Heidegger and the Emergence of the Question of Being offers a new, updated and comprehensive introduction to Heidegger's development and his early confrontation with philosophical tradition, theology, neo-Kantianism, vitalism, hermeneutics, and phenomenology, up to the publication of Being and Time in 1927. The main thread is the genealogy of the question of the meaning of being. Alongside the most recent scholarly research, this book takes into account the documentary richness of Heidegger's first Freiburg (1919-1923) and Marburg (1923-1928) lectures, conferences, treatises and letters and addresses the thematic and methodological richness of this period of Heidegger's intellectual life, and offers a coherent and unified interpretation of his earlier work. This book conveys Heidegger's thought in a well-organized, impartial manner, without deviating too far from Heideggerian vocabulary. It will be invaluable for upper level undergraduates, graduate students of philosophy, studying phenomenology, continental and German philosophy.

This volume offers a much needed shift of focus in the study of emotion in the history of philosophy. Discussion has tended to focus on the moral relevance of emotions, and (except in ancient philosophy) the role of emotions in cognitive life has received little attention. Thirteen new essays investigate the continuities between medieval and early modern thinking about the emotions, and open up a contemporary debate on the relationship between emotions, cognition, and reason, and the way emotions figure in our own cognitive lives. A team of leading philosophers of the medieval, renaissance, and early modern periods explore these ideas from the point of view of four key themes: the situation of emotions within the human mind; the intentionality of emotions and their role in cognition; emotions and action; the role of emotion in self-understanding and the social situation of individuals.

This text presents and addresses the philosophical movement of antiphilosophy working thru the texts of Christian thinkers such as Pascal and Kierkegaard. The author as influenced by Alain Badiou, portrays these Christian thinkers as of a subjective dimension negating the possibility of an objective quest for truth. The claim here is that antiphilosophy is abundant in the eyes of these two thinkers who frame the thought event as represented by Christianity, ultimately resigning itself to more or less the opposite of philosophy itself. Readers will discover why philosophical reason should never be convinced by that which denies its very authority. Subjecting faith to the perils of philosophical analysis, confronting the philosophical tradition with the truth of the Christian faith, and occupying the space between the two: such are the challenges facing an antiphilosophy of Christianity. This text will appeal to researchers and students working in continental philosophy, philosophy of religion and those in religious studies who want to investigate the links between Christianity and antiphilosophy.

A discussion of the rapidly growing field, from a thinker at the forefront of research at the interface of technology and the humanities, this is a must-read for anyone interested in contemporary developments in Continental philosophy and philosophy of technology. Philosophy of technology regularly draws on key thinkers in the Continental tradition, including Husserl, Heidegger, and Foucault. Yet because of the problematic legacy of the 'empirical turn', it often criticizes 'bad' continental tendencies - lyricism, pessimism, and an outdated view of technology as an autonomous, transcendental force. This misconception is based on a faulty image of Continental thought, and in addressing it Smith productively redefines our concept of technology. By closely engaging key texts, and by examining 'exceptional technologies' such as imagined, failed, and impossible technologies that fall outside philosophy of technology's current focus, this book offers a practical guide to thinking about and using continental philosophy and philosophy of technology. It outlines and enacts three key characteristics of philosophy as practiced in the continental tradition: close reading of the history of philosophy; focus on critique; and openness to other disciplinary fields. Smith deploys the concept of exceptional technologies to provide a novel way of widening discussion in philosophy of technology, navigating the relationship between philosophy of technology and Continental philosophy; the history of both these fields; the role of imagination in relation to technologies; and the social function of technologies themselves.

This book is concerned with the evaluation of natural argumentative discourse, and, in particular, with the language in which arguments are expressed. It introduces a systematic procedure for the analysis and assessment of arguments, which is designed to be a practical tool, and may be considered a pseudo-algorithm for argument evaluation. The first half of the book lays the theoretical groundwork, with a thorough examination of both the nature of language and the nature of argument. This leads to a definition of argumentation as reasoning expressed within a procedure, which itself yields the three frames of analysis used in the evaluation procedure: Process, Reasoning, and Expression. The second half begins with a detailed discussion of the concept of fallacy, with particular attention on fallacies of language, their origin and their effects. A new way of looking at fallacies emerges from these chapters, and it is that conception, together with the understanding of the nature of argumentation described in earlier sections, which ultimately provides the support for the Comprehensive Assessment Procedure for Natural Argumentation. The first two levels of this innovative procedure are outlined, while the third, that dealing with language, and involving the development of an Informal Argument Semantics, is fully described. The use of the system, and its power of analysis, are illustrated through the evaluation of a variety of examples of argumentative texts.

