This book discusses the influence of creative work on human life, and the role it has played in shaping human civilization since antiquity. To do so, it analyzes the history of thought on creative work from three civilizations: Greek, Indian, and Chinese, as well as contemporary neurological studies on consciousness. According to the classical Greeks, humans are instinctively predisposed to use creative work to gain truth, wisdom and happiness; the Indians consider that Dharma (duty, morality, etc.) can be achieved only through work (karma); and for the Chinese, creative work is needed to attain the supreme wisdom (Dao). Modern studies on consciousness show that our brain creates a personal self-model (ego tunnel) when we learn things creatively, and developing such skills provides lifelong protection for the brain. In the 21st century, human involvement in creative work is declining as we use mechanized systems to gain more and more profit, but the wealth falls into the hands of the few superrich: the Plutonomy. As creative work is taken over by AI systems, human work is reduced to operating those machines, and this in turn leads to an exponential growth in the number of part-time workers (Precariat). The declining value of human life today is a consequence of this change in society. Further, reducing creative work means we have no way to distribute wealth, nor do we have any means to address problems like the lack of enthusiasm in the young; the health crisis due to lack of physical activity; or the environmental crisis due to the high demand for energy to run mechanized systems. This book explores these issues.

In The Domestication of Derrida, Lorenzo Fabbri argues that Rorty's powerful reading protocol is motivated by the necessity to contain the risks of Derrida's critique of Western philosophy and politics. Rorty claims that Derrida reduces philosophy to a production of private fantasies that do not have any political or epistemological relevance. Fabbri challenges such an aberrant appropriation by investigating the two key features of Rorty's privatization of deconstruction: the reduction of deconstructive writing to an example of merely autobiographical literature; and the idea that Derrida not only dismisses, but also mocks the desire to engage philosophy with political struggle. What is ultimately questioned in The Domestication of Derrida is the legitimacy of labelling deconstruction as a post-modern withdrawal from politics and theory. By discussing Derrida's resistance against the very possibility of theoretical and political ascetism, Fabbri shows that there is much more politics and philosophy in deconstruction than Rorty is willing to admit.

Daniel Russell examines Plato's subtle and insightful analysis of pleasure and explores its intimate connections with his discussions of value and human psychology. Russell offers a fresh perspective on how good things bear on happiness in Plato's ethics, and shows that, for Plato, pleasure cannot determine happiness because pleasure lacks a direction of its own. Plato presents wisdom as a skill of living that determines happiness by directing one's life as a whole, bringing about goodness in all areas of one's life, as a skill brings about order in its materials. The 'materials' of the skill of living are, in the first instance, not things like money or health, but one's attitudes, emotions, and desires where things like money and health are concerned. Plato recognizes that these 'materials' of the psyche are inchoate, ethically speaking, and in need of direction from wisdom. Among them is pleasure, which Plato treats not as a sensation but as an attitude with which one ascribes value to its object. However, Plato also views pleasure, once shaped and directed by wisdom, as a crucial part of a virtuous character as a whole. Consequently, Plato rejects all forms of hedonism, which allows happiness to be determined by a part of the psyche that does not direct one's life but is among the materials to be directed. At the same time, Plato is also able to hold both that virtue is sufficient for happiness, and that pleasure is necessary for happiness, not as an addition to one's virtue, but as a constituent of one's whole virtuous character itself. Plato therefore offers an illuminating role for pleasure in ethics and psychology, one to which we may be unaccustomed: pleasure emerges not as a sensation or even a mode of activity, but as an attitude - one of the ways in which we construe our world - and as such, a central part of every character.

