International law has recently emerged as the subject-matter of an exciting new field of philosophical investigation. This volume is the ideal guide to the current debates, offering 29 specially commissioned essays by leading philosophers and international lawyers, addressing the central philosophical questions about international law.

The title of my thesis may lead the reader to expect to find in it rather more and different things than there actually are. Because of this I think it advisable to outline some of the restrictions which have been imposed upon it and some of the reasons which explain these. The first and most important restriction lies in the fact that it is mainly confined to the exposition and elucidation of Vico's theories. There is little philosophical discussion of the (...) tenability and value of his ideas and such as I have been able to include i3 largely to be found in the brief concluding section. I have found it necessary to omit altogether any comparisons of Vico with latter-day thinkers of his type, e.g. Hegel, Spengler and Toynbee. A variety of reasons have contributed towards this. Hie first is the obscure, diffuse and often muddled nature of "Hie New Science", which is notoriously difficult to understand. In part this problem arises not so much from the difficulty of the ideas as from the fact that there are so many of them. But this alone would not be a reason for puzzlement. It becomes so when allied to a second factor: the difficulty of understanding the meaning of some of Vico's principal pronouncements about the nature of the enterprise carried out in "The New Science" and about the relationships between at least some of its main theories. It is admitted on all hands that Vico's language is obscure. I should not want to dispute this and, indeed, have had to go to some lengths to try to clear up a few of these obscurities. It is also alleged sometimes that some of the difficulties of understanding 'The Now Science" arise from philosophical confusions. This is a much more disputable claim, it will become clear in the following work that I hold that Vico was by no means so confused in his grasp of his own doctrines as the general obscurity of "The New Science" might suggest. Certainly I do not think that he was guilty of one or two basic philosophical confusions which, if located, would provide the clue to the unravelling of most of the difficulties of his work. Nor do I think that those mistakes which he does make are so fundamental that he is left with nothing of importance to say once they have been rectified. (shrink)

Philosophy means ‘love of wisdom,’ but author Edmond Holmes fears the encroaching dominance of intellect over feeling. In this title, Holmes argues that metaphysics’ reliance on intellect and pure reason undermines the study of philosophy. Rather, Holmes suggests a return to intuitional philosophy, combining thought and feeling. First published in 1930, this title will be ideal for students interested in Philosophy and Western Civilisation.

Philosophy lost its traditional subject-matter when other disciplines became socio-culturally and epistemologically differentiated. It does not have its unique methods as doing philosophy resembles the features, stages and steps of theorizing and will be present in any significant research, the writing of articles, books, dissertations, etc. Attempts to usurp philosophy and philosophical methods by the new science of Habermas and followers of Critical Theory and other Continental approaches attempt to do philosphy by using terms and ideas from philosophy (eg (...) ontology, epistemology, methodology, transcendentals, pre-suppostions, assumptions etc). These are not uniquely philosophical terms but nowadays they are employed by all disciplines, articles, books etc (all these things have ontologies, epistemologies, do theorizing, etc). (shrink)

Green and Shapiro's tour de force fails as a convincing critique of rational choice applications in political science because it locks itself into a statistical form of assessment. Rather than seeing the constructive side of rational choice theory, both as an engine of theoretical development and as a source of non?obvious empirical insights about politics, Green and Shapiro depart from the procedure in most sciences, comparing rational choice against an ideal rather than some concrete alternative. Finally, they fail to note (...) the recent emphasis on sophisticated empirical testing of rational choice hypotheses. (shrink)

Returning to the famous prologue to the book Difference and Repetition, in which Gilles Deleuze points out that the time is approaching when it would not be possible to write a philosophy book as before, we will try to think about the deleuzian evocation of the need to adopt a new tone and new rules for the exercise philosophical. We believe that resuming this philosopher's appeal would launch us into the heart of deleuzian and deleuze-guattarian conception of philosophy as experimentation. (...) The author suggesting that a philosophical treatise should sound as much like a kind of detective novel as it does like science fiction. This excursion, we argue, would not only help us in the deleuzian and deleuzo-guattarian understanding of philosophy as experimentation, but would also make it possible to outline some clues about the role of the history of philosophy at the heart of this conception. (shrink)

