In this book Julian Wuerth offers a radically new interpretation of Kant's theories of mind, action, and ethics. As the author of a Copernican revolution in philosophy, Kant grounded his philosophy in his positive theory of the mind, which remains an enigma two centuries later. Wuerth's original interpretation of Kant's theory of mind consults a far wider range of Kant's recorded thought than previous interpretations, revealing a fascinating evolution in Kant's thought in the decades before and after his 1781 Critique. Starting in the 1760s, Kant recognized the unique status of our epistemic contact to ourselves. This is the sole instance of our immediate epistemic contact with a substance, of being a substance, and it is the sole instance of epistemic contact with something other than the particular states of inner sense. Contrary to empiricists, Kant thus rejects the reduction of the self to a bundle of mental states of inner sense. But Kant also rejects the rational psychologists' assumption that the souls substantiality and simplicity implies its permanence, incorruptibility, and immortality. As Kant developed his transcendental idealism, he eventually pinpointed the source of their errors, a source neither unique to a particular, historical school, nor random. It is instead a deep, natural, and timeless transcendental confusion. Kants new account of substance allows him to draw new distinctions in kind between sensibility and understanding and between phenomenal and noumenal substance, setting the stage for a transcendental argument that only at the phenomenal level do substantiality and simplicity imply permanence and incorruptibility. Wuerth next undertakes a groundbreaking study of Kant's theory of action and ethics. He first maps Kant's notoriously vast and complex system of the minds powers, drawing on all of Kant's recorded thought. This system structures Kant's philosophy as a whole and so provides crucial insights into this whole and its parts, including Kant's theory of action, a persisting stumbling block for interpreters of Kant's ethics. Wuerth demonstrates that Kant rejects intellectualist theories of action that reduce practical agents to pure reason. We are instead irreducibly both intellectual and sensible, exercising a power of choice, or Willkur, subject to two irreducible conative currencies, moral motives and sensible incentives, as Kant makes clear long before his 1785 Groundwork. Immoral choices at odds with the former can thus nonetheless be coherent choices in harmony with the latter. Wuerth applies these new findings about Kant's theory of mind and action to an analysis of the foundations of Kant's ethics. He rejects the dominant constructivist interpretation in favor of a moral realist one. At the heart of Kant's Enlightenment ethics is his insistence that the authority of the moral law ultimately rests in our recognition of its authority. Kant guides us to this recognition of the authority of the moral law, across his works in ethics and his various formulations of the moral law, using a single elimination of sensibility procedure. Here Kant systematically rejects the pretenses of sensibility to isolate reason and its insights into moral right and wrong. Precisely because immoral choice remains a coherent alternative, however, moral virtue demands our ongoing cultivation of our capacities for cognition, feeling, desire, and character.

Voltaire (1694-1778), best remembered as the author of Candide, is one of the central actors - arguably the defining personality - of the European Enlightenment. In this Very Short Introduction, Nicholas Cronk explores Voltaire's remarkable career and demonstrates how his thinking is pivotal to our notion and understanding of the Enlightenment. In a fresh and modern examination of his writings, Cronk examines the nature of Voltaire's literary celebrity, demonstrating the extent to which his work was reactive and practical, and therefore made sense within the broader context of the debates to which he responded. The most famous living author in Europe in the 18th century, Cronk emphasises Voltaire's skills of 'performance' as a writer and his continued relevance today. He concludes by looking not only at Voltaire's impact in literature and philosophy, but also his influence on French political values and modern French politics. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Benedict (Baruch) de Spinoza (1632-1677) was one of the most systematic, inspiring, and influential philosophers of the early modern period. From a pantheistic starting point that identified God with Nature as all of reality, he sought to demonstrate an ethics of reason, virtue, and freedom while unifying religion with science and mind with body. His contributions to metaphysics, epistemology, psychology, ethics, politics, and the analysis of religion remain vital to the present day. Yet his writings initially appear forbidding to contemporary readers, and his ideas have often been misunderstood. This second edition of The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza includes new chapters on Spinoza's life and his metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of religion, and biblical scholarship, as well as extensive updates to the previous chapters and bibliography. A thorough, reliable, and accessible guide to this extraordinary philosopher, it will be invaluable to anyone who wants to understand what Spinoza has to teach.

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 literary and scientific renaissance that struck Germany around 1800 is usually taken to be the cradle of contemporary humanism. Posthumanism in the Age of Humanism shows how figures like Immanuel Kant and Johann Wolfgang Goethe as well as scientists specializing in the emerging modern life and cognitive sciences not only established but also transgressed the boundaries of the "human." This period so broadly painted as humanist by proponents and detractors alike also grappled with ways of challenging some of humanism's most cherished assumptions: the dualisms, for example, between freedom and nature, science and art, matter and spirit, mind and body, and thereby also between the human and the nonhuman. Posthumanism is older than we think, and the so-called "humanists" of the late Enlightenment have much to offer our contemporary re-thinking of the human.

