Social justice, poverty and race : normative and empirical points of view /
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A clear understanding of social justice requires complex rather than simple answers. It requires comfort with ambiguity rather than absolute answers. This is counter to viewing right versus wrong, just vs. unjust, or good vs. evil as dichotomies. This book provides many examples of where and how to begin to view these as continuums rather than dichotomies.
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1 online resource (xviii, 222 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 183-214) and index. :
9789401206815 :
0929-8436 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Beyond conceptual dualism : ontology of consciousness, mental causation and holism in John R. Searle's Philosophy of mind /
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This book is a systematic analysis of John R. Searle's philosophy of mind. Searle's view of mind, as a set of subjective and biologically embodied processes, can account for our being part of nature qua mindful beings. This model finds support in neuroscience and offers reliable solutions to the problems of consciousness, mental causation, and the self.
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1 online resource (xx, 192 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 165-174) and index. :
9789401206334 :
0929-8436 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Morality : reasoning on different approaches /
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This book of essays focuses on the new approaches to moral issues from two perspectives. The first part, 'Various Concepts of Morality', analyses certain central approaches to moral study, and creates the methodological starting point for the more specific enquiries of the second part. 'New Trends in Understanding Morality' contains five articles focusing on these new approaches, especially as they are related to their conceptions of scientific knowledge. This section deals with selected special issues of morality in biology, natural sciences, but also in humanities.
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1 online resource (vi, 169 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789401209816 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Social brain matters : stances on the neurobiology of social cognition /
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This book examines philosophical and scientific implications of Neodarwinism relative to recent empirical data. It develops explanations of social behavior and cognition through analysis of mental capabilities and consideration of ethical issues. It includes debate within cognitive science among explanations of social and moral phenomena from philosophy, evolutionary and cognitive psychology, neurobiology, linguistics, and computer science. The series Cognitive Science provides an original corpus of scholarly work that makes explicit the import of cognitive-science research for philosophical analysis. Topics include the nature, structure, and justification of knowledge, cognitive architectures and development, brain-mind theories, and consciousness.
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1 online resource (xv, 299 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789401204491 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Dostoevsky and Kant : dialogues on ethics /
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"In this book, Evgenia Cherkasova brings the philosopher Kant and the novelist Dostoevsky together in conversations that probe why duty is central to our moral life. She shows that just as Dostoevsky is indebted to Kant, so Kant would profit from the deeply philosophical narratives of Dostoevsky, which engage the problem of evil and the claims of human community. She not only produces a novel reading of Dostoevsky, but also guides us to later, often neglected Kantian texts. This study is written with scholarly care, penetrating analysis, elegance of style, and moral urgency: Cherkasova writes with both mind and heart."--Emily Grosholz, Professor of Philosophy, The Pennsylvania State University.
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1 online resource (xiv, 128 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789042026117 :
0929-8436 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Practicing pragmatist aesthetics : critical perspectives on the arts /
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This is the first collection in English devoted exclusively to pragmatist aesthetics. Its main aim is to employ the resources of that rich and exciting tradition in studying artistic phenomena such as film, sculpture, bio-art, poetry, the novel, cuisine, and various body arts. But it also attempts to provide a wider background for such studies by sketching the history of pragmatist reflection on the aesthetic and by discussing some of the main positions that this history has produced: the aesthetic conceptions of C.S. Peirce, William James, John Dewey, Joseph Margolis, Richard Shusterman (somaesthetics in particular), and others.
