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Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Western philosophy > Modern Western philosophy, c 1600 to the present > Western philosophy, from c 1900 -
This book offers a comprehensive critical survey of issues of
historical interpretation and evaluation in Bertrand Russell's 1918
logical atomism lectures and logical atomism itself. These lectures
record the culmination of Russell's thought in response to
discussions with Wittgenstein on the nature of judgement and
philosophy of logic and with Moore and other philosophical realists
about epistemology and ontological atomism, and to Whitehead and
Russell's novel extension of revolutionary nineteenth-century work
in mathematics and logic. Russell's logical atomism lectures have
had a lasting impact on analytic philosophy and on Russell's
contemporaries including Carnap, Ramsey, Stebbing, and
Wittgenstein. Comprised of 14 original essays, this book will
demonstrate how the direct and indirect influence of these lectures
thus runs deep and wide.
Jacques Ranciere's work has challenged many of the assumptions of
contemporary continental philosophy by placing equality at the
forefront of emancipatory political thought and aesthetics. Drawing
on the claim that egalitarian politics persistently appropriates
elements from political philosophy to engage new forms of
dissensus, Devin Zane Shaw argues that Ranciere's work also
provides an opportunity to reconsider modern philosophy and
aesthetics in light of the question of equality. In Part I, Shaw
examines Ranciere's philosophical debts to the 'good sense' of
Cartesian egalitarianism and the existentialist critique of
identity. In Part II, he outlines Ranciere's critical analyses of
Walter Benjamin and Clement Greenberg and offers a reinterpretation
of Ranciere's debate with Alain Badiou in light of the
philosophical differences between Schiller and Schelling. From
engaging debates about political subjectivity from Descartes to
Sartre, to delineating the egalitarian stakes in aesthetics and the
philosophy of art from Schiller to Badiou, this book presents a
concise tour through a series of egalitarian moments found within
the histories of modern philosophy and aesthetics.
The book is exceptional because it applies the notion of foms of
life to the context of human action. It provides answers to the
following questions: Why do we act in a specific way? Why do we
make particular decisions? Does one's form of life and language
games determine our actions and decisions? Wittgenstein proposes a
holistic method which enables us to give coherent answers to these
questions. To answer the question of the contents of actions and
decisions we have to explain how we have institutionalized these
actions or decisions. To this aim we shall reveal the frame within
which language games are introduced and have come to function as
practice and custom. The scheme of order underlying the language
games is illustrated. Human actions and decisions follow particular
rules. By highlighting the underlying scheme of order we may gain a
perspicuous view of these rules. The aim of this book is to show
that actions and decisions generate rational choice. This choice is
explained by demonstrating the particular functions of the language
games involved.
This book proposes a new interpretative key for reading and
overcoming the binary of idealism and realism. It takes as its
central issue for exploration the way in which human consciousness
unfolds, i.e., through the relationship between the I and the
world-a field of phenomenological investigation that cannot and
must not remain closed within the limits of its own disciplinary
borders. The book focuses on the question of realism in
contemporary debates, ultimately dismantling prejudices and
automatisms that one finds therein. It shows that at the root of
the controversy between realism and idealism there often lie
equivocations of a semantic nature and by going back to the origins
of modern phenomenology it puts into play a discussion of the
Husserlian concept of transcendental idealism. Following this path
and neutralizing the extreme positions of a critical idealism and a
naive realism, the book proposes a "transcendental realism": the
horizon of a dynamic unity that embraces the process of cognition
and that grounds the relation, and not the subordination, of
subject and object. The investigation of this reciprocity allows
the surpassing of the limits of the domain of knowing, leading to
fundamental questions surrounding the ultimate sense of things and
their origin.
Literature reveals that the hidden strings of the human "passional
soul" are the creative source of the specifically human existence.
