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.

The Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, previously known as SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), has published over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly volumes since 1955 as part of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford. International in focus, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment volumes cover wide-ranging aspects of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, from gender studies to political theory, and from economics to visual arts and music, and are published in English or French.

Caroline of Ansbach (1683-1737), Augusta of Saxe-Gotha (1719-1772), and Charlotte of Mecklenberg-Strelitz (1744-1818) were three German princesses who became Queens Consort-or, in the case of Augusta, Queen in Waiting, Regent, and Princess Dowager-of Great Britain, and were linked by their early years at European princely courts, their curiosity, aspirations, and an investment in Enlightenment thought. This sumptuously illustrated book considers the ways these powerful, intelligent women left enduring marks on British culture through a wide range of activities: the promotion of the court as a dynamic forum of the Hanoverian regime; the enrichment of the royal collection of art; the advancement of science and industry; and the creation of gardens and menageries. Objects included range from spectacular state portraits to pedagogical toys to plant and animal specimens, and reveal how the new and novel intermingled with the traditional. Published in association with the Yale Center for British Art and Historic Royal Palaces Exhibition Schedule: Yale Center for British Art (02/02/17-04/30/17) Kensington Palace (06/22/17-11/12/17)

The reputation of the Marquis de Sade is well-founded. The experience of reading his works is demanding to an extreme. Violence and sexuality appear on almost every page, and these descriptions are interspersed with extended discourses on materialism, atheism, and crime. In this bold and rigorous study William S. Allen sets out the context and implications of Sade's writings in order to explain their lasting challenge to thought. For what is apparent from a close examination of his works is the breadth of his readings in contemporary science and philosophy, and so the question that has to be addressed is why Sade pursued these interests by way of erotica of the most violent kind. Allen shows that Sade's interests lead to a form of writing that seeks to bring about a new mode of experience that is engaged in exploring the limits of sensibility through their material actualization. In common with other Enlightenment thinkers Sade is concerned with the place of reason in the world, a place that becomes utterly transformed by a materialism of endless excess. This concern underlies his interest in crime and sexuality, and thereby puts him in the closest proximity to thinkers like Kant and Diderot, but also at the furthest extreme, in that it indicates how far the nature and status of reason is perverted. It is precisely this materialist critique of reason that is developed and demonstrated in his works, and which their reading makes persistently, excessively, apparent.

What is solitude, why do we crave and fear it, and how do we distinguish it properly from loneliness? It lies at the core of the lives of philosophers and their self-reflective contemplations, and it is the enabling (and disabling) condition that allows us to seriously question how to live creatively and meaningfully. David Farrell Krell is one of the decisive philosophical voices on how philosophers can creatively engage their solitudes. The scale and range of his understanding of solitudes are taken up in this book by some of the most distinguished Continental philosophers. Authors address the problem of solitude from different angles, and imagine how to face and respond creatively to it. Blending philosophical narrative and straightforward philosophical treatises, this book provides inspiration for contemplation of our own versions of solitude and their creative potentials. Some authors focus on the work of historical figures in philosophy or poetry, such as Heidegger and Hoelderlin, while others deal more directly with Krell's work as exemplary of their own imaginings of creative solitudes. Other authors respond more personally and creatively in their demonstrations of how we can, and must, seek our solitudes. Including an original chapter by David Farrell Krell, this book is an invigorating meditation on the possibility of being philosophical about a life through solitude, and the meaning of this powerfully resonant and universal human experience.

Over the past one and a half decades, the scope of experimental philosophy (x-phi) has expanded significantly. Experimental research programmes now cover almost all areas of philosophy, including epistemology, the philosophy of language, action theory, and the free will debate, to name just a few. This volume introduces the reader to these new developments in an accessible and systematic way. It explains how x-phi differs from traditional views of philosophy, investigates in depth how it uses empirical evidence to support philosophical conclusions of various kinds, and introduces the reader to both the most widely discussed experimental studies and the latest advancements in the field. As a critical study, it also examines the various criticisms that x-phi has received over the years and seeks, tentatively, to adjudicate them.

The Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, previously known as SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), has published over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly volumes since 1955 as part of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford. International in focus, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment volumes cover wide-ranging aspects of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, from gender studies to political theory, and from economics to visual arts and music, and are published in English or French.

