Given Heidegger’s inflammatory remarks about the intellectual poverty of modern logic, it may come as a surprise to be told that he has something to contribute to the philosophy of logic. One of the rewards of Daniel Dahlstrom’s Heidegger’s Concept of Truth is its argument that Heidegger can illuminate such issues in the philosophy of logic as the character of propositions, the nature of bivalence, and the concept of truth. Dahlstrom focuses on Heidegger’s work in the years immediately before and (...) after the publication of Being and Time, with particular emphasis on the lecture courses from this period, especially the one published as Logik: Die Frage nach der Wahrheit. (shrink)

Frege and Heidegger appear to appear to have diametrically opposed attitudes towards logic. Frege thinks logic must govern any investigation whatsoever, whereas Heidegger (in "What is Metaphysics?") apparently wants to dismantle logic. But when they try to explicate the nature of judgment, a striking similarity emerges. For while their accounts of judgment are radically different, each finds his account to be, by his own lights, _inexpressible<D>. This paper shows how Heidegger and Frege arrive at their respective accounts of judgment, explains (...) why they regard the status of their accounts as problematic, and explores and evaluates their responses to their parallel predicaments. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Many philosophers think that there could be a creature that looks, talks, and acts just like a human being but that has no inner awareness, no feelings, no qualia. These philosophers call such a hypothetical being a ‘zombie’, and they use the possibility of zombies to defend central claims in the philosophy of mind. In this essay, I use Wittgensteinian ideas to argue, against such philosophers, that the notion of a zombie is incoherent. I argue first that the possibility of (...) zombies would entail a radical form of skepticism about other minds. I then use that result to argue that philosophers who believe zombies are possible cannot account for the meaningfulness of terms like ‘pain’, ‘qualia’, and ‘phenomenal consciousness’. Since philosophers who think zombies are possible require such terms to define their position, I conclude that such philosophers employ words to which they have given no meaning. I close the essay by reflecting on the nature of these arguments and by drawing some Wittgensteinian lessons about the character of our mental concepts. (shrink)

Many philosophers think that there could be a creature that looks, talks, and acts just like a human being but that has no inner awareness, no feelings, no qualia. These philosophers call such a hypothetical being a ‘zombie’, and they use the possibility of zombies to defend central claims in the philosophy of mind. In this essay, I use Wittgensteinian ideas to argue, against such philosophers, that the notion of a zombie is incoherent. I argue first that the possibility of (...) zombies would entail a radical form of skepticism about other minds. I then use that result to argue that philosophers who believe zombies are possible cannot account for the meaningfulness of terms like ‘pain’, ‘qualia’, and ‘phenomenal consciousness’. Since philosophers who think zombies are possible require such terms to define their position, I conclude that such philosophers employ words to which they have given no meaning. I close the essay by reflecting on the nature of these arguments and by drawing some Wittgensteinian lessons about the character of our mental concepts. (shrink)

Given Heidegger’s inflammatory remarks about the intellectual poverty of modern logic, it may come as a surprise to be told that he has something to contribute to the philosophy of logic. One of the rewards of Daniel Dahlstrom’s Heidegger’s Concept of Truth is its argument that Heidegger can illuminate such issues in the philosophy of logic as the character of propositions, the nature of bivalence, and the concept of truth. Dahlstrom focuses on Heidegger’s work in the years immediately before and (...) after the publication of Being and Time, with particular emphasis on the lecture courses from this period, especially the one published as Logik: Die Frage nach der Wahrheit. (shrink)

In an attempt to discover the facial action units for affective states that occur during complex learning, this study adopted an emote-aloud procedure in which participants were recorded as they verbalised their affective states while interacting with an intelligent tutoring system (AutoTutor). Participants’ facial expressions were coded by two expert raters using Ekman's Facial Action Coding System and analysed using association rule mining techniques. The two expert raters received an overall kappa that ranged between.76 and.84. The association rule mining analysis (...) uncovered facial actions associated with confusion, frustration, and boredom. We discuss these rules and the prospects of enhancing AutoTutor with non-intrusive affect-sensitive capabilities. (shrink)

