In a world dominated by things, we must work hard to account for one another's personhood. Drawing a diverse set of thought leaders, Paul Louis Metzger helps us navigate a pluralistic world through a personalist moral framework, addressing issues such as abortion, genetic engineering, immigration, drone warfare, and more.

Dieser Aufsatz hat das Urteil Gottes über die Sünde im Kreuzestod Jesu Christi als konstitutiven Aspekt der Versöhnungslehre zum Thema. Die Erörterung orientiert sich an dem dreifachen Amt Jesu Christi als König, Priester und Prophet und versucht aus dieser Perspektive den Vollzug und die Wirklichkeit der Versöhnung als Herrlichkeit, Gnade und Motivation zur Dankbarkeit zu beschreiben. Dem entspricht ein Verständnis der Sünde als Stolz und Verzweiflung, das in personalen und nicht in moralistischen oder legalistischen Begriffen zu erfassen ist. Indem die (...) Erörterung der Versöhnung im Kontext trinitarischer Theologie entfaltet wird, soll einerseits versucht werden, die unterschiedlichen Metaphern der Versöhnungslehre als miteinander vereinbar darzustellen und andererseits die pesonalen , gemeinschaftsstiftenden und kosmischen Dimensionen des Versöhnungsgeschehens heraus-zuarbeiten. Sowohl der trinitarische Zugang zur Versöhnungslehre als auch der Versuch, ihre unterschiedlichen Metaphern als miteinander vereinbar und sich gegenseitig korrigierend zu erweisen, beruht auf Ansätzen, die Colin Gunton in seinen dogmatischen Werken zur Trinitätslehre und zur Soteriologie ausgearbeitet hat. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie Jahrgang: 57 Heft: 1 Seiten: 138-154.

This collection of essays, offered in honor of the distinguished career of prominent political philosophy professor Clifford Orwin, brings together internationally renowned scholars to provide a wide context and discuss various aspects of the virtue of “humanity” through the history of political philosophy.

Cette étude a eu pour objet le journal d'un curé de campagne, mais un journal qui n'a pas été écrit à la manière de Bernanos. Il s'agit en effet, comme l'indique le titre, d'un bulletin paroissial, qui a aussi fait office, à l'occasion, de bulletin communal. Dans la préface et l'introduction (p. 3-6), M. Winninger présente le curé Ackerer, auquel il était lié d'amitié depuis le temps de leurs études communes, et explique l'intérêt de cette imposante masse documentaire constituée au (...) fil d'une .. (shrink)

