Search results for ""Kant""

Use your imagination! The demand is as important as it is confusing. What is the imagination? What is its value? Where does it come from? And where is it going in a time when even the obscene mseems overdone and passé? This book takes up these questions and argues for the centrality of imagination in humanmcognition. It traces the development of the imagination in Kant’s critical philosophy (particularly the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment) and claims that the insights of Kantian aesthetic theory, especially concerning the nature of creativity, common sense, and genius, influenced the development of nineteenth-century American philosophy. The book identifies the central role of the imagination in the philosophy of Peirce, a role often overlooked in analytic treatments of his thought. The final chapters pursue the observation made by Kant and Peirce that imaginative genius is a type of natural gift (ingenium) and must in some way be continuous with the creative force of nature. It makes this final turn by way of contemporary studies of metaphor, embodied cognition, and cognitive neuroscience.

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Pragmatism Ascendent is the last of four volumes on the contribution of pragmatism to American philosophy and Western philosophy as a whole. It covers the period of American philosophy's greatest influence worldwide, from the second half of the 20th century through the beginning of the 21st. The book provides an account of the way pragmatism reinterprets the revolutionary contributions of Kant and Hegel, the significance of pragmatism's original vision, and the expansion of classic pragmatism to incorporate the strongest themes of Hegelian and Darwinian sources. In the process, it addresses many topics either scanted or not addressed at all in most overviews of the pragmatism's relevance today. Noting the conceptual stalemate, confusion, and inertia of much of current Western philosophy, Margolis advances a new line of inquiry. He considers a fresh conception of the human agent as a hybrid artifact of enlanguaged culture, the decline of all forms of cognitive privilege, the pragmatist sense of the practical adequacy of philosophical solutions, and the possibilities for a recuperative convergence of the best resources of Western philosophy's most viable movements.

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Deepening divisions separate today's philosophers, first, from the culture at large; then, from each other; and finally, from philosophy itself. Though these divisions tend to coalesce publicly as debates over the Enlightenment, their roots lie much deeper. Overcoming them thus requires a confrontation with the whole of Western philosophy. Only when we uncover the strange heritage of Aristotle's metaphysics, as reworked, for example, by Descartes and Kant, can we understand contemporary philosophy's inability to dialogue with women, people of color, LGBTs, and other minority groups. Only when we have understood that inability can we see how the thought of Hegel and Heidegger contains the seeds of a remedy. And only when armed with such a remedy can philosophy rise to the challenges posed by thinkers such as David Foster Wallace and Abraham Lincoln. The book's interpretations of these figures and others past and present are as scrupulous as its conclusions will be controversial. The result contributes to the most important question confronting us today: does reason itself have a future?

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Following Hegel's analysis of art's increasing difficulty to both engage and extricate itself from prosaic reality, Paul Fleming investigates the strategies employed by German literature from 1750 to 1850 for increasingly attuning itself to quotidian life—common heroes, everyday life, non-extraordinary events—while also avoiding all notions of mediocrity. He focuses on three sites of this tension: the average audience (Lessing), the average artist (Goethe and Schiller), and the everyday, or average life (Grillparzer and Stifter). The book's title, Exemplarity and Mediocrity, describes both a disjunctive and a conjunctive relation. Read disjunctively, modern art must display the "exemplary originality" (Kant) that only genius can provide and is thus fundamentally opposed to mediocrity as that which does not stand out or lacks distinctiveness; in the conjunctive sense, modern art turns to non-exceptional life in order to transform it—without forsaking its commonness—thereby producing exemplary forms of mediocrity that both represent the non-exceptional and, insofar as they stand outside the group they represent, are something other than mediocre.

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Is world government the answer to pressing global issues such as war, global injustices and environmental problems? Torbjorn Tannsjo presents the case for this idea. The notion of a sovereign world government has been defended in the past by philosophers such as Bertrand Russell and A.C. Ewing, but has been eclipsed by less radical ideas to do with peaceful cooperation between sovereign states or, at most, through systems of shared sovereignty. Tannsjo argues that such solutions cannot be effective; moreover he argues, in response to philosophers such as Kant and Rawls, that not only is a world government necessary if we want to solve pressing global problems, it is desirable in its own right. Short, simple to read, and focusing on the key arguments, Global Democracy is intended for anyone who wants to start to think about political solutions to global problems, putting them into a perspective that deserves to be taken seriously. Global Democracy now features a new preface written by the author in 2014. The author's royalties on sales of this book are being donated to Oxfam.

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This volume offers an accessible and wide-ranging introduction to the history of international political thought. Taking as its starting-point the various concepts people have used to think about differences between political communities, the book explores changing perceptions of international politics from antiquity to the twentieth century. As well as discussing well-known themes such as relations between independent sovereign states and the tension between raison d'état and a universal code of natural law, it also examines less familiar ideas which have influenced the development of international political thought such as the distinction between civilization, national culture and barbarism, religious attitudes towards infidels, and theories about racial difference and imperialism. Among the key thinkers covered are Thucydides, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Kant, Marx and Morgenthau, alongside less commonly studied figures such as Herodotus, Pope Innocent IV, Herder, Constant and Zimmern. Each chapter concludes with a guide to further reading which will help students to develop a more detailed understanding of the subject. Written with the beginner student in mind, this lively textbook is an ideal introduction for anyone studying international political thought.

