According to the dominant position among philosophers of language today, we can legitimately ascribe determinate contents (such as truth-conditions) to natural language sentences, independently of what the speaker actually means. This view contrasts with that held by ordinary language philosophers fifty years ago: according to them, speech acts, not sentences, are the primary bearers of content. François Recanati argues for the relevance of this controversy to the current debate about semantics and pragmatics. Is 'what is said' (as opposed to merely implied) determined by linguistic conventions, or is it an aspect of 'speaker's meaning'? Do we need pragmatics to fix truth-conditions? What is 'literal meaning'? To what extent is semantic composition a creative process? How pervasive is context-sensitivity? Recanati provides an original and insightful defence of 'contextualism', and offers an informed survey of the spectrum of positions held by linguists and philosophers working at the s
The Blackwell Guide to Aesthetics is the most authoritative survey of the central issues in contemporary aesthetics available. The volume features eighteen newly commissioned papers on the evaluation
Philosophy: The Big Questions occupies a unique position among introductory texts in philosophy. Designed for a single-semester introductory course in philosophy, it includes both classic readings in
Philosophy of Mind includes papers by leading philosophers that explore topics such as experience and its representational and qualitative content; subjectivity; causal relevance; a new a priorist arg
This volume brings together papers by some of the leading figures working on virtue-theoretic accounts in both ethics and epistemology.A collection of cutting edge articles by leading figures in the f
This Dictionary offers points of entry into Derrida’s complex and extensive works. This Dictionary offers points of entry into Derrida’s complex and extensive works. From ‘aporia’ to ‘yes’, the Dictio
This reader brings together classic and contemporary contributions to debates about social justice.A collection of classic and contemporary contributions to debates about social justice. Includes clas
John Stuart Mill was the leading British philosopher of the nineteenth century and his famous essay Utilitarianism is the most influential statement of the philosophy of utilitarianism: that actions, laws, policies and institutions are to be evaluated by their utility or contribution to good or bad consequences. Henry West has written the most up-to-date and user-friendly introduction to utilitarianism available. The book serves as both a commentary to and interpretation of the text. It also defends Mill against his critics. An appendix reviews in detail the structure and arguments of Utilitarianism. This book is primarily intended as a textbook for students in philosophy assigned to read Utilitarianism but it should also prove helpful to students and professionals in other fields such as political science, history and economics.
In this richly argued and provocative book, David Davies elaborates and defends a broad conceptual framework for thinking about the arts that reveals important continuities and discontinuities between
Merleau-Ponty was a pivotal figure in twentieth century French philosophy. He was responsible for bringing the phenomenological methods of the German philosophers - Husserl and Heidegger - to France a
Philippa Foot has for many years been one of the most distinctive and influential thinkers in moral philosophy. Long dissatisfied with the moral theories of her contemporaries, she has gradually evol
In this introduction to a classic philosophical text, Catherine Wilson examines the arguments of Descartes' famous Meditations, the book which launched modern philosophy. Drawing on the reinterpretations of Descartes' thought of the past twenty-five years, she shows how Descartes constructs a theory of the mind, the body, nature, and God from a premise of radical uncertainty. She discusses in detail the historical context of Descartes' writings and their relationship to early modern science, and at the same time she introduces concepts and problems that define the philosophical enterprise as it is understood today. Following closely the text of the Meditations and meant to be read alongside them, this survey is accessible to readers with no previous background in philosophy. It is well-suited to university-level courses on Descartes, but can also be read with profit by students in other disciplines.
Nietzsche's use of metaphor has been widely noted but rarely focused to explore specific images in great detail. A Nietzschean Bestiary gathers essays devoted to the most notorious and celebrated beas
Proposing "voluntary simplicity" as a alternative to consumer culture within the capitalist framework, Doherty (former managing editor, The Responsive Community and Etzioni (Institute for Communitaria
In Four Seminars, Heidegger reviews the entire trajectory of his thought and offers unique perspectives on fundamental aspects of his work. First published in French in 1976, these seminars were tran
An examination of the relation between war and politics, by one of the twentieth century’s most influential thinkersFrom 1971 until 1984 at the Coll?ge de France, Michel Foucault gave a series of lect
The Nature of the Mind is a comprehensive and lucid introduction to major themes in the philosophy of mind. It carefully explores the conflicting positions that have arisen within the debate and locat
This volume of The Collected Works contains essays published by Eric Voegelin between 1929 and 1933, the period between the publication of his first book, On the Form of the American Mind, and Hitler'
This introduction to the Madhva school of Vedanta is accessible to a wide audience with interest in Hinduism, Indian thought and in the comparative philosophy of religion. Deepak Sarma explores the ph
