This book is a history of modern European philosophy, focusing on the great philosophers of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, from Descartes through Nietzsche, all of whom develop comprehensive systems of thought. Such a history can be seen as telling a story (indeed, the very word "story" comes from the Latin word historia). It has been traditionally understood since ancient times that a good story has a beginning, an end, and a middle that reasonably moves us from the beginning (...) to its end. Although it may seem a bit artificial, we can think of the history of modern European philosophy as beginning in the 1620s, when Descartes was writing his Rules for the Direction of the Mind, and ending in 1900, with the death of Nietzsche. In some ways, the development from the former to the latter is a process of intellectual radicalization. Yet a focus that persists through this process is an emphasis on the individual thinker as the subject of experience, belief, knowledge, and action. (shrink)

In this article Alan Gewirth's theory of social ethics is applied to the picture of life presented in Orwell's novel, 1984, in such a way as to justify one's sense of repulsive evil therein. It is the systematic denial of human rights to freedom and well-being that is fundamentally immoral and destructive of the capacity of people to function as prospective purposive agents. This denial of what Gewirth terms additive, nonsubtractive, and basic goods violates both privacy and personal autonomy, reducing (...) man to a sub-human level. (shrink)

From early in the Christian era—certainly from the time of Clement of Alexandria—and for centuries thereafter, Western philosophy was considered the “handmaid of theology.” Its job was to be of whatever assistance possible to “faith seeking understanding.” In the modern period, with the gradual waxing of a liberated science and waning of ecclesiastical dominance over every facet of intellectual life, the functions of the maid became recognized as of comparable value and validity with those of the mistress. While ostensibly finding (...) it necessary to “deny knowledge, in order to make room for faith,” Kant sought to establish faith philosophically as rational, his theology emerging from a more fundamental moral philosophy. (shrink)

Ideas of Human Nature, now revised and updated in this second edition, presents twelve of the most influential Western thinkers on the topic of human nature.