This book offers an original reading of Wittgenstein's views on such topics as radical scepticism, the first- and third-person asymmetry of mental talk, Cartesianism, and rule-following.The celebrated 20th century philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, developed an interest in his later career in natural forms of behaviour and the role they play in our linguistic and other intellectual practices. To many, Wittgenstein appears to be advancing a theory about these practices as originating in natural forms of behaviour. However, theories of this sort seem out of place in philosophy, especially in light of Wittgenstein's own expressed views on the purpose of philosophy.Keith Dromm offers a way of understanding these apparently incongruous aspects of Wittgenstein's writings that is more consistent with his views on the proper purpose of philosophy. The book shows that Wittgenstein does not in fact offer theories about natural human behaviour. Rather, these references belong to a type of philosophical reasoning that is not meant to contribute to our knowledge, as explanations in science do, but instead to help clarify our thinking on certain philosophical topics. In particular, they serve to relieve apparent tensions between the things we do know.

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.

This book describes and analyzes the levels of experience that long-distance running produces. It looks at the kinds of experiences caused by long-distance running, the dimensions contained in these experiences, and their effects on the subjective life-world and well-being of an individual. Taking a philosophical approach, the analysis presented in this book is founded on Maurice Merleau-Pontys phenomenology of the body and Martin Heideggers fundamental ontology. Running is a versatile form of physical exercise which does not reveal all of its dimensions at once. These dimensions escape the eye and are not revealed to the runner conceptually, but rather as sensations and emotions. Instead of concentrating on conceptual analysis, this book explores the emotions and experiences and examines the meaning that running has in runners lives. Using the participative method, in which the author is both the research subject and the researcher, the book contributes to the philosophy of physical exercise.

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.

Martin Heidegger's Impact on Psychotherapy is the first comprehensive presentation in English of the background, theory and practice of Daseinsanalysis, the analysis of human existence. It is the work of the co-founding member of a radical re-envisioning of psychoanalysis initiated by the work of the Swiss psychiatrist, Medard Boss (1903-1990). Originally published in 1998, this new edition of Gion Condrau's (1919-2006) book acquaints new generations of psychotherapists, psychiatrists and psychoanalysts with an alternative to psychodynamic, humanistic and existential forms of the therapy of the word that is currently experience a renaissance of interest, especially in the United States and the UK. The volume presents the basic ideas of Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) that made possible this unique approach to psychotherapy. It is arranged in sections on (1) the foundations of Daseinsanalysis in Heidegger's thought, (2) understanding psychopathology, (3) daseinsanalytic psychotherapy in practice, (4) working with the dying person, and (5) the preparation of the professional Daseinsanalyst. Several extended cases are presented to illustrate daseinsanalytic practice at work (narcissistic personality disorder and obsessive compulsive personality disorder). Since dreaming and dream life are central to Daseinsanalysis, a number of dreams are analyzed from its perspective. Daseinsanalysis originated as a form of psychoanalysis and retains a number of its features: free association, optional use of the couch, and attention to dreams. It differs from psychoanalysis by abandoning the natural science perspective which understands human experience and behavior in terms of causality. Instead, human existence is seen to be utterly different from every other kind of sentient animal life. Taking a phenomenological perspective, Daseinsanalysis is based on letting the existence of the human being in all his or her uniqueness show itself. In practice, Daseinsanalysis avoids intervening in the life of the person in favor of maximizing the conditions in which existence can come into its own with maximum freedom.

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.

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.

Here is a philosophy for the information age. Social, cultural, and technological changes present new challenges to our ways of knowing and understanding, and philosophy must face these challenges. Alvin Goldman explores new frontiers by creating a thoroughgoing social epistemology, moving beyond the traditional focus on solitary knowers, rescuing truth from fashionable assaults and demonstrating its importance to society.

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.

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

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.

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.

