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Books > Philosophy > Western philosophy
By the time Martin Heidegger passed away on May 26th, 1976, he had
become the most important and controversial philosopher of his age.
While many of his former students had become important philosophers
and thinkers in their own right, Heidegger also inspired countless
others, like Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Jean-Paul
Sartre. The second edition of the Historical Dictionary of
Heidegger's Philosophy is an historical perspective on the
development of Heidegger's thought in all its nuances and facets.
Schalow and Denker cast light on the historical influences that
shaped the thinker and his time through a chronology; an
introductory essay; a bibliography; appendixes that include German
and Greek to English glossaries of terms and a complete listing of
Heidegger's writings, lectures, courses, and seminars; and a
cross-referenced dictionary section offering over 600 entries on
concepts, people, works, and technical terms. This volume is an
invaluable resource for student and scholar alike.
Dathorne's approach is basically literary and historical, but he
has also developed his argument around politics, popular culture,
language, and even landscape architecture. He looks at Europe as a
mental construct of philosophies and politics that both the English
and European Americans identified with Greece and Rome. Dathorne
shows how much of what we think of as European heritage is actually
of African and/or Islamic background. He shows the founders of the
U.S. to be idealistic Athenian-type elites, unlikely to allow
humanity to govern as a citizenship. The book discusses the
literary history of the ex-colony of America with its own special
lens, showing how again and again the makers of the American myth
failed to come to terms with the multicultural realities.
Gilles Deleuze is considered one of the most important French
philosophers of the twentieth century. Eleanor Kaufman situates
Deleuze in relation to others of his generation, such as Jean-Paul
Sartre, Pierre Klossowski, Maurice Blanchot, and Claude
Levi-Strauss, and she engages the provocative readings of Deleuze
by Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek.
"Deleuze, The Dark Precursor" is organized around three themes
that critically overlap: dialectic, structure, and being. Kaufman
argues that Deleuze's work is deeply concerned with these concepts,
even when he advocates for the seemingly opposite notions of
univocity, nonsense, and becoming. By drawing on scholastic thought
and reading somewhat against the grain, Kaufman suggests that these
often-maligned themes allow for a nuanced, even positive reflection
on apparently negative states of being, such as extreme inertia.
This attention to the negative or minor category has implications
that extend beyond philosophy and into feminist theory, film,
American studies, anthropology, and architecture.
Aristotle's theory of eternal continuous motion and his argument
from everlasting change and motion to the existence of an unmoved
primary cause of motion, provided in book VIII of his Physics, is
one of the most influential and persistent doctrines of ancient
Greek philosophy. Nevertheless, the exact wording of Aristotle's
discourse is doubtful and contentious at many places. The present
critical edition of Ishaq ibn Hunayn's Arabic translation (9th c.)
is supposed to replace the faulty edition by A. Badawi and aims at
contributing to the clarification of these textual difficulties by
means of a detailed collation of the Arabic text with the most
important Greek manuscripts, supported by comprehensive Greek and
Arabic glossaries.
This book is exclusively written on the foundation of sacred books
called Bible and on the experience of many good and great people,
for man who was created for hard work, accordingly to its given
gift calls talent. (1Co. 12:4) Which is precisely given accordingly
to everybody's abilities. (1Co. 12:7). To do good work and to
become son of living God (Jn. 15:15) and eventually on the end to
become god, (Ps. 82:6) when come time to give its record and hear;
well done my faithful son, enter into my rest. In this book it is
not my intention to teach anyone but only to incite everyone to
think about, to speak about and to recommend in order improving
life for entire humanity independent, of race, color, ethnicity,
languages or religion for everyone to become in agreement according
to its given gift, which is powerful Spirit of love, what we call
talent. It is not my idea that proves that, but myriad of humans as
modern prophets that by their work witnessed for real life directed
by the powerful Spirit of love call talent is only one way only one
direction toward goodness for entire humanity, which pleases only
One whom we call Great Creator. We may call it as universal secular
religion or secular ideology as you wish which is universal and
founded on free gift, given talent and responsibility while divine
religion is religion of individuals gathered in the congregation
founded on faith and obedience, while both are blessed with the
power of love. It is true and is easy to understand that life that
is directed by the given talent as a life purpose for the love
toward One who sent you to do it and for devoted love for entire
humanity as a fulfi llment of fi rst law to love your Great Creator
and not only your neighbor but entire humanity to be like sun that
shine from above for all and rain that comes for above for all as a
HEAVENLY WISDOM An end I would like to hear from you about your
opinion and suggestion in order to further improve that given
program suggested from many and for goodness for entire humanity.