Johann Gottfried Herder: Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit Edition Holzinger. Taschenbuch Berliner Ausgabe, 2013 Vollständiger, durchgesehener Neusatz mit einer Biographie des Autors bearbeitet und eingerichtet von Michael Holzinger Erstdruck: Erstdruck: o.O. 1774 (anonym). Textgrundlage ist die Ausgabe: Sturm und Drang. Weltanschauliche und ästhetische Schriften. Herausgegeben von Peter Müller, Band 1-2, Berlin und Weimar: Aufbau, 1978. Herausgeber der Reihe: Michael Holzinger Reihengestaltung: Viktor Harvion Umschlaggestaltung unter Verwendung des Bildes: Johann Gottfried Herder (Gemälde von Anton Graff, 1785).

This book contributes to the 'rehabilitation' of Plutarch as a philosopher by focusing on an important aspect of his philosophical self: his work as a teacher, interpreter, and, eventually, historian of philosophy.

Frohlich and Oppenheimer's works aim to study empirically Rawls' philosophy. They replicate the original position, using a veil of ignorance covering the subjects' deliberations. This should provide empirical data usable by philosophers, a claim discussed here: Rawls' foundationalism precludes a genuine opening of his philosophy to empirical data. On the other hand, Rawls' distinction between natural and moral justice attitudes sheds light on the deterministic metaphysics indirectly required by the Rawlsian sense of justice. This leads to the question of the (...) empirical feasibility of the theory: is doing without preinstitutional meritocratic attitudes humanly possible? Studies investigating the influence of socialization on causal attribution suggest that the feeling of free will is not a fundamental need of the human mind. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Kant is regarded as the spokesman of the contemporary declaration of human rights and the forerunner of global citizenship theory. However, this noble image has been questioned by critics for his comment of empirical racial hierarchy stated in the pre-critical period: Kant’s moral law applies only to the white race with the “full personality”. Around the question of whether Kant’s pure moral philosophy was impregnated by his racist view, the defenders of Kant either adopt the negative defense strategy of affirming (...) the transcendental moral philosophy and negating the racial thought, or try to justify the consistency of Kant’s theory from the perspective of his later philosophy of right. The deficiency of these two justifications is that they do not directly deal with the relationship between moral philosophy and race theory. When Kant developed a mature moral theory in the mid-1780s, he also constructed a systemically mature race theory under the guidance of teleology principles to defend the unity of mankind in a different world. This theory can be used as the explanatory basis to prove the universality of Kant’s moral philosophy, which reflects the deep correlation between moral philosophy and race theory. From this perspective, it can not only make up for the lack of defenders and respond to the critics’ doubts, but also portray a consistent egalitarian image of Kant. (shrink)

Praktiken der Bildverknüpfung sind basale Kulturtechniken, die Aufmerksamkeit stiften, unsere Blicke lenken und uns miteinander wie auch mit der Welt verbinden. Sie bestimmen unser Leben und durchdringen unsere Forschungen zunehmend. Vor diesem Hintergrund befragt der interdisziplinäre Sammelband den systematischen Ort der Assoziation im Umgang mit Bildern. Dazu stellt er der Assoziation als sprachlicher Verknüpfung und narrativer Bildverkettung die Ordnungen und Verbindungen visueller Assoziationen an die Seite. Letztere offenbaren eine andere, vielschichtige Weise medial gebahnter bildlicher Anschlüsse und Übergänge, die sich zum (...) Imaginären hin öffnen. In dieser Perspektive widmen sich die Autor*innen und Künstler*innen den visuellen Assoziationen aus unterschiedlichen Feldern und institutionellen Kontexten der Kunst und ihrer Vermittlung, der Philosophie und der Wissenschaft. Visuelle Assoziationen kommen dabei in ihrer Medialität und Performanz in den Blick, die sich zum einen als die je spezifischen Verfahren und Praktiken der Sichtbarmachung und Konstellation von Bildern und zum anderen als Movens eines visuellen Denkens zeigen.0. (shrink)