This timely volume brings together a diverse group of expert authors in order to investigate the question of phenomenology's relation to the political. These authors take up a variety of themes and movements in contemporary political philosophy. Some of them put phenomenology in dialogue with feminism or philosophies of race, others with Marxism and psychoanalysis, while others look at phenomenology's historical relation to politics. The book shows the ways in which phenomenology is either itself a form of political philosophy, or a useful method for thinking the political. It also explores the ways in which phenomenology falls short in the realm of the political. Ultimately, this collection serves as a starting point for a groundbreaking dialogue in the field about the nature of the relationship between phenomenology and the political. It is a must-read for anyone who is interested in phenomenology or contemporary social and political philosophy.

Spectres of False Divinity presents a historical and critical interpretation of Hume's rejection of the existence of a deity with moral attributes. In Hume's view, no first cause or designer responsible for the ordered universe could possibly have moral attributes; nor could the existence (or non-existence) of such a being have any real implications for human practice or conduct. Hume's case for this 'moral atheism' is a central plank of both his naturalistic agenda in metaphysics and his secularizing program in moral theory. It complements his wider critique of traditional theism, and threatens to rule out any religion that would make claims on moral practice.
Thomas Holden situates Hume's commitment to moral atheism in its historical and philosophical context, offers a systematic interpretation of his case for divine amorality, and shows how Hume can endorse moral atheism while maintaining his skeptical attitude toward traditional forms of cosmological and theological speculation.

This monograph offers a new interpretation of Melville's work (focusing on "Moby-Dick", "Pierre" and "Benito Cereno") in the light of scholarship on globalization from critics in 'new' American studies. In "Melville, Mapping and Globalization", Robert Tally argues that Melville does not belong in the tradition of the American Renaissance, but rather creates a baroque literary cartography, artistically engaging with spaces beyond the national model. At a time of intense national consolidation and cultural centralization, Melville discovered the postnational forces of an emerging world system, a system that has become our own in the era of globalization. Drawing on the work of a range of literary and social critics (including Deleuze, Foucault, Jameson, and Moretti), Tally argues that Melville's distinct literary form enabled his critique of the dominant national narrative of his own time and proleptically undermined the national literary tradition of American Studies a century later. Melville's hypercanonical status in the United States makes his work all the more crucial for understanding the role of literature in a post-American epoch. Offering bold new interpretations and theoretical juxtapositions, Tally presents a postnational Melville, well suited to establishing new approaches to American and world literature in the twenty-first century.

Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973) stands outside the traditional canon of twentieth-century French philosophers. Where he is not simply forgotten or overlooked, he is dismissed as a 'relentlessly unsystematic' thinker, or, following Jean-Paul Sartre's lead, labelled a 'Christian existentialist' - a label that avoids consideration of Marcel's work on its own terms. How is one to appreciate Marcel's contribution, especially when his uvre appears to be at odds with philosophical convention? Helen Tattam proposes a range of readings as opposed to one single interpretation, a series of departures or explorations that bring his work into contact with critical partners such as Henri Bergson, Paul Ric ur and Emmanuel Levinas, and offer insights into a host of twentieth-century philosophical shifts concerning time, the subject, the other, ethics, and religion. Helen Tattam's ambitious study is an impressively lucid account of Marcel's engagement with the problem of time and lived experience, and is her first monograph since the award of her doctorate from the University of Nottingham.

Bernard Lonergan (1904-84) is acknowledged as one of the most significant philosopher-theologians of the 20th century. Lonergan, Meaning and Method in many ways complements Andrew Beards' previous book on Lonergan, Insight and Analysis (Bloomsbury, 2010). Andrew Beards applies Lonergan's thought and brings it into critical dialogue and discussion with other contemporary philosophical interlocutors, principally from the analytical tradition. He also introduces themes and arguments from the continental tradition, as well as offering interpretative analysis of some central notions in Lonergan's thought that are of interest to all who wish to understand the importance of Lonergan's work for philosophy and Christian theology. Three of the chapters focus upon areas of fruitful exchange and debate between Lonergan's thought and the work of three major figures in current analytical philosophy: Nancy Cartwright, Timothy Williamson and Scott Soames. The discussion also ranges across such topics as meaning theory, metaphilosophy, epistemology, philosophy of science and aesthetics.

In May 2010, philosophers, family and friends gathered at the University of Notre Dame to celebrate the career and retirement of Alvin Plantinga, widely recognized as one of the world's leading figures in metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of religion. Plantinga has earned particular respect within the community of Christian philosophers for the pivotal role that he played in the recent renewal and development of philosophy of religion and philosophical theology. Each of the essays in this volume engages with some particular aspect of Plantinga's views on metaphysics, epistemology, or philosophy of religion. Contributors include Michael Bergman, Ernest Sosa, Trenton Merricks, Richard Otte, Peter VanInwagen, Thomas P. Flint, Eleonore Stump, Dean Zimmerman and Nicholas Wolterstorff. The volume also includes responses to each essay by Bas van Fraassen, Stephen Wykstra, David VanderLaan, Robin Collins, Raymond VanArragon, E. J. Coffman, Thomas Crisp, and Donald Smith.

