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806 results in Philosophy: general interest

Page 1 of 41

Kripke's Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language at 40
  • Edited by Claudine Verheggen
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date: February 2024
  • Print publication: 29 February 2024
  • Saul Kripke's Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language is one of the most celebrated and important books in philosophy of language and mind of the past forty years. It generated an avalanche of responses from the moment it was published and has revolutionized the way in which we think about meaning, intentionality, and the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein. It introduced a series of questions that had never been raised before concerning, most prominently, the normativity of meaning and the prospects for a reductionist account of meaning. This volume of new essays reassesses the continuing influence of Kripke's book and demonstrates that many of the issues first raised by Kripke, both exegetical and philosophical, remain as thought-provoking and as relevant as they were when he first introduced them.

Resistance to Evidence
  • Mona Simion
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date: February 2024
  • Print publication: 29 February 2024
  • We have increasingly sophisticated ways of acquiring and communicating knowledge, but efforts to spread this knowledge often encounter resistance to evidence. The phenomenon of resistance to evidence, while subject to thorough investigation in social psychology, is acutely under-theorized in the philosophical literature. Mona Simion's book is concerned with positive epistemology: it argues that we have epistemic obligations to update and form beliefs on available and undefeated evidence. In turn, one's resistance to easily available evidence is unpacked as an instance of epistemic malfunctioning. Simion develops a full positive, integrated epistemological picture, in conjunction with novel accounts of evidence, defeat, norms of inquiry, and permissible suspension, and disinformation. Her book is relevant for anyone with an interest in the nature of evidence and justified belief, and in the best ways to avoid the high-stakes practical consequences of evidence resistance in policy and practice.

Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions at 60
  • Edited by K. Brad Wray
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date: February 2024
  • Print publication: 29 February 2024
  • Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions has sold more than one million copies since its publication in 1962, is one of the most cited academic books of all time, and continues to be read and studied today. This volume of new essays evaluates the significance of Kuhn's classic book in its changing historical context, including its initial reception and its lasting effects. The essays explore the range of ideas which Kuhn made popular with his influential philosophy of science, including paradigms, normal science, paradigm changes, scientific revolutions, and incommensurability; and they also look at less-studied themes in his work, including scientific measurement, science education, and science textbooks. Drawing on the latest scholarship as well as unpublished material in the Thomas Kuhn Archives at MIT, this volume offers a comprehensive way into Kuhn's philosophy and demonstrates the continuing relevance of his ideas for our understanding of science.

Religious Experience
  • Implications for What Is Real
  • Phillip H. Wiebe
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date: December 2023
  • Print publication: 31 December 2023
  • In this book, Phillip Wiebe examines religious, spiritual, and mystical experiences, assessing how these experiences appear to implicate a spiritual order. Despite the current prevalence of naturalism and atheism, he argues that experiences purporting to have a religious or spiritual significance deserve close empirical investigation. Wiebe surveys the broad scope of religious experience and considers different types of evidence that might give rise to a belief in phenomena such as spirits, paranormal events, God, and an afterlife. He demonstrates that there are different explanations and interpretations of religious experiences, both because they are typically personal accounts, and they suggest a reality that is often unobservable. Wiebe also addresses how to evaluate evidence for theories that postulate unobservables in general, and a Theory of Spirits in particular. Calling for more rigorous investigation of these phenomena, Wiebe frames the study of religious experience among other accepted social sciences that seek to understand religion.

Heidegger and Literary Studies
  • Edited by Andrew Benjamin
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date: November 2023
  • Print publication: 30 November 2023
  • Martin Heidegger is one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th Century, and a key philosophical resource for literary critics. Not only has he written about poetry, generations of poets have engaged his writings. And yet, for Heidegger poetry and literature are separate. An essential part of the project of this book therefore is to show how both the distinction and connection between literature and poetry is staged within Heidegger's thought. It offers Heidegger's perspective on a range of key themes, topics, poets, and writers, including Poetry and Poetics, Ancient Greek theatre and tragedies and then specifically Friedrich Hölderlin, Thomas Mann, Paul Celan, Euripides and Sophocles. As the Chapters comprising this book make clear, Heidegger's work remains indispensable for any serious engagement with either literature or poetry today.

