Search results for ""kant""

In Animals and the Limits of Postmodernism, Gary Steiner illuminates postmodernism's inability to produce viable ethical and political principles. Ethics requires notions of self, agency, and value that are not available to postmodernists. Thus, much of what is published under the rubric of postmodernist theory lacks a proper basis for a systematic engagement with ethics. Steiner demonstrates this through a provocative critique of postmodernist approaches to the moral status of animals, set against the background of a broader indictment of postmodernism's failure to establish clear principles for action. He revisits the ideas of Derrida, Foucault, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, together with recent work by their American interpreters, and shows that the basic terms of postmodern thought are incompatible with definitive claims about the moral status of animals-as well as humans. Steiner also identifies the failures of liberal humanist thought in regards to this same moral dilemma, and he encourages a rethinking of humanist ideas in a way that avoids the anthropocentric limitations of traditional humanist thought. Drawing on the achievements of the Stoics and Kant, he builds on his earlier ideas of cosmic holism and non-anthropocentric cosmopolitanism to arrive at a more concrete foundation for animal rights.

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In Animals and the Limits of Postmodernism, Gary Steiner illuminates postmodernism's inability to produce viable ethical and political principles. Ethics requires notions of self, agency, and value that are not available to postmodernists. Thus, much of what is published under the rubric of postmodernist theory lacks a proper basis for a systematic engagement with ethics. Steiner demonstrates this through a provocative critique of postmodernist approaches to the moral status of animals, set against the background of a broader indictment of postmodernism's failure to establish clear principles for action. He revisits the ideas of Derrida, Foucault, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, together with recent work by their American interpreters, and shows that the basic terms of postmodern thought are incompatible with definitive claims about the moral status of animals-as well as humans. Steiner also identifies the failures of liberal humanist thought in regards to this same moral dilemma, and he encourages a rethinking of humanist ideas in a way that avoids the anthropocentric limitations of traditional humanist thought. Drawing on the achievements of the Stoics and Kant, he builds on his earlier ideas of cosmic holism and non-anthropocentric cosmopolitanism to arrive at a more concrete foundation for animal rights.

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Richard Eldridge explores the ability of dense and formally interesting literature to respond to the complexities of modern life. Beyond simple entertainment, difficult modern works cultivate reflective depth and help their readers order and interpret their lives as subjects in relation to complex economies and technological systems. By imagining themselves in the role of the protagonist or the authorial persona, readers become immersed in structures of sustained attention, under which concrete possibilities of meaningful life, along with difficulties that block their realization, are tracked and clarified. Literary form, Eldridge argues, generates structures of care, reflection, and investment within readers, shaping--if not stabilizing--their interactions with everyday objects and events. Through the experience of literary forms of attention, readers may come to think and live more actively, more fully engaging with modern life, rather than passively suffering it. Eldridge considers the thought of Descartes, Kant, Adorno, Benjamin, Stanley Cavell, and Charles Taylor in his discussion of Goethe, Wordsworth, Rilke, Stoppard, and Sebald, advancing a philosophy of literature that addresses our desire to read and the meaning and satisfaction that literary attention brings to our fragmented modern lives.

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Liberal thinkers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were alert to the political costs and human cruelties involved in European colonialism, but they also thought that European expansion held out progressive possibilities. In Progress, Pluralism, and Politics David Williams examines the colonial and anti-colonial arguments of Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, Jeremy Bentham, and L.T. Hobhouse.Williams locates their ambivalent attitude towards European conquest and colonial rule in a set of tensions between the impact of colonialism on European states, the possibilities of progress in distant and diverse places, and the relationship between universalism and cultural pluralism. In so doing he reveals some of the central ambiguities that characterize the ways that liberal thought has dealt with the reality of an illiberal world. Of particular importance are appeals to various forms of universal history, attempts to mediate between the claims of identity and the reality of difference, and the different ways of thinking about the achievement of liberal goods in other places.Pointing to key elements in still ongoing debates within liberal states about how they should relate to illiberal places, Progress, Pluralism, and Politics enriches the discussion on political thought and the relationship between liberalism and colonialism.

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As a philosopher, Richard McKeon spent his career developing Pragmatism in a new key, specifically by tracing the ways in which philosophic problems arise in fields other than philosophy—across the natural and social sciences and aesthetics—and showed the ways in which any problem, pushed back to its beginning or taken to its end, is a philosophic problem. The roots of this book, On Knowing—The Social Sciences, are traced to McKeon’s classes where he blended philosophy with physics, ethics, politics, history, and aesthetics. This volume—the second in a series—leaves behind natural science themes to embrace freedom, power, and history, which, McKeon argues, lay out the whole field of human action. The authors McKeon considers—Hobbes, Machiavelli, Spinoza, Kant, and J. S. Mill—show brilliantly how philosophic methods work in action, via analyses that do not merely reduce or deconstruct meaning, but enhance those texts by reconnecting them to the active history of philosophy and to problems of ethics, politics, and history. The waves of modernism and post-modernism are receding. Philosophic pluralism is now available, fully formulated, in McKeon’s work, spreading from the humanities to the social sciences.

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In this imaginative and comprehensive study, Edward Casey, one of the most incisive interpreters of the Continental philosophical tradition, offers a philosophical history of the evolving conceptualizations of place and space in Western thought. Not merely a presentation of the ideas of other philosophers, "The Fate of Place" is acutely sensitive to silences, absences, and missed opportunities in the complex history of philosophical approaches to space and place. A central theme is the increasing neglect of place in favor of space from the seventh century A.D. onward, amounting to the virtual exclusion of place by the end of the eighteenth century. Casey begins with mythological and religious creation stories and the theories of Plato and Aristotle and then explores the heritage of Neoplatonic, medieval, and Renaissance speculations about space. He presents an impressive history of the birth of modern spatial conceptions in the writings of Newton, Descartes, Leibniz, and Kant and delineates the evolution of twentieth-century phenomenological approaches in the work of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Bachelard, and Heidegger. In the book's final section, Casey explores the postmodern theories of Foucault, Derrida, Tschumi, Deleuze and Guattari, and Irigaray.