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Danto simply and entertainingly traces the evolution of the concept of beauty over the past century and explores how it was removed from the definition of art. Beauty then came to be regarded as a serious aesthetic crime, whereas a hundred years ago it was almost unanimously considered the supreme purpose of art. Beauty is not, and should not be, the be-all and end-all of art, but it has an important place, and is not something to be avoided.Danto draws eruditely upon the thoughts of artists and critics such as Rimbaud, Fry, Matisse, the Dadaists, Duchamp, and Greenberg, as well as on that of philosophers like Hume, Kant, and Hegel. Danto agrees with the dethroning of beauty as the essence of art, and maintains with telling examples that most art is not, in fact, beautiful. He argues, however, for the partial rehabilitation of beauty and the removal of any critical taboo against beauty. Beauty is one among the many modes through which thoughts are presented to human sensibility in art: disgust, horror, sublimity, and sexuality being among other such modes.

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Are cyborgs our friends or our enemies? Was it morally right for Skynet to nuke us? Is John Connor free to choose to defend humanity, or not? Is Judgment Day inevitable? The Terminator series is one of the most popular sci-fi franchises ever created, captivating millions with its edgy depiction of the struggle of humankind for survival against its own creations. This book draws on some of history’s philosophical heavy hitters: Descartes, Kant, Karl Marx, and many more. Nineteen leather-clad chapters target with extreme prejudice the mysteries surrounding intriguing philosophical issues raised by the series, including the morality of terminating other people for the sake of peace, whether we can really use time travel to protect our future resistance leaders in the past, and if Arnold’s famous T-101 is a real person or not. You’ll say “Hasta la vista, baby” to philosophical confusion as you develop a new appreciation for the complexities of John and Sarah Connor and the battles between Skynet and the human race.

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Taste is recognized as one of the most evocative senses. The flavors of food play an important role in identity, memory, emotion, desire, and aversion, as well as social, religious and other occasions. Yet despite its fundamental role, taste is often mysteriously absent from discussions about food. Now in its second edition, The Taste Culture Reader examines the sensuous dimensions of eating and drinking and highlights the centrality of taste in human experience. Combining both classic and contemporary sources from anthropology, philosophy, sociology, history, science, and beyond, the book features excerpts from texts by David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Pierre Bourdieu, Brillat-Savarin, Marcel Proust, Sidney Mintz, and M.F.K. Fisher as well as original essays by authors such as David Sutton, Lisa Heldke, David Howes, Constance Classen, and Amy Trubek. This edition has been revised substantially throughout to include the latest scholarship on the senses and features new introductions from the editor as well as 10 new chapters. The perfect introduction to the study of taste, this is essential reading for students in food studies, anthropology, sensory studies, philosophy, and culinary arts.

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German:Die vorliegende Studie untersucht die Phänomenologie der Sinnbildung bei Marc Richir. Sie ist die erste in deutscher Sprache vorgelegte Untersuchung zu Richirs Versuch einer Neugründung der Phänomenologie. Dieser Versuch besteht zum einen in der Thematisierung der Phänomenalität der Phänomene als solcher und der Ausarbeitung eines Schematismus der Phänomenalisierung; zum anderen aus der Erweiterung der phänomenologisch-eidetischen Sphäre um die Dimension des Symbolischen. Diese Umgestaltung der phänomenologischen Architektonik führt zu einer umfangreichen Neubewertung phänomenologischer Grundbegriffe: transzendentales Bewusstsein, Zeitkonstitution, phänomenologisches Wesen, phänomenologische Reduktion und Epoché u. v. a. Besonders in der mittleren Schaffensperiode entsteht daraus eine Phänomenologie der Sinnbildung, deren Ziel es ist, das genetische „Abenteuer“ des Sinns zu ergründen. Der Sinn ist gleichsam einer doppelten Gefahr ausgesetzt: einerseits sich in der Proteusartigkeit und Flüchtigkeit der aufkommenden Sinnregungen zu verlieren; andererseits sich im symbolischen Gestell der Stiftungen zu entfremden. Die These der vorliegenden Studie lautet, dass dieses doppelte Schweben der Sinnbildung in der Verschränkung verschiedener Zeitschematismen gründet. Das klassische immanente und prä-immanente Zeitbewusstsein verschränkt sich mit der Proto-Zeitigung und Proto-Räumlichung des Schematismus der Phänomenalisierung und den Zeitkategorien des Symbolischen. Die Integration dieser symbolischen Zeitkategorien – Überstürzung, Wiederholung und Nachträglichkeit als Zeitigungsweisen des Nicht-Erscheinens – in die Phänomenologie führt zu einer enormen Erweiterung der Dialog- und Anschlussfähigkeit derselben. Die vorliegende Untersuchung versucht zudem die theoretischen Kontexte, die diese Umgestaltung der phänomenologischen Architektonik motivieren, zu versammeln. Neben klassischen phänomenologischen Autoren wie Husserl, Heidegger und Merleau-Ponty spielen Denker wie Kant, Freud, Lacan und Derrida eine zentrale Rolle.English:This book examines the phenomenology of sense formation in Marc Richir. It is the first study presented in German on Richir's attempt to refound phenomenology. The thesis of the present study is that in Richir, the double suspension of sense formation is grounded in the entanglement of different temporal schemata. Classical immanent and pre-immanent time consciousness intertwine with the proto-temporalization and proto-spatialization of the schematism of phenomenalization and the time categories of the symbolic. The integration of these symbolic time categories - precipitation, repetition, and retroactivity as modes of temporalization of non-appearance - into phenomenology leads to an enormous expansion of the latter's capability for dialogue and connection. This volume also assembles the theoretical contexts that motivate this transformation. In addition to classical phenomenological authors such as Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty, thinkers such as Kant, Freud, Lacan, and Derrida play an equally central role. This text appeals to students and researchers in the field.