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1 online resource (vi, 224 pages) : illustrations (chiefly color) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789401210812 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Wittgenstein on the human spirit /
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Wittgenstein on the Human Spirit provides a new understanding of Wittgenstein's discourse as an insightful philosophy of culture, pursued through self-reflection. It offers an edifying perspective on the conceptual underpinnings of culture as a shared expressive spiritual form of life. The ideas investigated in it are highly relevant for discussions in philosophy, aesthetics, anthropology, and cultural studies. The book embraces three studies: The Spirit of Jews , The Spirits of Culture and Civilization , and The Common Spirit of Human Beings . The first discusses Wittgenstein's remarks about Jews, focusing on their place within his philosophical thinking, self-reflection, and European discourse about culture and Jews. It shows how overcoming the anti-Semitic attitude implicit in them set off the major change in his philosophy. The second discusses Wittgenstein's reflections on the "deterioration of culture" in the modern period, showing how they are related to his remarks about following rules. The third discusses Wittgenstein's insights regarding the symbolic nature of myth, magic and religion. It suggests that modern human beings and those of ancient cultures possess a common expressive spiritual nature. This enables us to understand expressive practices in other cultures without interpretation. Nonetheless religious belief during the modern period is problematic.
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1 online resource (xii, 276 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 255-259) and index. :
9789401207928 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Peace philosophy and public life : commitments, crises, and concepts for engaged thinking /
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To a world assaulted by private interests, this book argues that peace must be a public thing. Distinguished philosophers of peace have always worked publicly for public results. Opposing nuclear proliferation, organizing communities of the disinherited, challenging violence within status quo establishments, such are the legacies of truly engaged philosophers of peace. This volume remembers those legacies, reviews the promise of critical thinking for crises today, and expands the free range of thinking needed to create more mindful and peaceful relations. With essays by committed peace philosophers, this volume shows how public engagement has been a significant feature of peace philosophers such as Camus, Sartre, Dewey, and Dorothy Day. Today we also confront historical opportunities to transform practices for immigration, police interrogation, and mental health, as we seek to sustain democracies of increasing multicultural diversity. In such cases our authors consider points of view developed by renowned thinkers such as Weil, Mouffe, Conway, and Martín-Baró. This volume also presents critical analysis of concepts for thinking about violence, reconsiders Plato's philosophy of justice, and examines the role of ethical theory for liberation struggles such as Occupy!
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p.163-174) and index. :
9789401210522 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Shakespeare and philosophy : lust, love, and law /
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This book is an interdisciplinary work that weaves literary interpretation, legal theory, and philosophical doctrine about sex and love into a coherent mosaic in the context of two of Shakespeare's plays: The Merchant of Venice and Measure for Measure . In the process, the work advances literary interpretations of the plays including character studies of some of the main protagonists. The aim is partly theoretical but mostly practical: to demonstrate what we can learn about living a robustly meaningful and significant human life by taking Shakespeare's work seriously from contemporary philosophical and legal vantage points. Shakespeare does not reveal a tightly defined moral system that he is trying to urge upon his audience. Instead, Shakespeare challenges his audience to struggle with moral complexity as they confront conflicting elements surrounding legal and moral issues presented in his work and within the souls of his characters. His issues and their conflicts are also ours. Much of Shakespeare's work consists of raising weighty questions inextricably connected to the human condition and inviting his audience to ponder possible answers. The philosophical lessons about living our lives meaningfully and significantly that we can derive from Shakespeare are simple yet powerful.
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1 online resource (xiii, 227 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789401208727 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Communities of peace : confronting injustice and creating justice /
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This volume examines the many ways in which violence, domination, and oppression manifest themselves. This examination opens the way to creative suggestions for overcoming injustice. The authors in this volume also describe the features of a just community and inspire readers to implement peaceful transformation.