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An account of criticism as an urgent response to what moves us. Criticism begins when we put down a book to tell someone about it. It is what we do when we face a work or event that bowls us over and makes us scramble for a response. As Michel Chaouli argues, criticism involves three moments: Something speaks to me. I must tell you about it. But I don’t know how. The heart of criticism, no matter its form, lies in these surges of thoughts and feelings. Criticism arises from the fundamental need to share what overwhelms us. We tend to associate criticism with scholarship and journalism. But Chaouli is not describing professional criticism, but what he calls “poetic criticism”—a staging ground for surprise, dread, delight, comprehension, and incomprehension. Written in the mode of a philosophical essay, Something Speaks to Me draws on a wide range of writers, artists, and thinkers, from Kant and Schlegel to Merleau-Ponty, Bachelard, Barthes, and Cavell. Reflecting on these dimensions of poetic experience, Something Speaks to Me is less concerned with joining academic debates than communicating the urgency of criticism.

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Una introducción perfecta a la historia de la filosofía.Este libro completamente ilustrado explica las ideas clave de los científicos más grandes de la historia y explora todas las ramas del pensamiento filosófico de una manera visual única. Explora cómo el ser humano se ha cuestionado el mundo que le rodea a lo largo de las civilizaciones y encuentra las respuestas de los filósofos a las "grandes preguntas" de la vida.Cómo funciona la filosofía, una guía clara y accesible de la filosofía, combina infografías detalladas y un texto claro para explicar los conceptos fundamentales de la filosofía. Cubriendo todo, desde la ética hasta la epistemología y la fenomenología, este libro presenta las ideas y teorías filosóficas así como a filósofos clave, desde Platón y Sócrates hasta Nietzsche, Wittgenstein y Kant, de una manera novedosa y fácil de entender.Conoce las respuestas a las "grandes preguntas" de la vidaDesarrolla tu pensamiento crítico reflexionando con preguntas como ¿cómo debemos vivir?, ¿qué es el bien?, ¿qué es el mal?, ¿cómo deberíamos organizar la sociedad? Estas son cuestiones fundamentales que no son solo los cimientos de la filosofía, sino que también son temas de conversación en nuestra vida diaria.En este libro de filosofía encontrarás numerosas teorías e ideas que han proporcionado los filósofos como Friedrich Nietzsche e Immanuel Kant, para contestar a esas preguntas, así como las justificaciones de los puntos de vista. Algunas te serán familiares o estarán en armonía con tus propias ideas, lo cual quizá te dará materia para reflexionar todavía más.Este libro es el complemento ideal a El libro de la filosofía de las serie de Big Ideas (Spanish Edition)Con un lenguaje claro y fácil de comprender este libro de filosofía explica en detalle todo lo que necesitas saber para tener una base sólida en la materia a través de los siguientes capítulos:Fundamentos.Filosofía analítica.Filosofía continental.Filosofía de la mente.Bien y mal.Filosofía política.Lógica.Cómo funciona la filosofía, pertenece a la colección de libros juveniles en español de Conocimiento de la editorial DK, un rincón de nuestro catálogo destinado a mentes jóvenes curiosas que estén interesadas en conocer más sobre el mundo que les rodea, con disciplinas tales como la filosofía, economía y psicología. Los títulos incluidos en esta colección responden a infinidad de preguntas con un lenguaje sencillo y cercano y se apoyan en formidables ilustraciones y esquemas para ayudar a entender complejos asuntos y teorías que capten el interés del público juvenil, mientras desarrollan sus habilidades lectoras y sus conocimientos generales.

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Waarom spreken Franstaligen over de peripherie bruxelloise en over een carcan flamand rond Brussel en waarom willen de Vlamingen de Brusselse olievlek 'indijken' of 'indammen'? Waarom vragen de Franstalige partijen de territoriale uitbreiding van het Brussels Hoofdstedelijk Gewest en waarom wordt dit langs Vlaamse kant radicaal afgewezen? Deze tegenstellingen zijn te lapidair, maar maken duidelijk dat de twee grootste taalgemeenschappen in Belgie een andere visie hebben over de Vlaamse Rand en over de relatie van dit ommeland met de hoofdstad. Hoe komt dat? Welke historische evoluties liggen daaraan ten grondslag? Dit tweede nummer in de reeks 'Accenten uit de geschiedenis van Vlaams-Brabant' verschijnt in opdracht van de provincie Vlaams-Brabant en is een realisatie van het ADVN, archief-, documentatie- en onderzoekscentrum. In het boek zijn ook een aantal foto's opgenomen uit de reportage die persfotograaf Michiel Hendryckx speciaal voor deze gelegenheid maakte en die her en der in de provincie zal worden tentoongesteld. Zijn lens registreerde tot zijn eigen verwondering het nog sterk landelijk karakter van de streek.

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El mar, ese desierto de agua sin límites, incontrolable y con voz propia siempre ha desbordado todo entendimiento y su naturaleza sublime, como afirmaba Kant, impone a la imaginación la difícil tarea de imaginar lo infinito, algo que, paradójicamente, a su vez nos induce a pensar en la infinitud del espíritu. Gracias a ese carácter voluble e imprevisible, el mar es capaz de revelarnos el espíritu en un sinfín de dualidades; el mar es el yin y el yang; por un lado, nos ofrece su lado amable, la condición uterina de esa impetuosa madre antigua como lo llamaba Walt Whitman, su fuerza sanadora, las promesas que sugiere su inalcanzable lejanía y por otro, su carácter hostil e indómito, ese mare tenebrosum capaz de conducirnos a los más oscuros abismos mostrando su total inmisericordia.Los poemas escogidos para esta antología son una humilde muestra de la importancia de la imagen del mar a través de la historia de la poesía japonesa, desde el primero, perteneciente a la antología Manyoos