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Esta obra se abre con una introducción histórica, no heleno ni eurocéntrica, en la que se reinterpretan los sistemas éticos en la historia mundial, hasta situar la problemática en la Modernidad dentro del sistema-mundo como proceso de globalización que simultáneamente excluye a la mayoría de la humanidad.En la primera parte se aborda una crítica a las morales formales (Kant, Rawls, Apel, Habermas) desde un principio material o de contenido con pretensión de universalidad; el deber de producir, reproducir y desarrollar la vida humana en comunidad. El principio de factibilidad ética, por su parte, permite que el cumplimiento del acto, institución o sistema de eticidad pueda tener la pretensión de bondad.En la segunda parte, desde la imposibilidad de que dicho acto, institución o sistema de eticidad buenos pueda tener pretensión de perfección acabada, se descubren los que sufren en su corporalidad vulnerable la imposibilidad de vivir, el hecho de ser excluidos. Se trata de las vícti

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Leída las más de las veces desde la estética y, en concreto, desde los aspectos que tanto entusiasmo despertaron en el romanticismo temprano (las categorías de lo bello y lo sublime, la teoría del genio, el papel de la imaginación en la estética, etc.), el problema central de la Crítica del discernimiento desborda, no obstante, el terreno de la filosofía del arte para constituirse en cuestión capital que afecta a la propia unidad de la filosofía en general: es posible hallar un quicio entre el ámbito de la naturaleza ?abordado en la primera Crítica? y el ámbito de la libertad ?del que se ocupa la segunda de las Críticas?? El problema es tanto más importante cuanto que va de la mano, a juicio de Kant, de la pregunta clave y fundamental que da sentido a la propia filosofía: Qué es el hombre?Esta edición, realizada por Roberto R. Aramayo y Salvador Mas, revisa y actualiza la terminología de la obra, comenzando por su propio título.

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Esta obra de la pensadora australiana Genevieve Lloyd es considerada un clásico del feminismo filosófico. Traducida por primera vez al castellano, es de lectura indispensable para quienes estudian Filosofía o, igualmente, para quienes se interesan por la impronta que el androcentrismo ha dejado en la cultura que hemos heredado. Un repaso breve de los escritos de Platón, Aristóteles, Filón de Alejandría, san Agustín, santo Tomás de Aquino, Bacon, Descartes, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Sartre y Simone de Beauvoir, entre otros, permite a la autora mostrar la dinámica de los símbolos de la masculinidad y la feminidad en la tradición filosófica. Pero, distanciándose de algunas críticas feministas a la razón que terminarían perpetuando la carga simbólica que es necesario superar, Lloyd aclara: "La afirmación de que la Razón es masculina no requiere en absoluto apelar al relativismo sexual sobre la verdad, ni sugerir que los principios del pensamiento lógico válidos para los hombres no lo so

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He aquí una original indagación en torno a lo que algunos notables pensadores ?desde el siglo XVII al XX? han afirmado respecto de una de las personalidades más in fluyentes, debatidas y amadas (también odiada) que podemos encontrar en la historia de la humanidad: Jesús de Nazaret. Muchos de los textos aquí recogidos sorprenderán. En el panorama editorial español es la primera vez que se publica una obra de estas características sobre aquel lejano judío, muerto en una cruz a las afueras de Jerusalén, miles de veces representado en pinturas y esculturas a lo largo de la historia. El autor ofrece una clarificadora introducción en torno a las tres principales perspectivas que han seguido los filósofos en su acercamiento a Jesús, el Cristo: la metafísica (verdad-ser), la ética (bien-amor), y la escatológica (muerte-resurrección), derivadas de las tres preguntas del ilustrado Kant (qué puedo saber?, qué debo hacer?, qué me cabe esperar?). Igualmente el autor del libro presenta de cada pensa

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Caminar es mucho más que poner un pie delante del otro. Y si solo se pudiera pensar bien a través de los pies? Un admirable libro que entusiasmará incluso a los sedentarios empedernidos. Le Monde des LivresAndar no exige ni aprendizaje, ni técnica, ni material ni dinero. Sólo requiere de un cuerpo, de espacio y de tiempo. Cada día son más los aficionados a caminar, y todos ellos obtienen los beneficios de esa propensión: sosiego, comunión con la naturaleza, plenitud...Andar. Una filosofía es un recorrido (a pie), filosófico y literario, en compañía de ilustres autores como Rimbaud, Thoreau o Kant cuyo hilo conductor es el simple hecho de caminar. Andar como experiencia de libertad, como acto solitario y propicio para la ensoñación, como motor de creatividad...Este libro es una celebración del paseo y una reivindicación de virtudes elementales que parecemos haber olvidado en esta época de prisas y de monotonía. Desde un enfoque cultural, Frédéric Gros se adhiere a la corriente

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Este es un libro de amplio recorrido y excelentemente documentado que ofrece una visión de conjunto de la génesis y la evolución de la obra el joven Heidegger y de su temprana confrontación con la tradición filosófica, la teología, el neokantismo, el vitalismo, la hermenéutica y la fenomenología. Tomando como hilo conductor la genealogía de la pregunta por el sentido del ser, la presente obra articula, de una forma realmente comprensible, el núcleo temático y metodológico de la obra temprana de Heidegger a partir de un exhaustivo estudio de sus escritos de juventud y de una discusión abierta con la literatura secundaria más reciente. Mas allá de las interesantes interpretaciones heideggerianas de Agustín, Pablo, Lutero, Descartes, Kant, Dilthey, Lask y, sobre todo, Aristóteles y HUsserl, el pensamiento del joven Heidegger plantea una serie de problemas filosóficos que todavía hoy en día ocupan un papel central en el debate contemporáneo: desde su innovadora idea de la filosofía como fe