Truth, etc. is a wide-ranging study of ancient logic based upon the John Locke lectures given by the eminent philosopher Jonathan Barnes in Oxford. Its six chapters discuss, first, certain ancient ideas about truth; secondly, the Aristotelian conception of predication; thirdly, various ideas about connectors which were developed by the ancient logicians and grammarians; fourthly, the notion of logical form, insofar as it may be discovered in the ancient texts; fifthly, the question of the 'justification of deduction'; and sixthly, the attitude which has been called logical utilitarianism and which restricts the scope of logic to those forms of inference which are or might be useful for scientific proofs. In principle, the book presupposes no knowledge of logic and no skill in ancient languages: all ancient texts are cited in English translation; and logical symbols and logical jargon are avoided so far as possible. There is no scholarly apparatus of footnotes, and no bibliography. It can be read in an armchair. Anyone interested in ancient philosophy, or in logic and its history, will find it interesting.

The reader will find a mystical and often magical self-realization throughout Chandler's working designs through both writing and art. The "Template of Time" is a collection of the actual statements, written verbatim by Chandler, as they were heard. Chandler Zedac does not trance which made it even more difficult to hear and interpret the statements. Many have been relieved of the pressures of believing that they were demon possessed or schizophrenic. Hearing the universal "voice" is happening to over half of the world, now, at a time when Man has shown that he is ready to "shed the old wineskins to prepare for the new wine in new skins."

One may feel the ease of the timelessness of dimensional science woven through the artwork, which was also under advisement by Chandler's communicator. This was in hopes of setting up for the reader a much broader understanding of whom he is in relationship to the surrounding Universe, and to prepare the reader for the masterworks of the Eternal Force within us all; to openly work within oneself, as well. For those who have already experienced the timelessness of the Listening Ear, the Masterworks will encourage and sustain you in knowing that you too are unfolding as you should be, and encourage you to take comfort in the daily responses of the Master Soul working in your everyday life-path.

In this seminal contribution to Kant studies, originally published in 1982, Karl Ameriks presented the first thorough survey and evaluation of Kant's theory of mind. It is now brought up to date with a substantial new Preface and Postscript, as well as additional notes and references; this expanded edition will enhance the book's continued value for today's Kantians and philosophers of mind.

'splendid ... not only the best commentary we have in English on Kant's philosophy of mind, but one of the most stimulating perspectives on Kant's whole philosophy to appear for some time.'|s Times Literary Supplement

This complete collection of Ralph Waldo Emerson's essays offers the towering wisdom and intellectual prowess of the author in hardcover. This edition contains both series of Emerson's most famous essays, filled with quotable passages concerning different aspects of life. Herein are texts such as Nature and The Oversoul, free of embellishments or abridgment. Owing to their unique style, the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson have found an appreciative and enduring audience. Seen by many as the guiding light for the individualist philosophy that was to underpin the astonishing growth of the United States, Emerson's essays are a superb demonstration of the rigorous thought and intellectual contributions he made to the world around him. Ralph Waldo Emerson was a tireless and diligent public intellectual who would deliver over 1500 lectures over the course of his career, educating thousands of people within academia and wider society about his beliefs, principles and personal philosophy.

The Cambridge Platonist, Henry More (1614-1687), was a dominant figure on the 17th-century intellectual scene. His life spanned both the political revolutions of the English Civil War and its aftermath and the intellectual revolution in 17th-century science and philosophy. More was highly regarded in his own day as a metaphysician, although the combination of receptivity to the new (such as his admiration of Galileo, Descartes and Boyle) and defence of traditional thinking (notably his belief in witchcraft) makes him a difficult figure to assess today. The heterodoxy of his theological views notwithstanding, More was an important spokesman for moderation within the Anglican Church after the Restoration, and a key figure in the Latitudinarian movement. This text is the only biographical account of him by one of his contemporaries. The almost hagiographical tone is ample testimony to the high regard in which More was held by his admirers. Ward's "Life" is an important document of intellectual and cultural history which testifies to the continuing impact of More's ideas in the Enlightenment. Among other topics, Ward's biography registers the impact of Quakerism in the late-17th century and includes important details about More's "heroine pupil", Anne Conway. The present edition prints both the only modern edition of the printed part of Ward's account first published in 1710, together with the manuscript Account of More's writings.

