The subject of the aesthetic has returned to cultural and literary debates with a vengeance. The Aesthetics of Cultural Studies is a timely and authoritative collection of essays that analyze the role
Kevin Hart introduces the reader to all of the major figures and issues in the field, including Derrida, Baudrillard and Foucault, as well as explaining what makes a thinker or writer postmodern.
Mary Midgley argues in her powerful new book that far from being the opposite of science, myth is a central part of it. In brilliant prose, she claims that myths are neither lies nor mere stories but
According to natural law theory, there exists an objective law of morality based in the nature of human society or human nature. Thus, natural law is inherently true, not a product of a mutable or sub
These selections illuminate Philo's crucial role in assimilating Greek philosophy to biblical religion and accommodating Jewish belief to Greek thought. Topics include the knowledge of God; the mystic
This book is a rereading of Plato's early dialogues from the point of view of the characters with whom Socrates engages in debate. Socrates' interlocutors are generally acknowledged to play important dialectical and dramatic roles, but no previous book has focused mainly on them. Existing studies are thoroughly dismissive of the interlocutors and reduce them to the status of mere mouthpieces for views which are hopelessly confused or demonstrably false. This book takes interlocutors seriously and treats them as genuine intellectual opponents whose views are often more defensible than commentators have standardly thought. The author's purpose is not to summarise their positions or the arguments of the dialogues in which they appear, much less to produce a series of biographical sketches, but to investigate the phenomenology of philosophical disputation as it manifests itself in the early dialogues.
Every day we seem to make and act upon all kinds of free choices - some trivial, and others so consequential that they may change the course of our life. But are these choices reality free? Or are we
First published in France in 1936 as a journal article, The Transcendence of the Ego was one of Jean-Paul Sartre's earliest philosophical publications. When it appeared, Sartre was still largely unkno
The Nature of Moral Reasoning is a discussion about the landscape, or environment, in which moral reasoning occurs, and the factors which contribute to it.
Widely regarded as one of the foremost figures in contemporary philosophy of religion, this book by Linda Zagzebski is a major contribution to ethical theory and theological ethics. At the core of the book lies a form of virtue theory based on the emotions. Quite distinct from deontological, consequentialist and teleological virtue theories, this one has a particular theological, indeed Christian, foundation. The theory helps to resolve philosophical problems and puzzles of various kinds: the dispute between cognitivism and non-cognitivism in moral psychology, the claims and counterclaims of realism and anti-realism in the metaphysics of value, and paradoxes of perfect goodness in natural theology, including the problem of evil. As with Zagzebski's previous Cambridge book Virtues of the Mind, this book will be sought out eagerly by a broad swathe of professionals and graduate students in philosophy and religious studies.
In her 2004 book Carol Gould addresses the fundamental issue of democratizing globalization, that is to say of finding ways to open transnational institutions and communities to democratic participation by those widely affected by their decisions. The book develops a framework for expanding participation in crossborder decisions, arguing for a broader understanding of human rights and introducing a new role for the ideas of care and solidarity at a distance. Reinterpreting the idea of universality to accommodate a multiplicity of cultural perspectives, the author takes up a number of applied issues, including the persistence of racism, cultural rights, women's human rights, the democratic management of firms, the use of the Internet to enhance political participation, and the importance of empathy and genuine democracy in understanding terrorism and responding to it. Accessibly written with a minimum of technical jargon this is a major contribution to political philosophy.
Dworkin and His Critics provides an in-depth, analytical discussion of Ronald Dworkin's ethical, legal and political philosophical writings, and it includes substantial replies from Dworkin himself. I
This is the first book devoted to the work of Ernest Sosa, one of the most influential contemporary epistemologists. Part of the acclaimed Philosophers and Their Critics series. The editor’s introduct
Is life different from the non-living? If so, how? And how, in that case, does biology as the study of living things differ from other sciences? These questions are traced through an exploration of episodes in the history of biology and philosophy. The book begins with Aristotle, then moves on to Descartes, comparing his position with that of Harvey. In the eighteenth century the authors consider Buffon and Kant. In the nineteenth century the authors examine the Cuvier-Geoffroy debate, pre-Darwinian geology and natural theology, Darwin and the transition from Darwin to the revival of Mendelism. Two chapters deal with the evolutionary synthesis and such questions as the species problem, the reducibility or otherwise of biology to physics and chemistry, and the problem of biological explanation in terms of function and teleology. The final chapters reflect on the implications of the philosophy of biology for philosophy of science in general.
In The Hand, the first volume of his trilogy, Raymond Tallis looked at how humans have avoided the constraints of biology. I Am focuses on two crucial aspects of the escape from being a mere organism:
In a clear and vivid manner, Edward S. Casey, one of America's finest thinkers, takes up the great themes of imagination, remembering, perceiving, and place. A brilliant and useful account of basic ph