“Tell me," Wittgenstein once asked a friend, "why do people always say, it was natural for man to assume that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth was rotating?" His friend replied, "Well, obviously because it just looks as though the Sun is going round the Earth." Wittgenstein replied, "Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?” What would it have looked like if we looked at all (...) sciences from the viewpoint of Wittgenstein’s philosophy? Wittgenstein is undoubtedly one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. His complex body of work has been analysed by numerous scholars, from mathematicians and physicists, to philosophers, linguists, and beyond. This volume brings together some of his central perspectives as applied to the modern sciences and studies the influence they may have on the thought processes underlying science and on the world view it engenders. The contributions stem from leading scholars in philosophy, mathematics, physics, economics, psychology and human sciences; all of them have written in an accessible style that demands little specialist knowledge, whilst clearly portraying and discussing the deep issues at hand. (shrink)

Socializing Metaphysics supplies diverse answers to the basic questions of social metaphysics, from a broad array of voices. It will interest all philosophers and social scientists concerned with mind, action, or the foundations of social theory.

Studies of Witherspoon's influence as an educator and as a pivotal figure in the American founding tend to neglect his earlier part in controversies among the Scottish Moderates and Evangelicals. By the time he answered the summons from the College of New Jersey, his position on church-state relations was thoroughly developed as was his understanding of the nature and the sources of rights, both alienable and unalienable. Nor were there ‘two Witherspoons’, the earlier one in Scotland opposed to the academic (...) world of intellectuals and a later American version suddenly committed to the progressive ethos of the Enlightenment. There was but one Witherspoon, clear on the several missions required by the times. (shrink)

This paper focuses on John Witherspoon (1723-1794) and the religious background of the American conception of religious liberty and church-state separation, as found in the First Amendment. Witherspoon was strongly influenced by debates and conflicts concerning liberty of conscience and the independence of the congregations in his native Scotland; and he brought to his work, as President of the (Presbyterian) College of New Jersey, a moderate Calvinism challenging the conception of “true virtue” found in Jonathan Edwards. Witherspoon was teacher to (...) James Madison who would substantially write the First Amendment. Religious freedom, focused on freedom of conscience, and ‘Christian magnanimity’ stand in considerable tension with the prior orthodoxy of predetermination and the historical tradition of Calvinistic theocracy. Understanding Witherspoon, we better understand the reformation background of the American Enlightenment and how his conception of the freedom of conscience contributed to American conceptions of freedom generally. (shrink)

SummaryThe College of New Jersey (which later became Princeton University) provides an example of how Scottish philosophy influenced American higher education in an institutional context during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This article compares the administrations of John Witherspoon (served from 1768 to 1794), Samuel Stanhope Smith (served from 1795 to 1812) and James McCosh (served from 1868 to 1888) at Princeton and examines their use of Scottish philosophy in restructuring the curriculum and reforming its institutional purpose. While presiding (...) over Princeton during its most significant transitional moments, these philosophers of the Scottish School of Common Sense instituted different versions of moral education. Meanwhile, Witherspoon's legacy of balancing the interests of Evangelicalism and Scottish philosophy as Princeton's driving purpose influenced the creation and reception of nineteenth-century programmes of moral education. The broader question this article addresses is: how did the interconnecting points among Scottish philosophy, Calvinism and moral education inform notions of didactic Enlightenment at Princeton across a century? (shrink)

Jeffry H. Morrison offers readers the first comprehensive look at the political thought and career of John Witherspoon--a Scottish Presbyterian minister and one of America's most influential and overlooked founding fathers. Witherspoon was an active member of the Continental Congress and was the only clergyman both to sign the Declaration of Independence and to ratify the federal Constitution. During his tenure as president of the College of New Jersey at Princeton, Witherspoon became a mentor to James Madison and influenced many (...) leaders and thinkers of the founding period. He was uniquely positioned at the crossroads of politics, religion, and education during the crucial first decades of the new republic. Morrison locates Witherspoon in the context of early American political thought and charts the various influences on his thinking. This impressive work of scholarship offers a broad treatment of Witherspoon's constitutionalism, including his contributions to the mediating institutions of religion and education, and to political institutions from the colonial through the early federal periods. This book will be appreciated by anyone with an interest in American political history and thought and in the relation of religion to American politics. (shrink)