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Dieser dritte Band von Wilhelm Diltheys Briefwechsel enthält ausgewählte Briefe von und an Dilthey aus den Jahren 1896-1905. Die hier größtenteils erstmalig aus den Nachlässen Diltheys und seiner zahlreichen Briefpartner edierten und kommentierten Briefe geben Aufschluss über die Lebens- und Arbeitssituation Diltheys während seiner letzten zehn Jahre als ordentlicher Professor der Philosophie an der Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin bis zu seiner Emeritierung im Juli 1905. Einen inhaltlichen Schwerpunkt der Briefe dieses Bandes bildet durchgehend vor allem Diltheys Initiierung, Organisation und Leitung der Kant-Akademieausgabe. Ein weiterer Arbeitsschwerpunkt Diltheys liegt seit ca. 1900 in seinem Engagement für die Durchführung einer interuniversitär geplanten Leibniz-Akademieausgabe und seinen damit zusammenhängenden eigenen Forschungen, Aktivitäten und Schriften. Neben diesen beiden Großprojekten, an denen Dilthey maßgeblich und federführend beteiligt war, arbeitete er unermüdlich am zweiten Band des Lebens Schleiermachers und der Fortsetzung zur Grundlegung der Geisteswissenschaften parallel weiter, in der Hoffnung beides noch fertigstellen zu können. Darüber hinaus veranschaulichen gerade die Briefe dieses Zeitraums Diltheys teilweise chaotischen Arbeitsstil sowie den fordernden Umgang mit seinen engsten Mitarbeitern, wie etwa Paul Menzer, Alfred Heubaum, Paul Ritter und Herman Nohl.

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The 173 stories collected in Alexander Kluge’s The Devil’s Blind Spot range from a dozen pages to just half a page in length: these tales are like novels in pill form. The whole is arranged in five chapters. The first group illustrates the little-known virtues of the Devil; the second explores love (from Kant to the opera); the third (entitled “Sarajevo Is Everywhere”) addresses power; the fourth considers the cosmos; and the fifth ranges all our “knowledge” against our feelings. Stories such as “Origin of Iraq as a Case for the Files” and “The Devil in the White House” display Alexander Kluge’s special genius for making found material his own. From the wreck of the Kursk to failed love affairs to Chernobyl, Kluge alights on precise details, marching us step by step through a black comedy of the exact stages of thinking that lead to disaster. These semi-documentary stories radiate what W.G. Sebald termed “Kluge’s intellectual steadfastness” as he undertakes his “archaeological excavation of the slag-heaps of our collective existence.”

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In The Sovereign Self, Grant H. Kester examines the evolving discourse of aesthetic autonomy from its origins in the Enlightenment through avant-garde projects and movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Kester traces the idea of aesthetic autonomy—the sense that art should be autonomous from social forces while retaining the ability to reflect back critically on society—through Kant, Schiller, Hegel, Marx, and Adorno. Kester critiques the use of aesthetic autonomy as the basis for understanding the nature of art and the shifting relationship between art and revolutionary praxis. He shows that dominant discourses of aesthetic autonomy reproduce the very forms of bourgeois liberalism that autonomy discourse itself claims to challenge. Analyzing avant-garde art and political movements in Russia, India, Latin America, and elsewhere, Kester retheorizes the aesthetic beyond autonomy. Ultimately, Kester demonstrates that the question of aesthetic autonomy has ramifications that extend beyond art to encompass the nature of political transformation and forms of anticolonial resistance that challenge the Eurocentric concept of “Man,” upon which the aesthetic itself often depends.

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Ever since Plato expelled the poets from his ideal state, the ethics of art has had to confront philosophy's denial of art's morality. In Art before the Law, Ruth Ronen proposes a new outlook on the ethics of art by arguing that art insists on this tradition of denial, affirming its singular ethics through negativity. Ronen treats the mechanism of negation as the basis for the relationship between art and ethics. She shows how, through moves of denial, resistance, and denouncement, art exploits its negative relation to morality. While deception, fiction, and transgression allegedly locate art outside morality and ethics, Ronen argues they enable art to reveal the significance of the moral law, its origins, and the idea of the good. By employing the thought of Freud and Lacan, Ronen reconsiders the aesthetic tradition from Plato through Kant and later philosophers of art in order to establish an ethics of art. An interdisciplinary study, Art before the Law is sure to be of interest both to academic philosophers and to those interested in psychoanalytic theory and practice.

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Jean-François Lyotard (1924-1998) was one of the most important French philosophers of the Twentieth Century. His impact has been felt across many disciplines: sociology; cultural studies; art theory and politics. This volume presents a diverse selection of interviews, conversations and debates which relate to the five decades of his working life, both as a political militant, experimental philosopher and teacher. Including hard-to-find interviews and previously untranslated material, this is the first time that interviews with Lyotard have been presented as a collection. Key concepts from Lyotard’s thought – the differend, the postmodern, the immaterial – are debated and discussed across different time periods, prompted by specific contexts and provocations. In addition there are debates with other thinkers, including Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida, which may be less familiar to an Anglophone audience. These debates and interviews help to contextualise Lyotard, highlighting the importance of Marx, Freud, Kant and Wittgenstein, in addition to the Jewish thought which accompanies the questions of silence, justice and presence that pervades Lyotard’s thinking.

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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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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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From 1968 until his death in 2003, Gerald Hanratty was professor of philosophy at University College Dublin. In this volume dedicated to his memory, Fran O'Rourke has assembled twenty-six essays reflecting Hanratty's broad philosophical interests, dealing with central questions of human existence and the ultimate meaning of the universe. Whether engaged in historical investigations into Gnosticism or the Enlightenment, Hanratty was concerned with fundamental themes in the philosophy of religion and philosophical anthropology. Human Destinies brings together a wide range of approaches to these central questions. Included are historical studies of classical thinkers of the ancient and medieval periods (Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, Aquinas) and studies of numerous modern authors (among them, Kant, Husserl, Heidegger, Marcel, Adorno, Derrida, Plantinga, Scruton, and many others). Contributors: Fran O'Rourke, Peter L. P. Simpson, Rowland Stout, Andrew Smith, Eoin G. Cassidy, Cyril O'Regan, Michael Nolan, Patrick Masterson, Tim Lynch, James R. O'Shea, Ciarán McGlynn, Maria Baghramian, Mark Dooley, Brendan Purcell, Brendan Sweetman, Ciarán Benson, Richard Kearney, Dermot Moran, Belinda McKeon, Brian Elliott, Eileen Brennan, Liberato Santoro-Brienza, Brian O'Connor, Timothy Mooney, David Walsh, and Gerard Casey.