In 1728 George Berkeley, the Irish philosopher and Anglican priest, came to America in the hope of founding a university in Bermuda and converting the Indians. He never reached Bermuda, where within a few years no Indians were left. Instead he settled in Newport, Rhode Island, one of the few places in New England that was hospitable to Anglicans. There his lively mind and sympathetic spirit involved him in a great variety of interests, though he stayed only thirty-three months. "Westward the Course of Empire takes its Way," Berkeley wrote, and these words inspired Americans both as British colonists and later as citizens of a new nation. Berkeley, in spite of his disappointment over the much-vexed Bermuda project, never flagged in his concern for the spiritual and intellectual life of the New World. The presence of the distinguished churchman gave heart to embattled Anglicans in Puritan New England. Through his close friendship with New Haven's Samuel Johnson, Berkeley did much to encourage both that faith and the town's recently founded college. Harvard also benefited from his generosity. But Berkeley's enduring influence on the cultural life of America is attested all the way from Yale's Berkeley College to Berkeley, California, the site of another great university. This book is a graceful and authoritative account of an important episode in the life of a major philosopher and influential figure in the religious life of colonial New England.

Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, his main work of theoretical philosophy, frequently uses metaphors from law. In this first book-length study in English of Kant's legal metaphors and their role in the first Critique, Sofie Moller shows that they are central to Kant's account of reason. Through an analysis of the legal metaphors in their entirety, she demonstrates that Kant conceives of reason as having a structure mirroring that of a legal system in a natural right framework. Her study shows that Kant's aim is to make cognisers become similar to authorized judges within such a system, by proving the legitimacy of the laws and the conditions under which valid judgments can be pronounced. These elements consolidate her conclusion that reason's systematicity is legal systematicity.

Why read Kant's Critique of Judgment today? Does this classic of aesthetic theory still possess the vitality to prompt those of us engaged with art and criticism to think more deeply about issues that move us, issues such as the force of aesthetic experience, the essence of art, and the relationship of beauty and meaning? It does, if we find the right way into it. Michel Chaouli shows us one such way. He unwraps the gray packing paper of Kant's prose to reveal the fresh and fierce ideas that dwell in this masterpiece-not just the philosopher's theory of beauty but also his ruminations on organisms and life. Each chapter in Thinking with Kant's Critique of Judgment unfolds the complexity of a key concept, to disclose its role in Kant's thought and to highlight the significance it holds for our own thinking. Chaouli invites all who are interested in art and interpretation-novice and expert alike-to set out on the path of thinking with the Critique of Judgment. The rewards are handsome: we see just how profoundly Kant's book can shape our own ideas about aesthetic experience and meaning. By thinking with Kant, we learn to surpass the horizon of his thought and find ourselves pushed to the very edge of what can be grasped firmly. That is where Kant's book is at its most thrilling.

Enlists the principles of post-humanist critique in order to investigate decades of intimate dialogues between African American and Spanish intellectuals In Archives of Flesh, Robert Reid-Pharr reveals the deep history of intellectual engagement between African America and Spain. Opening a fascinating window onto black and anti-Fascist intellectual life from 1898 through the mid-1950s, Reid-Pharr argues that key institutions of Western Humanism, including American colleges and universities, developed in intimate relation to slavery, colonization, and white supremacy. This retreat to rigidly established philosophical and critical traditions can never fully address-or even fully recognize-the deep-seated hostility to black subjectivity underlying the humanist ideal of a transcendent Manhood. Calling for a specifically anti-white supremacist reexamination of the archives of black subjectivity and resistance, Reid-Pharr enlists the principles of post-humanist critique in order to investigate decades of intimate dialogues between African American and Spanish intellectuals, including Salaria Kea, Federico Garcia Lorca, Nella Larsen, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Chester Himes, Lynn Nottage, and Pablo Picasso. In the process Reid-Pharr takes up the "African American Spanish Archive" in order to resist the anti-corporeal, anti-black, anti-human biases that stand at the heart of Western Humanism.