Continuing the inquiry into the "elemental passions of the soul"
and the "human creative soul" pursued in several previous volumes
of this series, the present volume focuses on the "passions of the
earth", bringing to light some of the primogenital existential
threads of the innermost bonds of the "Human Condition" and mother
earth. In the author's words, the book's purpose is to unravel the
essential bond between the living human being and the earth - a
bond that lies at the heart of our existence. A heightened
awareness of this bond should enlighten our situation and help us
find our existential bearings.
In three comprehensive volumes, Logic of the Future presents a full
panorama of Charles S. Peirce's important late writings. Among the
most influential American thinkers, Peirce took his existential
graphs to be his greatest contribution to human thought. The
manuscripts from 1895-1913, most of which are published here for
the first time, testify the richness and open-endedness of his
theory of logic and its applications. They also invite us to
reconsider our ordinary conceptions of reasoning as well as the
conventional stories told about the evolution of modern logic. This
second volume collects Peirce's writings on existential graphs
related to his Lowell Lectures of 1903, the annus mirabilis of his
that became decisive in the development of the mature theory of the
graphical method of logic.
The Promise of Phenomenology: Posthumous Papers of John Wild
includes articles that remained unpublished during Wild's lifetime,
a journal, wherein he recorded conversations with major British and
Continental philosophers during 1957-8, as well as a masterful
exposition and commentary on Emmanuel Levinas's book Totality and
Infinity. It also contains a complete bibliography of all of Wild's
unpublished writings open for research at the Beinecke Rare Book
Library at Yale University. More personal and less reserved than
Wild's published scholarship, yet containing Wild's characteristic
clarity and rigor, the writings in this book cover such subjects as
a phenomenological approach to moral relativism, an exploration of
lived time, and reflections on the other and religious
transcendence. The Promise of Phenomenology gives a lively picture
of a master philosopher at work conveying the vitality and
importance of philosophy to everyday life.
Western philosophy's relationship with prisons stretches from
Plato's own incarceration to the modern era of mass incarceration.
Philosophy Imprisoned: The Love of Wisdom in the Age of Mass
Incarceration draws together a broad range of philosophical
thinkers, from both inside and outside prison walls, in the United
States and beyond, who draw on a variety of critical perspectives
(including phenomenology, deconstruction, and feminist theory) and
historical and contemporary figures in philosophy (including Kant,
Hegel, Foucault, and Angela Davis) to think about prisons in this
new historical era. All of these contributors have experiences
within prison walls: some are or have been incarcerated, some have
taught or are teaching in prisons, and all have been students of
both philosophy and the carceral system. The powerful testimonials
and theoretical arguments are appropriate reading not only for
philosophers and prison theorists generally, but also for prison
reformers and abolitionists.
On the one hand, Creation and Discovery, Lacan and Klein: An Essay
of Reintroduction seeks to disclose the often suppressed or
unacknowledged proximity, even intimacy, between Lacan and Klein,
and thereby to facilitate a re-introduction between Lacan and Klein
such that their works can read anew, both independently and
together. On the other hand, by reconstructing the highly divergent
metapsychological theories and clinical orientations of Jacques
Lacan and Melanie Klein from their discussions of the same case
material, the text seeks to demonstrate the irreducible plurality
of psychoanalysis and the ethico-political significance of this
plurality. Siding with neither Lacan nor Klein's perspective, Adam
Rosen-Carole argues that within and between these exaggerated
positions, a dialectic of creation and discovery emerges that
affords the reader unique insights into the nature and status of
psychoanalytic knowing and its particular objects. Special
attention is paid to the indelible exaggerations and distortions,
the guiding sensitivities and urgencies, and the concomitant
structures of blindness and insight organizing various
psychoanalytic perspectives. Written for clinicians as well as for
students and scholars interested in psychoanalysis and philosophy,
this book serves not only as a comprehensive introduction to Lacan,
but also a reassessment of psychoanalytic method.
