The Essential Davidson compiles the most celebrated papers of one of the twentieth century's greatest philosophers. It distills Donald Davidson's seminal contributions to our understanding of ourselves, from three decades of essays, into one thematically organized collection. A new, specially written introduction by Ernie Lepore and Kirk Ludwig, two of the world's leading authorities on his work, offers a guide through the ideas and arguments, shows how they interconnect, and reveals the systematic coherence of Davidson's worldview.
Davidson's philosophical program is organized around two connected projects. The first is that of understanding the nature of human agency. The second is that of understanding the nature and function of language, and its relation to the world. Accordingly, the first part of the book presents Davidson's investigation of reasons, causes, and intentions, which revolutionized the philosophy of action. This leads to his notable doctrine of anomalous monism, the view that all mental events are physical events, but that the mental cannot be reduced to the physical. The second part of the book presents the famous essays in which Davidson set out his highly original and influential philosophy of language, which founds the theory of meaning on the theory of truth.
These fifteen classic essays will be invaluable for anyone interested in the study of mind and language. Fascinating though they are individually, it is only when drawn together that there emerges a compelling picture of man as a rational linguistic animal whose thoughts, though not reducible to the material, are part of the fabric of the world, and whose knowledge of his own mind, the minds ofothers, and the world around him is as fundamental to his nature as the power of thought and speech itself.

Truth, Language, and History is the much-anticipated final volume of Donald Davidson's philosophical writings. In four groups of essays, Davidson continues to explore the themes that occupied him for more than fifty years: the relations between language and the world; speaker intention and linguistic meaning; language and mind; mind and body; mind and world; mind and other minds. He asks: what is the role of the concept of truth in these explorations? And, can a scientific world view make room for human thought without reducing it to something material and mechanistic? Including a new introduction by his widow, Marcia Cavell, this volume completes Donald Davidson's colossal intellectual legacy.

Problems of Rationality is the eagerly awaited fourth volume of Donald Davidson's philosophical writings. From the 1960s until his death in August 2003 Davidson was perhaps the most influential figure in English-language philosophy, and his work has had a profound effect upon the discipline. His unified theory of the interpretation of thought, meaning, and action holds that rationality is a necessary condition for both mind and interpretation. Davidson here develops this theory to illuminate value judgements and how we understand them; to investigate what the conditions are for attributing mental states to an object or creature; and to grapple with the problems presented by thoughts and actions which seem to be irrational. Anyone working on knowledge, mind, and language will find these essays essential reading.

Including two new essays, this remarkable volume is an updated edition of Davidson's classic Essays on Actions and Events (1980). A superb work on the nature of human action, it features influential discussions of numerous topics. These include the freedom to act; weakness of the will; the logical form of talk about actions, intentions, and causality; the logic of practical reasoning; Hume's theory of the indirect passions; and the nature and limits of decision theory.

This is the third volume of philosophical writings by Donald Davidson. He presents a selection of his work on knowledge, mind, and language from the 1980s and the 1990s. We all have knowledge of our own minds, knowledge of the contents of other minds, and knowledge of the shared environment. Davidson examines the nature and status of each of these three sorts of knowledge, and the connections and differences among them. Along the way he has illuminating things to say about truth, human rationality, and the relations between language, thought, and the world.

Now in a new edition, this volume updates Davidson's exceptional Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (1984), which set out his enormously influential philosophy of language. The original volume remains a central point of reference, and a focus of controversy, with its impact extending into linguistic theory, philosophy of mind, and epistemology. Addressing a central question--what it is for words to mean what they do--and featuring a previously uncollected, additional essay, this work will appeal to a wide audience of philosophers, linguists, and psychologists.

This collection of classic and contemporary essays in philosophy of language offers a concise introduction to the field for students in graduate and upper-division undergraduate courses. It contains some of the most important basic sources in philosophy of language, including a number of classic essays by philosophers such as Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Kripke, Grice, Davidson, Strawson, Austin, and Putnam, as well as more recent contributions by scholars including John McDowell, Stephen Neale, Ruth Millikan, Stephen Schiffer, Paul Horwich, and Anthony Brueckner, among others, who are on the leading edge of innovation in this increasingly influential area of philosophy. The result is a lively mix of readings, together with the editors' discussions of the material, which provides a rigorous introduction to the subject.