La France est une nation legere - ce lieu commun antique est abondamment repris tout au long du XVIIIe siecle, temoignant de profonds bouleversements axiologiques, scientifiques et ethiques, dont ce volume collectif cherche a mesurer l'importance et les enjeux, en racontant l'histoire d'un autre siecle des Lumieres : celle d'un siecle de la Legerete. Propre aux representations que le XVIIIe siecle francais construit de lui-meme, tant par rapport aux siecles qui l'ont precede que dans une logique de parallele entre les nations europeennes, la legerete du XVIIIe siecle est un important paradigme de l'historiographie qui s'est constituee sitot apres la Revolution. Les heritiers du XVIIIe siecle ne reconnaissent pas seulement en lui l'age de la raison et du progres, des Lumieres et des droits du citoyen, mais eprouvent aussi tantot du mepris, tantot de la nostalgie pour la pretendue legerete de ses moeurs, la futilite de ses gouts ou la frivolite de ses enfantillages. Entre la bourgeoisie industrieuse du XIXe siecle tirant profit des representations voluptueuses des fetes galantes et l'interet de notre epoque celebrant l'aimable frivolite du siecle de Marie-Antoinette, le XVIIIe siecle en sa legerete n'a jamais cesse de seduire certes, mais aussi de questionner le recit progressiste de la raison et de l'utilite dans la definition des valeurs qui fondent notre communaute. Aussi importe-t-il d'interroger les conceptions et les valeurs qui sont associees a la notion de legerete au XVIIIe siecle, de maniere a mieux comprendre dans quelle mesure elle a pu etre associee a la fois au caractere de la nation francaise en general et au XVIIIe siecle en particulier. --- The age-old cliche that France is a light-hearted nation is echoed repeatedly throughout the eighteenth century and bears witness to the deep axiological, scientific and ethical upheavals which this volume explores. By analysing the importance of, and issues at stake in, these transformations, the articles gathered here tell the story of another age of Enlightenment: the story of an age of lightness. Lightness is at the crux of how the French eighteenth century represents itself both in contrast with previous centuries and through parallels between European nations. The concept of lightness therefore constitutes an essential paradigm of the historiography that developed immediately after the French Revolution. The intellectual heirs of the eighteenth century do not only find in this period an age of reason, progress, Enlightenment and citizens' rights; they also feel, at times, contempt, at other times, nostalgia for the alleged lightness of its mores, the futility of its taste or the frivolity of its childish ways. Between the industrious bourgeoisie of the 19th century exploiting the voluptuous representations of fetes galantes and the fascination of our own 21st century for the delightful frivolity of Marie-Antoinette's era, the 18th century in its lightness has never lost its charm. Yet, crucially, it also challenges the progressive narrative of the history of reason and usefulness in the definition of the very values on which our community is built. It is therefore essential to analyse the concepts and values associated to the notion of lightness in the 18th century. Such an approach yields breakthroughs in understanding why, and to what extent, this idea of lightness has been related to the French national character in general as well as, more particularly, to its 18th century.

Die Unabhangigkeitsbestrebungen Kataloniens von Spanien bilden ein wiederkehrendes, politisch brisantes Thema in ganz Europa. In diesem Zusammenhang untersucht diese Studie die Wurzeln regionaler Darstellungen in der Literatur der spanischen Aufklarung auf der diskursiven Ebene und zeigt die Herausbildung politisch-oekonomischer Interessen einzelner Provinzen im Kontext des spanischen Reformprojekts des 18. Jahrhunderts auf.

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.

In Kant's Rational Theology, Allen W. Wood explores Kant's views on the concept of God and on the attempt to demonstrate God's existence. "We cannot have a full or balanced understanding of Kant's thought on religious subjects," he writes, "as long as we fail to take account of his reflections, often exceedingly abstract, obscure, and subtle, concerning the rational origin, content, and status of our concept of a supreme being."

The importance of this aspect of Kantian thought, according to Wood, lies in its originality, in its historical influence, and in the insights it affords into the tradition of rational theology in medieval and modern philosophy. He believes that it also provides a means of understanding Kant's work as a whole and of achieving a proper appreciation of the contents of Kant's moral faith.

The author focuses on Kant's chapter on the ideal or pure reason from the Critique of Pure Reason and also discusses other Kantian writings (especially the Lectures on Philosophical Theology, the Critique of Judgment, and several of Kant's precritical essays) where the topic of rational theology is prominent. A concise recapitulation and critical assessment of Kant's more speculative theses, this book is a complement to Wood's earlier book, Kant's Moral Religion.

