Rich with historical and cultural value, these works are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

The problem of being is central to Western metaphysics. Etched sharply in the verses of Parmenides, it took on distinctive colouring in Aristotle as the subject matter of a science expressly labelled 'theological.' For Aristotle, being could not be shared in generic fashion by other natures. As a nature it had to be found not in various species but in a primary instance only. The science specified by the primary nature was accordingly the one science that under the aspect of (...) being treated universally of whatever is: it dealt with being qua being. (shrink)

Substance and Essence in Aristotle is a close study of Aristotle's most profound—and perplexing—treatise: Books VII-IX of the Metaphysics. These central books, which focus on the nature of substance, have gained a deserved reputation for their difficulty, inconclusiveness, and internal inconsistency. Despite these problems, Witt extracts from Aristotle's text a coherent and provocative view about sensible substance by focusing on Aristotle's account of form or essence. After exploring the context in which Aristotle's discussion of sensible substance takes place, Witt turns (...) to his analysis of essence. Arguing against the received interpretation, according to which essences are classificatory, Witt maintains that a substance's essence is what causes it to exist. In addition, Substance and Essence in Aristotle challenges the orthodox view that Aristotelian essences are species-essences, defending instead the controversial position that they are individual essences. Finally, Witt compares Aristotelian essentialism to contemporary essentialist theories, focusing in particular on Kripke's work. She concludes that fundamental differences between Aristotelian and contemporary essentialist theories highlight important features of Aristotle's theory and the philosophical problems and milieu that engendered it. (shrink)

Stephen Salkever shows that reading Aristotle is a starting point for discussing contemporary political problems in new ways that avoid the opposition between liberal individualism and republican communitarianism, between the politics of rights and the politics of virtues. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable (...) paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Drawing freely and expertly from Continental and analytic traditions, Richard Bernstein examines a number of debates and controversies exemplified in the works of Gadamer, Habermas, Rorty, and Arendt. He argues that a "new conversation" is emerging about human rationality—a new understanding that emphasizes its practical character and has important ramifications both for thought and action.

This book is the first sustained inquiry into the ways in which postmodern thinkers have grappled with the historical bases, implications, and methodological problems of the Holocaust. The book examines the thinking of Arendt, Levinas, Foucault, Lyotard, and Derrida, all of whom have recognized the centrality of the Nazi genocide to the epoch in which we live. The essays written for this volume constitute a wide-ranging study of the efforts of postmodernism to articulate the Holocaust.

This is a major and comprehensive study of the philosophy of Hegel, his place in the history of ideas, and his continuing relevance and importance. Professor Taylor relates Hegel to the earlier history of philosophy and, more particularly, to the central intellectual and spiritual issues of his own time. He engages with Hegel sympathetically, on Hegel's own terms and, as the subject demands, in detail. This important book is now reissued with a fresh new cover.

Charlotte Witt extracts from this text a coherent and provocative view about sensible substance by focusing on Aristotle's account of form or essence.

Stephen Salkever shows that reading Aristotle is a starting point for discussing contemporary political problems in new ways that avoid the opposition between liberal individualism and republican communitarianism, between the politics of rights and the politics of virtues. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable (...) paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Reale's monumental work establishes the exact dimensions of Aristotle's concept of first philosophy and proves the profound unity of concept that exists in Aristotle's Metaphysics.

Ontology has been traditionally guided by sophia, a form of knowledge directed toward that which is eternal, permanent, necessary. This tradition finds an important early expression in the philosophical ontology of Aristotle. Yet in the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle's intense concern to do justice to the world of finite contingency leads him to develop a mode of knowledge, phronsis, that implicitly challenges the hegemony of sophia and the economy of values on which it depends. Following in the tradition of the early (...) Heidegger's recognition of the ontological significance of Aristotle's Ethics and of Gadamer's appropriation of phronsis for hermeneutics, this article argues that an ontology guided by phronsis is preferable to one governed by sophia. Specifically, it suggests that by taking sophia as its paradigm, traditional philosophical ontology has historically been determined by a kind of knowledge that is incapable of critically considering the concrete historico-ethico-political conditions of its own deployment. This critique of sophia is accomplished by uncovering the economy of values that led Aristotle to privilege sophia over phronsis. It is intended to open up the possibility of developing an ontology of finite contingency based on phronsis. Such an ontology, because it is guided by and must remain responsible to the concrete individual with which it is engaged, would be ethical at its very core. (shrink)