Two dominant schools have emerged in twentieth-century American
philosophy: scientific naturalism and pragmatism. In this vibrant
collection of hard-to-find essays, articles and contributions to
books, internationally-known philosopher, author and lecturer Paul
Kurtz offers his own special blend of these influential theories.
With skill and clarity, "Philosophical Essays in Pragmatic
Naturalism" captures naturalism's dedication to scientific method
and critical intelligence (which are so much a part of ordinary
life), and pragmatism's application of rational inquiry to the
problems each of us face as individuals and as social beings.
"Philosophical Essays in Pragmatic Naturalism" demonstrates Kurtz's
unwavering commitment to free inquiry, his appreciation of
pluralism and diversity, and his fervent belief that the scientific
method and critical intelligence that gave birth to pragmatic
naturalism provide the foundations for a cosmic outlook and an
authentic ethical humanism.
John Dewey was the most celebrated and publicly engaged American
philosopher in the twentieth century. His naturalistic theory of
"experience" generated new approaches to education and democracy
and re-grounded philosophy's search for truth in the needs of life
as it is shared and lived. However, interpretations of Dewey after
the linguistic turn have either obscured or rejected the
considerable role that he gives to the non-discursive dimension of
experience. In Dewey and the Aesthetic Unconscious: The Vital
Depths of Experience, Bethany Henning argues that much classical
American philosophy implicitly recognizes an unconscious dimension
of mind that is distinct from Freud's theory. Although the
unconscious that emerges within American thought has never been
treated systematically, it found its fullest expression in Dewey's
work, particularly in his theory of aesthetic experience. This
dimension of mind illuminates the continuity between nature and
culture, and it provides us with an account of why artwork is often
successful at communicating meanings from the ecological and
intimate dimensions of life, where discourse often fails. If the
relationship between the human and the organic world has emerged as
the definitive question of twenty-first century life, then the
aesthetic unconscious stands as a resource for our ecological and
intimate well-being.
Antony Flew is one of the most well-known and respected
philosophers alive today. In Philosophical Essays, twelve of Flew's
most significant works are gathered together for the first time,
creating a unique and valuable collection. The book begins with a
new autobiographical sketch of Flew's life and career. In addition
to some of the distinguished scholar's most influential and famous
articles, Philosophical Essays includes a number of rare works that
have not been available to a wide audience until now. This
important book will be an essential addition to the library of any
philosopher.
This volume examines the interface between the teachings of art and
the art of teaching, and asserts the centrality of aesthetics for
rethinking education. Many of the essays in this collection claim a
direct connection between critical thinking, democratic dissensus,
and anti-racist pedagogy with aesthetic experiences. They argue
that aesthetics should be reconceptualized less as mere art
appreciation or the cultivation of aesthetic judgment of taste, and
more with the affective disruptions, phenomenological experiences,
and the democratic politics of learning, thinking, and teaching.
The first set of essays in the volume examines the unique
pedagogies of the various arts including literature, poetry, film,
and music. The second set addresses questions concerning the art of
pedagogy and the relationship between aesthetic experience and
teaching and learning. Demonstrating the flexibility and diversity
of aesthetic expressions and experiences in education, the book
deals with issues such as the connections between racism and
affect, curatorship and teaching, aesthetic experience and the
common, and studying and poetics. The book explores these topics
through a variety of theoretical and philosophical lenses including
contemporary post-structuralism, psychoanalysis, phenomenology,
critical theory, and pragmatism.
This book offers a new way of doing African philosophy by building
on an analysis of the way people talk. The author bases his
investigation on the belief that traditional African philosophy is
hidden in expressions used in ordinary language. As a result, he
argues that people are engaging in a philosophical activity when
they use expressions such as taboos, proverbs, idioms, riddles, and
metaphors. The analysis investigates proverbs using the ordinary
language approach and Speech Act theory. Next, the author looks at
taboos using counterfactual logic, which studies the meaning of
taboo expressions by departing from a consideration of their
structure and use. He argues that the study of these figurative
expressions using the counterfactual framework offers a particular
understanding of African philosophy and belief systems. The study
also investigates issues of meaning and rationality departing from
a study on riddles, explores conceptual metaphors used in
conceptualizing the notion of politics in modern African political
thought, and examines language and marginalization of women and
people with disabilities. The book differs from other works in
African philosophy in the sense that it does not claim that
Africans have a philosophy as is commonly done in most studies.