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In Mood and Trope, John Brenkman introduces two provocative propositions to affect theory: that human emotion is intimately connected to persuasion and figurative language; and that literature, especially poetry, lends precision to studying affect because it resides there not in speaking about feelings, but in the way of speaking itself. Engaging a quartet of modern philosophers--Kant, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Deleuze--Brenkman explores how they all approach the question of affect primarily through literature and art. He draws on the differences and dialogues among them, arguing that the vocation of criticism is incapable of systematicity and instead must be attuned to the singularity and plurality of literary and artistic creations. In addition, he confronts these four philosophers and their essential concepts with a wide array of authors and artists, including Pinter and Poe, Baudelaire, Jorie Graham and Li-Young Lee, Shakespeare, Tino Sehgal, and Francis Bacon. Filled with surprising insights, Mood and Trope provides a rich archive for rethinking the nature of affect and its aesthetic and rhetorical stakes.

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Augustine famously claimed that the virtues of pagan Rome were nothing more than splendid vices. This critique reinvented itself as a suspicion of acquired virtue as such, and true Christian virtue has, ever since, been set against a false, hypocritical virtue alleged merely to conceal pride. "Putting On Virtue" reveals how a distrust of learned and habituated virtue shaped both early modern Christian moral reflection and secular forms of ethical thought. Jennifer A. Herdt develops her claims through an argument of broad historical sweep, which brings together the Aristotelian tradition, as taken up by Thomas Aquinas, with the early modern thinkers who shaped modern liberalism. In chapters on Luther, Bunyan, the Jansenists, Mandeville, Hume, Rousseau, and Kant, she argues that efforts to make a radical distinction between true Christian virtue and its tainted imitations actually created an autonomous natural ethics separate from Christianity. This secular value system valorized pride and authenticity, while rendering graced human agency less meaningful. Ultimately, "Putting On Virtue" traces a path from suspicion of virtue to its secular inversion, from confession of dependence to assertion of independence.

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The second edition of Jack Crumley's An Introduction to Epistemology strikes a balance between the many issues that engage contemporary epistemologists and the contributions of the major historical figures. He shows not only how philosophers such as Descartes, Hume, Locke, Berkeley, and Kant foreground the contemporary debates, but also why they deserve consideration on their own terms.A substantial revision of the first edition, the second edition is even more accessible to students. The new edition includes recent work on contextualism, evidentialism, externalism and internalism, and perceptual realism; as well, the chapter on coherence theory is substantially revised, reflecting recent developments in that area. New to this second edition is a chapter on feminist epistemology, which includes discussions of major positions and themes, such as feminist empiricism, feminist standpoint epistemology, postmodern epistemology, and feminist critiques of objectivity. It presents the important contributions of philosophers such as Sandra Harding, Helen Longino, Genevieve Lloyd, and others. Each chapter ends with a list of study questions and readings for further study.

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Having only emerged in the past few decades, Feminist Philosophy is rapidly developing its own thrust in areas of particular importance to feminism-and women more generally-while also reevaluating and reshaping most other fields of philosophy, from ethics to logic and Marxism to environmentalism. It draws not only on feminist philosophers but criticizes, approves, or appropriates the work of the leading philosophers of all times. The introduction to this reference work provides a useful overview of the subject area and the chronology runs the gamut from Ancient Greek philosophers to contemporary feminist ones. The cross-referenced dictionary entries cover both the central figures and ideas from the historical tradition of philosophy, as well as ideas and theories from contemporary feminist philosophy, such as epistemology (the philosophy of science) and topics that have been introduced by the feminist movement itself, like abortion and sexuality. In addition to including entries on Aristotle, Plato, Descartes, Kant, Wollstonecraft, Beauvoir, and Daly, relevant aspects of other fields of philosophy, the major concepts, and prevailing interpretations and conjectures are also covered. A comprehensive bibliography allows for further reading.

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In Skeptical Environmentalism, Robert Kirkman raises doubts about the speculative tendencies elaborated in environmental ethics, deep ecology, social ecology, postmodern ecology, ecofeminism, and environmental pragmatism. Drawing on skeptical principles introduced by David Hume, Kirkman takes issue with key tenets of speculative environmentalism, namely that the natural world is fundamentally relational, that humans have a moral obligation to protect the order of nature, and that understanding the relationship between nature and humankind holds the key to solving the environmental crisis. Engaging the work of Kant, Hegel, Descartes, Rousseau, and Heidegger, among others, Kirkman reveals the relational worldview as an unreliable basis for knowledge and truth claims, and, more dangerously, as harmful to the intellectual sources from which it takes inspiration. Exploring such themes as the way knowledge about nature is formulated, what characterizes an ecological worldview, how environmental worldviews become established, and how we find our place in nature, Skeptical Environmentalism advocates a shift away from the philosopher’s privileged position as truth seeker toward a more practical thinking that balances conflicts between values and worldviews.

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Demystifying the key ideas of the world's greatest philosophers, and exploring all of the most important branches of thought including philosophy of science, philosophy of religion and feminist philosophy in a uniquely visual way, this book is the perfect introduction to the history of philosophy. A clear and accessible guide to philosophy, How Philosophy Works combines bold infographics and jargon-free text to demystify fundamental concepts. Covering everything from ethics to epistemology and phenomenology, the book presents the ideas and theories of key philosophical traditions and philosophers - from Plato and Socrates to Nietzsche and Wittgenstein via Kant - in a novel, easy-to-understand way. Its infographics will help you to understand the elements of philosophy on a conceptual level and, by tackling life's "big questions", it will help you to look at the world in an entirely new way. With its unique graphic approach and clear, authoritative text, How Philosophy Works is the perfect introduction to philosophy, and the ideal companion to DK's The Philosophy Book in the "Big Ideas" series.