If it is true that a painting can 'think visually', then it is also true that Diderot was the first to say so - and he has spelled out this concept better than anyone else. Diderot's Salons show that the 'imaginal' sense that arises from the engagement with a picture needs to be investigated using the concepts of ekphrasis and theatricality - the capacity to explore the power of pictures in relation to the composition of the scene, to the expressive and pantomimic gestures, and to what can be called a 'theory of affections'. The book will focus on an issue that pertains to the theory of pictures, on a question that is ground-breaking in the English-speaking academic context: how can we look at a picture in order to rethink aesthetics as a discipline that allows us to look at pictures from a philosophical point of view? The Salons demonstrate that the 'imaginal' process leading to knowledge always emerges from the picture itself, and that this process always needs to be supported by a method of inquiry that can rightly be called a philosophical method - as Diderot was a philosopher himself. Even when approaching this issue from a contemporary perspective, this method should always be related to the concepts of ekphrasis and theatricality. Fundamental, however, is also the 'pathetic', the emotionally stimulating, due to its essential relation to the enjoyment of pictures - something rooted in aesthetic disinterestedness, absorption and, conversely, voyeurism.

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.

The history of anthropology has been written from multiple viewpoints, often from perspectives of gender, nationality, theory, or politics. Before Boas delves deeper into issues concerning anthropology's academic origins to present a groundbreaking study that reveals how ethnography and ethnology originated during the eighteenth rather than the nineteenth century, developing parallel to anthropology, or the "natural history of man." Han F. Vermeulen explores primary and secondary sources from Russia, Germany, Austria, the United States, the Netherlands, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, France, and Great Britain in tracing how "ethnography" originated as field research by German-speaking historians and naturalists in Siberia (Russia) during the 1730s and 1740s, was generalized as "ethnology" by scholars in Goettingen (Germany) and Vienna (Austria) during the 1770s and 1780s, and was subsequently adopted by researchers in other countries. Before Boas argues that anthropology and ethnology were separate sciences during the Age of Reason, studying racial and ethnic diversity, respectively. Ethnography and ethnology focused not on "other" cultures but on all peoples of all eras. Following G. W. Leibniz, researchers in these fields categorized peoples primarily according to their languages. Franz Boas professionalized the holistic study of anthropology from the 1880s into the twentieth century.

One of the most persistent, troubling, and divisive of the ideological divisions within modernity is the struggle over the Enlightenment and its legacy. Much of the difficulty is owed to a general failure among scholars to consider how history, philosophy, and politics work together. Rethinking the Enlightenment bridges these disciplinary divides. Recent work by historians has now called into question many of the cliches that still dominate scholarly understandings of the Enlightenment's literary, philosophical, and political culture. Yet this work has so far had little impact on the reception of the Enlightenment, its key players, debates, and ideas in the disciplines that most rely on its legacy, namely, philosophy and political science. Edited by Geoff Boucher and Henry Martyn Lloyd, Rethinking the Enlightenment makes the case for connecting new work in intellectual history with fresh understandings of 'Continental' philosophy and political theory. In doing so, in this collection moves towards a critical self-understanding of the present.

The first modern biography of William Robertson, a key figure of the Scottish EnlightenmentA prominent figure in the Scottish Enlightenment, William Robertson differed from his contemporaries, such as Voltaire, Hume and Gibbon, because he used the critical tools of the Enlightenment to strengthen religion, not to attack it. As an historian, he helped shape 18th-century historiography. As a minister of the Church of Scotland, he sought to make the church fit for a polite age. And, as principal of the University of Edinburgh, he presided over a flourishing of intellectual inquiry in the midst of the Enlightenment. But despite his European fame, he was a controversial figure. Drawing extensively on his unpublished correspondence, Jeffrey Smitten captures both the man and his work in his own words. By foregrounding Robertson's religious outlook, Smitten gives us a more contextualised and nuanced interpretation of Robertson's motives, intentions and beliefs than we have had before.Key Features:Includes new biographical information drawn from archival sources and from all Robertson's largely unpublished correspondenceDiscusses Robertson's works, published and unpublishedAssesses Robertson's achievement based on fresh consideration of all facets of his career as minister, historian and principal

Can scientific explanation ever make reference to God or the supernatural? The present consensus is no; indeed, a naturalistic stance is usually taken to be a distinguishing feature of modern science. Some would go further still, maintaining that the success of scientific explanation actually provides compelling evidence that there are no supernatural entities, and that true science, from the very beginning, was opposed to religious thinking. Science without God? Rethinking the History of Scientific Naturalism shows that the history of Western science presents us with a more nuanced picture. Beginning with the naturalists of ancient Greece, and proceeding through the middle ages, the scientific revolution, and into the nineteenth century, the contributors examine past ideas about 'nature' and 'the supernatural'. Ranging over different scientific disciplines and historical periods, they show how past thinkers often relied upon theological ideas and presuppositions in their systematic investigations of the world. In addition to providing material that contributes to a history of 'nature' and naturalism, this collection challenges a number of widely held misconceptions about the history of scientific naturalism.