At the beginning of his book, Methode und Beweisziel im ersten Buch der “Physikvorlesung” des Aristoteles, Johannes Fritsche announces that the theme of the work is to be more or less Aristotle’s Physics. It is to be less about the Physics insofar as it treats only two sentences of its first book—the first sentence of chapter one and a sentence taken from its decisive seventh chapter. It is to be more about the Physics insofar as it explicates these two sentences (...) in order to establish the principle according to which the entire Physics is constructed. Fritsche’s book is impressive both in its breadth and its depth. He situates his own position within a broad historical tradition by addressing both ancient commentators, like Simplicius and Philoponus, and modern commentators, like Wieland and Guzzoni. He argues, however, the unpopular position that the books of the Physics do have a systematic relationship to one another, that they are not merely an amalgamation of individual thoughts on the general subject of natural philosophy. One of the most intriguing aspects of Fritsche’s account is his suggestion that the main goal of the first two books of the Physics is to establish the condition for the possibility that there are principles of natural beings. In this, he distinguishes his own position from many in the tradition who claim that Aristotle assumes the existence of such principles without ever actually arguing for them. (shrink)

One of the constant themes of Adorno’s work, running from his early essay “The Idea of Natural History” through his unfinished Aesthetic Theory, is the notion of the experience of power within the natural realm and the relation of rational “enlightenment” to this experience. On the one hand, “Enlightenment is mythic fear turned radical” ; on the other hand, “Myth turns into enlightenment, and nature into mere objectivity”. What concerns Adorno is precisely the dialectic that enlightenment itself is. As the (...) attempt to free humanity from fear of the force of nature, enlightenment is an attempt to demythologize nature, to strip nature of its power. Yet, in this very activity, enlightenment becomes that power itself. If reason is the response to the force of nature, then reason itself has to be force as well: “Myth is already enlightenment; and enlightenment reverts to mythology”. (shrink)

This brilliant study of the stages in the mind's necessary progress from immediate sense-consciousness to the position of a scientific philosophy includes an introductory essay and a paragraph-by-paragraph analysis of the text to help the reader understand this most difficult and most influential of Hegel's works.

This book explores a fundamental tension in Aristotle's metaphysics: how can an entity such as a living organisma composite generated through the imposition of form on preexisting matterhave the conceptual unity that Aristotle demands of ...

Review of Substance and Essence in Aristotle: an Interpretation of Metaphysics VII-IX, by Charlotte Witt (Cornell University Press: 1989).

Review of Primary Ousia: An Essay on Aristotle's Metaphysics Z and H, by Michael J. Loux (Cornell University Press: 1991).

"A fascinating and timely treatment of the objectivism versus relativism debates occurring in philosophy of science, literary theory, the social sciences, ...

This volume makes available in English for the first time Adorno’s lectures on metaphysics. It provides a unique introduction not only to metaphysics but also to Adorno’s own intellectual standpoint, as developed in his major work Negative Dialectics. Metaphysics for Adorno is defined by a central tension between concepts and immediate facts. Adorno traces this dualism back to Aristotle, whom he sees as the founder of metaphysics. In Aristotle it appears as an unresolved tension between form and matter. This basic (...) split, in Adorno’s interpretation, runs right through the history of metaphysics. Perhaps not surprisingly, Adorno finds this tension resolved in the Hegelian dialectic. Underlying this dualism is a further dichotomy, which Adorno sees as essential to metaphysics: while it dissolves belief in transcendental worlds by thought, at the same time it seeks to rescue belief in a reality beyond the empirical, again by thought. It is to this profound ambiguity, for Adorno, that the metaphysical tradition owes its greatness. The major part of these lectures, given by Adorno late in his life, is devoted to a critical exposition of Aristotle’s thought, focusing on its central ambiguities. In the last lectures, Adorno’s attention switches to the question of the relevance of metaphysics today, particularly after the Holocaust. He finds in metaphysical experiences, which transcend rational discourse without lapsing into irrationalism, a last precarious refuge of the humane truth to which his own thought always aspired. This volume will be essential reading for anyone interested in Adorno’s work and will be a valuable text for students and scholars of philosophy and social theory. (shrink)

Bd. 1. Abhandlungen zur systematischen Philosophie.--Bd. 2. Abhandlungen zur Philosophie-Geschichte.--Bd. 3. Vom Neukantianismus zur Ontologie.