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'Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.' Immanuel KantIsaiah Berlin was one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century - an activist of the intellect who marshalled vast erudition and eloquence in defence of the endangered values of individual liberty and moral and political plurality. In The Crooked Timber of Humanity he exposes the links between the ideas of the past and the social and political cataclysms of our own time: between the Platonic belief in absolute truth and the lure of authoritarianism; between the eighteenth-century reactionary ideologue Joseph de Maistre and twentieth-century Fascism; between the romanticism of Schiller and Byron and the militant - and sometimes genocidal - nationalism that convulses the modern world. This new edition features a revised text, a new foreword in which award-winning novelist John Banville discusses Berlin's life and ideas, particularly his defence of pluralism, and a substantial new appendix that provides rich context, including letters and previously uncollected writings by Berlin, notably his virtuoso review of Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy.

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'This is brilliant. A book about women in philosophy by women in philosophy – love it!' Elif ShafakWhere are the women philosophers? The answer is right here.The history of philosophy has not done women justice: you’ve probably heard the names Plato, Kant, Nietzsche and Locke – but what about Hypatia, Arendt, Oluwole and Young?The Philosopher Queens is a long-awaited book about the lives and works of women in philosophy by women in philosophy. This collection brings to centre stage twenty prominent women whose ideas have had a profound – but for the most part uncredited – impact on the world.You’ll learn about Ban Zhao, the first woman historian in ancient Chinese history; Angela Davis, perhaps the most iconic symbol of the American Black Power Movement; Azizah Y. al-Hibri, known for examining the intersection of Islamic law and gender equality; and many more.For anyone who has wondered where the women philosophers are, or anyone curious about the history of ideas – it's time to meet the philosopher queens.

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Danger: Diabolik (1968) was adapted from a comic that has been a social phenomenon in Italy for over fifty years, featuring a masked master criminal-part Fantomas, part James Bond-and his elegant companion Eva Kant. The film partially reinvents the character as a countercultural prankster, subverting public officials and the national economy, and places him in a luxurious and futuristic underground hideout and Eva in a series of unforgettable outfits. A commercial disappointment on its original release, Danger: Diabolik's reputation has grown along with that of its director, Mario Bava, the quintessential cult auteur, while the pop-art glamour of its costumes and sets have caught the imagination of such people as Roman Coppola and the Beastie Boys. This study examines its status as a comic-book movie, including its relation both to the original fumetto and to its sister-film, Barbarella. It traces its production and initial reception in Italy, France, the U.S., and the U.K., and its cult afterlife as both a pop-art classic and campy "bad film" featured in the final episode of Mystery Science Theatre 3000.

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Soren Kierkegaard (1813-55), one of the most original thinkers of the nineteenth century, wrote widely on religious, psychological, and literary themes. This book shows how Kierkegaard developed his views in emphatic opposition to prevailing opinions. It describes his reaction to the ethical and religious theories of Kant and Hegel, and it also contrasts his position with doctrines advanced by men like Feuerbach and Marx. Kierkegaard's seminal diagnosis of the human condition, which emphasizes the significance of individual choice, has arguably been his most striking philosophical legacy, particularly for the growth of existentialism. Both that and his arresting but paradoxical conception of religious belief are critically discussed, and Patrick Gardiner concludes this lucid introduction by showing how Kierkegaard has influenced contemporary thought. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

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The Magic of Unknowing is a unique philosophical and literary work. Cast in the dialogue form, it unfolds in the mood of soliloquy. Mervyn Sprung has created an imaginative meeting of the minds of great western philosophers: Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Hume, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein and Pyrrho. All are brothers, the more skeptical sons of Aristotle. Later they hear as well from Chang, a Taoist, and Nagaraj, a Buddhist, both lately adopted into the family.The dialogue dramatises the erosion in modern times of Aristotelian rationality under the pressures of its own logic. The two eastern thinkers throw the weight of their own skepticism into the discussion at the critical point.In the end the brothers realize that they have moved away from Western philosophy’s faith in the singular power of reason to establish truth and sense in the human world. They discover the magic of unknowing that lies in the reciprocal penetration of knowledge and behavior, each receiving its sense from the other. They discover that philosophies are not the issue of reasoning alone but are themselves already inseparably thought and action. And they realise that this entails an unheard-of future for philosophy.

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We are inundated with game play today. Digital devices offer opportunities to play almost anywhere and anytime. No matter our age, gender, social, cultural, or educational background—we play. Play in the Age of Goethe: Theories, Narratives, and Practices of Play around 1800 is the first book-length work to explore how the modern discourse of play was first shaped during this pivotal period (approximately 1770-1830). The eleven chapters illuminate critical developments in the philosophy, pedagogy, psychology, politics, and poetics of play as evident in the work of major authors of the period including Lessing, Goethe, Kant, Schiller, Pestalozzi, Jacobi, Tieck, Jean Paul, Schleiermacher, and Fröbel. While drawing on more recent theories of play by thinkers such as Jean Piaget, Donald Winnicott, Jost Trier, Gregory Bateson, Jacques Derrida, Thomas Henricks, and Patrick Jagoda, the volume shows the debates around play in German letters of this period to be far richer and more complex than previously thought, as well as more relevant for our current engagement with play. Indeed, modern debates about what constitutes good rather than bad practices of play can be traced to these foundational discourses. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

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This book is a highly original exploration of what life could and should be. It juxtaposes a philosophical enquiry into the nature of the good life with an ethnography of people living in a small Irish town. Attending carefully to the everyday lives of these people, the ethnographic chapters examine topics ranging from freedom and inequality to the creation of community and the purpose of life. These chapters alternate with discussions of similar topics by a wide range of philosophers in the Western tradition, from Socrates and the Stoics through Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger to Adorno, Rawls, MacIntyre, and Nussbaum. As an ethnography, this book reveals just how much we can learn from a respectful acknowledgement of what ordinary modest people have achieved. By creating community as a deliberate and social project that provides the foundation for a more fulfilling life, where affluence has not led to an increase in individualism, the people in this town have found a way to live the good enough life. The book also shows how anthropology and philosophy can complement and enrich one another in an enquiry into what we might accomplish in our lives.