Jeffry H. Morrison offers readers the first comprehensive look at the political thought and career of John Witherspoon—a Scottish Presbyterian minister and one of America’s most influential and overlooked founding fathers. Witherspoon was an active member of the Continental Congress and was the only clergyman both to sign the Declaration of Independence and to ratify the federal Constitution. During his tenure as president of the College of New Jersey at Princeton, Witherspoon became a mentor to James Madison and influenced many (...) leaders and thinkers of the founding period. He was uniquely positioned at the crossroads of politics, religion, and education during the crucial first decades of the new republic. Morrison locates Witherspoon in the context of early American political thought and charts the various influences on his thinking. This impressive work of scholarship offers a broad treatment of Witherspoon’s constitutionalism, including his contributions to the mediating institutions of religion and education, and to political institutions from the colonial through the early federal periods. This book will be appreciated by anyone with an interest in American political history and thought and in the relation of religion to American politics. “I have been waiting a long time for such a book on John Witherspoon. This book is not only well-researched, but well-written. The story Morrison tells is quite wonderful.” —_Michael Novak, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research_ _ _ "Dr. John Witherspoon is at once an exceptionally influential figure in Early American history, and a sadly neglected one. Professor Morrison's book fills this gap in American political history brilliantly. It is especially revealing of 18th century views on the interrationships between education, religion, and society. Morrison presents new insights into the Early American understanding of balancing faith, government, and society. It will change our conceptions of this period and provide fresh perspectives on contemporary problems. Everyone interested in the American Founding era is indebted to Morrison for this illuminating book." —_Garrett Ward Sheldon, University of Virginia's College at Wise_ "At last we have a full and learned account, as the title states, of _JOHN WITHERSPOON aND THE FOUNDING OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC_. Including discussion of Witherspoon's direct role in the crucial events of 1775-1790 as an advocate of Independence and friend of the Constitution, as a contributor to early American religious and political thought, and most important, as a mentor to James Madison and other Princeton revolutionairies and nation-builders, Morrison reveals Witherspoon's high standing in American religious, educational, and political history. Madison remembered Witherspoon's injunction to his students to 'Lead useful Lives;' he provided an excellent role model." —_Ralph Ketcham, Syracuse University_. (shrink)

...Witherspoon's Course in Political Theory, as Taken by James Madison Dennis F. Thompson Princeton University [523...Witherspoon's Course in Political Theory, as Taken by James Madison. James Madison was an unusually wen-prepared student when, at eighteen...

Considered the first significant teacher of rhetoric in America, John Witherspoon also introduced Scottish moral philosophy in America, and as president of Princeton reformed the curriculum to give emphasis to both studies. He was an active pamphleteer on religious and political issues and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Thomas P Miller argues that Witherspoon’s career exemplifies the Ciceronian ideal, and the eight selections Miller presents from the 1802 American edition of the _Works _corroborate that claim.

This article is an introduction to a special issue on ‘Contexts of Religious Tolerance: New Perspectives from Early Modern Britain and Beyond’, which contains essays on the contributions to the debates on tolerance by non-canonical philosophers and theologians, mainly from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Scotland and England. Among the studied authors are the Aberdeen Doctors, Samuel Rutherford, James Dundas, John Finch, George Keith, John Simson, Archibald Campbell, Francis Hutcheson, George Turnbull and John Witherspoon. The introduction draws attention to several methodological points (...) connected to the decision to look at the debates on tolerance through the prism of rarely studied authors. It then presents the essays, which offer novel perspectives by analysing and contextualising political, religious and moral treatments of tolerance. These are tied especially to debates on the articles of faith and on their status, on confessions of faith and their role in the quest for orthodoxy, on liberty of conscience, and on the relation between church and state. (shrink)

