Humor has been praised by philosophers and poets as a balm to soothe the sorrows that outrageous fortune's slings and arrows cause inevitably, if not incessantly, to each and every one of us. In mundane life, having a sense of humor is seen not only as a positive trait of character, but as a social prerequisite, without which a person's career and mating prospects are severely diminished, if not annihilated. However, humor is much more than this, and so much else. In particular, humor can accompany cruelty, inform it, sustain it, and exemplify it. Therefore, in this book, we provide a comprehensive, reasoned exploration of the vast literature on the concepts of humor and cruelty, as these have been tackled in Western philosophy, humanities, and social sciences, especially psychology. Also, the apparent cacophony of extant interpretations of these two concepts is explained as the inevitable and even useful result of the polysemy inherent to all common-sense concepts, in line with the understanding of concepts developed by M. Polanyi in the 20th century. Thus, a thorough, nuanced grasp of their complex mutual relationship is established, and many platitudes affecting today's received views, and scholarship, are cast aside.

The culmination of Eliezer Schweid's life-work as a Jewish intellectual historian, this five-volume work provides a comprehensive, interdisciplinary account of the major thinkers and movements in modern Jewish thought, in the context of general philosophy and Jewish social-political historical developments, with extensive primary source excerpts. Volume Two, "The Birth of the Jewish Historical Studies and the Modern Jewish Religious Movements," discusses the major Jewish thinkers of central and eastern Europe before 1881, in connection with the movements they fostered: German-Jewish Wissenschaft (Zunz), Reform (Formstecher, Samuel Hirsch, Geiger), Neo-Orthodoxy (S. D. Luzzatto, Steinheim, Samson Raphael Hirsch), Positive-Historical (Frankel, Graetz), and Neo-Haredi (Kalischer, Malbim, Hayyim Volozhiner, Salanter). In addition, extensive attention is given to the thinkers of the east-European Haskalah, both earlier (Levinsohn, Rubin, Schorr, Mieses, Abraham Krochmal) and later proto-Zionist thinkers (Zweifel, Smolenskin, Pines, Lilienblum).

Experimental philosophy has blossomed into a variety of philosophical fields including ethics, epistemology, metaphysics and philosophy of language. But there has been very little experimental philosophical research in the domain of philosophy of religion. Advances in Religion, Cognitive Science, and Experimental Philosophy demonstrates how cognitive science of religion has the methodological and conceptual resources to become a form of experimental philosophy of religion. Addressing a wide variety of empirical claims that are of interest to philosophers and psychologists of religion, a team of psychologists and philosophers apply data from the psychology of religion to important problems in the philosophy of religion including the psychology of religious diversity; the psychology of substance dualism; the problem of evil and the relation between religious belief and empathy; and the cognitive science explaining the formation of intuitions that unwittingly guide philosophers of religion when formulating arguments. Bringing together authors and researchers who have made important contributions to interdisciplinary research on religion in the last decade, Advances in Religion, Cognitive Science, and Experimental Philosophy provides new ways of approaching core philosophical and psychological problems.

In Self-Identity and Powerlessness, Alice Koubova proposes a conception of human existence that does not essentially depend on the definition of self-identity. The author shows that the philosophical stress on human identity fails to grasp essential aspects of human existence. By emphasizing the moments of Dasein's powerlessness in Heidegger's fundamental ontology, she develops - in her analysis of various philosophers, literary examples, and social psychology -an original phenomenology of alternation of existence and affair. How necessary is identity for thinking? Are we capable of philosophical thought even when we have neither ourselves, nor the world under our full control? Is it possible to relax, become powerless, and yet think precisely? These questions are to be answered in this book.

The work of Lorenzo Valla (1406-57) has enjoyed renewed attention in recent years, as have new critical editions of his texts. One of the most interesting interpreters of Valla, Salvatore I. Camporeale, O.P., had a following among scholars who read Italian, but very little of his work saw the light in English before his death in 2002. This book presents two of Camporeale's studies on Valla in English, which examine in detail two of Valla's works: his treatise on the Donation of Constantine (undoubtedly the work for which Valla is best known) and his Encomium of Saint Thomas Aquinas, delivered publicly in the last year of Valla's life and, in Camporeale's reading, summing up Valla's multi-faceted thought.