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Amorous jealousy is not a monster, as Shakespeare's venomous Iago claims. It is neither prickly and bitter fancy nor a cruel and mean passion, nor yet a symptom of feeble self-esteem. All those who have experienced its wounds are well aware that it is not callous, nasty, delusional and ridiculous. It is just painful. Yet for centuries moralists have poured scorn and contempt on a feeling that, in their view, we should fight in every possible way. It is allegedly a disease to be treated, a moral vice to be eradicated, an ugly, pre-modern, illiberal, proprietary emotion to be overcome. Above all, no one should ever admit to being jealous. So should we silence this embarrassing sentiment? Or should we, like the heroines of Greek tragedy, see it as a fundamental human demand for reciprocity in love? By examining its cultural history from the ancient Greeks to La Rochefoucauld, Hobbes, Kant, Stendhal, Freud, Beauvoir, Sartre and Lacan, this book demonstrates how jealousy, far from being a 'green-eyed' fiend, reveals the intense and apprehensive nature of all erotic love, which is the desire to be desired. We should never be ashamed to love.

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Amorous jealousy is not a monster, as Shakespeare's venomous Iago claims. It is neither prickly and bitter fancy nor a cruel and mean passion, nor yet a symptom of feeble self-esteem. All those who have experienced its wounds are well aware that it is not callous, nasty, delusional and ridiculous. It is just painful. Yet for centuries moralists have poured scorn and contempt on a feeling that, in their view, we should fight in every possible way. It is allegedly a disease to be treated, a moral vice to be eradicated, an ugly, pre-modern, illiberal, proprietary emotion to be overcome. Above all, no one should ever admit to being jealous. So should we silence this embarrassing sentiment? Or should we, like the heroines of Greek tragedy, see it as a fundamental human demand for reciprocity in love? By examining its cultural history from the ancient Greeks to La Rochefoucauld, Hobbes, Kant, Stendhal, Freud, Beauvoir, Sartre and Lacan, this book demonstrates how jealousy, far from being a 'green-eyed' fiend, reveals the intense and apprehensive nature of all erotic love, which is the desire to be desired. We should never be ashamed to love.

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A lively examination of the life and work of one of the great Enlightenment intellectuals Philosopher, translator, novelist, art critic, and editor of the Encyclopédie, Denis Diderot was one of the liveliest figures of the Enlightenment. But how might we delineate the contours of his diverse oeuvre, which, unlike the works of his contemporaries, Voltaire, Rousseau, Schiller, Kant, or Hume, is clearly characterized by a centrifugal dynamic? Taking Hegel's fascinated irritation with Diderot's work as a starting point, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht explores the question of this extraordinary intellectual's place in the legacy of the eighteenth century. While Diderot shared most of the concerns typically attributed to his time, the ways in which he coped with them do not fully correspond to what we consider Enlightenment thought. Conjuring scenes from Diderot's by turns turbulent and quiet life, offering close readings of several key books, and probing the motif of a tension between physical perception and conceptual experience, Gumbrecht demonstrates how Diderot belonged to a vivid intellectual periphery that included protagonists such as Lichtenberg, Goya, and Mozart. With this provocative and elegant work, he elaborates the existential preoccupations of this periphery, revealing the way they speak to us today.

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In Forms of Life, Andreas Gailus argues that the neglect of aesthetics in most contemporary theories of biopolitics has resulted in an overly restricted conception of life. He insists we need a more flexible notion of life: one attuned to the interplay and conflict between its many dimensions and forms. Forms of Life develops such a notion through the meticulous study of works by Kant, Goethe, Kleist, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Benn, Musil, and others. Gailus shows that the modern conception of "life" as a generative, organizing force internal to living beings emerged in the last decades of the eighteenth century in biological thought. At the core of this vitalist strand of thought, Gailus maintains, lies a persistent emphasis on the dynamics of formation and deformation, and thus on an intrinsically aesthetic dimension of life. Forms of Life brings this older discourse into critical conversation with contemporary discussions of biopolitics and vitalism, while also developing a rich conception of life that highlights, rather than suppresses, its protean character. Gailus demonstrates that life unfolds in the open-ended interweaving of the myriad forms and modalities of biological, ethical, political, psychical, aesthetic, and biographical systems.

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The Bloomsbury Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century German Philosophers is a landmark work. Covering one of the most innovative centuries for philosophical investigation, it features more than 650 entries on the eighteenth-century philosophers, theologians, jurists, physicians, scholars, writers, literary critics and historians whose work has had lasting philosophical significance. Alongside well-known German philosophers of that era—Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Immanuel Kant, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel—the Dictionary provides rare insights into the lives and minds of lesser-known individuals who influenced the shape of philosophy. Each entry discusses a particular philosopher’s life, contributions to the world of thought, and later influences, focusing not only on their most important published writings, but on relevant minor works as well. Bibliographical references to primary and secondary source material are included at the end of entries to encourage further reading, while extensive cross-referencing allows comparisons to be easily made between different thinkers' ideas and practices. For anyone looking to understand more about the century when enlightenment thinking arrived in Germany and established conceits were challenged, The Bloomsbury Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century German Philosophers is a valuable, unparalleled resource.