It is widely believed in philosophy of science that nobody can claim that any verdict of science is forced upon us by the effects of a physical world upon our sense organs and instruments. The Quine-Duhem problem supposedly allows us to resist any conclusion. Views on language aside, Quine is supposed to have shown this decisively. But it is just false. In many scientific examples, there is simply no room to doubt that a particular hypothesis is responsible for a refutation or established by the observations. Fault Tracing shows how to play independently established hypotheses against each other to determine whether an arbitrary hypothesis needs to be altered in the light of (apparently) refuting evidence. It analyses real examples from natural science, as well as simpler cases. It argues that, when scientific theories have a structure that prevents them from using this method, the theory looks wrong, and is subject to serious criticism. This is a new, and potentially far-reaching, theory of empirical justification.

In the Platonic work "Alcibiades I," a divinely guided Socrates adopts the guise of a lover in order to divert Alcibiades from an unthinking political career. The contributors to this carefully focussed volume cover aspects of the background to the work; its arguments and the philosophical issues it raises; its relationship to other Platonic texts, and its subsequent history up to the time of the Neoplatonists. Despite its ancient prominence, the authorship of "Alcibiades I" is still unsettled; the essays and two appendices, one historical and one stylometric, come together to suggest answers to this tantalising question.

This is an important collection of essays examining and promoting Foucault's influence on present-day philosophy, in both the analytic and Continental philosophical traditions."Foucault's Legacy" brings together the work of eight Foucault specialists in an important collection of essays marking the 25th anniversary of Foucault's death. Focusing on the importance of Foucault's most central ideas for present-day philosophy, the book shows how his influence goes beyond his own canonical tradition and linguistic milieu. The essays in this book explore key areas of Foucault's thought by comparing aspects of his work with the thought of a number of major philosophers, including Nietzsche, Heidegger, Rorty, Hegel, Searle, Vattimo and Williams. Crucially the book also considers the applicability of his central ideas to broader issues such as totalitarianism, religion, and self-sacrifice. Presenting a fresh and exciting vision of Foucault as a philosopher of enduring influence, the book shows how important Foucault remains to philosophy today.

Drawing from the works of Dante, Catherine of Siena, Boccaccio, Aquinas, and Cavalcanti and other literary, philosophic, and scientific texts, Heather Webb studies medieval notions of the heart to explore the "lost circulations" of an era when individual lives and bodies were defined by their extensions into the world rather than as self-perpetuating, self-limited entities.

The keywords of the Enlightenment-freedom, tolerance, rights, equality-are today heard everywhere, and they are used to endorse a wide range of positions, some of which are in perfect contradiction. While Orwell's 1984 claims that there is one phrase in the English language that resists translation into Newspeak, namely the opening lines of that key Enlightenment text, the Declaration of Independence: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...', we also find the Wall Street Journal saying of the Iraq War that the US was 'fighting for the very notion of the Enlightenment'. It seems we are no longer sure whether these truths are self-evident nor quite what they might mean today. Based on the critically acclaimed Oxford Amnesty Lectures series, this book brings together a number of major international figures to debate the history of freedom, tolerance, equality, and to explore the complex legacy of the Enlightenment for human rights. The lectures are published here with responses from other leading figures in the field.

Exploring the latest research in Husserl Studies, this collection presents fifteen new essays on key topics in the field from an international team of writers. "Epistemology, Archaeology, Ethics: Current Investigations of Husserl's Corpus" presents fifteen original essays by an international team of expert contributors that together represent a cross-section of Husserl Studies today. The collection manifests the extent to which single themes in Husserl's corpus cannot be isolated, but must be considered in relation to their overlap with each other. Many of the accepted views of Husserl's philosophy are currently in a state of flux, with positions that once seemed incontestable now finding themselves relegated to the status of one particular school of thought among several. Among all the new trends and approaches, this volume offers a representative sample of how Husserlian research should be conducted given the current state of the corpus. The book is divided into four parts, each dedicated to an area of Husserl Studies that is currently gaining prominence: Husserlian epistemology; his views on intentionality; the archaeology of constitution; and, ethics, a relatively recent field of study in phenomenology.

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.

The Hegel Dictionary is a comprehensive and accessible guide to the world of G.W.F. Hegel, one of the most important and influential thinkers in the history of philosophy. Meticulously researched and extensively cross-referenced, this unique book provides a firm grounding in the central themes of Hegel's thought. Students will discover a wealth of useful information and analysis. A-Z entries include clear definitions of key terms used in Hegel's writings and detailed synopses of his major works. The Dictionary also includes entries on Hegel's philosophical influences, such as Kant, Fichte, and Schelling, and those he influenced, including Marx. It covers everything that is essential to a sound understanding of Hegel's philosophy, offering clear and accessible explanations of often complex terminology. The Hegel Dictionary is the ideal resource for anyone reading or studying Hegel or Modern European Philosophy more generally.