This volume is devoted to the natural philosopher Bernardino Telesio (1509-1588) and his place in the scientific debates of the Renaissance. Telesio's thought is emblematic of Renaissance culture in its aspiration towards universality; the volume deals with the roots and reception of his vistas from an interdisciplinary perspective ranging from the history of philosophy to that of physics, astronomy, meteorology, medicine, and psychology. The editor, Pietro Daniel Omodeo and leading specialists of intellectual history introduce Telesio's conceptions to English-speaking historians of science through a series of studies, which aim to foster our understanding of a crucial early modern author, his world, achievement, networks, and influence. Contributors are Roberto Bondi, Arianna Borrelli, Rodolfo Garau, Giulia Giannini, Miguel Angel Granada, Hiro Hirai, Martin Mulsow, Elio Nenci, Pietro Daniel Omodeo, Nuccio Ordine, Alessandro Ottaviani, Jurgen Renn, Riccarda Suitner, and Oreste Trabucco.

Mary Midgley is one of the most influential moral philosophers of the twentieth century. Over the last 40 years, Midgley's writings on such central yet controversial topics as human nature, morality, science, animals, the environment, religion, and gender have shaped the landscape of contemporary philosophy. She is celebrated for the complexity, nuance, and sensibility with which she approaches some of the most challenging issues in philosophy without falling into the pitfalls of close-minded extremism. In turn, Midgley's sophisticated treatment of the interconnected and often muddled issues related to human nature has drawn interest from outside the philosophical world, stretching from scientists, artists, theologians, anthropologists, and journalists to the public more broadly. Mary Midgley: An Introduction systematically introduces readers to Midgley's collected thought on the most central and influential areas of her corpus. Through clear and lively engagement with Midgley's work, this volume offers readers accessible explanation, interpretation, and analysis of the concepts and perspectives for which she is best known, most notably her integrated understanding of human nature, her opposition to reductionism and scientism, and her influential conception of our relationship to animals and the wider world. These insights, supplemented by excerpts from original interviews with Midgley herself, provide readers of all backgrounds with an informed understanding and appreciation of Mary Midgley and the philosophical problems to which she has devoted her life's work.

Sleep is quite a popular activity, indeed most humans spend around a third of their lives asleep. However, cultural, political, or aesthetic thought tends to remain concerned with the interpretation and actions of those who are awake. How to Sleep argues instead that sleep is a complex vital phenomena with a dynamic aesthetic and biological consistency. Arguing through examples drawn from contemporary, modern and renaissance art; from literature; film and computational media, and bringing these into relation with the history and findings of sleep science, this book argues for a new interplay between biology and culture. Meditations on sex, exhaustion, drugs, hormones and scientific instruments all play their part in this wide-ranging exposition of sleep as an ecology of interacting processes. How to Sleep builds on the interlocking of theory, experience and experiment so that the text itself is a lively articulation of bodies, organs and the aesthetic systems that interact with them. This book won't enhance your sleeping skills, but will give you something surprising to think about whilst being ostensibly awake.

Jonas Olson presents a critical survey of moral error theory, the view that there are no moral facts and so all moral claims are false. In Part I (History), he explores the historical context of the debate, and discusses the moral error theories of David Hume and of some more or less influential twentieth century philosophers, including Axel Hagerstroem, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Richard Robinson. He argues that the early cases for moral error theory are suggestive but that they would have been stronger had they included something like J. L. Mackie's arguments that moral properties and facts are metaphysically queer. Part II (Critique) focuses on these arguments. Olson identifies four queerness arguments, concerning supervenience, knowledge, motivation, and irreducible normativity, and goes on to establish that while the first three are not compelling, the fourth has considerable force, especially when combined with debunking explanations of why we tend to believe that there are moral properties and facts when in fact there are none. One conclusion of Part II is that a plausible error theory takes the form of an error theory about irreducible normativity. In Part III (Defence), Olson considers challenges according to which that kind of error theory has problematic ramifications regarding hypothetical reasons, epistemic reasons, and deliberation. He ends his discussion with a consideration of the implications of moral error theory for ordinary moral thought and talk, and for normative theorizing.