Für Ricoeur ist die Frage nach dem Selbst nur dann sinnvoll zu beantworten, wenn sie primär als eine Wer-Frage aufgefasst wird, die sich auf vierfache Weise formulieren lässt: "Wer spricht?", "Wer handelt?", "Wer erzählt?" und "Wer ist das Subjekt der moralischen Zuschreibung?" Die Autorin konfrontiert Ricoeurs verweisungsreiche Antworten auf diese Fragen u. a. mit den Thesen Albert Camus' und Dieter Thomäs, um die zentralen Momente seiner eindrucksvollen Hermeneutik des Selbst herauszustellen: die Freiheit und Verantwortung, das Versprechen und die Freundschaft.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A World for All? Global Civil Society in Political Theology and Trinitarian Theology ed. by William Storrar, Peter Casarella, and Paul Louis Metzger, and: Public Theology for a Global Society: Essays in Honor of Max L. Stackhouse ed. by Deirdre King Hainsworth and Scott PaethJonathan RothchildA World for All? Global Civil Society in Political Theology and Trinitarian Theology Edited by William Storrar, Peter Casarella, and (...) class='Hi'>Paul Louis Metzger Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2011. 346 pp. $35.00Public Theology for a Global Society: Essays in Honor of Max L. Stackhouse Edited by Deirdre King Hainsworth and Scott Paeth Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2010. 264 pp. $45.00The intersections of globalization, civil society, and public theological reflection remain fluid, contested, and complicated. Two edited volumes that have shared connections to Princeton’s Center of Theological Inquiry celebrate the contributions of Max Stackhouse (Public Theology for Global Society as a festschrift and A World for All? as a dedication) toward these intersections. Public Theology for a Global Society attends to neo-Calvinist debates about public theology and its applicability to family, finance, and technology, while A World For All? explores religious beliefs and practices in their contexts, the meanings of the Trinity, and the prospects for cultural, political, and religious dialogue within civil society.In Public Theology for a Global Society, the contributors engage Stackhouse’s work in terms of its “global reach and its ecclesial concern” (ix). The essays consider five overarching themes: covenant, natural law, and human rights; social pluralism and social justice; Christian responsibility for society; economic and political realism; and Christian ethics in a global era. One of the book’s strengths is that it ambitiously probes—as Stackhouse’s own work does—the substantive interrelationships of these themes. Harold Breitenberg’s opening essay clarifies the meanings of public theology, but it does not account for recent developments, including comparative interventions that reconstruct modes of public theology.In the second section on key issues in public theology, John Witte speculates on whether Stackhouse would accept sixteenth-century Calvinist thinker Johannes Althusius’s “‘different and ‘even dangerous’” (36) theory of natural law. [End Page 205] Witte’s query, which begs comparisons vis-à-vis Catholic models of public theology frequently neglected in the book, is critically addressed by Don Browning’s essay. Browning’s theology of covenant includes a subordinate theory of natural law because “the concept of covenant cannot stand alone” (49). Other essays include reflections on covenant by Hak Joon Lee (which reconstructs Abraham Kuyper’s theory of sphere sovereignty) and Richard Mouw (which analyzes neo-Calvinist conceptions of law, covenant, and common morality). Similar to Browning’s caution to Stackhouse, Mouw censures a complete rejection of natural law (104); pace Browning’s critique, Mouw applauds Stackhouse’s insistence on the prominence of covenant in neo-Calvinist ethical and social theory. Interrogation of these disagreements by either the editors or the contributors would have strengthened the book.The book’s third section examines public theology in a global context. Differing from Stackhouse, William Schweiker charts the basic anthropological and existential components of a cosmopolitan conscience to overcome the universalist and particularist difficulties within public theology (134–38). Other thinkers appropriate interreligious dialogue as constructive models. Mark Heim contends that, in the face of massive global suffering, interreligious dialogue must promote human flourishing. Scott Paeth similarly sees dialogue as a mechanism for overcoming religiously motivated violence (166). Peter Paris, Shirley Roels, and Deirdre King Hainsworth all point to various features of technology as pathways to new articulations of public theology. In the concluding section, the contributors fittingly focus on the legacy of Stackhouse, namely, his long-standing interests in justification, justice, congregational life, and a “sobered version of Reformed theology vis-à-vis institutional responsibility and the retrieval of its theological substance” (Gabriel Fackre, 247).A World for All?, borne out of a 2005 conference in Edinburgh, approaches globalization within the modern ecumenical movement as illustrated by the affiliations of its three editors: William Storrar (ecumenical Protestant), Peter Casarella (Catholic), and Paul Metzger (Evangelical). The book examines the broader trajectories of globalization in conversation with “examples of churches around the world... playing a vital part... (shrink)

The present essay is addressed simultaneously to two distinct audiences.

A study in the philosophy of science, proposing a strong form of the doctrine of scientific realism' and developing its implications for issues in the philosophy of mind.

Interwoven with natural structurations and personal history, the flesh , in Merleau-Ponty's gradually-forged conception, is nourished by the combined influences of neurology, Gestalt psychology and psychoanalysis. This triple influence undergirds a recurring theme in his later writings: the mirror . "The flesh is a mirror phenomenon," Merleau-Ponty tells us. The unpublished manuscripts reveal that this famous clause refers neither directly to Husserl, nor to Wallon and Lacan, but is driven by contemporary readings of Paul Schilder and Wolfgang Metzger, (...) who study the phenomena of distanciated migrations of the body-image in vision. The mirror mingles objective body with phenomenal body, in an effective community between my lived body and its external image. It shows how the flesh lives both within and outside of itself, animated by an essential incompleteness that engages perception in a process of incorporation and, thus, hints at intercorporeity. (shrink)

Paul Moser's book defends what has been an unfashionable view in recent epistemology: the foundationalist account of knowledge and justification. Since the time of Plato philosophers have wondered what exactly knowledge is. This book develops a new account of perceptual knowledge which specifies the exact sense in which knowledge has foundations. The author argues that experiential foundations are indeed essential to perceptual knowledge, and he explains what knowledge requires beyond justified true beliefs. In challenging prominent sceptical claims that we (...) have no justified beliefs about the external world, the book outlines a theory of rational belief. (shrink)

Firstly, Paul Ricoeur takes a phenomenological approach to memory. He then addresses recent work by historians by reopening the question of the nature and truth of historical knowledge. Finally, he describes the necessity of forgetting as a condition for the possibility of remembering.