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Featuring scholars at the forefront of contemporary political theology and the study of German Idealism, Nothing Absolute explores the intersection of these two flourishing fields. Against traditional approaches that view German Idealism as a secularizing movement, this volume revisits it as the first fundamentally philosophical articulation of the political-theological problematic in the aftermath of the Enlightenment and the advent of secularity. Nothing Absolute reclaims German Idealism as a political-theological trajectory. Across the volume’s contributions, German thought from Kant to Marx emerges as crucial for the genealogy of political theology and for the ongoing reassessment of modernity and the secular. By investigating anew such concepts as immanence, utopia, sovereignty, theodicy, the Earth, and the world, as well as the concept of political theology itself, this volume not only rethinks German Idealism and its aftermath from a political-theological perspective but also demonstrates what can be done with (or against) German Idealism using the conceptual resources of political theology today. Contributors: Joseph Albernaz, Daniel Colucciello Barber, Agata Bielik-Robson, Kirill Chepurin, S. D. Chrostowska, Saitya Brata Das, Alex Dubilet, Vincent Lloyd, Thomas Lynch, James Martel, Steven Shakespeare, Oxana Timofeeva, Daniel Whistler

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Cinema, Religion and the Romantic Legacy surveys the ways in which notions of religion and spirituality have impinged upon the cinema. Cinema is conceived as a post-Romantic form for which religion and spirituality can be unified only problematically. While inspecting many of the well-established themes and topoi of writing on religion and film (such as films about priests and 'Christ-figures') it also seeks to problematize them, focusing primarily upon the issues of religious representation foregrounded by such European directors as Kieslowski and Godard. Coates draws on theories of theologians, philosophers and cultural and literary critics including: Otto, Kant, Schiller and Girard. Addressing the relationship between religion and spirituality from a film studies specialist's perspective, this book offers all those concerned with film, media or religious studies an invaluable examination of artistic interaction with the theological and aesthetic issues of representation and representability. Paul Coates is Reader in Film Studies at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, and author of many books including: The Gorgon's Gaze (CUP), Film at the Intersection of High and Mass Culture (CUP), The Story of the Lost Reflection (Verso).

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This book analyses how modern conceptions of ethics, psychoanalysis and aesthetics are linked through the question of pain. Through a series of rigorous encounters with key critical figures, this monograph argues that modern thought is, in a double sense, the thought of pain. This book argues that modern European philosophy after Kant offers less the conceptual equipment to tackle pain in explanatory terms, than an experience of thought that participates in the forms of pain and suffering about which it speaks. Perhaps surprisingly, the question of pain establishes a ground from which to examine key debates in 20th-century European philosophy, most recently between forms of post-structuralist and ethical thinking imagined to be in crisis and the resurgence of discourses of political emancipation arising from traditions of thought associated with Marxism. It offers a systematic account of the modern European tradition's relationship to the question of pain and suffering, and new interpretation of "ethics" and "evil". It questions longstanding distinctions - between physical and psychological pain, 'my' pain and the pain of the other, human pain and animal pain. It sets new agendas for reading post-Kantian philosophy.

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Bruce Haddock's lucid and original textbook combines historical and theoretical analysis, setting political thought in the context of the emerging institutional, cultural and economic framework of the modern world. From the colossal impact of the French and American revolutions, through reaction and constitutional consolidation, the book traces the contrasting criteria invoked to justify particular forms of political order from 1789 to the present day. Its chapters are organized around key themes such as liberty, welfare, the nation-state and totalitarianism, focusing on the response of theorists to fundamental ideological and political controversies. Major thinkers covered include Kant, Burke, Hegel, Tocqueville, Marx, Mill, Mazzini, Lenin, Schmitt, Hayek, Oakeshott and Rawls. The book also confronts challenging questions about the status of moral and political principles. Cultural and moral controversy is characteristic of our everyday experience. In recent decades, however, the foundations of political and ethical theory have been widely questioned. Haddock highlights the emergence of a dilemma that faces all citizens: how we make judgements of value from embedded positions in social and cultural communities. A History of Political Thought: 1789 to the Present will be of interest to students and scholars of politics, history and philosophy.

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In Money Matters, Richard Gray investigates the discourses of aesthetics and philosophy alongside economic thought, arguing that their domains are not mutually exclusive. The transition in Germany from an agrarian or proto-industrial economy to a capitalist industrial economy, which was paralleled by a shift from the exchange of money in coin to the use of paper currencies, occurred simultaneously with an efflorescence of German-language literature and philosophy. Based on close readings of canonical literary and philosophical texts, Gray explores how this confluence led to a rich cross-fertilization between economic and literary thought in Germany during this period. Money Matters documents the surprising degree to which literature and philosophy participated in the creation of modern economic paradigms, as well as the extent to which economics influenced literature and philosophy. The cultural artifacts of the period demonstrate the existence of an “economic unconsciousness”: persistent notions of value and exchange that inflect the aesthetic and thematic dimensions of literary and philosophical texts. This book offers a thought-provoking and original analysis of literature and ideas in the critical transition period from Kant and Goethe, through the German Romantics, to Marx.

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Peter Sloterdijk turns his keen eye to the history of western thought, conducting colorful readings of the lives and ideas of the world's most influential intellectuals. Featuring nineteen vignettes rich in personal characterizations and theoretical analysis, Sloterdijk's companionable volume casts the development of philosophical thinking not as a buildup of compelling books and arguments but as a lifelong, intimate struggle with intellectual and spiritual movements, filled with as many pitfalls and derailments as transcendent breakthroughs. Sloterdijk delves into the work and times of Aristotle, Augustine, Bruno, Descartes, Foucault, Fichte, Hegel, Husserl, Kant, Kierkegaard, Leibniz, Marx, Nietzsche, Pascal, Plato, Sartre, Schelling, Schopenhauer, and Wittgenstein. He provocatively juxtaposes Plato against shamanism and Marx against Gnosticism, revealing both the vital external influences shaping these intellectuals' thought and the excitement and wonder generated by the application of their thinking in the real world. The philosophical "temperament" as conceived by Sloterdijk represents the uniquely creative encounter between the mind and a diverse array of cultures. It marks these philosophers' singular achievements and the special dynamic at play in philosophy as a whole. Creston Davis's introduction details Sloterdijk's own temperament, surveying the celebrated thinker's intellectual context, rhetorical style, and philosophical persona.