At stake in this book is a struggle with language in a time when our old faith in the redeeming of the word-and the word's power to redeem-has almost been destroyed. Drawing on Benjamin's political theology, his interpretation of the German Baroque mourning play, and Adorno's critical aesthetic theory, but also on the thought of poets and many other philosophers, especially Hegel's phenomenology of spirit, Nietzsche's analysis of nihilism, and Derrida's writings on language, Kleinberg-Levin shows how, because of its communicative and revelatory powers, language bears the utopian "promise of happiness," the idea of a secular redemption of humanity, at the very heart of which must be the achievement of universal justice. In an original reading of Beckett's plays, novels and short stories, Kleinberg-Levin shows how, despite inheriting a language damaged, corrupted and commodified, Beckett redeems dead or dying words and wrests from this language new possibilities for the expression of meaning. Without denying Beckett's nihilism, his picture of a radically disenchanted world, Kleinberg-Levin calls attention to moments when his words suddenly ignite and break free of their despair and pain, taking shape in the beauty of an austere yet joyous lyricism, suggesting that, after all, meaning is still possible.

The shift in the interpretation of eighteenth-century European culture over the last century provokes the questions: what meaning can be ascribed to that notion at the beginning of the twenty-first century? and how should we see Diderot's response to it? This collection of essays re-examines Diderot's uniquely rich relationship with the intellectual life of European nations, and his crucial role in focusing, connecting and spreading its many strands. While sharing certain Eurocentric prejudices, he held a more liberated view of a common humanity and the universal nature of human aspirations. These essays explore his interest in those hybrid, borderline zones, where systems, hierarchies, and national or disciplinary boundaries come under productive stress. What emerges is the irreducibility of his writing, which resists incorporation into any officially sanctioned canon. The Diderot being created by today's scholars is truly protean, not so much French, or even European, as global, a cultural icon for the modern age.

Throughout his career, Keith Hossack has made outstanding contributions to the theory of knowledge, metaphysics and the philosophy of mathematics. This collection of previously unpublished papers begins with a focus on Hossack's conception of the nature of knowledge, his metaphysics of facts and his account of the relations between knowledge, agents and facts. Attention moves to Hossack's philosophy of mind and the nature of consciousness, before turning to the notion of necessity and its interaction with a priori knowledge. Hossack's views on the nature of proof, logical truth, conditionals and generality are discussed in depth. In the final chapters, questions about the identity of mathematical objects and our knowledge of them take centre stage, together with questions about the necessity and generality of mathematical and logical truths. Knowledge, Number and Reality represents some of the most vibrant discussions taking place in analytic philosophy today.

For centuries, philosophers have addressed the ontological question of whether God exists. Most recently, philosophers have begun to explore the axiological question of what value impact, if any, God's existence has (or would have) on our world. This book brings together four prestigious philosophers, Michael Almeida, Travis Dumsday, Perry Hendricks and Graham Oppy, to present different views on the axiological question about God. Each contributor expresses a position on axiology, which is then met with responses from the remaining contributors. This structure makes for genuine discussion and developed exploration of the key issues at stake, and shows that the axiological question is more complicated than it first appears. Chapters explore a range of relevant issues, including the relationship between Judeo-Christian theism and non-naturalist alternatives such as pantheism, polytheism, and animism/panpsychism. Further chapters consider the attitudes and emotions of atheists within the theism conversation, and develop and evaluate the best arguments for doxastic pro-theism and doxastic anti-theism. Of interest to those working on philosophy of religion, theism and ethics, this book presents lively accounts of an important topic in an exciting and collaborative way, offered by renowned experts in this area.

Anaximander, the sixth century BCE philosopher of Miletus, is often credited as being the instigator of both science and philosophy. The first recorded philosopher to posit the idea of the boundless cosmos, he was also the first to attempt to explain the origins of the world and humankind in rational terms. Anaximander's philosophy encompasses theories of justice, cosmogony, geometry, cosmology, zoology and meteorology. "Anaximander: A Re-assessment" draws together these wide-ranging threads into a single, coherent picture of the man, his worldview and his legacy to the history of thought. Arguing that Anaximander's statements are both apodeictic and based on observation of the world around him, Andrew Gregory examines how Anaximander's theories can all be construed in such a way that they are consistent with and supportive of each other. This includes the tenet that the philosophical elements of Anaximander's thought (his account of the" apeiron," the extant fragment) can be harmonised to support his views on the natural world. The work further explores how these theories relate to early Greek thought and in particular conceptions of theogony and meterology in Hesiod and Homer.