Dr. Dragan P. Bogunovic MD FAAFP. Bogdani
Contemporary philosophers frequently assume that Kant never
seriously engaged with Spinoza or Spinozism-certainly not before
the break of Der Pantheismusstreit, or within the Critique of Pure
Reason. Offering an alternative reading of key pre-critical texts
and to some of the Critique's most central chapters, Omri Boehm
challenges this common assumption. He argues that Kant not only is
committed to Spinozism in early essays such as "The One Possible
Basis" and "New Elucidation," but also takes up Spinozist
metaphysics as Transcendental Realism's most consistent form in the
Critique of Pure Reason. The success -- or failure -- of Kant's
critical projects must be evaluated in this light. Boehm here
examines The Antinomies alongside Spinoza's Substance Monism and
his theory of freedom. Similarly, he analyzes the refutation of the
Ontological Argument in parallel with Spinoza's Causa-sui. More
generally, Boehm places the Critique of Pure Reason's separation of
Thought from Being and Is from Ought in dialogue with the Ethics'
collapse of Being, Is and Ought into Thought.
Two major interpretations of Mendelssohn's achievements have
attained prominence in recent works. One interpretation, defended
most recently by David Sorkin and Edward Breuer, casts Mendelssohn
as a Jewish traditionalist who uses the language of enlightened
German philosophy to bolster his pre-modern religious beliefs. The
other interpretation, defended by Allan Arkush, casts Mendelssohn
as a radical Deist who defends Judaism exoterically in order to
avoid arousing opposition from his co-religionists while
facilitating their social integration into enlightened European
society. In Faith and Freedom, Michah Gottlieb stakes out a middle
position. He argues that Mendelssohn defends pre-modern Jewish
religious concepts sincerely, but in so doing, unconsciously gives
them a humanistic valence appropriate to life in a diverse,
enlightened society. Gottlieb sees the Pantheism Controversy as
part of a broader assessment of Mendelssohn's theological-political
philosophy, framed in terms of Mendelssohn's relation to his two
greatest Jewish philosophical predecessors, Moses Maimonides
(1138-1204) and Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677). While Mendelssohn's
relation to Maimonides and Spinoza has been discussed sporadically,
Faith and Freedom is the first book-length treatment of this
subject. The connection is particularly instructive as both
Maimonides and Spinoza wrote major theological-political treatises
and exercised profound influences on Mendelssohn. Not surprisingly,
Mendelssohn is deeply ambivalent about both of these figures. He
reveres Maimonides for what he sees as his synthesis of Judaism
with secular knowledge, while seeming deeply disturbed by
Maimonides's elitism, his equivocation regarding many of the tenets
of theism, his espousing religious coercion, and his intolerant
view of Gentiles. As for Spinoza, Mendelssohn respects him as a
model for how a Jew can fruitfully contribute to science and
philosophy and be a model of ethical rectitude. But Mendelssohn
objects to Spinoza's atheism, advocacy of state religion, debunking
of Jewish chosenness, and rejection of Jewish law. For Mendelssohn,
reason best preserves human dignity and freedom by upholding the
individual's right to arrive at truth on their own and determine
their own beliefs independently of all authority. As such, reason
demands that the state respect diversity of thought and religious
expression. Mendelssohn interprets faith in the Jewish sense as
trust in God's providential goodness, arguing that reason affirms
this as well. But he recognizes the difficulty of establishing
metaphysical truth rationally and so in his final works adumbrates
a form of religious pragmatism. The faith-reason debate rages again
today. Gottlieb explores Mendelssohn's theological-political
thought with an eye to axiological and political dimensions of the
debate.
In this part of the Posterior Analytics, Aristotle elaborates his
assessment of how universal truths of science can be scientifically
explained as inevitable in demonstrative proofs. But he introduces
complications: some sciences discuss phenomena that can only be
explained by higher sciences and again sometimes we reason out a
cause from an effect, rather than an effect from a cause.
Philoponus takes these issues further. Reasoning from particular to
universal is the direction taken by induction, and in mathematics
reasoning from a theorem to the higher principles from which it
follows is considered particularly valuable. It corresponds to the
direction of analysis, as opposed to synthesis. This volume
contains an English translation of Philoponus' commentary, a
detailed introduction, extensive explanatory notes and a
bibliography.