These readings are organized into four sections. The first explores the wellsprings of the debates in the relationship between the postmodern and the enterprise it both continues and contravenes: modernism. Here philosophers, social and political commentators, as well as cultural and literary analysts present controversial background essays on the complex history of postmodernism. The readings in the second section debate the possibility—or desirability—of trying to define the postmodern, given its cultural agenda of decentering, challenging, even undermining the guiding “master” narratives (...) of Western culture. The readings in the third section explore postmodernism’s complicated complicity with these very narratives, while the fourth section moves from theory to practice in order to investigate, in a variety of fields, the common denominators of the postmodern condition in action. (shrink)

In einem Brief nennt Adorno die "Negative Dialektik" kurz nach ihrem Erscheinen unter seinen Schriften "das philosophische Hauptwerk, wenn ich so sagen darf“. Dieser herausgehobenen Bedeutung, die das Werk für Adorno hatte, entspricht nicht nur die lange Zeit, die er mit der Abfassung des Buchs beschäftigt war, sondern auch die lange Geschichte, die ihre zentralen Motive in seinem Denken haben. Philosophische Begriffsklärung, die Arbeit an "Begriff und Kategorien“ einer negativen Dialektik, versteht Adorno dabei als dialektischen Übergang in inhaltliches Denken – (...) und so betreibt er sie auch hier. Das hat Konsequenzen für die Form des kooperativen Kommentars, der in diesem Band versucht wird. Adornos "Negative Dialektik" zu kommentieren, kann nur in dem Bewußtsein der unüberbrückbaren Kluft gelingen, die den Kommentar von diesem Text trennt. (shrink)

Acclaimed throughout the world as a philosopher of liberation and revolution, Herbert Marcuse is one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. His penetrating critiques of the ways modern technology produces forms of society and culture with oppressive modes of social control indicate his enduring significance in the contemporary moment. This collection of unpublished or uncollected essays, unfinished manuscripts, and correspondence between 1942 and 1951, provides Marcuse's exemplary attempts to link theory with practice, and develops ideas that can (...) be used to grasp and transform existing social reality. These papers vividly chronicle Marcuse's increasing, yet reluctant estrangement from Max Horkeimer, director of the Institute for Social Research and his years as an analyst with various U.S. government agencies. Marcuse's later attempts to link theory and practice in the 1960s and 1970s in regard to the New Left, National Liberation Movements and other new social movements were grounded in his work from the 1940s. As the 1940s witnessed the rise to global prominence of German fascism and its defeat in World War Two, and the emergence of the Cold War, Marcuse strived to preserve the radical vision of his youth during a difficult historical period while many turned toward more conservative positions. Precisely the sort of broad theoretical and political theorizing that Marcuse undertook througout his life is needed today to analyze the momentous changes that we are currently undergoing. Excerpt: Personal history is interwoven with intellectual and political events in these papers. We debated whether letters belonged here: whether some should be published at all. My father had a deep sense of personal privacy, both as a character trait and as a political expression of resistance to the commodification of the private. Yet the letters contain substantive discussions also. We could have edited out, expurgated some of the material. While not publishing every letter my father wrote, our selection was based on interest, and every letter that is included is included in full. That decision was in part painful for me personally. The juxtaposition of the letters to Horkeimer and the exchange with Heidegger highlights the point. --from the Foreword by Peter Marcuse. (shrink)

Traces the development of Heidegger's ontology, its origin, shifts, and final outcome within the field of phenomenology, also noting the coherence and ambiguity of his association with the Nazis.