First published in Paris in 1511, The Praise of Folly has enjoyed enormous and highly controversial success from the author's lifetime down to our own day. The Folly has no rival, except perhaps Thoma
History means many things to many people. But finding an answer to the question 'What is history?' is a task few feel equipped to answer. If you want to explore this tantalising subject, where do you
Throughout our lives we are making moral choices. Some decisions simply direct our everyday comings and goings; others affect our individual destinies. How do we make those choices? Where does our sen
"Foot stands out among contemporary ethical theorists because of her conviction that virtues and vices are more central ethical notions than rights, duties, justice, or consequences--the primary focu
In this collection, twelve philosophers, historians, and political philosophers-scholars with a diverse set of disciplinary and political leanings-assess aspects of socialism in light of its recent reversals. Some of the essays consider what made the socialist project seem compelling to its advocates, examining the moral and political values that made socialism appealing to intellectuals. Others evaluate whether there are aspects of socialism that ought to be preserved, such as its quest for equality and community. Some essays examine whether free-market systems need to be further modified in response to ongoing socialist critiques. Several others argue for the continuing validity of socialism in its social democratic incarnation, suggesting ways in which socialism may still have a productive future. Still others condemn the socialist project as inherently misguided in theory, while also portraying 'really existing socialism' as cataclysmic in practice.
Thomas Reid was one of the greatest philosophers of the eighteenth century and a contemporary of Kant’s. This volume is part of a new wave of international interest in Reid from a new generation
How is hope to be found amid the ethical and political dilemmas of modern life? Writer and philosopher Mary Zournazi brought her questions to some of the most thoughtful intellectuals at work today. S
This 2002 volume brings together major works by German thinkers, writing just prior to and after Kant, who were enormously influential in this crucial period of aesthetics. These texts include the first translation into English of Schiller's Kallias Letters and Moritz's On the Artistic Imitation of the Beautiful, together with translations of some of Hölderlin's most important theoretical writings and works by Hamann, Lessing, Novalis and Schlegel. In a philosophical introduction J. M. Bernstein traces the development of aesthetics from its still rationalist and mimetic construction in Lessing, through the optimistic construal of art and/or beauty as the appearance of human freedom in the work of Schiller, to Hölderlin's darker vision of art as the memory of a lost unity, and the variations of that theme - of an impossible striving after the lost ideal - which are found in the work of Schlegel and Novalis.
This brief monograph presents a close reading of the first two chapter's of Beyond Good and Evil and offers an interpretation that places Nietzsche in opposition to the Platonic and Socratic traditi
Editors Joan Grossman and Ruth Rischin pose to their contributors an intriguing question: What happens when the ideas of a thinker like William James, who—despite his originality—was deeply rooted in
It is commonly believed that Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), well known as the founder of phenomenology and as the teacher of Heidegger, was unable to free himself from the framework of a classical metap
Ever since its discovery nearly thirty years ago, the phenomenon of blindsight - vision without visual consciousness - has been the source of great controversy in the philosophy of mind, psychology, a
International law makes it explicit that states shall not intervene militarily or otherwise in the affairs of other states; it is a central principle of the charter of the United Nations. But internat
This book brings together nearly all of GadamerAs previously published but never translated essays on the Presocratics. Beginning with a hermeneutical and philological investigation of the Heraclitus
Mountains and freeways, oceans and apartment buildings, trees and automobiles: such things lend shape to mental activity, says Christopher J. Preston. Yet Western epistemology, since its origins, has
Academic feminist philosophers analyze gender with respect to the ethical concepts of recognition, responsibility, and human rights and to the social and institutional practices that are shaped by tho
John Dewey himself argued for the recognition of the contextualism of philosophical thinking. Taking that position seriously, notes Gavin (philosophy, U. of Southern Maine), means addressing the conte
Arguing that philosopher Georges Bataille is one of the most important thinkers in the development of French thought, Gemerchak (Institute of Philosophy, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium) attem
Against the assumption that aesthetic form relates to a harmonious arrangement of parts into a beautiful whole, this book argues that reason is the real theme of the Critique of Judgment as of the tw