A quarter of a century before Lyndon B. Johnson popularized the slogan "The Great Society," Donald Davidson wrote his critique of Leviathan, the omnipotent nation-state, in terms that only recently have come to be appreciated. "Leviathan is the idea of the Great Society, organized under a single, complex, but strong and highly centralized national government, motivated ultimately by men's desire for economic welfare of a specific kind rather than their desire for personal liberty. " Originally published as The Attack on Leviathan, this eloquent volume is an attack on state centralism and an affirmation of regional identity. Davidson's work is a special sort of intellectual as well as social history. It reveals an extraordinary mastery of the literature on regionalism in the United States, with special emphasis on the work on Rupert Vance and Howard Odum in the social sciences. Davidson looks at regionalism in arts, literature, and education. He favors agriculture over industrialization, and "the hinterland" over cities, examining along the way varying historical memories, the dilemma of Southern liberals, and the choice of expedience or principles. His book is a forceful and commanding challenge to those who would push for central authority at the sacrifice of individual and regional identity. Davidson concludes with a devastating critique of nationalism leading to a supra-nationalism. Ultimately, the heterogeneity of human desires comes up against the uniformity of world systems and world states. Davidson offers instead a broad world of intellectual history and commentary in which individualism allies itself with communities as a means for stemming the tide of collectivism and its base in a world state. For Davidson, Leviathan, the monstrous state, is a devourer, not a savior. As several peoples rise to strike down their own Leviathans, this courageous book may be better understood now than it was in 1938. Donald Davidson was part of that movement in American letters known as the Southern Agrarians. He was a poet, critic, historian, and political analyst. He spent most of his life at Vanderbilt University, and was himself born in central Tennessee. He is best known as the author of The Tall Men (1927) and a collection of essays, Still Rebels, Still Yankees (1957).

The Philebus is hard to reconcile with standard interpretations of Plato's philosophy and in this pioneering work Donald Davidson, seeks to take the Philebus at face value and to reassess Plato's late philosophy in the light of the results. The author maintains that the approach to ethics in the Philebus represents a considerable return to the methodology of the earlier dialogues. He emphasizes Plato's reversion to the Socratic elenchus and connects it with the startling reappearance of Socrates as the leading voice in the Philebus.

A quarter of a century before Lyndon B. Johnson popularized the slogan "The Great Society," Donald Davidson wrote his critique of Leviathan, the omnipotent nation-state, in terms that only recently have come to be appreciated. "Leviathan is the idea of the Great Society, organized under a single, complex, but strong and highly centralized national government, motivated ultimately by men's desire for economic welfare of a specific kind rather than their desire for personal liberty. " Originally published as "The Attack on Leviathan," this eloquent volume is an attack on state centralism and an affirmation of regional identity.
Davidson's work is a special sort of intellectual as well as social history. It reveals an extraordinary mastery of the literature on regionalism in the United States, with special emphasis on the work on Rupert Vance and Howard Odum in the social sciences. Davidson looks at regionalism in arts, literature, and education. He favors agriculture over industrialization, and "the hinterland" over cities, examining along the way varying historical memories, the dilemma of Southern liberals, and the choice of expedience or principles. His book is a forceful and commanding challenge to those who would push for central authority at the sacrifice of individual and regional identity.
Davidson concludes with a devastating critique of nationalism leading to a supra-nationalism. Ultimately, the heterogeneity of human desires comes up against the uniformity of world systems and world states. Davidson offers instead a broad world of intellectual history and commentary in which individualism allies itself with communities as a means for stemming the tide of collectivism and its base in a world state. For Davidson, Leviathan, the monstrous state, is a devourer, not a savior. As several peoples rise to strike down their own Leviathans, this courageous book may be better understood now than it was in 1938.
"Donald Davidson" was part of that movement in American letters known as the Southern Agrarians. He was a poet, critic, historian, and political analyst. He spent most of his life at Vanderbilt University, and was himself born in central Tennessee. He is best known as the author of "The Tall Men" (1927) and a collection of essays, "Still Rebels, Still Yankees" (1957).