The single most influential work in Chinese history is Lunyu, the Confucian Analects. Its influence on the Chinese people is comparable to that of the bible on the Western world. It is neither a tract of prosaic moralism contained in the fortune cookies in Chinese restaurants nor a manual of political administration that prescribes do's and don't's for new initiates. A book claiming a readership of billions of people throughout the history in China and East Asia and now even in the Western world must be one that has struck a chord in the readers, one which appears to arise from the existential concerns that Confucius shared: How can one overcome the egoistic tendency that plagues life? How does one see the value of communal existence? What should be one's ultimate concern in life?These questions call for a line of inquiry on the Analects that is explicitly existential. An existential reading of the Analects differs from other lines of inquiry in that it not only attempts to reveal how the text spoke to the original audience but also to us today. It is not only a pure academic exercise that appeals to the scholarly minded but also an engagement with all who feel poignantly about existential predicaments.In this existential reading of the Analects, the author takes Paul Tillich as an omnipresent dialogical partner because his existential theology was at one time very influential in the West and currently very popular in Chinese academia. His analysis of ontological structure of man can be applied to the Analects. This conceptual analysis reveals that that this foundational text has three organically connected levels of thought, proceeding from personal cultivation through the mediation of the community to the metaphysical level of Ultimate Reality. Few scholarly attempts like this one have been made to reveal systematically the interconnectedness of these three levels of thought and to the prominence to their theological underpinnings.This existential reading of the Analects carries with it a theological implication. If one follows the traditional division of a systematic theology, one will find that the Analects has anthropological, ethical, and theological dimensions, which correspond to the three levels of thoughts mentioned. If one understands soteriology more broadly, one will find the Analects also has a soteriological dimension. The Analects points to the goal of complete harmony in which a harmony within oneself, with the society and cosmos are ensured.If one is to construct a theology of the Analects, the existential reading enables the drawing of certain contrasts with Paul Tillich's existential theology. The Confucian idea of straying from the Way differs from the symbol of fall. The Confucian reality of social entanglement differs from the reality of estrangement. The Confucian paradoxical nature of Heaven differs from trinitarian construction of God. The most important contribution of this study is that it reveals the religious or theological dimension of the Confucian Analects.This is an important book for those engaged in the study of the Confucian Analects, including those in Chinese studies as well as comparative theology and religion.

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.

In recent years there has been increased interest in three contemporary French philosophers, all former students of Louis Althusser and each now an influential thinker in his own right. Alain Badiou is one of the most important living continental thinkers, well-known for his pioneering theory of the Event. Etienne Balibar has forged new approaches to democracy, citizenship and what he describes as 'equaliberty'. Jacques Ranciere has crossed boundaries between history, politics and aesthetics and his work is beginning to receive the attention it deserves. Nick Hewlett brings these three thinkers together, examining the political aspects of their work. He argues that in each of their systems there are useful and insightful elements that make real contributions to the understanding of the modern history of politics and to the understanding of contemporary politics. But he also identifies and explores problems in each of Badiou, Balibar and Ranciere's work, arguing that none offers a wholly convincing approach.

Maurice O'Connor Drury was among Wittgenstein's first students after his return to Cambridge in 1929. The subsequent course of Drury's life and thought was to be enormously influenced by his teacher, from his decision to become a doctor to his later work in psychiatry. The Selected Writings of Maurice O'Connor Drury brings together the best of his lectures, conversations, and letters on philosophy, religion and medicine. Central to the collection is the Danger of Words, the 1973 text described by Ray Monk as 'the most truly Wittgensteinian book published by any of Wittgenstein's students'. Through notes on conversations with Wittgenstein, letters to a student of philosophy and correspondence of almost 30 years with Rush Rhees, Drury gives shape to what he had learned from Wittgenstein. Whether discussing methods of philosophy, Simone Weil or the power of hypnosis, he makes fascinating excursions into the bearing of Wittgenstein's thought on philosophy and the practice of medicine and psychiatry. With an introduction presenting a new biography of Drury, analysing the relationship between him and Wittgenstein, The Selected Writings of Maurice O'Connor Drury features previously unpublished archival sources. Beautifully written and carefully selected, each piece reveals the impact of Wittgenstein's teachings, shedding light on the friendship and thinking of one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century.

American pragmatism can be best understood against the background of 20th-century American culture and politics. The essays in this volume, by philosophers, cultural critics, and historians, explore the development of pragmatism in this context. The emphasis in this volume is on the interrelations between the philosophical or foundational issues raised by pragmatism as a philosophical movement, and the cultural, political, and educational programs that have been associated with pragmatism from James, Dewey, and Mead to Rorty and Cornel West. The book is divided into three parts, reflecting the periods of Progressivism, Positivism, and Postmodernism. The contributors explore the ways in which pragmatist writings have been appropriated or misappropriated in the literature and practice of Progressive reformers, positivist academics, end-of-ideology liberals, and postmodernists.

While economic and other social science expertise is indispensable for successful public policy-making regarding global climate change, social scientists face trade-offs between the scientific credibility, policy-relevance, and legitimacy of their policy advice. From a philosophical perspective, this book systematically addresses these trade-offs and other crucial challenges facing the integrated economic assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Based on John Dewey's pragmatist philosophy and an analysis of the value-laden nature and reliability of climate change economics, the book develops a refined science-policy model and specific guidelines for these assessments of climate policy options. The core idea is to scientifically explore the various practical implications of alternative climate policy pathways in an interdisciplinary manner, together with diverse stakeholders. This could facilitate an iterative, deliberative public learning process concerning disputed policy issues. This volume makes novel contributions to three strands of the literature: (1) the philosophy of (social) science in policy; (2) the philosophy of economics; and (3) debates about the design of scientific assessments, including the continuous IPCC reform debate. This work is thus interesting for philosophers and other scholars reflecting on the science-policy interface, but also for assessment practitioners, climate policy-makers, and economists. The science-policy approach developed in this volume has already influenced the recent socio-economic IPCC assessment.