How was Voltaire's legacy seen in France between 1830 and 1900? To
what extent did the nineteenth century reinvent Voltaire? Viewed
during these years through the distorting lens of the French
Revolution, Voltaire was vilified and venerated in roughly equal
measure: as an icon of republican anticlericalism on the one hand,
and a deeply Christian reformer on the other. This wide-ranging
study uses the rich sources of the Parisian periodical and daily
press to examine the evolution of Voltaire's legacy as it was
contested through caricature and statuary as much as through
editions and criticism of his works.
Prolegomena to a Carnal Hermeneutics introduces the importance of
body politics from both Eastern and Western perspectives. Hwa Yol
Jung begins with Giambattista Vico's anti-Cartesianism as the birth
of the discipline. He then explores the homecoming of Greek mousike
(performing arts), which included oral poetry, dance, drama, and
music; Mikhail Bakhtin's dialogical body politics; the making of
body politics in Hannah Arendt, Emmanuel Levinas, and Luce
Irigaray; Marshall McLuhan's transversal and embodied philosophy of
communication; and transversal geophilosophy. This tour de force
will be an engaging read for anyone interested in the above
thinkers, as well as for students and scholars of comparative
philosophy, communication theory, environmental philosophy,
political philosophy, or continental philosophy
Maine de Biran's work has had an enormous influence on the
development of French Philosophy - Henri Bergson called him the
greatest French metaphysician since Descartes and Malebranche,
Jules Lachelier referred to him as the French Kant, and
Royer-Collard called him simply 'the master of us all' - and yet
the philosopher and his work remain unknown to many English
speaking readers. From Ravaisson and Bergson, through to the
phenomenology of major figures such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty,
Michel Henry, and Paul Ricoeur, Biran's influence is evident and
acknowledged as a major contribution. The notion of corps propre,
so important to phenomenology in the twentieth century, originates
in his thought. His work also had a huge impact on the distinction
between the virtual and the actual as well as the concepts of
effort and puissance, enormously important to the development of
Deleuze's and Foucault's work. This volume, the first English
translation of Maine de Biran in nearly a century, introduces
Anglophone readers to the work of this seminal thinker. The
Relationship Between the Physical and the Moral in Man is an
expression of Biran's mature 'spiritualism' and philosophy of the
will as well as perhaps the clearest articulation of his
understanding of what would later come to be called the mind-body
problem. In this text Biran sets out forcefully his case for the
autonomy of mental or spiritual life against the reductive
explanatory power of the physicalist natural sciences. The
translation is accompanied by critical essays from experts in
France and the United Kingdom, situating Biran's work and its
reception in its proper historical and intellectual context.
This work offers a concise and accessible introduction to the key
empiricists of the 17th and 18th centuries, ideal for undergraduate
students. Empiricism is one of the most widely discussed topics in
philosophy. Students regularly encounter the well known opposition
between rationalism and empiricism - the clash between reason and
experience as sources of knowledge and ideas - at an early stage in
their studies. "The Empiricists: A Guide for the Perplexed" offers
a clear and thorough guide to the key thinkers responsible for
developing this central concept in the history of philosophy. The
book focuses on the canonical figures of the empiricist movement,
Locke, Berkeley and Hume, but also explores the contributions made
by other key figures such as Bacon, Hobbes, Boyle and
Newton.Laurence Carlin presents the views of these hugely
influential thinkers in the context of the Scientific Revolution,
the intellectual movement in which they emerged, and explores in
detail the philosophical issues that were central to their work.
Specifically designed to meet the needs of students seeking a
thorough understanding of the topic, this book is the ideal guide
to a key concept in the history of philosophy. "Continuum's Guides
for the Perplexed" are clear, concise and accessible introductions
to thinkers, writers and subjects that students and readers can
find especially challenging - or indeed downright bewildering.
Concentrating specifically on what it is that makes the subject
difficult to grasp, these books explain and explore key themes and
ideas, guiding the reader towards a thorough understanding of
demanding material.
Winner - AERA 2011 Outstanding Book Award Jacques Rancire:
Education, Truth, Emancipation demonstrates the importance of
Rancires work for educational theory, and in turn, it shows just
how central Rancires educational thought is to his work in
political theory and aesthetics. Charles Bingham and Gert Biesta
illustrate brilliantly how philosophy can benefit from Rancires
particular way of thinking about education, and go on to offer
their own provocative account of the relationship between
education, truth, and emancipation. Including a new essay by
Rancire himself, this book is a must-read for scholars of social
theory and all who profess to educate.