For more than seven decades there has been a broad gap between how philosophy is conceived and practiced. Two ill-defined but well-recognized traditions have developed—the "analytic" and "Continental" schools of philosophy. The former traces its roots to philosophers like Frege, Russell, Moore, Wittgenstein, and the logical positivists. The latter has been heavily influenced by Nietzsche, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, and Derrida, among others. The aim of this collection is to reconsider the often facile characterization of major thinkers as belonging to either (...) one or the other philosophical tradition. The contributors—philosophers from both sides of the divide working in different countries and contexts—all question the problematic conception that the two traditions are incommensurable. Each of their articles compares individual philosophers who have had a major influence on the analytic and Continental traditions with a view to clarifying their similarities and dissimilarities of approach. What this collection of thoughtful articles clearly demonstrates is that regardless of approach and precedents, analytic and Continental philosophers are all doing philosophy, and there are many important points of contact between them. The contributors are: Richard Rorty, whose thoughtful overview highlights the salient points in both traditions; Barry Allen ; Babette E. Babich ; David Cerbone ; Sharyn Clough ; Jonathan Kaplan ; Richard Matthews ; Carlos G. Prado ; Bjorn Torgrim Ramberg ; Mike Sandbothe ; Barry Stocker ; and Ed Witherspoon. (shrink)

Ranging from Joseph Bellamy to Hilary Putnam, and from early New England Divinity Schools to contemporary university philosophy departments, historian Bruce Kuklick recounts the story of the growth of philosophical thinking in the United States. Readers will explore the thought of early American philosphers such as Jonathan Edwards and John Witherspoon and will see how the political ideas of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson influenced philosophy in colonial America. Kuklick discusses The Transcendental Club (members Henry David Thoreau, Ralph (...) Waldo Emerson) and describes the rise of pragmatism centered on Metaphysical Club of Cambridge (and members William James, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Charles Peirce). He examines the profound impact Darwinism had on American philosophy and looks at Idealists such as the Kantian Josiah Royce and the Hegelian John Dewey. The book shows how, in the twentieth century, the Nazi conquest of Europe unleashed a flood of European intellectuals onto these shores, including such major thinkers as Theodore Adorno, Erich Fromm, Rudolph Carnap, and Alfred Tarski. Finally, Kuklick examines the contributions of such contemporary philosophers as Sidney Hook and Willard Quine and such books as John Rawl's A Theory of Justice and Herbert Marcuse's One Dimensional Man. Kuklick pulls no punches in portraying the state of American philosophy today and its contested role in the intellectual life of the nation and the world. The range of philosophical thought in our nation's history has been great, from Edwards's Religious Affections to Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and Bruce Kuklick has captured it all in a book that blends intricate details with sweeping vision. (shrink)

The Scottish Enlightenment provided the fledgling United States of America and its emerging universities with a philosophical orientation. For a hundred years or more, Scottish philosophers were both taught and emulated by professors at Princeton, Harvard and Yale, as well as newly founded colleges stretching from Rhode Island to Texas. This volume in the Library of Scottish Philosophy demonstrates the remarkable extent of this philosophical influence. Selections from William Smith, John Witherspoon, Samuel Stanhope Smith, Archibald Alexander, Alexander Campbell, W.E. Channing, (...) James McCosh, and C.S. Peirce, together with the editor's introductory and explanatory material, provide the modern reader with unprecedented access to this period of intellectual formation. (shrink)