Paul Faulkner presents a new theory of testimony - the basis of much of what we know. He addresses the questions of what makes it reasonable to accept a piece of testimony, and what warrants belief formed on that basis. He rejects rival theories and argues that testimonial knowledge and testimonially warranted belief are based on trust.

Time is generally thought to be one of the more mysterious ingredients of the universe. In this intriguing book, Paul Horwich makes precise and explicit the interrelationships between time and a large number of philosophically important notions.Ideas of temporal order and priority interact in subtle and convoluted ways with the deepest elements in our network of basic concepts. Confronting this conceptual jigsaw puzzle, Horwich notes that there are glaring differences in how we regard the past and future directions of (...) time. For example, we can influence the future but not the past, and can easily gain knowledge of the past but not of the future. Moreover we see a profusion of decay processes but little spontaneous generation of order; time appears to "flow" in one privileged direction, not the other; and we tend to explain phenomena in terms of antecedent circumstances, rather than subsequent ones. Horwich explains such time asymmetries and examines their bearing on the nature of time itself.Asymmetries in Time covers many notoriously difficult problems in the philosophy of science: causation, knowledge, entropy, explanation, time travel, rational choice, laws of nature, and counterfactual implication -- and gives a unified treatment of these matters. The book covers an unusually broad range of topics in a lucid and nontechnical way and includes alternative points of view in the philosophical literature. (shrink)

Contrary to standard assumptions, reasoning is often an emotional process. Emotions can have good effects, as when a scientist gets excited about a line of research and pursues it successfully despite criticism. But emotions can also distort reasoning, as when a juror ignores evidence of guilt just because the accused seems like a nice guy. In _Hot Thought_, Paul Thagard describes the mental mechanisms -- cognitive, neural, molecular, and social -- that interact to produce different kinds of human thinking, (...) from everyday decision making to legal reasoning, scientific discovery, and religious belief, and he discusses when and how thinking and reasoning should be emotional. Thagard argues that an understanding of emotional thinking needs to integrate the cognitive, neural, molecular, and social levels. Many of the chapters employ computational models of various levels of thinking, including HOTCO models and the more neurologically realistic GAGE model. Thagard uses these models to illuminate thinking in the domains of law, science, and religion, discussing such topics as the role of doubt and reasonable doubt in legal and other contexts, valuable emotional habits for successful scientists, and the emotional content of religious beliefs. Identifying and assessing the impact of emotion, Thagard argues, can suggest ways to improve the process of reasoning. (shrink)

in die operative Logik und Mathematik Zweite Auflage Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg New York 1969 Paul Lorenzen o. Prof. der Philosophie an der Universitat Erlangen Geschaftsfilhrende Herausgeber: Prof. Dr. B. Eckmann Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule Zurich Prof. Dr. B. L. van cler Waerclen Mathematisches Institut der Universitat ZUrich ISBN 978-3-642-86519-0 ISBN 978-3-642-86518-3 (eBook) DOl 10.1007/978-3-642-86518-3 Aile Rechte vorbehalten. Kein Teil dieses Buches darf ohne schriftliche Genehmigung des Springer-Verlages ubersetzt oder in irgendeiner Form vervielfaltigt werden © by Springer-Verlag Berlin· Heidelberg 1955 und (...) 1969 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 2nd edition 1969 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 73-76724 Titel-Nr. 5061 Vorwort zur zweiten Auflage. Fiir die Neuauflage ist der Text nur unwesentlich geandert worden. Es ist - neben der Korrektur einiger Ungenauigkeiten - vor allem die Terminologie und Symbolik an meine spateren Arbeiten angeglichen. Obwohl ich - verstandlicherweise - jetzt die Ansatze der spateren Arbeiten fiir "sachgemaBer" halte, z. B. eine Logik der Dialoge statt einer Logik der Kalkiile, die Verwendung indefiniter Quantoren statt einer expliziten Konstruktion von Sprachschichten, enthalt diese Neu­ auflage den Inhalt der 1. Auflage unverandert. Der Leser kann also einen Vergleich mit meinen spateren Arbeiten (vgl. Literaturverzeichnis) seIber durchfiihren. Mein Dank gilt wiederum dem Verlag fiir seine entgegenkommende Mitarbeit bei der Vorbereitung dieser Neuauflage. Erlangen, den 1. November I968. PAUL LORENZEN. Vorwort zur ersten Auflage. (shrink)