This book presents a multidisciplinary overview of a little known interethnic conflict in the southernmost part of the Americas: the tensions between the Mapuche indigenous people and the settlers of European descent in the Araucania region, in southern Chile. Politically autonomous during the colonial period, the Mapuche had their land confiscated, their population decimated and the survivors displaced and relocated as marginalized and poor peasants by Chilean white settlers at the end of the nineteenth century, when Araucania was transformed in a multi-ethnic region marked by numerous tensions between the marginalized indigenous population and the dominant Chileans of European descent. This contributed volume presents a collection of papers which delve into some of the intercultural dilemmas posed by these complex interethnic relations. These papers were originally published in Spanish and French and provide a sample of the research activities of the Nucleo de Estudios Interetnicos e Interculturales (NEII) at the Universidad Catolica de Temuco, in the capital of Araucania. The NEII research center brings together scholars from different fields: sociocultural anthropology, sociolinguistics, ethno-literature, intercultural education, intercultural philosophy, ethno-history and translation studies to produce innovative research in intercultural and interethnic relations. The chapters in this volume present a sample of this work, focusing on three main topics: The ambivalence between the inclusion and exclusion of indigenous peoples in processes of nation-building. The challenges posed by the incorporation of intercultural practices in the spheres of language, education and justice. The limitations of a functional notion of interculturality based on eurocentric thought and neoliberal economic rationality. Intercultural Studies from Southern Chile: Theoretical and Empirical Approaches will be of interest to anthropologists, linguists, historians, philosophers, educators and a range of other social scientists interested in intercultural and interethnic studies.

This book participates in the ongoing debate about the alleged "death of theory" and the current post-theoretical condition, arguing that the "finitude" of theoretical projects does not mean "end", but rather contingency and transformation of thinking, beyond irreconcilable doctrines. Contributors from different cultural and scholarly backgrounds and based in three different continents propose new areas of investigation and interpretive possibilities, reopening dialogues with past and present discourses from a plurality of perspectives and locations. After a first section that reassesses the status and scopes of critique, theory, and literature, the book foregrounds new or neglected critical vocabulary, literary paradigms, and narrative patterns to reread texts at the intersection with other branches of the humanities-history, philosophy, religion, and pedagogy. It then explores geopolitical, cultural, and epistemological domains that have been historically and ideologically overdetermined (such as postsocialist, postcolonial, and cosmopolitan spaces), recodifying them as unstable sites of both conflicts and convergences. By acknowledging the spatio-temporal and cultural delimitations of any intellectual practice, the book creates awareness of our own partiality and incompleteness, but treats boundaries as zones of contact, exchange, and conceptual mobility that promote crossings and connections.

This book applies phenomenological methodology to examine the transformations of messages as they pass from the mind to the linear world of human speech, and then back again. Rapid development of linguistic science in the second half of the 20th century, and cognitive science in the beginning of the 21st century has brought us through various stages of natural human language analysis and comprehension - from deep structures, transformational grammar and behaviorism to cognitive linguistics, theory of encapsulation, and mentalism. Thus, drawing upon new developments in cognitive science, philosophy and hermeneutics, the author reveals how to obtain the real vision of life lurking behind the spoken word. Applying methodology introduced by Edmund Husserl and developed by Martin Heidegger, the author examines how we can see the 'living' and dynamic essence of speech hidden in the world of linear linguistic strings and casual utterances. This uniquely researched work will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of cognitive stylistics, pragmatics and the psychology of language.

