In The Social Authority of Reason, Philip J. Rossi, SJ argues that the current cultural milieu of globalization is strikingly reflective of the human condition appraised by Kant, in which mutual social interaction for human good is hamstrung by our contentious "unsociable sociability." He situates the paradoxical nature of contemporary society—its opportunities for deepening the bonds of our common human mutuality along with its potential for enlarging the fissures that arise from our human differences—in the context of Kant's notion of radical evil. As a corrective, Rossi proposes that we draw upon the social character of Kant's critique of reason, which offers a communal trajectory for human moral effort and action. This trajectory still has power to open the path to what Kant called "the highest political good"—lasting peace among nations.

This anthology of readings in the philosophy of science includes essays and articles from most well-known philosophers of science (Carnap,Dennett,Fodor,Hacking,Hempel,Kuhn,Popper,Putnam, Quine,Reichenbach,van Fraassen and many others).

In The Greek Concept of Nature, Gerard Naddaf utilizes historical, mythological, and linguistic perspectives to reconstruct the origin and evolution of the Greek concept of phusis. Usually translated as nature, phusis has been decisive both for the early history of philosophy and for its subsequent development. However, there is a considerable amount of controversy on what the earliest philosophers—Anaximander, Xenophanes, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Leucippus, and Democritus—actually had in mind when they spoke of phusis or nature.

Sir Anthony Kenny continues his magisterial new history of Western philosophy with a fascinating guide through more than a millennium of thought from 400 AD onwards, charting the story of philosophy from the founders of Christian and Islamic thought through to the Renaissance.The middle ages saw a great flourishing of philosophy, and the intellectual endeavour of the era reaches its climax in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, with the systems of the great schoolmen such as Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus. Specially written for a broad popular readership, but serious and deep enough to offer a genuine understanding of the great philosophers, Kenny's lucid and stimulating history will become the definitive work for anyone interested in the people and ideas that shaped the course of Western thought.

Based on the award-winning motivational program seen on PBS, Quest Volume 3: Energy, Power and Spirit is a one-of-a-kind audio program in which seven of the world's most prominent and respected thinkers and authors provide new perspectives to help you make the most of your spiritual and physical power. Self-help authors Thomas Moore, Caroline Myss, Sara Ban Breathnach, and David Wyte discuss the connections between body and spirit and explore ways to feel more energy and control over your own time. From taking control of your life to revitalizing and empowering your spirit, these great minds impart practical yet profound wisdom straight to your heart and soul...

Is the universe shaped like a donut? Homer proposed such a theory. Do three-eyed fish swim near nuclear power plants? Bart managed to catch one. Are perpetual-motion machines suitable for school projects? Lisa constructed a working model. The Simpsons®, the world's most popular and longest-running animated series, is a treasure-trove of scientific ideas and a clever mixture of fact and fancy. Now there's a guide to the science behind the show. In What's Science Ever Done for Us? you'll find answers to an amazing array of scientific questions raised in 26 classic episodes. Whether you're a Simpsons fan, a science buff, or both, get ready to laugh and learn as Homer, Bart, Marge, Lisa, and the entire town of Springfield prove that science isn't just fun—it's hilarious!

In a penetrating and lucid discussion of the enigmatic relationship between the work of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, Steven Galt Crowell proposes that the distinguishing feature of twentieth-century philosophy is not so much its emphasis on language as its concern with meaning. Arguing that transcendental phenomenology is indispensable to the philosophical explanation of the space of meaning, Crowell shows how a proper understanding of both Husserl and Heidegger reveals the distinctive contributions of each to that ongoing phenomenological project.

Herder is a figure of considerable importance in the history of philosophy and the history of ideas. His far-reaching influence encompasses philosophy--Hegel, Schleiermacher, Nietzsche, literature--Goethe, Schiller and linguistics--von Humboldt. This volume presents a comprehensive selection of his writings in a new translation, with an introduction that sets them in their philosophical and historical context.

Idealism without Absolutes offers an ambitious and broad reconsideration of Idealism in relation to Romanticism and subsequent thought. Linking Idealist and Romantic philosophy to contemporary theory, the volume explores the multiplicity of different philosophical incarnations of Idealism and materialism, and shows how they mix with and invade each other in philosophy and culture. The contributors discuss a wide range of major figures in the long Romantic period, from Kant and Hegel to Nietzsche, as well as key figures defining the contemporary intellectual debate, including Freud, Heidegger, Adorno, Lyotard, Derrida, de Man, and Deleuze and Guattari. While preserving the significance of the historical period extending from Kant to the early nineteenth century, the volume gives the concept of Romantic culture a new historical and philosophical meaning that extends from its pre-Kantian past to our own culture and beyond.

This volume collects some of the seminal essays on Descartes by Daniel Garber, one of the preeminent scholars of early-modern philosophy. A central theme unifying the volume is the interconnection between Descartes's philosophical and scientific interests, and the extent to which these two sides of the Cartesian program illuminate each other, a question rarely treated in the existing literature. This collection will be a mandatory purchase for any serious student of or professional working in 17th-century philosophy, history of science, or history of ideas.

Allen Speight argues that behind Hegel's extraordinary appeal to literature in the Phenomenology of Spirit lies a philosophical project concerned with understanding human agency in the modern world. It shows that Hegel looked to three literary genres--tragedy, comedy, and the romantic novel--as offering privileged access to three moments of human agency: retrospectivity, theatricality, and forgiveness. Taking full account of the authors that Hegel himself refers to (Sophocles, Diderot, Schlegel, Jacobi), Allen Speight has written a book with a broad appeal to both philosophers and literary theorists.

This study explores the theme of freedom in the philosophy of Hegel and Nietzsche. First, Will Dudley sets Hegel's Philosophy of Right within a larger systematic account and deploys the Logic to interpret it. He demonstrates that freedom involves not only the establishment of certain social and political institutions but also the practice of philosophy itself. Then, he reveals how Nietzsche's discussions of decadence, nobility and tragedy lead to an analysis of freedom that critiques heteronomous choice and Kantian autonomy, and ultimately issues a positive conception of liberation.

Morals from Motives develops a virtue ethics inspired more by Hume and Hutcheson's moral sentimentalism than by recently-influential Aristotelianism. It argues that a reconfigured and expanded "morality of caring" can offer a general account of right and wrong action as well as social justice. Expanding the frontiers of ethics, it goes on to show how a motive-based "pure" virtue theory can also help us to understand the nature of human well-being and practical reason.

The philosophy of religion as a distinct discipline is an innovation of the last two hundred years, but its central topics--the existence and nature of the divine, humankind's relation to it, the nature of religion and its place in human life--have been with us since the inception of philosophy. Philosophers have long critically examined the truth of (and rational justification for) religious claims, and have explored such philosophically interesting phenomena as faith, religious experience and the distinctive features of religious discourse. The second half of the twentieth-century has been an especially fruitful period, with philosophers using new developments in logic and epistemology to mount both sophisticated defenses of, and attacks on, religious claims. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Religion contains newly commissioned chapters by 21 prominent experts who cover the field in a comprehensive but accessible manner. Each chapter is expository, critical, and representative of a distinctive viewpoint.

It is in the “weak thought” of Richard Rorty and Gianni Vattimo that the new postreligious culture, which is to say the future of religion after the deconstruction of western ontology, is taking shape. In contemporary philosophy, Rorty represents the postempirical pragmatism of North America, and Vattimo, the postmodern direction of Latin Europe, as Michael Theunissen points out. From John Dewey’s neopragmatism and Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutics, Rorty and Vattimo both take not just the critique of the objectivistic self-understanding of the human sciences but also the concept of culture.