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Ante pandemias devastadoras, climas extremos y la destrucción de ecosistemas, parece evidente que la relación entre los seres humanos y la naturaleza debería estar en el centro de cualquier debate intelectual. Cada vez somos más conscientes de la necesidad de cambiar nuestras costumbres; de no lograrlo, las consecuencias parecen inevitables: desapareceremos, junto a otras tantas especies. El primer escalón hacia esa meta pasa por repensar la manera en que concebimos la naturaleza, así como el vínculo que nos une a ella.Bernstein nos interpela para que revisemos algunas de las grandes reflexiones acerca de la naturaleza que la historia nos ha dado. El autor articula un recorrido por el pensamiento de figuras como Spinoza, Kant, Marx y Nietzsche para reconstruirlo y revelar tanto sus contradicciones como sus puntos en común. Así, consigue vertebrarlos en un todo coherente que permite pensar, de nuevo, nuestra forma actual de relacionarnos con el entorno.Las vicisitudes de la nat

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Ensayo imprescindible para conocer los inicios de la estética moderna, el tratado de Edmund Burke (1729-1797) sobre lo sublime y lo bello es digno heredero de una tradición retórica que se remonta a Longino, de la filosofía empirista anglosajona y de las teorías del gusto neoclásicas e ilustradas. A pesar de ser obra de juventud de un autor que alcanzó la fama sobre todo por sus escritos políticos, entre los que destaca Reflexiones sobre la Revolución en Francia -publicado también en esta colección-, la indagación de Burke constituye una aportación de tal relevancia al estudio de los fundamentos empíricos y psicológicos de la experiencia estética, que sus ideas influyeron decisivamente en el pensamiento de Kant, en los programas artísticos y literarios del Romanticismo, con su fascinación por lo infinito, lo pasional y lo pintoresco, y en las formas de lo sublime y lo siniestro que ha prodigado el arte contemporáneo.Introducción, traducción y notas de Carlota Fernández-Jáureg

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Five years. Five messages. Can a killer hold the key? It’s five years since psychiatrist Olivia Hofmann’s husband and daughter vanished without trace, and five years since the body of troubled teenager Lisa Manz was found murdered in a quarry outside Vienna. While the trail of Lisa’s killer has gone cold, Olivia receives an anonymous postcard each year on the anniversary of her family’s disappearance. Who is sending the messages, and why are they sorry? When one of her patients claims he has seen Lisa alive, Olivia joins forces with detective Levi Kant, who was taken off the murder case when he was close to finding answers. Is it possible Lisa is still alive? And is there a connection with Olivia’s missing loved ones? But reopening the cold case will put Olivia and Levi in mortal danger: the killer is onto them and will stop at nothing to remain in the shadows. Can they bring the truth to light before they are silenced forever?

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Phenomenology of Civilization explores the philosophy of Edmund Husserl and R.G. Collingwood, two of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. Husserl founded phenomenology, which has had a direct effect on contemporary philosophy, and Collingwood, though less formally known, is still one of the most commonly read twentieth century philosophers. Maurice Eisenstein examines their work in relation to recent philosophy, particularly focusing on existentialism, Heideggerian phenomenology, and postmodernism. He brings these two philosophers together because they were contemporaries of each other, addressed the same audience, and, therefore, had similar issues to influence them. This discussion of Husserl and Collingwood's work moves beyond Husserl's phenomenology, and Collingwood's typical association with Hegel or Kant, to a new understanding of their ideas through an association with each other in regard to contemporary philosophy and political theory. Eisenstein's discoveries place Husserl and Collingwood into the main Western liberal political tradition with Dewey and James, rather than the more radical critique of that tradition with Sartre and Heidegger.

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At its most basic, philosophy is about learning how to think about the world around us. It should come as no surprise, then, that children make excellent philosophers! Naturally inquisitive, pint-size scholars need little prompting before being willing to consider life's big questions, however strange or impractical. Plato & Co. introduces children and curious grown-ups to the lives and work of famous philosophers, from Descartes to Socrates, Einstein, Marx, and Wittgenstein. Each book in the series features an engaging and often funny story that presents basic tenets of philosophical thought alongside vibrant color illustrations. In Professor Kant's Incredible Day, the philosopher Immanuel Kant wants only to be left in peace to consider life's big questions: What can I know? What can I hope for? But, when a perfumed letter arrives one day, it interrupts his studies and sets off a series of events the dour professor could not possibly have predicted. But just when it seems as though al

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In Science Fiction and Extro-Science Fiction, Quentin Meillassoux addresses the problem of chaos and of the constancy of natural laws in the context of literature. With his usual argumentative rigor, he elucidates the distinction between science fiction, a genre in which science remains possible in spite of all the upheavals that may attend the world in which the tale takes place, and fiction outside-science, the literary concept he fashions in this book, a fiction in which science becomes impossible. With its investigations of the philosophies of Hume, Kant, and Popper, Science Fiction and Extro-Science Fiction broadens the inquiry that Meillassoux began in After Finitude, thinking through the concrete possibilities and consequences of a chaotic world in which human beings can no longer resort to science to ground their existence. It is a significant milestone in the work of an emerging philosopher, which will appeal to readers of both philosophy and literature. The text is followed by Isaac Asimov’s essay “The Billiard Ball.”

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The Art Firm explores the seemingly unorthodox alliance of the arts, management, and marketing. Art firms—as avant-garde enterprises and arts corporations—have existed for at least two hundred years, using texts, images, and other types of art to create corporate wealth. This book investigates how to apply the methods artists use in creating value to the methods more traditional managers use in running their businesses. Guillet de Monthoux offers a crash course in aesthetics from Kant to Gadamer, showing how aesthetic management and metaphysical marketing can create value. Using case studies of successful art managers from Richard Wagner to Robert Wilson, the author illustrates the creative role—so central to value-making in contemporary economies—performed by aesthetic play in art firms. Along the way, Guillet de Monthoux points out how responsible aesthetic management and marketing can eradicate the problems of banality and totality, the two capital sins of an art-based economy.