The Greek word eoikos can be translated in various ways. It can be used to describe similarity, plausibility or even suitability. This book explores the philosophical exploitation of its multiple meanings by three philosophers, Xenophanes, Parmenides and Plato. It offers new interpretations of the way that each employs the term to describe the status of his philosophy, tracing the development of this philosophical use of eoikos from the fallibilism of Xenophanes through the deceptive cosmology of Parmenides to Plato's Timaeus. The central premise of the book is that, in reflecting on the eoikos status of their accounts, Xenophanes, Parmenides and Plato are manipulating the contexts and connotations of the term as it has been used by their predecessors. By focusing on this continuity in the development of the philosophical use of eoikos, the book serves to enhance our understanding of the epistemology and methodology of Xenophanes, Parmenides and Plato's Timaeus.

What is the meaning of life? Does anything really matter? In the past few decades these questions, perennially associated with philosophy in the popular consciousness, have rightly retaken their place as central topics in the academy. In this major contribution, Nicholas Waghorn provides a sustained and rigorous elucidation of what it would take for lives to have significance. Bracketing issues about ways our lives could have more or less meaning, the focus is rather on the idea of ultimate meaning, the issue of whether a life can attain meaning that cannot be called into question. Waghorn sheds light on this most fundamental of existential problems through a detailed yet comprehensive examination of the notion of nothing, embracing classic and cutting-edge literature from both the analytic and Continental traditions. Central figures such as Heidegger, Carnap, Wittgenstein, Nozick and Nagel are drawn upon to anchor the discussion in some of the most influential discussion of recent philosophical history. In the process of relating our ideas concerning nothing to the problem of life's meaning, Waghorn's book touches upon a number of fundamental themes, including reflexivity and its relation to our conceptual limits, whether religion has any role to play in the question of life's meaning, and the nature and constraints of philosophical methodology. A number of major philosophical traditions are addressed, including phenomenology, poststructuralism, and classical and paraconsistent logics. In addition to providing the most thorough current discussion of ultimate meaning, it will serve to introduce readers to philosophical debates concerning the notion of nothing, and the appendix engaging religion will be of value to both philosophers and theologians.

This book examines the cogency and value of Nietzsche's idea of eternal recurrence, as an antidote to the nihilism resulting from the catastrophic event of 'the death of God'. Its significance to Nietzsche's philosophy as a whole (when presented either as an imaginative thought experiment, a cosmological hypothesis, or a poetic metaphor) is analysed, alongside the manifold criticisms the idea has attracted. In this original reading of eternal recurrence, McNeil explores the strength of metaphorical meaning contained within Heraclitean and Stoic cosmologies, revealing their influence on Nietzsche's own cosmology, along with their holistic approach to life which Nietzsche endorsed. Furthermore, an extensive critique of Heidegger's interpretation of eternal recurrence is given. McNeil argues that Heidegger ignores not only the life-affirming Dionysian aspects of the concept, but also the Heraclitean sense of play evident in the cosmology, and the importance of this for developing a positive, celebratory attitude towards our lives and creative projects.

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.

Hegel's critique of Early German Romanticism and its theory of irony resonates to the core of his own philosophy in the same way that Plato's polemics with the Sophists have repercussions that go to the centre of his thought. The Anti-Romantic examines Hegel's critique of Fr. Schlegel, Novalis and Schleiermacher. Hegel rarely mentions these thinkers by name and the texts dealing with them often exist on the periphery of his oeuvre. Nonetheless, individually, they represent embodiments of specific forms of irony: Schlegel, a form of critical individuality; Novalis, a form of sentimental nihilism; Schleiermacher, a monstrous hybrid of the other two. The strength of Hegel's polemical approach to these authors shows how irony itself represents for him a persistent threat to his own idea of systematic Science. This is so, we discover, because Romantic irony is more than a rival ideology; it is an actual form of discourse, one whose performative objectivity interferes with the objectivity of Hegel's own logos. Thus, Hegel's critique of irony allows us to reciprocally uncover a Hegelian theory of scientific discourse. Far from seeing irony as a form of consciousness overcome by Spirit, Hegel sees it as having become a pressing feature of his own contemporary world, as witnessed in the popularity of his Berlin rival, Schleiermacher. Finally, to the extent that ironic discourse seems, for Hegel, to imply a certain world beyond his own notion of modernity, we are left with the hypothesis that Hegel's critique of irony may be viewed as a critique of post-modernity.

French philosopher and Talmudic commentator Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995) has received considerable attention for his influence on philosophical and religious thought. In this book, Victoria Tahmasebi-Birgani provides the first examination of the applicability of Emmanuel Levinas' work to social and political movements. Investigating his ethics of responsibility and his critique of the Western liberal imagination, Tahmasebi-Birgani advances the moral, political, and philosophical debates on the radical implications of Levinas' work.