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It is usually held that representative government is not strictly democratic, since it does not allow the people themselves to directly make decisions. But here, taking as her guide Thomas Paine's subversive view that "Athens, by representation, would have surpassed her own democracy," Nadia Urbinati challenges this accepted wisdom, arguing that political representation deserves to be regarded as a fully legitimate mode of democratic decision making - and not just a pragmatic second choice when direct democracy is not possible.As Urbinati shows, the idea that representation is incompatible with democracy stems from our modern concept of sovereignty, which identifies politics with a decision maker's direct physical presence and the immediate act of the will. She goes on to contend that a democratic theory of representation can and should go beyond these identifications. Political representation, she demonstrates, is ultimately grounded in a continuum of influence and power created by political judgment, as well as the way presence through ideas and speech links society with representative institutions. Deftly integrating the ideas of such thinkers as Rousseau, Kant, Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes, Paine, and the Marquis de Condorcet with her own, Urbinati constructs a thought-provoking alternative vision of democracy.

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One is a science, the other an art; one useful, the other seemingly decorative, but mathematics and music share common origins in cult and mystery and have been linked throughout history. "Emblems of Mind" is Edward Rothstein's classic exploration of their profound similarities, a journey into their "inner life." Along the way, Rothstein explains how mathematics makes sense of space, how music tells a story, how theories are constructed, how melody is shaped. He invokes the poetry of Wordsworth, the anthropology of Levi-Strauss, the imagery of Plato, and the philosophy of Kant. Math and music, Rothstein shows, apply comparable methods as they create their abstractions, display similar concerns with ratio and proportion, and depend on metaphors and analogies to create their meanings. Ultimately, Rothstein argues, they reveal the ways in which we come to understand the world. They are images of the mind at work and play; indeed, they are emblems of Mind itself. Jacques Barzun called this book "splendid." Martin Gardner said it was "beautifully written, marvelous and entertaining." It will provoke all serious readers to think in new ways about the grand patterns in art and life.

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In Negative Certainties, renowned philosopher Jean-Luc Marion challenges some of the most fundamental assumptions we have developed about knowledge: that it is categorical, predicative, and positive. Following Descartes, Kant, and Heidegger, he looks toward our finitude and the limits of our reason. He asks an astonishingly simple-but profoundly provocative-question in order to open up an entirely new way of thinking about knowledge: Isn't our uncertainty, our finitude and rational limitations, one of the few things we can be certain about? Marion shows how the assumption of knowledge as positive demands a reductive epistemology that disregards immeasurable or disorderly phenomena. He shows that we have experiences every day that have no identifiable causes or predictable reasons, and that these constitute a very real knowledge-a knowledge of the limits of what can be known. Establishing this "negative certainty," Marion applies it to four aporias, or issues of certain uncertainty: the definition of man; the nature of God; the unconditionality of the gift; and the unpredictability of events. Translated for the first time into English, Negative Certainties is an invigorating work of epistemological inquiry that will take a central place in Marion's oeuvre.

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Why was Jesus, who said ‘I judge no one’, put to death for a political crime? Of course, this is a historical question—but it is not only historical. Jesus’s life became a philosophical theme in the first centuries of our era, when ‘pagan’ and Christian philosophers clashed over the meaning of his sayings and the significance of his death. Modern philosophers, too, such as Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Nietzsche, have tried to retrace the arc of Jesus’s life and death. I Judge No One is a philosophical reading of the four memoirs, or ‘gospels’, that were fashioned by early Christ-believers and collected in the New Testament. It offers original ways of seeing a deeply enigmatic figure who calls himself the Son of Man. David Lloyd Dusenbury suggests that Jesus offered his contemporaries a scandalous double claim. First, that human judgements are pervasive and deceptive; and second, that even divine laws can only be fulfilled in the human experience of love. Though his life led inexorably to a grim political death, what Jesus’s sayings revealed—and still reveal—is that our highest desires lie beyond the political.

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This book, ten years in the making, is the first factual and conceptual history of Martin Heidegger's "Being and Time" (1927), a key twentieth-century text whose background until now has been conspicuously absent. Through painstaking investigation of European archives and private correspondence, Theodore Kisiel provides an unbroken account of the philosopher's early development and progress toward his masterwork. Beginning with Heidegger's 1915 dissertation, Kisiel explores the philosopher's religious conversion during the bleak war years, the hermeneutic breakthrough in the war-emergency semester of 1919, the evolution of attitudes toward his phenomenological mentor, Edmund Husserl, and the shifting orientations of the three drafts of "Being and Time". Discussing Heidegger's little-known reading of Aristotle, as well as his last-minute turn to Kant and to existentialist terminology, Kisiel offers a wealth of narrative detail and documentary evidence that will be an invaluable factual resource for years to come. A major event for philosophers and Heidegger specialists, the publication of Kisiel's book allows us to jettison the stale view of Being and Time as a great book 'frozen in time' and instead to appreciate the erratic starts, finite high points, and tentative conclusions of what remains a challenging philosophical 'path'.

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Classical and Contemporary Sociological Theory: Text and Readings provides students with the best of both worlds—carefully-edited excerpts from the original works of sociology′s key theorists accompanied by an analytical framework that discusses the lives, ideas, and historical circumstances of each theorist. This unique format enables students to examine, compare, and contrast each theorist’s major themes and concepts. In the Fourth Edition of this bestseller, examples from contemporary life and a rich variety of updated pedagogical tools (tables, figures, photographs, discussion questions,) illuminate complex ideas. NEW TO THIS EDITION: The overarching theoretical framework has been expanded to further help students understand, compare, and contrast the readings. Additional discussion of the Enlightenment thinkers, such as Locke, Rousseau, Hume, Kant, Hobbes, Wollstonecraft, demonstrates how these thinkers shaped the core theoretical questions that guide sociological inquiry to this day. A new primary source reading from theorist Ulrich Beck enables students to analyze climate change from a sociological perspective. A new reading from Talcott Parsons gives students a better understanding of social action theory and structural functionalism. Updated examples, statistics and visuals tie theory to current events.

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