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No theme has been more central to international philosophical debates than that of community: from American communitarianism to Habermas's ethic of communication to the French deconstruction of community in the work of Derrida and Nancy. Nevertheless, in none of these cases has the concept been examined from the perspective of community's original etymological meaning: cum munus. In Communitas: The Origin and Destiny of Community, Roberto Esposito does just that through an original counter-history of political philosophy that takes up not only readings of community by Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant, Heidegger and Bataille, but also by Hölderlin, Nietzsche, Canetti, Arendt, and Sartre. The result of his extraordinary conceptual and lexical analysis is a radical overturning of contemporary interpretations of community. Community isn't a property, nor is it a territory to be separated and defended against those who do not belong to it. Rather, it is a void, a debt, a gift to the other that also reminds us of our constitutive alterity with respect to ourselves.

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This is the first English-language introduction to Peter Sloterdijk, the distinguished German philosopher and controversial public intellectual. Sloterdijk, in the tradition of Nietzsche and Heine, is an iconoclast who uses humour and biting critique to challenge many of modernity�s sacred thinkers, from Kant to Heidegger, in the process radically reinterpreting the canon of Western philosophy. In this unique textbook, leading Sloterdijk expert Jean-Pierre Couture explains in accessible language Sloterdijk�s exceptional contribution, breaking his thought down into five key approaches: psychopolitics, anthropotechnics, spherology, controversy, and therapeutics. Sloterdijk�s frequent public controversies, with supporters of Habermas and the Frankfurt school in particular, are assessed and their significance for current philosophical debates explained. This fascinating book will be an essential companion for those interested in the hybrid aesthetics of thought situated at the crossroads of art and philosophy. Its up-to-date analyses of Sloterdijk�s recently translated corpus will make it essential reading for all students and scholars of modern European thought.

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Liberalism is an innovative introductory textbook exploring the dominant discourse of contemporary political theory and the core ideas that underpin it. Despite the ubiquity of liberalism there remains considerable disagreement about what contemporary political liberals believe. This book distinguishes modern political liberalism from earlier manifestations of the concept, yet shows how contemporary liberalism is derived from a long-standing historical tradition that includes John Locke, Immanuel Kant and J.S. Mill. Contemporary liberalism combines ideas from this historical tradition to make a political theory that places at its heart the equal treatment of each person. Paul Kelly provides an overview of the basic building blocks of contemporary liberalism - contractarianism, impartiality, justice and freedom, - and introduces students to the ideas of its key theorists John Rawls, Brian Barry and Ronald Dworkin. He goes on to consider three major challenges facing liberalism today and concludes with a defence of the continuing relevance of political liberalism in the contemporary world.

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Gayatri Chakravorty Spivaks seminal contribution to contemporary thought defies disciplinary boundaries. From her early translations of Derrida to her subsequent engagement with Marxism, feminism and postcolonial studies and her recent work on human rights, the war on terror and globalization, she has proved to be one of the most vital of present-day thinkers. In this book Stephen Morton offers a wide-ranging introduction to and critique of Spivaks work. He examines her engagements with philosophers and other thinkers from Kant to Paul de Man, feminists from Cixous to Helie-Lucas and literary texts by Charlotte Bronte, J. M. Coetzee, Mahasweta Devi and Jean Rhys. Spivaks thought is also situated in relation to subaltern studies. Throughout the book, Morton interrogates the materialist basis of Spivaks thought and demonstrates the ethical and political commitment which lies at the heart of her work. Stephen Morton provides an ideal introduction to the work of this complex and increasingly important thinker.

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In Being after Rousseau, Richard L. Velkley presents Jean-Jacques Rousseau as the founder of a modern European tradition of reflection on the relation of philosophy to culture - a reflection that calls both into question. Tracing this tradition from Rousseau to Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schelling, and Martin Heidegger, Velkley shows late modern philosophy as a series of ultimately unsuccessful attempts to resolve the dichotomies between nature and society, culture and civilization, and philosophy and society that Rousseau brought to the fore. The Rousseauian tradition begins, for Velkley, with Rousseau's criticism of modern political philosophy. Although the German Idealists such as Schelling accepted much of Rousseau's critique, they believed, unlike Rousseau, that human wholeness could be attained at the level of society and history. Heidegger and Nietzsche questioned this claim, but followed both Rousseau and the Idealists in their vision of the philosopher-poet striving to recover an original wholeness that the history of reason has distorted.

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Debates about the nature of the Enlightenment date to the eighteenth century, when Immanuel Kant himself addressed the question, 'What is Enlightenment'? The contributors to this ambitious book offer a paradigm-shifting answer to that now-famous query: Enlightenment is an event in the history of mediation. Enlightenment, they argue, needs to be engaged within the newly broad sense of mediation introduced here - not only oral, visual, written, and printed media, but everything that intervenes, enables, supplements, or is simply in between. With essays addressing infrastructure and genres, associational practices and protocols, this volume establishes mediation as the condition of possibility for enlightenment. In so doing, it not only answers Kant's query; it also poses its own broader question: how would foregrounding mediation change the kinds and areas of inquiry in our own epoch? "This Is Enlightenment" is a landmark volume with the polemical force and archival depth to start a conversation that extends across the disciplines that the Enlightenment itself first configured.