Emmanuel Levinas and the Politics of Non-Violence is the first book to closely consider the affinity between Levinas' ethical vision and Mohandas Gandhi's radical yet non-violent political struggle. Situating Levinas' insights within a transnational, transcontinental, and global framework, Tahmasebi-Birgani highlights Levinas' continued relevance in an age in which violence is so often resorted to in the name of "justice" and "freedom."

On the basis of the Thomist and Pietist tradition, Christian August Crusius (1715-1775) elaborated a philosophically challenging and influential alternative to the philosophy of Christian Wolff. For the first time, this edited collection offers a rigorous overview of the work of the Leipzig-based philosopher and theologian.

It is widely agreed that there is such a thing as sensory phenomenology and imagistic phenomenology. The central concern of the cognitive phenomenology debate is whether there is a distinctive "cognitive phenomenology"--that is, a kind of phenomenology that has cognitive or conceptual character in some sense that needs to be precisely determined. This volume presents new work by leading philosophers in the field, and addresses the question of whether conscious thought has cognitive phenomenology. It also includes a number of essays which consider whether cognitive phenomenology is part of conscious perception and conscious emotion.
Three broad themes run through the volume. First, some authors focus on the question of how the notion of cognitive phenomenology ought to be understood. How should the notion of cognitive phenomenology be defined? Are there different kinds of cognitive phenomenology? A second theme concerns the existence of cognitive phenomenology. Some contributors defend the existence of a distinctive cognitive phenomenology, whereas others deny it. The arguments for and against the existence of cognitive phenomenology raise questions concerning the nature of first-person knowledge of thought, the relationship between consciousness and intentionality, and the scope of the explanatory gap. A third theme concerns the implications of the cognitive phenomenology debate. What are the implications of the debate for accounts of our introspective access to conscious thought and for accounts of the very nature of conscious thought? Cognitive Phenomenology brings the debate to the forefront of philosophy, and provides a state-of-the-art account of the issues at stake.

The Syriac treatise published in the present volume is in many respects a unique text. Though it has been preserved anonymously, there remains little doubt that it belongs to Porphyry of Tyre. Accordingly, it enlarges our knowledge of the views of the most famous disciple of Plotinus. The text is an important witness to Platonist discussions on First Principles and on Plato's concept of Prime Matter in the Timaeus. It contains extensive quotations from Atticus, Severus, and Boethus. This text thus provides us with new textual witnesses to these philosophers, whose legacy remains very poorly attested and little known. Additionally, the treatise is a rare example of a Platonist work preserved in the Syriac language. The Syriac reception of Plato and Platonic teachings has left rather sparse textual traces, and the question of what precisely Syriac Christians knew about Plato and his philosophy remains a debated issue. The treatise provides evidence for the close acquaintance of Syriac scholars with Platonic cosmology and with philosophical commentaries on Plato's Timaeus.

Although the Greeks were responsible for the first systematic philosophy of which we have any record, they were not alone in the Mediterranean world and were happy to draw inspiration from other traditions; traditions that are now largely neglected by philosophers and scholars. This book tells the story of 'Greek Philosophy', paying due attention to its historical context and the contributions made by Egyptians, Hebrews, Persians and even barbarians from northern Europe. Stephen Clark provides a narrative history of the philosophical traditions that took shape over several centuries in the Mediterranean world and offers a comprehensive survey of this crucial period in the history of philosophy. The book includes a thorough historical and philosophical overview of all the key thinkers, events and ideas that characterized the period and explores in detail central themes such as the contest of gods and giants, the contrast between the reality and appearance, and the idea of the philosopher. Ideal for undergraduate students, this concise and accessible book provides a comprehensive guide to a fascinating period in the history of philosophy.>

SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER 'The most important book of the year' Daily Mail The brilliant and provocative new book from one of the world's foremost political writers 'The anti-Western revisionists have been out in force in recent years. It is high time that we revise them in turn...' In The War on the West, international bestselling author Douglas Murray asks: if the history of humankind is one of slavery, conquest, prejudice, genocide and exploitation, why are only Western nations taking the blame for it? It's become perfectly acceptable to celebrate the contributions of non-Western cultures, but discussing their flaws and crimes is called hate speech. What's more it has become acceptable to discuss the flaws and crimes of Western culture, but celebrating their contributions is also called hate speech. Some of this is a much-needed reckoning; however, some is part of a larger international attack on reason, democracy, science, progress and the citizens of the West by dishonest scholars, hatemongers, hostile nations and human-rights abusers hoping to distract from their ongoing villainy. In The War on the West, Douglas Murray shows the ways in which many well-meaning people have been lured into polarisation by lies, and shows how far the world's most crucial political debates have been hijacked across Europe and America. Propelled by an incisive deconstruction of inconsistent arguments and hypocritical activism, The War on the West is an essential and urgent polemic that cements Murray's status as one of the world's foremost political writers.