Rather, it reflects and unfolds philosophical elements in ordinary
language use. The book also builds African Conception of beauty and
truth through the study of language.
In Society as a Department Store Ryszard Legutko wrestles with the
emancipatory ideology promulgated by postmodernists, libertarians,
and liberal thinkers. Legutko argues that modern Western liberals
have embraced a revolutionary ethic; they have turned their backs
on their own cultural heritage, and used its political and
ideological apparatus to destroy classical metaphysics and
epistemology. The book considers the paradoxical implications of
this state of affairs for Eastern European intellectuals arguing
that, with the triumph of liberalism over communism, these
intellectuals feel compelled to digest an ideology that shares many
elements with the oppressive system from which they just liberated
themselves. Based on hubris rather than genuine humane concerns,
Legutko mourns not simply the loss of faith in classical Western
culture, but the way in which that loss is becoming a central point
of identity.
This volume addresses key aspects of the philosophical psychology
elaborated by Alexius Meinong and some of his students. It covers a
wide range of topics, from the place of psychological
investigations in Meinong's unique philosophical program to his
thought-provoking views on perception, colors,
"Vorstellungsproduktion," assumptions, values, truth, and emotions.
Isaiah Berlin is one of the towering intellectual figures of the
twentieth century, the most famous English thinker of the post-war
era, and the focus of growing interest and discussion. Above all,
he is one of the best modern exponents of the disappearing art of
letter-writing. 'Life is not worth living unless one can be
indiscreet to intimate friends, ' wrote Berlin to a correspondent.
This first volume inaugurates a long awaited edition of his letters
that might well adopt this remark as an epigraph. Berlin's life was
well worth living, both for himself and for the world. Fortunately
he said a great deal to his friends on paper as well as in person.
Berlin's letters reveal the significant growth and development of
his personality and career over the two decades covered within
them. Starting with his days as an eighteen year old student at St.
Paul's School in London, they cover his years at Oxford as scholar
and professor and the authorship of his famous biography of Karl
Marx. The letters progress to his World War II stay in the U.S. and
finally, his trip to the Soviet Union in 1945-6 and return to
Oxford in 1946. "Emotional exploitation, cannibalism, which I think
I dislike more than anything else in the world." To Ben Nicolson,
September 1937 "Valery delivered an agreeable but dull lecture
here. He said words were like thin planks over precipices, and if
you crossed rapidly nothing happened, but if you stopped on any of
them and stared into the gulf you would get vertigo and that was
what philosophers were doing." To Cressida Bonham Carter, March
1939 "I never don't moralize." To Mary Fisher, 18 April 1940 "I
only feel happy when I feel the solidarity of the majority of
people Irespect with and behind me." To Marion Frankfurter, 23
August 1940 "Certainly no politics are more real than those of
academic life, no loves deeper, no hatreds more burning, no
principles more sacred." To Freya Stark, 12 June 1944 "Nobody is so
fiercely bureaucratic, or so stern with soldiers and regular civil
servants, as the don disguised as temporary government official
armed with an indestructible superiority complex." To Freya Stark,
12 June 1944 "My view on this is that you will not find life in the
country lively enough for persons of your temperament. Life in the
country in England depends entirely on (a) motor cars (b) rural
tastes. As you possess neither, it is my considered view that apart
from a weekend cottage or something of that sort, life in the
country would bore you stiff within a very short time." To his
parents, 31 January 1944 "This country is undoubtedly the largest
assembly of fundamentally benevolent human beings ever gathered
together, but the thought of staying here remains a nightmare." To
his parents, 31 January 1944 "I am a hopeless dilettante about
matters of fact really and only good for a column of gossip, if
that." To W. J. Turner, 12 June 1945 "England is an old chronic