Donald Davidson was one of the most famous and influential philosophers of the twentieth century. The Structure of Truth presents his 1970 Locke Lectures in print for the first time. They comprise an invaluable historical document which illuminates how Davidson was thinking about the theory of meaning, the role of a truth theory therein, the ontological commitments of a truth theory, the notion of logical form, and so on, at a pivotal moment in the development of his thought. Unlike Davidson's previously published work, the lectures are written so as to be presented to an audience as a fully organized and coherent exposition of his program in the philosophy of language. Had they been widely available in the years following 1970, the reception of Davidson's work might have been very different. Given the systematic nature of their presentation of Davidson's semantic program, these lectures will be of interest to anyone working in the philosophy of language.

The Essential Davidson compiles the most celebrated papers of one of the twentieth century's greatest philosophers. It distills Donald Davidson's seminal contributions to our understanding of ourselves, from three decades of essays, into one thematically organized collection. A new, specially written introduction by Ernie Lepore and Kirk Ludwig, two of the world's leading authorities on his work, offers a guide through the ideas and arguments, shows how they interconnect, and reveals the systematic coherence of Davidson's worldview.
Davidson's philosophical program is organized around two connected projects. The first is that of understanding the nature of human agency. The second is that of understanding the nature and function of language, and its relation to the world. Accordingly, the first part of the book presents Davidson's investigation of reasons, causes, and intentions, which revolutionized the philosophy of action. This leads to his notable doctrine of anomalous monism, the view that all mental events are physical events, but that the mental cannot be reduced to the physical. The second part of the book presents the famous essays in which Davidson set out his highly original and influential philosophy of language, which founds the theory of meaning on the theory of truth.
These fifteen classic essays will be invaluable for anyone interested in the study of mind and language. Fascinating though they are individually, it is only when drawn together that there emerges a compelling picture of man as a rational linguistic animal whose thoughts, though not reducible to the material, are part of the fabric of the world, and whose knowledge of his own mind, the minds ofothers, and the world around him is as fundamental to his nature as the power of thought and speech itself.

Truth, Language, and History is the much-anticipated final volume of Donald Davidson's philosophical writings. In the four groups of essays that comprise it, Davidson continues to explore the themes that occupied him for more than fifty years: the relations between language and the world; speaker intention and linguistic meaning; language and mind; mind and body; mind and world; mind and other minds. He asks: what is the role of the concept of truth in these explorations? And, can a scientific world view make room for human thought without reducing it to something material and mechanistic? Davidson's underlying picture, which can be seen in many of these essays, is that we are acquainted directly with the world, not indirectly via some intermediary such as sense-data, representations, or language itself; that thought emerges in the first place through interpersonal communication in a shared material world, and continues to develop as we engage each other in dialogue; and that language depends on communication, not vice versa. This is the triangulating situation - two creatures communicating about a common world - about which Davidson has written elsewhere. As for the mind-body relation: our ontology need posit nothing more that material objects and events; but as explainers we require two mutually irreducible vocabularies: mind and body. In the last six essays Davidson finds interconnections between his own views and those of some of the major philosophers of the past. Including a new introduction by his widow, Marcia Cavell, this volume completes Donald Davidson's colossal intellectual legacy.

Problems of Rationality is the eagerly awaited fourth volume of Donald Davidson's philosophical writings. From the 1960s until his death in August 2003 Davidson was perhaps the most influential figure in English-language philosophy, and his work has had a profound effect upon the discipline. His unified theory of the interpretation of thought, meaning, and action holds that rationality is a necessary condition for both mind and interpretation. Davidson here develops this theory to illuminate value judgements and how we understand them; to investigate what the conditions are for attributing mental states to an object or creature; and to grapple with the problems presented by thoughts and actions which seem to be irrational. Anyone working on knowledge, mind, and language will find these essays essential reading.

Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective is the long-awaited third volume of philosophical writings by Donald Davidson, whose influence on philosophy since the 1960s has been deep and broad. Davidson's first two collections, published by OUP in the early 1980s, are recognized as contemporary classics. His ideas have continued to flow, and now he presents a selection of his best work on knowledge, mind, and language from the last two decades--a rich and rewarding feast for anyone interested in philosophy today, and essential reading for anyone working on these topics.

Donald Davidson has prepared a new edition of his classic 1980 collection of Essays on Actions and Events, including two additional essays. This seminal work on the nature of human action features influential discussions of such topics as freedom to act; weakness of the will; the logical form of talk about actions, intentions, and causality; the logic of practical reasoning; Hume's theory of the indirect passions; and the nature and limits of decision theory. 'a classic in its field.' P. F. Strawson

Donald Davidson presents a new edition of the 1984 volume which set out his enormously influential philosophy of language. Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation has been a central point of reference and a focus of controversy in the subject ever since, and its influence has extended into linguistic theory, philosophy of mind, and epistemology. The central question which these essays address is what it is for words to mean what they do. This new edition features an additional essay, previously uncollected. 'a classic in its field.' P. F. Strawson

One of the most important of the Southern magazines in the 1920s was "The Fugitive," a magazine of verse and brief commentaries on literature in general. Among its contributors were John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren, Donald Davidson, and Merrill Moore. Publication began in April 1922 and ended in December 1925. Soon thereafter, the "Fugitive" writers and some others became profoundly concerned with the materialism of American life and its effect upon the South. The group became known as "Agrarians." Their thinking and discussion culminated in a symposium, "I'll Take My Stand," published in 1930.
In his first two lectures Davidson describes the underlying nature and aims of the Fugitive and Agrarian movements. He brings to the discussion his intimate and thorough knowledge of Southern life and letters. The third lecture deals with the place of the writer in the modern university, posing the questions of whether the writer needs the university and whether the university needs or wants the writer.

One of the most important of the Southern magazines in the 1920s was" The Fugitive," a magazine of verse and brief commentaries on literature in general. Among its contributors were John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren, Donald Davidson, and Merrill Moore. Publication began in April 1922 and ended in December 1925. Soon thereafter, the "Fugitive" writers and some others became profoundly concerned with the materialism of American life and its effect upon the South. The group became known as "Agrarians." Their thinking and discussion culminated in a symposium, "I'll Take My Stand," published in 1930.

In his first two lectures Davidson describes the underlying nature and aims of the Fugitive and Agrarian movements. He brings to the discussion his intimate and thorough knowledge of Southern life and letters. The third lecture deals with the place of the writer in the modern university, posing the questions of whether the writer needs the university and whether the university needs or wants the writer.

Uproariously funny and filled with choice narration, The Big Ballad Jamboree is Donald Davidson's only novel. He set his story- the romance of hillbilly and country singer Danny MacGregor with folk singer and ballad scholar Cissy Timberlake- in the fictional western North Carolina town of Carolina City during the summer of 1949. The late forties, just after WWII and before the rise of national television, are great years for classic country music on live radio. Yet this Appalachian community is struggling to embrace a modern commercial economy without losing its folk heritage. In this setting Davidson draws lively satirical pictures: civic boosters allied with shameless politicians; a local sheriff, a barber, and a dean cooperating to protect the image of a college; a folklore professor seeking fame by promoting a ballad-singing bootlegger. Seen through the eyes of a country boy with a musical gift descended from mountain people, this novel is a highbrow art about memorable lowbrow characters. It is also a great read. Those who know Davidson as a poet and scholar may be surprised to learn that he wrote a novel about country music. Here his long romance with southern folk life and mountain balladry captures the evolution of hillbilly singers into Grand Ole Opery stars as he pursues vexing questions about folk authenticity in country music. Long thought lost, The Big Ballad Jamboree now is published for the first time. The famous teacher of young writers as Robert Penn Warren, Jesse Stuart, and Elizabeth Spencer never saw publication of his own novel. The mystery of its fate resolved at long last with the publication of the complete manuscript, discovered by a granddaughter in family files.