Why should anybody take an interest in philosophy? Is it just another detailed study like metallurgy? Or is it similar to history, literature and even religion: a study meant to do some personal good and influence our lives? "Engaging and accessible, this vigorous swansong exemplifies many of Midgley's virtues, and revisits many of her favourite themes." - The Tablet In her last published work, Mary Midgley addresses provocative questions, interrogating the various forms of our current intellectual anxieties and confusions and how we might deal with them. In doing so, she provides a robust, yet not uncritical, defence of philosophy and the life of the mind. This defence is expertly placed in the context of contemporary debates about science, religion, and philosophy. It asks whether, in light of rampant scientific and technological developments, we still need philosophy to help us think about the big questions of meaning, knowledge, and value.

The Scottish Enlightenment was the first intellectual movement to view commercial society as a distinct and distinctive social formation - one that still shapes our everyday lives. In this title the author explains why enlightenment thinkers considered commercial society to be wealthier and freer than earlier forms, and charts the arguments Scottish philosophers put forward for and against the idea. The first book to focus on the Scottish Enlightenment's conception of commercial society, revealing it to be the movement's core idea; it analyses key works like Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, David Hume's Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects and Adam Ferguson's Essay on the History of Civil Society and looks at lesser known works such as Robert Wallace's Dissertation on Numbers of Mankind.

The appeal of philosophy has always been its willingness to speak to those pressing questions that haunt us as we make our way through life. What is truth? Could we think without language? Is materialism everything? But in recent years, philosophy has been largely absent from mainstream cultural commentary. Many have come to believe that the field is excessively technical and inward-looking and that it has little to offer outsiders. The 25 interviews collected in this volume, all taken from a series of online interviews with leading philosophers published by the cultural magazine 3ammagazine.com, were carried out with the aim of confronting widespread ignorance about contemporary philosophy. Interviewer Richard Marshall's informed and enthusiastic questions help his subjects explain the meaning of their work in a way that is accessible to non-specialists. Contemporary philosophical issues are presented through engaging but serious dialogues that, taken together, offer a glimpse into key debates across the discipline. Alongside metaphysics, philosophy of mind, epistemology, logic, philosophy of science, philosophy of language, political philosophy and ethics, discussed here are feminist philosophy, continental philosophy, pragmatism, philosophy of religion, experimental philosophy, bioethics, animal rights, and legal philosophy. Connections between philosophy and fields such as psychology, cognitive science, and theology are likewise examined. Marshall interviews philosophers both established and up-and coming. Engaging, thoughtful and thought-provoking, inviting anyone with a hunger for philosophical questions and answers to join in, Philosophy at 3:AM shows that contemporary philosophy can be relevant - and even fun.

Paulson examines literary, philosophical, and pedagogical writing on blindness in France from the Enlightenment, when philosophical speculation and surgical cures for cataracts demystified the difference between the blind and the sighted, to the nineteenth century, when the literary figure of the blind bard or seer linked blindness with genius, madness, and narrative art. A major theme of the book is the effect of blindness on the use of language and sign systems: the philosophes were concerned at first with understanding the doctrine of innate ideas, rather than with understanding blindness as such. Originally published in 1987. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies examines the creation of the academic Bible. Beginning with the fragmentation of biblical interpretation in the centuries after the Reformation, Michael Legaspi shows how the weakening of scriptural authority in the Western churches altered the role of biblical interpretation. Focusing on renowned German scholar Johann David Michaelis (1717-1791), Legaspi explores the ways in which critics reconceived the role of the Bible. This book offers a new account of the origins of biblical studies, illuminating the relation of the Bible to churchly readers, theological interpreters, academic critics, and people in between. It explains why, in an age of religious resurgence, modern biblical criticism may no longer be in a position to serve as the Bible's disciplinary gatekeeper.

Challenging the common assumption that the Enlightenment of the late seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries was an essentially secular, irreligious and atheistic movement, this book critiques this standard interpretation as based on a narrow view of Enlightenment sources. Building on the work of revisionist historians, this volume takes the argument squarely into the theological domain, whether Anglican, Dissenting, Lutheran or deistic, whilst also noting that the Enlightenment deeply affected Roman Catholic and Jewish theologies. It challenges the stereotype of 'Enlightenment rationalism', and the penultimate chapter brings out the biblical and ecclesial roots of the image of enlightenment and reclaims it for Christian faith.