complaint: every day in the afternoon in the left knee and the left
leg below the kneecap, tiresome, annoying, not bad enough to go to
bed with, probably incurable and madly irritating but not
necessarily unlikely to lead to a really serious crisis unless
complications set in." To Angus Malcolm, 20 February 1946
Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology reconstructs Merleau-Ponty's
treatment of the problem of ideal objects. Kirk Besmer describes
Merleau-Ponty's early attempt to found ideal objects on
pre-linguistic, perceptual experience and shows that Merleau-Ponty
ultimately came to see the shortcomings of this initial view. An
examination of often ignored writings from the middle-period of
Merleau-Ponty's career allows Besmer to piece together
Merleau-Ponty's mature view of ideal objects, one that does not
overlook the contributions of perception but emphasizes the
historical and cultural nature of ideal objects and one's
experience of them. Merleau-Ponty's final view of ideal objects
takes ideal meanings in language as paradigmatic and understands
ideal objects as embedded in cultural practices and institutions.
Kirk Besmer's book is the first ever to be devoted to the problem
of ideal objects in Merleau-Ponty's thought. Showing for the first
time the crucial conceptual developments and revisions internal to
Merleau-Ponty's thought, Besmer's book will change the way that
Merleau-Ponty is read.
Alain Badiou's Being and Event continues to impact philosophical
investigations into the question of Being. By exploring the central
role set theory plays in this influential work, Burhanuddin Baki
presents the first extended study of Badiou's use of mathematics in
Being and Event. Adopting a clear, straightforward approach, Baki
gathers together and explains the technical details of the relevant
high-level mathematics in Being and Event. He examines Badiou's
philosophical framework in close detail, showing exactly how it is
'conditioned' by the technical mathematics. Clarifying the relevant
details of Badiou's mathematics, Baki looks at the four core topics
Badiou employs from set theory: the formal axiomatic system of ZFC;
cardinal and ordinal numbers; Kurt Goedel's concept of
constructability; and Cohen's technique of forcing. Baki then
rebuilds Badiou's philosophical meditations in relation to their
conditioning by the mathematics, paying particular attention to
Cohen's forcing, which informs Badiou's analysis of the event.
Providing valuable insights into Badiou's philosophy of
mathematics, Badiou's Being and Event and the Mathematics of Set
Theory offers an excellent commentary and a new reading of Badiou's
most complex and important work.
What happens to a culture when it's most basic assumptions are
questioned and rejected, but no new ones are offered to replace
them? This book critically analyzes anti-modernist philosophy, the
(perhaps futile) attempt to recover traditional worldviews and
belief systems in order to cope with the void of meaning engendered
by the upheavals of modernity. The textual focus of this book is
interwar Germany, as it provides a dramatic and relatively recent
example of cultural crisis, with a rich philosophical literature.
The writings of Heidegger, Junger, Spengler, and others are
discussed in detail. Key themes will be applied to our contemporary
post-modern condition as well. The book examines the dangers of
anti-modernism, both past and the present, but also discusses some
of its implicit appeals.
This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open
Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com.
Water is the element that, more than any other, ties human beings
in to the world around them - from the oceans that surround us to
the water that makes up most of our bodies. Exploring the cultural
and philosophical implications of this fact, Bodies of Water
develops an innovative new mode of posthuman feminist phenomenology
that understands our bodies as being fundamentally part of the
natural world and not separate from or privileged to it. Building
on the works by Luce Irigaray, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Gilles
Deleuze, Astrida Neimanis's book is a landmark study that brings a
new feminist perspective to bear on ideas of embodiment and
ecological ethics in the posthuman critical moment.
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