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Schelling came of age during the pivotal and exciting years at the end of the eighteenth century, as Kant''s philosophy was being incorporated into the German academic world. At this time, in addition to delving into the new Kantian philosophy, Schelling engaged in an intense study of Plato''s dialogues and was immersed in a Neoplatonic intellectual culture. Attention to these aspects of Schelling''s early philosophical development illuminates his fundamental commitments. Throughout the first decade of his adult life, from 1792-1802, Schelling was a mystical Platonist. Naomi Fisher argues that Schelling is committed to two overarching theses, which together comprise his mystical Platonism. First, Schelling considers the absolute to be ineffable: It cannot be described in conceptual terms. For this reason, it remains inferentially external to any given philosophical system and is only intimated to us in certain analogical formulations, in works of art, or in nature as a whole. Second, S

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Learn to think big and tackle life''s tricky questions in this easy-to-understand guide to philosophy.Learn all about the great thinkers who, from ancient times to the modern day, have tried to make sense of the world by asking questions such as Who am I?', Is the world real?', and Is it ever right to tell a lie?'Meet Socrates and Confucius, Kant and Sartre, and many others who have studied and pondered on the complexities of everyday life in this book for children aged 9+ that breaks down philosophy in an accessible and engaging way.This book philosophy for children offers:- A clear and logical approach that brings the exciting world of big ideas and great thinkers within reach of young children.- A range of topics broken down by colourful photographs and lively, accessible text.- A new edition that's been fully-revised with fresh material on issues of equality, climate change and virtual reality.This fully updated editi

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Fukuyama’s concept of the End of History has been one of the most widely debated theories of international politics since the end of the Cold War. This book discusses Fukuyama’s claim that liberal democracy alone is able to satisfy the human aspiration for freedom and dignity, and explores the way in which his thinking is part of a philosophical tradition which includes Kant, Hegel and Marx. Two new chapters in this second edition discuss the ways in which Fukuyama’s thinking has developed – they include his celebrated and controversial criticism of neoconservatism and his complex intellectual relationship to Samuel Huntington, whose Clash of Civilization thesis he rejects but whose notion of political decay is central to his more recent work. The authors here argue that Fukuyama’s continuing fundamental contributions to debates concerning the spread of democracy and threat of global terror mark him out as one of the most important thinkers of the twenty-first century.

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From pebbles to planets, tigers to tables, pine trees to people; animate and inanimate, natural and artificial; bodies are everywhere. Bodies populate the world, acting and interacting with one another, and they are the subject-matter of Newton''s laws of motion. But what is a body? And how can we know how they behave? In Philosophical Mechanics in the Age of Reason, Katherine Brading and Marius Stan examine the struggle for a theory of bodies.At the beginning of the 18th century, physics was the branch of philosophy that studied bodies in general. Its primary task was to provide a qualitative account of the nature of bodies, including their essential properties, causal powers, and generic behaviors. Pursued by a variety of figures both canonical (from Leibniz to Kant) and less familiar (from Du Châtelet and Euler to d''Alembert and Lagrange), this proved a difficult task. At stake were the appropriate epistemologies and methods for theorizing about the natural world. Solutions demande

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What is goodness? Is goodness achievable, and if so, how? If being a good person is a matter of doing the right thing, then what is the right thing to do? Is it acting rationally, promoting happiness, exercising moderation in all things or respecting the freedom of others, or is it somehow a concoction of all these abilities, wisely adjusted to suit circumstances? In this instructive, entertaining and often humorous book, Gary Cox, best-selling author of How to Be an Existentialist and How to Be a Philosopher, investigates the phenomenon of goodness and what, if anything, it is to be a good person and a paragon of virtue. Part easygoing exploration of the age-old subject of moral philosophy, part personal development and improvement manual, How to Be Good carefully leads you on a fascinating journey through the often strange and surprising world of ethics, with ideas from Aristotle, Kant, Nietzsche and a host of other moral philosophers.

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El libro que las influencers no quieren que leas. Lo más divertido que leerás en mucho tiempo. "Y el caso es que yo, que siempre he sido muy creativa para la chufla, me creé una cuenta para echar las tardes estirando la coña ma rinera de esas semanas de apocilgamiento en casa. Hazme una foto así, como que tengo el brazo colocado para una resonancia desde hac e veinte minutos. Hazme una foto así, como que estoy tratando de entender de qué trata La crítica de la razón pura de Kant. Y así nació @hazmeunafotoasi".En un mundo en el que cualquiera se autodenomina creador de contenidos, a Lorena Macías le robó el corazón que la amiga de una influencer se refiriera a ella como destructora de contenidos. En su primer libro, su ácido e ingenioso estilo provoca carcajadas salvajes al entremezclar su propia historia con las anécdotas más locas de las influencers.Acompaña a la autora en el descubrimiento de esta nave industrial de pamplinas que es Instagram y en sus av

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Romanticism was a cultural and intellectual movement characterized by discovery, revolution, and the poetic as well as by the philosophical relationship between people and nature. Botany sits at the intersection where romantic scientific and literary discourses meet. "Clandestine Marriage" explores the meaning and methods of how plants were represented and reproduced in scientific, literary, artistic, and material cultures of the period. Theresa M. Kelley synthesizes romantic debates about taxonomy and morphology, the contemporary interest in books and magazines devoted to plant study and images, and writings by such authors as Mary Wollstonecraft and Anna Letitia Barbauld. Period botanical paintings of flowers are reproduced in vibrant color, bringing her argument and the romantics' passion for plants to life. In addition to exploring botanic thought and practice in the context of British romanticism, Kelley also looks to the German philosophical traditions of Kant, Hegel, and Goethe and to Charles Darwin's reflections on orchids and plant pollination. Her interdisciplinary approach allows a deeper understanding of a time when exploration of the natural world was a culture-wide enchantment.