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1 online resource (viii, 103 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 83-89) and index. :
9789401200356 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The search for a theory of cognition : early mechanisms and new ideas /
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The book brings into relief the variety of approaches and disciplines that have informed the quest for a theory of cognition. The center of interest are the historical, geographical, and theoretical peripheries of classic AI's mainstream research program. The twelve chapters bring back into focus the variety of strategies and theoretical questions that researchers explored while working toward a scientific theory of cognition and pre-cognition. The volume is organized in four parts, each one including three essays. The first one deals with cybernetics, the approach that may be considered as the most important periphery of classic AI research. The second part focuses on the geographical periphery of AI research. It examines how the theories and techniques developed on AI's home ground were translated into countries with different cultures and traditions: Italy, France, and the Soviet Union. The third part focuses on AI's periphery understood in the cultural and historical meaning of the term. It contains essays that locate some of the central concepts of AI, like representation and computability, within a broader philosophical (Descartes, Aristotle, Leibniz) and technical background (programming theory and practice). The fourth and final part of the volume is focused directly on the limitation of Turing's classic computability theory and its possible alternatives, some of which were studied in the early years of AI's research (e.g. Ashby's re-entrant information model), while others have been intensely studied in recent times (quantum automata).
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1 online resource (xxvii, 375 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 313-351) and index. :
9789401207157 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Self and Society.
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This book is the fourth volume of selected papers from the Central European Pragmatist Forum (CEPF). It deals with the general question of self and society, and the papers are organized into sections on Self and History, Self and Society, Self and Politics, Self and Neopragmatism, and an Interview with Richard Rorty. The authors are among the leading specialists in American philosophy from universities across the US and in Central and Eastern Europe.
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1 online resource (273 pages) :
9789042026223 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The privacy of the psychical /
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This book argues that the irreducible singularity of each person as a psychical subject implies the privacy of the psychical and that of experience, and yet the private accessibility of each person to his or her mind is compatible with interpersonal communication and understanding. The book treats these major issues against the background of the author's original metaphysics-panenmentalism.
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1 online resource (144 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 129-136) and index. :
9789401200851 :
0929-8436 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The Conspiracy of the Prince of Macchia and G.B. Vico /
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In September of 1701, events transpired in Naples that, through frequent retellings, became popularly known as "the conspiracy of the Prince of Macchia." Rapidly gaining fame, this apparently anonymous narrative was soon incorporated by different historians in their history of the transition years between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But who was the initial bard or narrator, the town clerk or citizen who first gave testimony of this event by creating a Latin text of the story of the Prince of Macchia? Giambattista Vico was not among the claimants to the authorship of the fabulous story that changed the future of the Kingdom of Naples. Nevertheless, four scholars across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were themselves convinced, and managed to convince the intellectual world as well, that Vico, then a young teacher of rhetoric at the University of Naples, was indeed the source of this original Latin narration of this oft retold Neapolitan history. This book provides the original Latin text with a parallel translation, as well as historical context and analysis of both the text's authorship history and the account itself.
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Includes a history and critical analysis of Giambattista Vico's text and role as author. :
1 online resource (xvi, 325 pages) : portraits. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 303-310) and index. :
9789401209120 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The Continuing Relevance of John Dewey : Reflections on Aesthetics, Morality, Science, and Society.
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The present volume encapsulates the contemporary scholarship on John Dewey and shows the place of Dewey's thought on the philosophical arena. The authors are among the leading specialists in the philosophy of John Dewey from universities across the US and in Europe.
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1 online resource (318 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789042032330 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Dialogue on grief and consolation /
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Have you lost a loved one? The loss can be inestimable, the grief excruciating. What helped you? Did someone say something comforting? Did someone offer a consolation, which you resented? Have you ever tried to comfort someone with a terminal illness or one who has lost a loved one? Knowing how to help or what to say that is not trite, insincere, or superficial can be difficult. The point of view of a grieving person is quite different from that of those who wish to offer comfort. In a multicultural society such as ours, anticipating the beliefs of the grieving person can be even more difficult. This book explores the perspective of a grieving person. It considers the merits and potential harm of alternative comfort strategies. As a philosophical analysis of grief, it emphasizes an understanding of the beliefs that underlie grief and the usefulness or dangers of emotions. Because grief is so complex and sensitive, a narrow approach runs the risk of alienating the grieving person. The ideas in this book are expressed in a dialogue among three characters. Their discussion is broad and fundamental. Starting from the familiar consolation, "She's no longer suffering" and the grieving person's resentment toward the expression, the three friends articulate the value of life and the evils of death. Their discussion enriches their understanding of grief. Many consolations offered to mourners are poor arguments. Even the better ones do their work best in the context of a greater understanding of grief.