Debates about the nature of the Enlightenment date to the eighteenth century, when Imanual Kant himself addressed the question, "What is Enlightenment?" The contributors to this ambitious book offer a paradigm-shifting answer to that now-famous query: Enlightenment is an event in the history of mediation. Enlightenment, they argue, needs to be engaged within the newly broad sense of mediation introduced here--not only oral, visual, written, and printed media, but everything that intervenes, enables, supplements, or is simply in between.

With essays addressing infrastructure and genres, associational practices and protocols, this volume establishes mediation as the condition of possibility for enlightenment. In so doing, it not only answers Kant's query; it also poses its own broader question: how would foregrounding mediation change the kinds and areas of inquiry in our own epoch? "This Is Enlightenment "is a landmark volume""with the polemical force and archival depth to start a conversation that extends across the disciplines that the Enlightenment itself first configured.

In Kant's Moral Religion, Allen W. Wood argues that Kant's doctrine of religious belief if consistent with his best critical thinking and, in fact, that the "moral arguments" along with the faith they justify are an integral part of Kant's critical philosophy. Wood shows that Kant's sensitive religious outlook on the world deserves to be counted among the greatest of his philosophical contributions.

In setting forth his interpretation of Kant, Wood provides a clear statement of what the philosopher reveals in his reasoning for belief in God and immortality. He reexamines Kant's conception of moral volition and defends his doctrine of the "highest good." He discusses Kant's use of moral faith as a rational criterion for religion in relation to ecclesiastically faith, religious experience, and claims to divine revelation. Finally, he discusses the philosopher's idea of radical evil in man's nature, and develops Kant's theory of divine grace as it is foreshadowed in his 1793 book Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone.

Kant's thoughts about religion, Wood maintains, are a great philosopher's solution to difficult problems that must be confronted by everyone and can serve as a guide in any effort to deal rationally with questions of religion."

The prominence of the imagination in David Hume's philosophy has been recognised by generations of readers. In this rich study, Timothy Costelloe gives us the most complete picture yet of Hume's view of imagination and its place in his philosophy. Costelloe convincingly shows that Hume's concept of imagination is coherent, formulating the features that compose its distinctive character. Discover how this understanding of imagination informs Hume's approach to the various subjects he treats in his work: metaphysics, morals and politics, aesthetics, history, religion and the practice of philosophy itself.

This collection of essays by Christopher J. Berry spans several decades and multiple shifts across Scottish Enlightenment, Hume and Smith studies. It brings together classic essays - some of which are difficult to find - with 3 new pieces, which cumulatively constitute a distinct interpretation. Clustered around the themes of sociability, the Humean science of man and the Smithian engagement with commerce and morality, these collected works will be of considerable value to those working in political philosophy, the history of ideas and the history of economic and social theory. Also included is a substantial introduction which, alongside Berry's personal intellectual history, provides a commentary on the development of the study of the Scottish Enlightenment.

This collection brings together an international and interdisciplinary group of Adam Smith and Jean-Jacques Rousseau scholars to explore the key shared concerns of these two great thinkers in politics, philosophy, economics, history and literature.

The Testimony of Sense attempts to answer a neglected but important question: what became of epistemology in the late eighteenth century, in the period between Hume's scepticism and Romantic idealism? It finds that two factors in particular reshaped the nature of 'empiricism': the socialisation of experience by Scottish Enlightenment thinkers and the impact upon philosophical discourse of the belletrism of periodical culture. The book aims to correct the still widely-held assumption that Hume effectively silenced epistemological inquiry in Britain for over half a century. Instead, it argues that Hume encouraged the abandonment of subject-centred reason in favour of models of rationality based upon the performance of trusting actions within society. Of particular interest here is the way in which, after Hume, fundamental ideas like the self, truth, and meaning are conceived less in terms of introspection, correspondence, and reference, and more in terms of community, coherence, and communication. By tracing the idea of intersubjectivity through the issues of trust, testimony, virtue and language, the study offers new perspectives on the relationships between philosophy and literature, empiricism and transcendentalism, and Enlightenment and Romanticism. As philosophy grew more conversational, the familiar essay became a powerful metaphor for new forms of communication. The book explores what is epistemologically at stake in the familiar essay genre as it develops through the writings of Joseph Addison, David Hume, Samuel Johnson, Charles Lamb, and William Hazlitt. It also offers readings of philosophical texts, such as Hume's Treatise, Thomas Reid's Inquiry, and Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, as literary performances.