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Use your imagination! The demand is as important as it is confusing. What is the imagination? What is its value? Where does it come from? And where is it going in a time when even the obscene seems overdone and passé? This book takes up these questions and argues for the centrality of imagination in human cognition. It traces the development of the imagination in Kant’s critical philosophy (particularly the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment) and claims that the insights of Kantian aesthetic theory, especially concerning the nature of creativity, common sense, and genius, influenced the development of nineteenth-century American philosophy. The book identifies the central role of the imagination in the philosophy of Peirce, a role often overlooked in analytic treatments of his thought. The final chapters pursue the observation made by Kant and Peirce that imaginative genius is a type of natural gift (ingenium) and must in some way be continuous with the creative force of nature. It makes this final turn by way of contemporary studies of metaphor, embodied cognition, and cognitive neuroscience.

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Recognized as one of the leading philosophers and Jewish thinkers of the twentieth century, Emil Ludwig Fackenheim has been widely praised for his boldness, originality, and profundity. As is well-known, a striking feature of Fackenheim’s thought is his unwavering contention that the Holocaust brought about a radical shift in human history, so monumental and unprecedented that nothing can ever be the same again. Fackenheim regarded it as the specific duty of thinkers and scholars to assume responsibility to probe this historical event for its impact on the human future and to make its immense ramifications evident. In Emil Fackenheim’s Post-Holocaust Thought and Its Philosophical Sources, scholars consider important figures in the history of philosophy – including Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, and Strauss – and trace how Fackenheim's philosophical confrontations with each of them shaped his overall thought. This collection details which philosophers exercised the greatest influence on Fackenheim, and how he diverged from them. Incorporating widely varying approaches, the contributors in the volume wrestle with this challenge historically, politically, and philosophically in order to illuminate the depths of Fackenheim’s own thought.

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Thomas De Quincey's multivalent engagement with Romantic translation Offers new perspectives on De Quincey's most celebrated essays, his style and politics, and his famously fraught interactions with Coleridge, Wordsworth, Carlyle, Kant, and others Traces how De Quincey harnessed translation to reconfigure British Romanticism and open it towards European Romanticisms Combines insights from translation studies, critical theory, and Romantic studies in order to establish a novel method for reading Romantic writing This book investigates how De Quincey's writing was shaped by his work as a translator. Drawing on a wide range of materials and readings, it traces how De Quincey employed structures of interlinguistic and interdiscursive exchange to reimagine Romanticism. The book examines how his theories and practices of translation served to position his oeuvre, define his style, frame his philosophy and reinvent the meaning of literary creativity. Brecht de Groote traces in particular the ways in which De Quincey used translation to locate British Romanticism in its European context. In shedding new light on De Quincey, de Groote models a new translation-centric approach to the study of Romanticism.

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Interrogates the rise of national philosophies and their impact on cosmopolitanism and nationalismThe idea of national philosophy carries in it a strange contradiction. We talk about 'German philosophy' or 'American philosophy'. But philosophy has always pictured itself to be the project of universality. It presents itself as something that takes place outside or beyond the national detachable from language, culture and history.So why do we assign nationalities to philosophies? Building on Jacques Derrida's unpublished seminars on philosophical nationalism, Oisin Keohane claims that national philosophies are a variant of some form of cosmo-nationalism: a strain of nationalism that uses, rather than opposes, ideas in cosmopolitanism to advance the aims of one nation.Key FeaturesOpens up new exciting areas of exploration between nationalism and cosmopolitanism through the concept of the cosmo-nationalExamines Derrida's unpublished seminars on philosophical nationalism, showing him to be much more interested in the intersection of philosophy and the social sciences than previously thoughtExplores three cases: German Philosophy through Kant and Fichte, French Philosophy through Tocqueville and American Philosophy through Emerson

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This book explores the relationship among Romanticism, deconstruction, and Marxism by examining tropes of sensation and sobriety in a set of exemplary texts from Romantic literature and contemporary literary theory. Orrin N. C. Wang explains how themes of sensation and sobriety, along with Marxist-related ideas of revolution and commodification, set the terms of narrative surrounding the history of Romanticism as a movement. The book is both polemical and critical, engaging in debates with modern thinkers such as Paul de Man, Jacques Derrida, Walter Benn Michaels, and Slavoj i ek, as well as presenting fresh readings of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century writers, including Wordsworth, Kant, Shelley, Byron, Bronte, and Keats. Romantic Sobriety combines deeply complex, close readings with a broader reflection on Romanticism and its implications for literary study. It will interest scholars who study Romanticism from a number of perspectives, including those interested in bodily and social consumption, the roles of addiction and abstinence in literature, the connection between literary and visual culture, the intersection of critical theory and Romanticism, and the relationships among language, historical knowledge, and political practice.

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Palmquist’s Commentary provides the first definitive clarification on Kant’s Philosophy of Religion in English; it includes the full text of Pluhar’s translation, interspersed with explanations, providing both a detailed overview and an original interpretation of Kant’s work. Offers definitive, sentence-level commentary on Kant’s Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason Presents a thoroughly revised version of Pluhar’s translation of the full text of Kant’s Religion, including detailed notes comparing the translation with the others still in use today Identifies most of the several hundred changes Kant made to the second (1794) edition and unearths evidence that many major changes were responses to criticisms of the first edition Provides both a detailed overview and original interpretation of Kant’s work on the philosophy of religion Demonstrates that Kant’s arguments in Religion are not only cogent, but have clear and profound practical applications to the way religion is actually practiced in the world today Includes a glossary aimed at justifying new translations of key technical terms in Religion, many of which have previously neglected religious and theological implications