In _Complexity and Postmodernism_, Paul Cilliers explores the idea of complexity in the light of contemporary perspectives from philosophy and science. Cilliers offers us a unique approach to understanding complexity and computational theory by integrating postmodern theory into his discussion. _Complexity and Postmodernism_ is an exciting and an original book that should be read by anyone interested in gaining a fresh understanding of complexity, postmodernism and connectionism.

Paul Ricoeur was one of the foremost interpreters and translators of Edmund Husserl's philosophy. These nine essays present Ricoeur's interpretation of the most important of Husserl's writings, with emphasis on his philosophy of consciousness rather than his work in logic. In Ricoeur's philosophy, phenomenology and existentialism came of age and these essays provide an introduction to the Husserlian elements which most heavily influenced his own philosophical position.

In a wide-ranging study of unusual interest, Paul Weiss, Sterling Professor of Philosophy at Yale University, applies the principles and methods of philosophy to athletics. Every culture, he notes, has games of some kind; few activities seem to interest both children and young men as much as sports do; and few attract so many spectators, rich and poor. Yet none of the great philosophers, claiming to take all knowledge and being as their province, have made more than a passing (...) reference to sport, in part, Professor Weiss suggests, because they thought that what pleased the vulgar was not worth sustained study by the leisured. This seminal book breaks new ground and explores new paths: psychological and sociological forms of human behavior exhibited in games; the physiology of athletics, and the efforts of training and conditioning; and the motivation of athletics—the rhythm and aims of contests and games, and the meaning of team play. More importantly, however, Professor Weiss’s unique contributions lie in his discussions of the distinct contributions that sport makes to civilization. Professor Weiss discusses at length such topics as the Olympic Games and men and women as amateur and pro­fessional athletes—and their sacrifices, defeats, and humilia­tions. And he delineates the stages the athlete must go through in his progress toward self-completion. (shrink)

A Christian ethicist discusses such problems as organ transplants, caring for the terminally ill, and defining death.

Auf den Ersten Weltkrieg folgte in Mitteleuropa ein grundlegender politischer Umbruch. Albert Dikovich arbeitet die Folgen dieser demokratischen Zeitenwende für die deutschsprachige Philosophie umfassend auf. Dabei untersucht er zum einen, wie nach dem katastrophalen Gewaltereignis des Krieges und angesichts der akuten Eskalation im Inneren die Grenzen der moralisch legitimen Mittel politischer Konfliktaustragung neu gezogen wurden. Zum anderen beleuchtet er den Zusammenhang zwischen rechts- und erkenntnistheoretischen Annahmen und Positionierungen innerhalb eines Spannungsfeldes konkurrierender politischer Neuordnungsentwürfe. Dabei zeigt sich, dass die damals geführten (...) philosophischen Kämpfe um die Demokratie mit unserer Gegenwart mehr zu tun haben, als es der geschichtliche Abstand vermuten lässt. (shrink)

_In Defense of Anarchism_ is a 1970 book by the philosopher Robert Paul Wolff, in which the author defends individualist anarchism. He argues that individual autonomy and state authority are mutually exclusive and that, as individual autonomy is inalienable, the moral legitimacy of the state collapses.

In this work, Paul Weithman offers a fresh, rigorous and compelling interpretation of John Rawls' reasons for taking his so-called 'political turn'.

