In this companion volume to the established classic The Three Pillars of Zen, Roshi Philip Kapleau, who has played a key role in bringing Zen Buddhism to America, establishes guidelines for Western p
"Never am I more I than when I stand serene, survey the field, weigh my choices,?set my face in one direction, and advance with firm step and joyful heart. To know what I want to do and do it is the e
An extremely important Jewish writer and thinker of the first century AD, Philo of Alexandria exercised through his ideas and language a lasting influence on the development and growth of Christianity in the New Testament period and later. This book provides an introduction to the major themes and ideas in the religious and philosophical thinking of Philo and outlines the importance of his thought by means of introductory treatments and sections of freshly translated text and commentary. Dr Williamson illustrates in his work the place and significance of Philo within Judaism and as part of the background to Christianity, and so provides a valuable resource for scholars and students in this area of study.
"A valuable exposition of the thesis that the explanatory work of theology possesses formal similarities with that of the physical sciences, the social sciences, and philosophy. Clayton exhibits an im
The Structures of the Life-World is the final focus of twenty-seven years of Alfred Schutz's labor, encompassing the fruits of his work between 1932 and his death in 1959. This book represents Schutz'
"A history of Chinese philosophy in the so-called Axial Period (the period of classical Greek and Indian philosophy), during which time China evolved the characteristic ways of thought that sustained
This book is an introduction to and interpretation of the philosophy of language devised by Donald Davidson over the past 25 years. The guiding intuition is that Davidson's work is best understood as
The question Jon Elster addresses in this challenging book is what binds societies together and prevents them from disintegrating into chaos and war. He analyses two concepts of social order: stable, predictable patterns of behaviour, and co-operative behaviour. The book examines various aspects of collective action and bargaining from the perspective of rational-choice theory and the theory of social norms. It is a fundamental assumption of the book that social norms provide an important kind of motivation for action that is irreducible to rationality. The book represents a major statement by Elster, which will be of particular interest to political scientists, political philosophers, sociologists, and economists.
This volume of essays is very much a sequel to the two earlier collections by Jon Elster, Ulysses and the Sirens and Sour Grapes. His topic is rationality - its scope, its limitations, and its failures. Elster considers rational responses to the insufficiency of reason itself, and to the 'indeterminacies' in deploying rational-choice theory and discusses the irrationality of not seeing when, where, and what these are. A key essay which gives the collection its title examines disputes in cases of child custody, which are paradigmatically indeterminate. Leaving aside cases where one parent is patently unfit and assuming that protracted dispute is against the immediate interests of the child, Elster argues that three options present themselves: a strong presumption in favour of the mother, a strong presumption in favour of the primary caretaker (also likely to be the mother), and tossing a coin. Though the first two options may be preferable in the short/medium term, Elster argues that th
This is an advanced study of systems of propositional logic which offers a comprehensive account of a wide variety of logical systems and which encourages students to take a critical stance towards the subject. A great variety of systems and subsystems are defined and compared as regards their deductive power and relation to their model theory. Interesting features include a more refined treatment of modal logic and the special attention given to the weakenings of classical logic. Useful appendices provide a topical bibliography and review of basic set theory.
This work, by one of Europe's foremost social theorists, presents a critical history of the concept of ideology. The author's discussion ranges from the early conceptions of ideology to its current us
This collection of essays on communicative theory and praxis from the eminent Merleau-Ponty scholar and translator John O'Neill explores the thesis that the human body is the exemplary ground of all o
Richard L. Velkley offers a new interpretation of the central issue of Kant's philosophy and a new evaluation of its position within the history of modern philosophy. He persuasively argues that the w
The essays in this interdisciplinary collection share the conviction that modern western paradigms of knowledge and reality are gender-biased. Some contributors challenge and revise western conc
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, colleague of Gandhi, Nehru and Tagore, former Ambassador to the Soviet Union and now Vice-President of India, is regarded as the greatest living thinker of the East; the able