This book explores the phenomenological investigations of Edith Stein by critically contextualising her role within the phenomenological movement and assessing her accounts of empathy, sociality, and personhood. Despite the growing interest that surrounds contemporary research on empathy, Edith Stein's phenomenological investigations have been largely neglected due to a historical tradition that tends to consider her either as Husserl's assistant or as a martyr. However, in her phenomenological research, Edith Stein pursued critically the relation between phenomenology and psychology, focusing on the relation between affectivity, subjectivity, and personhood. Alongside phenomenologists like Max Scheler, Kurt Stavenhagen, and Hedwig Conrad-Martius, Stein developed Husserl's method, incorporating several original modifications that are relevant for philosophy, phenomenology, and ethics. Drawing on recent debates on empathy, emotions, and collective intentionality as well as on original inquiries and interpretations, the collection articulates and develops new perspectives regarding Edith Stein's phenomenology. The volume includes an appraisal of Stein's philosophical relation to Edmund Husserl and Max Scheler, and develops further the concepts of empathy, sociality, and personhood. These essays demonstrate the significance of Stein's phenomenology for contemporary research on intentionality, emotions, and ethics. Gathering together contributions from young researchers and leading scholars in the fields of phenomenology, social ontology, and history of philosophy, this collection provides original views and critical discussions that will be of interest also for social philosophers and moral psychologists.

This book introduces readers to global brain singularity through a logical meditation on the temporal dynamics of the universal process. Global brain singularity is conceived of as a future metasystem of human civilization that represents a qualitatively higher coherence of order. To better understand the potential of this phenomenon, the book begins with an overview of universal history. The focus then shifts to the structure of human systems, and the notion that contemporary global civilization must mediate the emergence of a commons that will transform the future of politics, economics and psychosocial life in general. In this context the book presents our species as biocultural evolutionary agents attempting to create a novel and independent domain of technocultural evolution that affords us new levels of freedom. Lastly, the book underscores the internal depths of the present moment, structured by a division between subject and object. The nature of the interaction between subject and object would appear to govern the mechanics of a spiritual process that is key to understanding the meaning of singularity inclusive of observers. Given its scope, the book will appeal to readers interested in systems approaches to the emerging world society, especially historians, philosophers and social scientists.

This interdisciplinary book ties the historical work of Descartes to his successors through current research and critical overviews on the neuroscience of consciousness, the brain, and cognition. This text is the first historical survey to focus on the cohesions and discontinuities between historical and contemporary thinkers working in philosophy, physiology, psychology, and neuroscience. The book introduces and analyzes early discussions of consciousness, such as: metaphysical alternatives to scientific explanations of consciousness and its connection to brain activity; claims about the possibilities and limits of neuroscientific accounts of consciousness and cognition; and the proposition of a "non-reductive naturalism" concerning phenomenal consciousness and rationality. The author assesses the contributions of early philosophers and scientists on brain, consciousness and cognition, among them: Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Newton, Haller, Kant, Fechner, Helmholtz and du Bois-Reymond. The work of these pioneers is related to that of modern researchers in physiology, psychology, neuroscience and philosophy of mind, including: Freud, Hilary Putnam, Herbert Feigl, Gerald Edelman, Jean-Pierre Changeux, Daniel Dennett and David Chalmers, amongst others. This text appeals to researchers and advanced students in the field.

This book concentrates on the conversation between Socrates and Gorgias which takes place in the first part of Plato's Gorgias. Scholars have tended to concentrate on the following two conversations held by Socrates with Polus and, especially, with Callicles. This first, relatively short, conversation is usually taken to be a kind of preface coming before Plato's 'real' philosophy. The present study challenges this assumption, arguing that the conversation between Socrates and Gorgias actually anticipates the message of the whole dialogue, which concerns the essence of rhetoric and its implications.

Andrews Reath presents a selection of his best essays on _ various features of Kant's moral psychology and moral _ theory, with particular emphasis on his conception of _ rational agency and his conception of autonomy. _ The opening essays explore different elements of Kant's _ views about motivation, including his account of respect for morality as the distinctive moral motive and his view of the principle of happiness as a representation of the shared structure of non-moral choice. These essays stress the unity of Kant's moral psychology by arguing that moral and non-moral considerations motivate in essentially the same way. Several of the essays develop an original approach to Kant's conception of autonomy that emphasizes the political metaphors found throughout Kant's writings on ethics. They argue that autonomy is best interpreted not as a _ psychological capacity, but as a kind of sovereignty: in _ claiming that moral agents have autonomy, Kant regards them as a kind of sovereign legislator with the power to give _ moral law through their willing. The final essays explore _ some of the implications of this conception of autonomy _ elsewhere in Kant's moral thought, arguing that his Formula of Universal Law uses this conception of autonomy to _ generate substantive moral principles and exploring the _ connection between Kantian self-legislation and duties to _ oneself. The collection offers revised versions of several previously published essays, as well as two new papers, 'Autonomy of _ the Will as the Foundation of Morality' and 'Agency and _ Universal Law'. It will be of interest to all students and_ scholars of Kant, and to many moral philosophers. _ _