Being human while trying to scientifically study human nature confronts us with our most vexing problem. Efforts to explicate the human mind are thwarted by our cultural biases and entrenched infirmities; our first-person experiences as practical agents convince us that we have capacities beyond the reach of scientific explanation. What we need to move forward in our understanding of human agency, Paul Sheldon Davies argues, is a reform in the way we study ourselves and a long overdue break with (...) traditional humanist thinking. Davies locates a model for change in the rhetorical strategies employed by Charles Darwin in _On the Origin of Species_. Darwin worked hard to anticipate and diminish the anxieties and biases that his radically historical view of life was bound to provoke. Likewise, Davies draws from the history of science and contemporary psychology and neuroscience to build a framework for the study of human agency that identifies and diminishes outdated and limiting biases. The result is a heady, philosophically wide-ranging argument in favor of recognizing that humans are, like everything else, subjects of the natural world—an acknowledgement that may free us to see the world the way it actually is. (shrink)

In Religion and the Obligations of Citizenship Paul J. Weithman asks whether citizens in a liberal democracy may base their votes and their public political arguments on their religious beliefs. Drawing on empirical studies of how religion actually functions in politics, he challenges the standard view that citizens who rely on religious reasons must be prepared to make good their arguments by appealing to reasons that are 'accessible' to others. He contends that churches contribute to democracy by enriching political (...) debate and by facilitating political participation, especially among the poor and minorities, and as a consequence, citizens acquire religiously based political views and diverse views of their own citizenship. He concludes that the philosophical view which most defensibly accommodates this diversity is one that allows ordinary citizens to draw on the views their churches have formed when voting and offering public arguments for their political positions. (shrink)

Thomas Reid is now recognized as one of the towering figures of the Enlightenment. Best known for his published writings on epistemology and moral theory, he was also an accomplished mathematician and natural philosopher, as an earlier volume of his manuscripts edited by Paul Wood for the Edinburgh Reid Edition, Thomas Reid on the Animate Creation, has shown. The Correspondence of Thomas Reid collects all of the known letters to and from Reid in a fully annotated form. Letters already (...) published by Sir William Hamilton and others have been reedited, and roughly half of the letters included appear in print for the first time. Writing in 1802, Reid's disciple and biographer Dugald Stewart doubted that Reid's correspondence &"would be generally interesting.&" This collection proves otherwise, for the letters illuminate virtually every aspect of Reid's life and career and, in some instances, provide us with invaluable evidence about activities otherwise undocumented in his manuscripts or published works. Through his correspondence we can trace Reid's relations with contemporaries such as David Hume and his colleagues at both King's College, Aberdeen, and the University of Glasgow, as well as his engagement with the most controversial philosophical, scientific, and political issues of his day. If anything, the letters assembled here serve as the starting point for understanding Reid and his place in the Enlightenment. (shrink)

It is unreasonable to assume that our pre-scientific emotion vocabulary embodies all and only those distinctions required for a scientific psychology of emotion. The psychoevolutionary approach to emotion yields an alternative classification of certain emotion phenomena. The new categories are based on a set of evolved adaptive responses, or affect-programs, which are found in all cultures. The triggering of these responses involves a modular system of stimulus appraisal, whose evoluations may conflict with those of higher-level cognitive processes. Whilst the structure (...) of the adaptive responses is innate, the contents of the system which triggers them are largely learnt. The circuits subserving the adaptive responses are probably located in the limbic system. This theory of emotion is directly applicable only to a small sub-domain of the traditional realm of emotion. It can be used, however, to explain the grouping of various other phenomena under the heading of emotion, and to explain various characteristic failings of the pre-scientific conception of emotion. (shrink)

Reverence is an ancient virtue that survives among us in half-forgotten patterns of civility and moments of inarticulate awe. Reverence gives meaning to much that we do, yet the word has almost passed out of our vocabulary.Reverence, says philosopher and classicist Paul Woodruff, begins in an understanding of human limitations. From this grows the capacity to be in awe of whatever we believe lies outside our control -- God, truth, justice, nature, even death. It is a quality of character (...) that is especially important in leadership and in teaching, although it figures in virtually every human relationship. It transcends religious boundaries and can be found outside religion altogether.Woodruff draws on thinking about this lost virtue in ancient Greek and Chinese traditions and applies lessons from these highly reverent cultures to today's world. The book covers reverence in a variety of contexts -- the arts, leadership, teaching, warfare, and the home -- and shows how essential a quality it is to a well-functioning society.First published by Oxford University Press in 2001, this new edition of Reverence is revised and expanded. It contains a foreword by Betty Sue Flowers, Distinguished Teaching Professor Emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin, a new preface, two new chapters -- one on the sacred and one on compassion -- and an epilogue focused on renewing reverence in our own lives. (shrink)

