of Jewish Amsterdam in the seventeenth century and, with Spinoza's exile from Judaism, into the midst of the tumultuous political, social, intellectual, and religious world of the young Dutch Republic. This new edition of Steven Nadler's biography, winner of the Koret Jewish Book Award for biography and translated into a dozen languages, is enhanced by exciting new archival discoveries about his family background, his youth, and the various philosophical, political, and religious contexts of his life and works. There is more detail about his family's business and communal activities, about his relationships with friends and correspondents, and about the development of his writings, which were so scandalous to his contemporaries.

While many periods of history are popularly known by their 'great men', the Enlightenment stands out for the prominence of its 'great groups'. This volume assembles leading scholars using data-driven scholarship to study the networks that made the Enlightenment possible, and contributed to creating a new sense of European identity. From Voltaire's correspondence with Catherine the Great, to Adam Smith's travels on the European continent, mediated and unmediated communication networks were the lifeline of the Enlightenment. What is particularly notable about the Enlightenment is how these different networks were central to their participants' identity. One could not take part in the Enlightenment on one's own. Although some older historical studies highlight the importance of social networks in the Enlightenment, data-driven approaches allow for a more comprehensive and granular understanding of the many different types of networks that formed the intellectual and cultural infrastructure of the Enlightenment throughout Europe. The recent influx of metadata from the correspondences of major Enlightenment figures now allows scholars to study these networks at both the micro and macro levels, and to explore the worlds of the philosophes and the "nodes" in their networks in rich detail. It is at this intersection of Enlightenment historiography, data capture, and social network analysis that the essays collected in this volume all fall, taking advantage of new data sources, configurations, and modes of analysis to deepen our understanding of how Enlightenment sociability worked, who it included, and what it meant for participants.

'Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains.' These are the famous opening words of a treatise that has stirred vigorous debate ever since its first publication in 1762. Rejecting the view that anyone has a natural right to wield authority over others, Rousseau argues instead for a pact, or 'social contract', that should exist between all the citizens of a state and that should be the source of sovereign power. From this fundamental premise, he goes on to consider issues of liberty and law, freedom and justice, arriving at a view of society that has seemed to some a blueprint for totalitarianism, to others a declaration of democratic principles. Translated by Quintin Hoare With a new introduction by Christopher Bertram

A number of Montesquieu's lesser-known discourses, dissertations and dialogues are made available to a wider audience, for the first time fully translated and annotated in English. The views they incorporate on politics, economics, science, and religion shed light on the overall development of his political and moral thought. They enable us better to understand not just Montesquieu's importance as a political philosopher studying forms of government, but also his stature as a moral philosopher, seeking to remind us of our duties while injecting deeper moral concerns into politics and international relations. They reveal that Montesquieu's vision for the future was remarkably clear: more science and less superstition; greater understanding of our moral duties; enhanced concern for justice, increased emphasis on moral principles in the conduct of domestic and international politics; toleration of conflicting religious viewpoints; commerce over war, and liberty over despotism as the proper goals for mankind.

The fifth volume of the "Corpus des notes marginales", long since out of print, was first published by Akademie-Verlag in Berlin, East Germany, in 1994. It was reissued in the OEuvres completes de Voltaire Oxford edition, where the remaining volumes of the 'Corpus' (unfinished since 1994) began to be published in 2006. This volume has been made easier to use in the reissue by the addition of running heads and by a new index of Voltaire's works cited in the notes of the present volume and the four that preceded it. This volume contains an additional piece by Nikolai Kopanev, 'V. S. Lublinski et le Corpus des notes marginales'.

Humility, Pride, and Christian Virtue Theory proposes an account of humility that relies on the most radical Christian sayings about humility, especially those found in Augustine and the early monastic tradition. It argues that this was the view of humility that put Christian moral thought into decisive conflict with the best Greco-Roman moral thought. This radical Christian account of humility has been forgotten amidst contemporary efforts to clarify and retrieve the virtue of humility for secular life. Kent Dunnington shows how humility was repurposed during the early-modern era-particularly in the thought of Hobbes, Hume, and Kant-to better serve the economic and social needs of the emerging modern state. This repurposed humility insisted on a role for proper pride alongside humility, as a necessary constituent of self-esteem and a necessary motive of consistent moral action over time. Contemporary philosophical accounts of humility continue this emphasis on proper pride as a counterbalance to humility. By contrast, radical Christian humility proscribes pride altogether. Dunnington demonstrates how such a radical view need not give rise to vices of humility such as servility and pusillanimity, nor need such a view fall prey to feminist critiques of humility. But the view of humility set forth makes little sense abstracted from a specific set of doctrinal commitments peculiar to Christianity. This study argues that this is a strength rather than a weakness of the account since it displays how Christianity matters for the shape of the moral life.

Liberty Fund recognises the significance of George Turnbull, one of the earliest of the authors in the Scottish tradition, with the publication of new editions of his 'Principles of Moral and Christian Philosophy', his 'Observations upon Liberal Education', and his translation of Heineccius. These major works testify to Turnbull's distinctive voice in presenting natural-law theory on a scientific model, in harnessing the arts to promote the principles of moral and civil virtue, and in extolling reason as the foundation of liberty. The short pieces in EDUCATION FOR LIFE supplement Turnbull's larger and more sprawling works and give a more concentrated presentation of his ideas. These extremely rare works include two Aberdeen graduation theses, three tracts on religion, various writings on education and art, and, for the first time in print, the correspondence of Turnbull.