Absurdity and Meaning in Contemporary Philosophy and Jewish Thought
  • Alan L. Mittleman
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date: October 2023
  • Print publication: 31 October 2023
  • There is a lively discussion in contemporary philosophy that explores the meaning of life or, more modestly, meaning in life. Philosophers, for the most part, assume that religion has little to contribute to this inquiry. They believe that the Western religions, such as Judaism, have doctrinaire beliefs which have become implausible and can no longer satisfy the search for meaning. In this book, Alan L. Mittleman argues that this view is misconceived. He offers a presentation of core Jewish beliefs by using classical and contemporary texts that address the question of the meaning of life in a philosophical spirit. That spirit includes profound self-questioning and self-criticism. Such beliefs are not doctrinaire: Jewish sources, such as the biblical Book of Ecclesiastes, are, in fact, open to an absurdist reading. Mittleman demonstrates that both philosophy and Judaism are prone to ineliminable doubts and perplexities. Far from pre-empting a conversation, they promote honest dialogue.

MacIntyre's After Virtue at 40
  • Edited by Tom Angier
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date: October 2023
  • Print publication: 26 October 2023
  • Since its publication in 1981, Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue has been recognised as a classic. Primarily a work of moral philosophy, it also draws on sociology, classics, political science and theology to effect a unique intellectual synthesis, and its combination of erudition and challenging, even provocative argument has made a significant impact throughout the humanities disciplines. This volume of new essays unpacks the influence of After Virtue on ethical and political theory, sociology and theology, and offers a multi-faceted exploration of its significance. The essays offer a way into MacIntyre's philosophy, and demonstrate how, rather than waning in influence over the past forty years, his most seminal text has found an ever-wider audience and continues to inspire controversy and debate in the humanities.

Spiritual Life
  • Edited by Michael McGhee
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date: October 2023
  • Print publication: 31 October 2023
  • The original claim made in the introduction to this classic volume was that it broke fresh ground: that it set a new agenda for the philosophy of religion and was a reaction against a narrow conception of the discipline that had little to say philosophically about human experience, or subjectivity, or about the religious imagination, or the idea of 'spirituality'. In a new Foreword to the book, Michael McGhee reflects on how the discipline has changed or remained the same in the intervening twenty-five years since first publication. He argues that the connections between 'philosophy' and 'spirituality' are still developing; and that what we think of as 'religious' or 'spiritual' is shifting, along with ideas about self-knowledge. The book contains pertinent chapters by some of the leading thinkers in the field, including Rowan Williams, Janet Soskice, Fergus Kerr, Stephen Clark and Paul Williams, who offers a comparative piece on Tibetan Buddhism.

An Introduction to Buddhist Philosophy
  • 2nd edition
  • Stephen J. Laumakis
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date: September 2023
  • Print publication: 12 October 2023
  • In this clearly written and accessible book, Stephen J. Laumakis explains the origin and development of Buddhist ideas and concepts, focusing on the philosophical ideas and arguments presented and defended by selected thinkers and sutras from various traditions. Starting with a sketch of the Buddha and the Dharma and highlighting the origins of Buddhism in India, he then considers specific details of the Dharma with special attention to Buddhist ontology and epistemology. He examines the development of Buddhism in China, Japan, and Tibet, and concludes with the ideas of the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh. Each chapter includes explanations of key terms and teachings, excerpts from primary source materials, and presentations of relevant arguments. This second edition is revised and updated throughout and includes two new chapters, on Buddhist ethics and Buddhist meditation. It will be an invaluable guide for all who are interested in this rich and vibrant philosophy.

Karl Popper
  • Edited by Anthony O'Hear
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date: September 2023
  • Print publication: 31 October 2023
  • Sir Karl Popper was a major thinker of the twentieth century, one who – as Anthony O'Hear writes in his new Foreword – 'has had a beneficent influence on those who have come under the spell of his thought and of the inimitable prose in which he articulates it'. It is now twenty-five years since Popper died, and thus seems – after a quarter of a century – an apposite moment to revaluate his impact, significance, and influence. The several chapters in this classic volume focus on many key elements of Popper's thought and philosophy. They are by no means uncritical, but afford Popper the respect due to a philosopher who wrote always with a degree of clarity, precision, and directness rare in the academic world of his time, and – as O'Hear puts it – 'even rarer subsequently'. This important book constitutes an essential introduction to some of the most esteemed philosophical writing of our times.