"Margaret L King has put together a highly representative selection of readings from most of the more significant -- but by no means the most obvious -- texts by the authors who made up the movement we have come to call the 'Enlightenment.' They range across much of Europe and the Americas, and from the early seventeenth century until the end of the eighteenth. In the originality of the choice of texts, in its range and depth, this collection offers both wide coverage and striking insights into the intellectual transformation which has done more than any other to shape the world in which we live today. It is simply the best introduction to the subject now available ." -- Anthony Pagden, UCLA, and author of The Enlightenment and Why It Still Matters

This volume critically examines and elucidates the complex relationship between politics and teleology in Kant's philosophical system. Examining this relationship is of key philosophical importance since Kant develops his political philosophy in the context of a teleological conception of the purposiveness of both nature and human history. Kant's approach poses the dual task of reconciling his normative political theory with both his priori moral philosophy and his teleological philosophy of nature and human history. The fourteen essays in this volume, by leading scholars in the field, explore the relationship between teleology and politics from multiple perspectives. Together, the essays explore Kant's normative political theory and legal philosophy, his cosmopolitanism and views on international relations, his theory of history, his theory of natural teleology, and the broader relationship between morality, history, nature and politics in Kant's works. This important new volume will be of interest to a wide audience, including Kant scholars, scholars and students working on topics in moral and political philosophy, the philosophy of history, political theory and political science, legal scholars and international relations theorists, as well as those interested broadly in the history of ideas.

The museum 'La Specola' in Florence hosts a celebrated collection of eighteenth-century anatomical models in wax - lifelike body parts and bodies in vivid poses, reminiscent of famous works of art and anatomical illustration. Based on a detailed study of rich archival sources, Model Experts explores practices of model production and display, and reveals the often invisible labours of the co-operating artisans, anatomists, and administrators. The book shows that the models were central to a remarkable political experiment: 'La Specola' opened in 1775 as the Royal Museum of Physics and Natural History, one of the first public science museums in Europe. As a venue for public enlightenment, the museum displayed model anatomies to create the model citizen. The study also moves beyond the borders of Tuscany, following a set of Florentine waxes to Vienna to explore the diverse reactions of medical professionals and general audiences as the models travelled in enlightened Europe. Focusing on the models' role for articulations of expertise in state service, the study uncovers the tensions and controversies behind the artificial anatomies' serene surfaces to highlight the fragility of expert authority, and the mutual constitution of notions of expertise, the public, and the state around 1800. The book will be of interest to historians of medicine, science, art, and enlightenment, to scholars in museum studies and in science & technology studies interested in the historical emergence of expertise, public engagement with science, and the relationship between science and the state.

Providing a unique interpretation of Kant's theory of judgement as integral to his overall project, Claudia Brodsky explores his continued relevance to contemporary theoretical concerns. The Linguistic Condition traces how Kant combined sensus communis, or common sense with the communicative nature of judgement to reveal that, for him, acts of judgement are dependent on their linguistic articulation, so that in Kantian philosophy language and judgement are inextricably linked. In this first in-depth analysis of language in the Critique of Judgement, Brodsky forms creative connections between literature and philosophy.

This is the first English-language anthology to provide a compendium of primary source material on the sublime. The book takes a chronological approach, covering the earliest ancient traditions up through the early and late modern periods and into contemporary theory. It takes an inclusive, interdisciplinary approach to this key concept in aesthetics and criticism, representing voices and traditions that have often been excluded. As such, it will be of use and interest across the humanities and allied disciplines, from art criticism and literary theory, to gender and cultural studies and environmental philosophy. The anthology includes brief introductions to each selection, reading or discussion questions, suggestions for further reading, a bibliography and index - making it an ideal text for building a course around or for further study. The book's apparatus provides valuable context for exploring the history and contemporary views of the sublime.

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.

This book outlines and analyzes John Locke's political thought about the oceans with a focus on law and freedom at sea. The book examines the Two Treatises of Government, in which Locke argues that the seas are collectively owned by all humans and are governed by universal natural laws that prohibit piracy. Locke's Two Treatises provides a systematic political theory of the seas that contributes to theories of international law and maritime law, but his text does not answer the practical question of how to enforce law effectively at sea. The book also considers how Locke translated his theoretical ideas into practice when he was involved in policymaking as a member of England's Board of Trade during the 1690s. On the Board, Locke waged a war against pirates by proposing an anti-piracy treaty between Europe's major maritime states, by successfully advocating a new English piracy law, and by supporting the deployment of the English Navy against pirates. Locke's war against pirates was consistent with the natural law theory in the Two Treatises, and helped to build English empire on land and at sea. There is also consistency between Locke's theoretical views about slavery and his work on the Board of Trade. As a Board member, Locke advocated forced migration and forced labor for English convicts, which is consistent with the theory of penal slavery in the Two Treatises and suggests that his theory was intended to justify the enslavement of English convicts. However, there are tensions between Locke's arguments in the Two Treatises and the policies of forced naval service that he supported on the Board. Locke's theories of law and freedom at sea shaped his vision of English national identity, and influenced the English government's policies about slavery and piracy.

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.