A Return to Moral and Religious Philosophy in Early America concentrates especially on three philosophical positions that dominated early American philosophy, Puritanism and Idealism, the Enlightenment or Age of Realism, and Transcendentalism. This book focuses primarily but not exclusively on the best representatives of each. Jonathan Edwards was the most brilliant and philosophically minded of early Puritan thinkers; his thinking was colored by metaphysical idealism. Thomas Jefferson gave us the best of the Age of Reason, but other Enlightenment thinker like (...) Benjamin Franklin, Ethan Allen, and Tom Pain are considered where relevant. Ralph Waldo Emerson is presented as the best of that romantic individualism known as Transcendentalism. Briefer references are made to other early American thinkers like Samuel Johnson, John Witherspoon, Cadwallader Colden, John Adams, James Madison, Henry David Thorough, and Theodore Parker. Considerable quoted material, especially from the central figures, is included. A moral and religious interpretative framework for binding all of this together into a coherent story is provided. (shrink)

Ranging from Joseph Bellamy to Hilary Putnam, and from early New England Divinity Schools to contemporary university philosophy departments, historian Bruce Kuklick recounts the story of the growth of philosophical thinking in the United States. Readers will explore the thought of early American philosphers such as Jonathan Edwards and John Witherspoon and will see how the political ideas of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson influenced philosophy in colonial America. Kuklick discusses The Transcendental Club (members Henry David Thoreau, Ralph (...) Waldo Emerson) and describes the rise of pragmatism centered on Metaphysical Club of Cambridge (and members William James, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Charles Peirce). He examines the profound impact Darwinism had on American philosophy and looks at Idealists such as the Kantian Josiah Royce and the Hegelian John Dewey. The book shows how, in the twentieth century, the Nazi conquest of Europe unleashed a flood of European intellectuals onto these shores, including such major thinkers as Theodore Adorno, Erich Fromm, Rudolph Carnap, and Alfred Tarski. Finally, Kuklick examines the contributions of such contemporary philosophers as Sidney Hook and Willard Quine and such books as John Rawl's A Theory of Justice and Herbert Marcuse's One Dimensional Man. Kuklick pulls no punches in portraying the state of American philosophy today and its contested role in the intellectual life of the nation and the world. The range of philosophical thought in our nation's history has been great, from Edwards's Religious Affections to Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and Bruce Kuklick has captured it all in a book that blends intricate details with sweeping vision. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A History of Scottish PhilosophyC. Jan SwearingenA History of Scottish Philosophy by Alexander Broadie Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009. 400 pp. $120.00, cloth; $45.00, paper.Alexander Broadie’s prolific work on Scottish philosophy, particularly the Scottish Enlightenment’s roots in much earlier Scottish thought, deserves to be better known outside of Britain. While its relevance to rhetoric is more indirect than direct, A History of Scottish Philosophy illuminates several strands in (...) Scottish philosophies of the mind and will, doctrines of freedom and liberty, and assessments of moral sense and reason, culminating in a masterful appraisal of the commonsense philosophy that in the eighteenth century became widely associated with prominent Scottish thinkers who were also philosophers of rhetoric, among them Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith, and Thomas Reid. The innovative senior-level course in rhetoric and moral philosophy created by these thinkers crossed the Atlantic and had a profound influence, still much debated, on the rhetoric, language, and thought of the American founding era. Many Americans are unaware of the sensitivity within Britain that is still attached to the very notion of a Scottish Enlightenment, a fraught context Broadie addresses in his introduction, beginning with elegantly calm descriptions of the Scottishness of Scottish philosophy and the distinctive figures and ideas that converged in the Scottish Enlightenment. Contesting the commonly held view that the [End Page 186] Scottish Enlightenment fizzled out at the end of the eighteenth century, supplanted by a cultural decline into tartan kitsch and maudlin recherché romanticism, Broadie provides solid evidence of ongoing developments in Scottish moral philosophy and theology and of continued Scottish responses to post-Kantian German idealism.Because Kant rebuked Hume’s philosophy, later Scottish responses to Kant were part of a family of ideas that, Broadie explains, continued in conversation with their predecessors and with the influential German philosophers of the nineteenth century. Although Kant sees himself as refuting Hume’s skepticism, Broadie finds in Kant’s thinking a more sophisticated version of Hume’s ideas. He notes commonsense philosopher Thomas Reid’s view that a theory of ideas, the model of mental representations, always ends in skepticism, a view that led Reid and other commonsense philosophers to focus on commonsense perception and liberty: “an account of the relation between the knower and the known, a relationship between a cognitively active subject and an object located in the real world” (319). It need not be said how much these issues of language and mind relationships continue to be debated in philosophical and rhetorical theory. Today’s skepticism, like that of the eighteenth century, defends a profound doubt about the possibility of knowledge, the perception of reality by individuals and groups, the possibility of any communication or rhetorical interactions that are not “always already” spoken. Revisiting these debates in eighteenth-century Scottish thought, Broadie’s commentary provides a number of illuminating recognition scenes.Broadie’s larger point throughout the book is that the idea that liberty is simultaneously intellectual, volitional, moral, and political—that it represents a capacity for intellectual freedom as well as a civic duty to promote liberty—recurs in Scottish philosophy, self-consciously understood as such, from the time of Duns Scotus to the present. Broadie’s meticulous exposition of the self-understood Scottishness of Scottish philosophy and philosophers is a major achievement of the book. American readers will find particularly interesting the discussions of John Witherspoon in the eighteenth century and James McCosh in the nineteenth, who came from Scotland to become presidents of the College of New Jersey/Princeton. I would add to Broadie’s account that Witherspoon’s influence on the American founding era and his role as the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence is substantially rhetorical. Alongside many other Scottish clergy professors in the colonies, he disseminated the Scottish [End Page 187] curriculum in rhetoric and moral philosophy and followed the practice of holding weekly moots and a senior-year matriculation oration that trained students in the practical arts of oral rhetorical composition. James Madison was a protégé among many others and sought Witherspoon’s as well as the Aberdonian James Wilson’s counsel while working on the much-debated... (shrink)