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The Bible is an enduring source of inspiration for the human heart and mind, and readers of Thinking about the Torah will be rewarded with an enhanced understanding of this great work’s deeper meanings. Drawing on Western philosophy and particularly Jewish philosophy, Kenneth Seeskin delves into ten core biblical verses and the powerful ideas that emerge from them. He speaks to readers on every page and invites conversation about topics central to human existence: how finite beings can relate to the infinite, what love is, the role of ethics in religion, and the meaning of holiness. Seeskin raises questions we all ask and responds to them with curiosity and compassion, weaving into his own perceptive commentary insights from great Jewish thinkers such as Maimonides, Spinoza, Buber, Rosenzweig, and Levinas, as well as Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Luther, Kant, and Kierkegaard. The Bible is concerned with how we think as well as how we follow the commandments, rituals, and customs. Seeskin inspires us to read the Torah with an open mind and think about the lessons it teaches us.

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Stanley Cavell's unique contributions to the study of epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, film, Shakespeare, and American philosophy have all received wide acclaim. But there has been relatively little recognition of the pertinence of Cavell's work to our understanding of political philosophy. The Claim to Community fills this gap with essays from a wide range of prominent American, English, French, and Italian philosophers and political theorists, as well as a lengthy response to the essays by Cavell himself. The topics covered include Cavell's understanding of political community, philosophical anthropology, moral perfectionism, the positivist distinction between fact and value, political friendship, the differences between political and aesthetic disagreement, political romanticism, "the pursuit of happiness," tragedy, and race. There are also evaluations of the ways Cavell's positions on these and other matters compare with those of Plato, Aristotle, Montaigne, Kant, John Stuart Mill, Thoreau, Nietzsche, Michel Foucault, Hannah Arendt, Carl Schmitt, Peter Winch, Wittgenstein, and Fred Astaire. This volume will be of great interest to political theorists and political philosophers, as well as to students of literature and film.

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When Goethe christened the 1700's "the Century of Winckelmann" and Kant dubbed it "the Century of Frederick the Great," they invoked two notorious figures in gay history. This collection of twelve essays reclaims "the Age of Goethe"—To call upon a literary designation of roughly the same period - as a time when same-sex erotic attraction suffused artistic production from Winckelmann's art treatises and Goethe's plays to Friedrich Schlegel's self-reflexive novel Lucinde and Kleist's letters. This volume employs historical, biographical, and textual evidence to paint a cohesive picture of the incontrovertibly sexual nature of male-male and female-female relationships in late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century Germany. The literature of this era bequeathed to us the cultural inventions of Romantic love, classical femininity, the marriage partnership, and the aesthetics of beauty - all, as this volume demonstrates, via and despite the ever-resurgent erotic desire for one's own sex. In the process, it offers radically new readings of canonical authors - including Wieland, Lenz, Goethe, Friedrich Schlegel, and Kleist — in light of the eroticized same-sex relations in their works.

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G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831), the influential German philosopher, believed that human history was advancing spiritually and morally according to God's purpose. At the beginning of Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Hegel writes: "What the history of Philosophy shows us is a succession of noble minds, a gallery of heroes of thought, who, by the power of Reason, have penetrated into the being of things, of nature and of spirit, into the Being of God, and have won for us by their labours the highest treasure, the treasure of reasoned knowledge." Volume 3 of Lectures on the History of Philosophy, titled Medieval and Modern Philosophy for this Bison Books edition, begins with a survey of the philosophy of the middle ages, leaving the pagan world for the Christian and extending to the sixteenth century A.D. Hegel shows how scholastic theology and philosophy developed through the efforts of Peter Lombard, Thomas Aquinas, and others. Hegel's treatment of the modern period of philosophy focuses on Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Hobbes, Leibnitz, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, and Fichte.

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In these 15 taster essays you will discover the key concepts and critical approaches of the theorists who have had the most significant impact on the humanities since 1990. On completing each chapter, you will find suggestions for further reading so that you can find out more and start applying the ideas in question. In addition to chapters on individuals such as Badiou, Ranciere and Spivak, there are chapters on Laclau and Mouffe, and a chapter on Green critical theorists. Key Features *Written by experienced lecturers including John Armitage (Northumbria University), Paul Hegarty (University College Cork), David Huddart (Chinese University of Hong Kong), Simon Tormey (The University of Sydney), Samuel A. Chambers (Johns Hopkins University) *Sets each theorist in their biographical and intellectual context *The only book to offer chapter-length introductions to such a range of contemporary theorists making it the first place to look for an informed overview and evaluation *Jon Simons has edited two other popular guides to critical theory: From Kant to Levi-Strauss: The Background to Contemporary Critical Theory and Contemporary Critical Theorists: From Lacan to Said.

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Robert Brandom is one of the most renowned contemporary American philosophers, discussed widely in analytic as well as continental philosophical communities on both sides of the Atlantic. His innovative approach to language and rationality combines the philosophies of language and mind, epistemology, metaphysics, and logic with intriguing interpretations of historical figures such as Kant, Hegel, and Wittgenstein. Yet, due to its boldly unorthodox and highly technical nature, Brandom's work can also be daunting for the beginner. In this accessible book, Ronald Loeffler provides a critical and clear-headed guide through the maze of Brandom's philosophy. He conveys the pioneering nature of Brandom's approach to language and communication, with its unabashed appropriation of the German Idealistic tradition, and offers focused, sure-footed introductions to all major aspects of Brandom’s thought, including his normative pragmatics and inferential role semantics and his theories of empirical knowledge, logic, linguistic representation, and objectivity. This book will be essential reading for students of philosophy, as well as those in related fields with interests in language, communication, and the nature of norm-governed social interaction.

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