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1 online resource (xiv, 285 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 269-279) and index. :
9789042026285 :
0929-8436 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Jesus or Nietzsche : how should we live our lives? /
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This book reconstructs the cornerstones of Jesus's moral teachings about how to lead a good, even exemplary, human life. It does so in a way that is compatible with the most prominent, competing versions of the historical Jesus. The work also contrast Jesus' understanding of the best way to lead our lives with that of Friedrich Nietzsche. Both Jesus and Nietzsche were self-consciously moral revolutionaries. Jesus refashioned the imperatives of Jewish law to conform to what he was firmly convinced was the divine will. Nietzsche aspired to transvalue the dominant values of his time -which themselves were influenced greatly by Christianity- in service of what he took to be a higher vision. The interplay of these radical versions of the good human life, seasoned with critical commentary emerging from modern findings in the sciences and humanities, opens possibilities and lines of inquiry that can inform our choices in answering that enduring, paramount question, "How should we live our lives?"
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1 online resource (246 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789401209250 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Beyond Aesthetics and Politics : Philosophical and Axiological Studies on the Avant-Garde, Pragmatism, and Postmodernism.
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The book presents five philosophical and axiological studies devoted to the relationship between aesthetics and politics . It shows this relationship throughout the works of some avant-gardists, pragmatists, and postmodernists. It is also a voice in the discussion about the meaning of the fine arts and aesthetics in the context of the political aims and norms. This voice claims that the political dimension of art and aesthetics should be studied much more seriously than it has been till today, and needs more courageous re-interpretations and re-readings.
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7. Deformation of Facial Images as Social Degradation (Gombrowicz). :
1 online resource (176 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789401209441 :
0929-8436 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Creative actualization : a meliorist theory of values /
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This book presents a major new value theory, value as creative actualization. The book takes a radically new approach to values. All potential values, whether artistic, scientific, political, or economic must be creatively actualized in the world. The theory argues for an active view in which value involves creation of novelties and thereby changes the world in some respect. Thus value is neither transcendent nor subjective, as a good of some sort has emerged in the world. Moreover, creative actualization means we can actualize standards, ideals, kinds and other norms. Creative actualization thereby dissolves the distinction between idealism and realism, since value changes the "real" with novel goods. The ideal is made real by creative actualization. The book examines traditional issues such as inherent value, modes, and meaning in the light of value as creative actualization. The later part of the book critically evaluates the history of value theory, arguing that it is insensitive to the environment and inconsistent with inherent values. Creative actualization extends historical pragmatism in novel ways. This value theory includes an ecocentric ethic, tying value theory to debates in environmental philosophy. The theory attempts to take the environment into consideration in ethics.
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1 online resource (xxvi, 381 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 353-361) and index. :
9789042032545 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Friendship : a central moral value /
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Friendship was recognized as a central moral value in the classical period, but it was dismissed from medieval, modern, and twentieth century moral theories. This book argues that this dismissal is unjustifiable. The validity of this claim is established in four steps. First, it proposes the concept of moral paradigm. This concept enables us to explore the source of moral value and to provide a criterion for the evaluation of the adequacy of moral theory. Second, the book explains why medieval, modern and twentieth century moral theorists neglected friendship as a central moral value in their analysis of moral behavior and why this neglect was unjustifiable. Third, it explains why the classical moral philosophers viewed friendship as a central moral value. Fourth, it argues that friendship is an ontological need, therefore, a necessary condition of the moral life. This need is implicitly recognized in the moral paradigms that underlie the moral theories of the medieval, modern, and twentieth century moral theories. Accordingly it cannot be neglected in the process of moral theorizing.
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1 online resource (233 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789401207256 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.