In this article, I discuss how Samuel Stanhope Smith advanced Reidian themes in his moral philosophy and examine their reception by Presbyterian revivalists Ashbel Green, Samuel Miller, and Archibald Alexander. Smith, seventh president and moral philosophy professor of the College of New Jersey (1779–1812), has received marginal scholarly attention regarding his moral philosophy and rational theology, in comparison to his predecessor John Witherspoon. As an early American philosopher who drew on the ideals of the Scottish Enlightenment including Common Sense philosophy, (...) Smith faced heightened scrutiny from American revivalists regarding the danger his epistemology presented to the institution of religion. The Scottish School of Common Sense was widely praised and applied in nineteenth-century American moral philosophy, but before the more general American acceptance of Common Sense, Smith already appealed to Reidian themes in his methodology and treatment of external sensations, internal sensations, intellectual powers, and active powers of the human mind. In this paper, I argue that Smith's use of Reidian themes for grooming his student's morality conflicted with the educational expectations from revivalists on Princeton's board of trustees who demanded more attention on orthodox theology. I identify Smith's notions of causation, liberty, and the moral faculty as primary reasons for this tension over Princeton's educational purpose during the first decade of the nineteenth century. (shrink)

From Aristotle to Thomas Jefferson, seminal thinkers have declared “common sense” essential for moral discernment and civilized living. Yet the story of commonsense philosophy is not well known today. In _America and the Political Philosophy of Common Sense_, Scott Segrest traces the history and explores the personal and social meaning of common sense as understood especially in American thought and as reflected specifically in the writings of three paradigmatic thinkers: John Witherspoon, James McCosh, and William James. The first two represent (...) Scottish Common Sense and the third, Pragmatism, the schools that together dominated American higher thought for nearly two centuries. Educated Americans of the founding period warmly received Scottish Common Sense, Segrest writes, because it reflected so well what they already thought, and he uncovers the basic elements of American common sense in examining the thought of Witherspoon, who introduced that philosophy to them. With McCosh, he shows the furthest development and limits of the philosophy, and with it of American common sense in its Scottish realist phase. With James, he shows other dimensions of common sense that Americans had long embraced but that had never been examined philosophically. Clearly, Segrest’s work is much more than an intellectual history. It is a study of the American mind and of common sense itself—its essential character and its human significance, both moral and political. It was common sense, he affirms, that underlay the Declaration of Independence and the founders’ ideas of right and obligation that are still with us today. Segrest suggests that understanding this foundation and James’s refreshing of it could be the key to maintaining America’s vital moral core against a growing alienation from common sense across the Western world. Stressing the urgency of understanding and preserving common sense, Segrest’s work sheds new light on an undervalued aspect of American thought and experience, helping us to perceive the ramifications of commonsense philosophy for dignified living. (shrink)