Contributions to Philosophy was published posthumously in 1989. The book casts Heidegger's philosophy in a wholly new light against the received opinion of Being and Time, as well as forming an important bridge between Heidegger's earlier and later works. Jason Powell's detailed and informative examination of this major work is extremely timely. Powell situates Contributions to Philosophy in the context of Heidegger's entire corpus and particularly alongside the other works he was writing in the 1930s. He shows how this important book continues to define the term 'Sein' ('Being') and further develops 'life' (here in a religious sense) as a central theme in Heidegger's work. Powell provides the reader with an overview of the significance of Contributions, its genesis and production, as well as current interpretations and its position in the received body of work on Heidegger. He explores in particular how this work relates to Heidegger magnum opus, Being and Time, and argues that Contributions was in fact the next step in Heidegger's major philosophical project as set out in his first major work.

On Location is the first book devoted to a highly significant doctrine in the history of philosophy and science--Aristotle's account of place in the Physics. Ben Morison presents an authoritative exposition and defence of this account of what it is for something to be somewhere, and demonstrates its enduring philosophical interest and value.

This book investigates intersections between the philosophy of nature and Hellenism in British and German Romanticism, focusing primarily on five central literary/philosophical figures: Friedrich Schelling, Friedrich Hoelderlin, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Percy Shelley, and Lord Byron. Near the end of the eighteenth century, poets and thinkers reinvented Greece as a site of aesthetic and ontological wholeness, a move that corresponded with a refiguring of nature as a dynamically interconnected web in which each part is linked to the living whole. This vision of a vibrant materiality that allows us to become "one with all that lives," along with a Romantic version of Hellenism that wished to reassemble the broken fragments of an imaginary Greece as both site and symbol of this all-unity, functioned as a two-pronged response to subjective anxiety that arose in the wake of Kant and Fichte. The result is a form of resistance to an idealism that appeared to leave little room for a world of beauty, love, and nature beyond the self.

Ruth Glasner presents an illuminating reappraisal of Averroes' physics. Glasner is the first scholar to base her interpretation on the full range of Averroes' writings, including texts that are extant only in Hebrew manuscripts and have not been hitherto studied. She reveals that Averroes changed his interpretation of the basic notions of physics - the structure of corporeal reality and the definition of motion - more than once. After many hesitations he offers a bold new interpretation of physics which Glasner calls 'Aristotelian atomism'. Ideas that are usually ascribed to scholastic scholars, and others that were traced back to Averroes but only in a very general form, are shown not only to have originated with him, but to have been fully developed by him into a comprehensive and systematic physical system. Unlike earlier Greek or Muslim atomistic systems, Averroes' Aristotelian atomism endeavours to be fully scientific, by Aristotelian standards, and still to provide a basis for an indeterministic natural philosophy. Commonly known as 'the commentator' and usually considered to be a faithful follower of Aristotle, Averroes is revealed in his commentaries on the Physics to be an original and sophisticated philosopher.

This book provides a timely, compelling, multidisciplinary critique of the largely tacit set of assumptions funding Modernity in the West. A partnership between Michael Polanyi and Charles Taylor's thought promises to cast the errors of the past in a new light, to graciously show how these errors can be amended, and to provide a specific cartography of how we can responsibly and meaningfully explore new possibilities for ethics, political society, and religion in a post-modern modernity.

The Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, previously known as SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), has published over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly volumes since 1955 as part of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford. International in focus, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment volumes cover wide-ranging aspects of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, from gender studies to political theory, and from economics to visual arts and music, and are published in English or French.