The Kantian Aesthetic explains the kind of perceptual knowledge
involved in aesthetic judgments. It does so by linking Kant's
aesthetics to a critically upgraded account of his theory of
knowledge. This upgraded theory emphasizes those conceptual and
imaginative structures which Kant terms, respectively, "categories"
and "schemata." By describing examples of aesthetic judgment, it is
shown that these judgments must involve categories and fundamental
schemata (even though Kant himself, and most commentators after
him, have not fully appreciated the fact). It is argued, in turn,
that this shows the aesthetic to be not just one kind of
pleasurable experience amongst others, but one based on factors
necessary to objective knowledge and personal identity, and which,
indeed, itself plays a role in how these capacities develop.
In order to explain how individual aesthetic judgments are
justified, and the aesthetic basis of art, however, the Kantian
position just outlined has to be developed further. This is done by
exploring some of his other ideas concerning how critical
comparisons inform our cultivation of taste, and art's relation to
genius. By linking the points made earlier to a more developed
account of this horizon of critical comparisons, a Kantian approach
can be shown to be both a satisfying and comprehensive explanation
of the cognitive basis of aesthetic experiences. It is shown also
that the approach can even cover some of the kinds of avant-garde
works which were thought previously to limit its relevance.
What does it mean to "live without why"? This was the advice of
Meister Eckhart (ca. 1260-1328), both in his Latin treatises to
philosophers and theologians and in his German sermons to nuns and
ordinary lay persons. He seems to have meant that we should live
and act out of justice or goodness and not in order to gain some
reward for our deeds. This message was received with indignation by
the Church hierarchy and was condemned by the Pope in 1329. How did
Eckhart come to formulate it? And why was it so controversial? John
M. Connolly addresses these questions by locating Eckhart's
thinking about how to live within the mainstream synthesis of
Christian and classical thought formulated in the High Middle Ages.
He calls the classical Greek moral consensus "teleological
eudaimonism," according to which correct living coincides with the
attainment of happiness (eudaimonia). This involves living a life
marked by the practice of the virtues, which in turn requires a
consistent desire for the correct goal in life. This desire is the
core notion of will. In late antiquity Augustine drew on this
tradition in formulating his views about how Christians should
live. This required grafting onto classical eudaimonism a set of
distinctively scriptural notions such as divine providence,
original sin, redemption, and grace. In the 13th century these
ideas were systematized by Thomas Aquinas in his will-centered
moral theology. Eckhart claimed that this tradition was profoundly
mistaken. Far from being a wild-eyed mystic or visionary, he argued
trenchantly from classical philosophical principles and the
Christian scriptures. Connolly proposes that Eckhart's views, long
obscured by the papal condemnation, deserve reconsideration today.
"This book is a signal contribution to ancient and medieval
philosophy. By putting Eckhart into conversation with his
predecessors (i.e., Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas), Connolly
does a fine job in identifying where Eckhart makes an original-and
still viable-contribution to moral thought in general. This is a
remarkable work, the product of long and careful thought, as well
as being clearly presented. " -Bernard McGinn, Naomi Shenstone
Donnelley Professor Emeritus of Historical Theology and of the
History of Christianity in the Divinity School and the Committees
on Medieval Studies and on General Studies, University of Chicago
"It would appear that Connolly has written the right book at the
right moment. Through his work, the English-speaking world can
become finally acquainted with the academic discussion of the last
decades concerning Eckhart and can furthermore have an original and
text grounded interpretation of a relevant section of his
philosophical thought." -Loris Sturlese, Professor of Medieval
Philosophy, Universita del Salento
This study focuses on the metaphysics of the great Arabic
philosopher Avicenna (or Ibn Sina, d. 1037 C.E.). More
specifically, it delves into Avicenna's theory of quiddity or
essence, a topic which seized the attention of thinkers both during
the medieval and modern periods. Building on recent contributions
in Avicennian studies, this book proposes a new and comprehensive
interpretation of Avicenna's theory of 'the pure quiddity' (also
known as 'the quiddity in itself') and of its ontology. The study
provides a careful philological analysis of key passages gleaned
from the primary sources in Arabic and a close philosophical
contextualization of Avicenna's doctrines in light of the legacy of
ancient Greek philosophy in Islam and the early development of
Arabic philosophy (falsafah) and theology (kalam). The study pays
particular attention to how Avicenna's theory of quiddity relates
to the ancient Greek philosophical discussion about the universals
or common things and Mu'tazilite ontology. Its main thesis is that
Avicenna articulated a sophisticated doctrine of the ontology of
essence in light of Greek and Bahshamite sources, which decisively
shaped subsequent intellectual history in Islam and the Latin West.
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