Originally published more than fifty years ago, _The Courage to Be_ has become a classic of twentieth-century religious and philosophical thought. The great Christian existentialist thinker Paul Tillich describes the dilemma of modern man and points a way to the conquest of the problem of anxiety. This edition includes a new introduction by Harvey Cox that situates the book within the theological conversation into which it first appeared and conveys its continued relevance in the current century. “The brilliance, the wealth (...) of illustration, and the aptness of personal application... make the reading of these chapters an exciting experience.”—W. Norman Pittenger, _New York Times Book Review_ “A lucid and arresting book.”—Frances Witherspoon, _New York Herald Tribune_ “Clear, uncluttered thinking and lucid writing mark Mr. Tillich’s study as a distinguished and readable one.”—_American Scholar_ Selected as one of the Books of the Century by the New York Public Library. (shrink)

In this wide ranging volume of philosophical essays John Haldane explores some central areas of social life and issues of intense academic and public debate. These include the question of ethical relativism, fundamental issues in bioethics, the nature of individuals in relation to society, the common good, public judgement of prominent individuals, the nature and aims of education, cultural theory and the relation of philosophy to art and architecture. John Haldane is Professor of Philosophy, and Director of the Centre for (...) Ethics, Philosophy and Public Affairs in the University of St Andrews. He is also a former Royden Davis Professor of Humanities at Georgetown University and is currently a Senior Fellow of the Witherspoon Institute, Princeton. As well as being a prominent academic philosopher he is well known in Britain, in North America and elsewhere in the English-speaking world as a public intellectual and social commentator. 'In Practical Philosophy, John Haldane eloquently makes the case for an approach to ethics that is distinctively practical — thought with a view to action. Taking his inspiration from a tradition that includes Aristotle, Aquinas, and Elizabeth Anscombe, Haldane argues that an orthodox dichotomy has long dominated both philosophical and everyday thinking: we must be either dualists or material reductionists. Both of these alternatives, however, neglect a subtle approach to intentionality and agency offered by the Aristotelian tradition. Haldane uses his illuminating approach to advance arguments on a number of controversial moral and political issues: the status of the foetus, the importance of the family, compensation for victims of crime, the basis of human solidarity across national boundaries. Although his conclusions are frequently controversial, Haldane always avoids polemics and the ideological parti pris, thus giving a welcome example of respectful and civil public argument.' — Martha Nussbaum 'What resources can philosophy bring to bear, when its enquiries are not theoretical, but practical? In Practical Philosophy John Haldane answers this question in a brilliant survey of key issues, showing us how a variety of theories can obscure or distort our view of the practical realities of life, family, and society. With admirable clarity he also shows us how philosophy can rescue us from such theorizing.' — Alasdair MacIntyre. (shrink)

This chapter is divided into three separate sections devoted in order to Europe, North America, and Australasia. In the first section, attention is given to the reception of Scottish philosophical writings principally in France and Germany, from the late decades of the eighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century. The second section recounts the place and influence of Scottish philosophy in the liberal arts colleges of colonial America, and the great influence of key figure such as Francis Allison, John Witherspoon, and (...) Samuel Stanhope Smith in post-revolutionary politics and education. The story is traced into the early years of the twentieth century, with some reference to John Clark Murray and the place of Scottish philosophy in Canada also. The third section deals with the role of philosophy in the establishment of universities in Australia. It details the notable number of Scottish educated philosophers who contributed to the study of philosophy in Australia and ends with the best known of them—John Anderson. (shrink)