This symposium begins with a critique by Paul Hirst of Wilfred Carr's ‘Philosophy and Education’(Journal of Philosophy of Education, 2004, 38.1), where Carr argues that philosophy of education should be concerned with ‘practical philosophy’ rather than ‘theoretical philosophy’. Hirst argues that the philosophy of education is best understood as a distinctive area of academic philosophy, in which the exercise of theoretical reason contributes critically to the development of rational educational practices and their discourse. While he acknowledges that these practices (...) and their discourse must of their nature be directly developed in the exercise of practical reason, or phronesis, the notion of ‘practical philosophy’ is rejected as ultimately incoherent and illusory. In his reply to Hirst's critique, Carr identifies three central claims in Hirst's argument and takes issue with each of these. He reaffirms the need to draw upon the resources afforded by the Aristotelian tradition of practical philosophy in order to identify inadequacies in our present understanding of how philosophy is related to education. He suggests that it is only through bringing their own ‘prejudices’ into critical confrontation with this tradition that philosophers of education will be able to assess whether practical philosophy is incoherent and illusory, as Hirst claims, or whether it is indispensable to the future development of their discipline. In a rejoinder to Carr, Hirst, defends the claim that philosophy of education is a social practice concerned with developing justifiable propositional accounts of the conceptual relations, justificatory procedures and presuppositions of educational practices. He rejects the argument that this ‘theoretical philosophy’ approach must be replaced by that of a new ‘practical philosophy’. (shrink)

David Ekdahl (2023), in a constructive and thoughtful commentary, outlines both points of agreement with and suggestions for further research arising from our paper ‘Crossing the Fictional Line: Moral Graveness, the Gamer’s Dilemma, and the Paradox of Fictionally Going Too Far’ (Montefiore & Formosa, 2023).

For over twenty years, Paul Weithman has explored the thought of John Rawls to ask how liberalism can secure the principled allegiance of those people whom Rawls called 'citizens of faith'. This volume brings together ten of his major essays, which reflect on the task and political character of political philosophy, the ways in which liberalism does and does not privatize religion, the role of liberal legitimacy in Rawls's theory, and the requirements of public reason. The essays reveal Rawls (...) as a thinker deeply engaged with political and existential questions that trouble citizens of faith, and explore how - in firm opposition to political realism - he tries to show that the possibility of liberal democracy and the natural goodness of humanity are objects of reasonable faith. The volume will be of interest to political philosophers, political theorists, moral theologians, and religious ethicists. (shrink)

This symposium begins with a critique by Paul Hirst of Wilfred Carr’s ‘Philosophy and Education’(Journal of Philosophy of Education, 2004, 38.1), where Carr argues that philosophy of education should be concerned with ‘practical philosophy’ rather than ‘theoretical philosophy’. Hirst argues that the philosophy of education is best understood as a distinctive area of academic philosophy, in which the exercise of theoretical reason contributes critically to the development of rational educational practices and their discourse. While he acknowledges that these practices (...) and their discourse must of their nature be directly developed in the exercise of practical reason, or phronesis, the notion of ‘practical philosophy’ is rejected as ultimately incoherent and illusory. In his reply to Hirst’s critique, Carr identifies three central claims in Hirst’s argument and takes issue with each of these. He reaffirms the need to draw upon the resources afforded by the Aristotelian tradition of practical philosophy in order to identify inadequacies in our present understanding of how philosophy is related to education. He suggests that it is only through bringing their own ‘prejudices’ into critical confrontation with this tradition that philosophers of education will be able to assess whether practical philosophy is incoherent and illusory, as Hirst claims, or whether it is indispensable to the future development of their discipline. In a rejoinder to Carr, Hirst, defends the claim that philosophy of education is a social practice concerned with developing justifiable propositional accounts of the conceptual relations, justificatory procedures and presuppositions of educational practices. He rejects the argument that this ‘theoretical philosophy’ approach must be replaced by that of a new ‘practical philosophy’. (shrink)

Philosophy and Kafka is a collection of original essays interrogating the relationship of literature and philosophy. The essays either discuss specific philosophical commentaries on Kafka’s work, consider the possible relevance of certain philosophical outlooks for examining Kafka’s writings, or examine Kafka’s writings in terms of a specific philosophical theme, such as communication and subjectivity, language and meaning, knowledge and truth, the human/animal divide, justice, and freedom.

This volume brings together Paul Williams's previously published papers on the Indian and Tibetan interpretations of selected verses from the eighth and ninth chapters of the Bodhicaryavatara. In addition, there is a much longer version of the paper 'Identifying the Object of Negation', and nearly half the book consists of a wholly new essay, 'The Absence of Self and the Removal of Pain', subtitled 'How Santideva Destroyed the Bodhisattva Path'. This book will be of interest to those concerned with (...) the history and interpretation of Indian and Tibetan philosophy. (shrink)

This third volume of Paul Feyerabend's philosophical papers, which gathers together work originally published between 1960 and 1980, offers a range of his characteristically exciting treatments of classic questions in the philosophy of science. It includes his previously untranslated paper 'The Problem of Theoretical Entities', and the important lecture 'Knowledge without Foundations', in which he develops the perspective on early philosophy and science put forward by Karl Popper. Other themes discussed include theoretical pluralism, the nature of scientific method, the (...) relationship between theory and observation, the distinction between science and myth, and the opposition between 'rationalism' and relativism. Several papers from the 1970s detail his increasing preoccupation with the social status of science and with the decline in quality within the philosophy of science itself. The volume is completed by a substantial introduction and a comprehensive list of Feyerabend's works. (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s philosophical achievement lies in the development of a new philosophical method rather than in the elaboration of a particular philosophical system. Dr Paul Johnston applies this innovative method to the central problems of moral philosophy: whether there can be ‘truth’ in ethics, or what the meaning of objectivity might mean in the context of moral deliberation. Wittgenstein and Moral Philosophy, first published in 1989, represents the first serious and rigorous attempt to apply Wittgenstein’s method to ethics. The conclusions (...) arrived at differ radically from those dominating contemporary ethical discussion, revealing an immense discrepancy between the ethical concepts employed in everyday moral decision-making and the way in which these are discussed by philosophers. Dr Johnston examines ways of eliminating this discrepancy in order to gain a clearer picture of the proper nature of moral claims, and at the same time provides new insights into Wittgenstein’s conception of philosophy. (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s philosophical achievement lies in the development of a new philosophical method rather than in the elaboration of a particular philosophical system. Dr Paul Johnston applies this innovative method to the central problems of moral philosophy: whether there can be ‘truth’ in ethics, or what the meaning of objectivity might mean in the context of moral deliberation. Wittgenstein and Moral Philosophy, first published in 1989, represents the first serious and rigorous attempt to apply Wittgenstein’s method to ethics. The conclusions (...) arrived at differ radically from those dominating contemporary ethical discussion, revealing an immense discrepancy between the ethical concepts employed in everyday moral decision-making and the way in which these are discussed by philosophers. Dr Johnston examines ways of eliminating this discrepancy in order to gain a clearer picture of the proper nature of moral claims, and at the same time provides new insights into Wittgenstein’s conception of philosophy. (shrink)

How do things come to stand for something other than themselves? An understanding of the ontology of relations allows for a compelling account of the action of signs. The Primacy of Semiosis is concerned with the ontology of relations and semiosis, the action of signs. Drawing upon the work of Gilles Deleuze, John Deely, and John Poinsot, Paul Bains focuses on the claim that relations are 'external' to their terms, and seeks to give an ontological account of this purported (...) externality of relations. Bains develops the proposition, first made in 1632 by John Poinsot (John of St. Thomas), that, ontologically, signs are relations whose whole being is in esse ad ('being-toward'). Furthermore, relations are found to be univocal in their being as relations. This univocity of being is antecedent to the division between 'ens rationis' and 'ens reale'. The ontology of relations Bains presents is thus neither mind-dependent nor mind-independent insofar as the rationale of the relation is concerned. The book includes chapters on Deleuze and Deely on relations, Jacob von Uexkull and Heidegger on Umwelten (self-worlds), Maturana and Varela on Autopoiesis. It provides a form of vicarious causality, by way of the scholastic doctrine of the 'species', that complements the emerging school of 'object oriented ontology'. The Primacy of Semiosis provides a semiotic that subverts the opposition between realism and idealism; one in which what have been called 'nature' and 'culture' interpenetrate in an expanding collective of human and non-human. Bains' work promises to be a touchstone for semiotic discussion for years to come. (shrink)