A Philosophy of Need
  • Edited by Soran Reader
  • Foreword by Gillian Brock
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date: September 2023
  • Print publication: 31 October 2023
  • Appeals to need abound in everyday discussion. People make claims about their own needs all the time, and they do so in a way that suggests these should have a certain moral force. Needs also play an important role in contemporary popular discourse about social justice, climate change, obligations to future generations, dealing fairly with refugees, treating animals humanely, and critiques of consumerist lifestyles – to name just a few of the many examples. The idea of need is present in an increasing number of debates and domains. There is interest in need from several disciplines, not just philosophy, which also include psychology, economics, political science, social work and sociology. This volume, then, offers a fine introduction to an increasingly important concept in day-to-day life. In a new Foreword, Gillian Brock discusses the continuing significance of several innovative chapters in the book, indicating how they presaged new directions in philosophical conversation.

An Introduction to Mesoamerican Philosophy
  • Alexus McLeod
  • Published online: 28 July 2023
  • Print publication: 03 August 2023
  • The philosophy of Mesoamerica – the indigenous groups of precolonial North-Central America – is rich and varied but relatively little-known. In this ground-breaking book, Alexus McLeod introduces the philosophical traditions of the Maya, Nahua (Aztecs), Mixtecs, Zapotecs, and others, focussing in particular on their treatment of language, truth, time, creation, personhood, knowledge, and morality. His wide-ranging discussion includes important texts of world literature such as the K'iche Maya Popol Vuh and the Aztec Florentine Codex, as well as precolonial glyphic texts and imagery. This comprehensive and accessible book will give students, specialists and other interested readers an understanding of Mesoamerican philosophy and a sense of the current scholarship in the field.

Rawls’s A Theory of Justice at 50
  • Edited by Paul Weithman
  • Published online: 20 July 2023
  • Print publication: 10 August 2023
  • In 1971 John Rawls's A Theory of Justice transformed twentieth-century political philosophy, and it ranks among the most influential works in the history of the subject. This volume of new essays marks the 50th anniversary of its publication with a multi-faceted exploration of Rawls's most important book. A team of distinguished contributors reflects on Rawls's achievement in essays on his relationship to modern political philosophy and 20th-century economic theory, on his Kantianism, on his transition to political liberalism, on his account of public reason and contemporary challenges to it, on his theory's implications for problems of racial justice, on democracy and its fragility, and on Rawls's enduring legacy. The volume will be valuable for students and scholars working in moral and political philosophy, political theory, legal theory, and religious ethics.

Life without God
  • An Outsider's Look at Atheism
  • Rik Peels
  • Published online: 11 May 2023
  • Print publication: 25 May 2023
  • In this book, Rik Peels explores atheism from a new perspective that aims to go beyond the highly polarized debate about arguments for and against God's existence. Since our beliefs about the most important things in life are not usually based on arguments, we should look beyond atheistic arguments and explore what truly motivates the atheist. Are there certain ideals or experiences that explain the turn to atheism? Could atheism be the default position for us, not requiring any arguments whatsoever? And what about the often-discussed arguments against belief in God—is there something that religious and nonreligious people alike can learn from them? This book explores how a novel understanding of atheism is possible – and how it effectively moves the God debate further. Believers and nonbelievers can learn much from Peels's assessment of arguments for and against atheism.

The Trolley Problem
  • Edited by Hallvard Lillehammer
  • Published online: 24 February 2023
  • Print publication: 02 March 2023
  • The Trolley Problem is one of the most intensively discussed and controversial puzzles in contemporary moral philosophy. Over the last half-century, it has also become something of a cultural phenomenon, having been the subject of scientific experiments, online polls, television programs, computer games, and several popular books. This volume offers newly written chapters on a range of topics including the formulation of the Trolley Problem and its standard variations; the evaluation of different forms of moral theory; the neuroscience and social psychology of moral behavior; and the application of thought experiments to moral dilemmas in real life. The chapters are written by leading experts on moral theory, applied philosophy, neuroscience, and social psychology, and include several authors who have set the terms of the ongoing debates. The volume will be valuable for students and scholars working on any aspect of the Trolley Problem and its intellectual significance.

A History of Western Philosophy of Music
  • James O. Young
  • Published online: 18 January 2023
  • Print publication: 26 January 2023
  • This book presents a comprehensive, accessible survey of Western philosophy of music from Pythagoras to the present. Its narrative traces themes and schools through history, in a sequence of five chapters that survey the ancient, medieval, early modern, modern and contemporary periods. Its wide-ranging coverage includes medieval Islamic thinkers, Continental and analytic thinkers, and neglected female thinkers such as Vernon Lee (Violet Paget). All aspects of the philosophy of music are discussed, including music and the cosmos, music's value, music's relation to the other arts, the problem of opera, the origins of musical genius, music's emotional impact, the moral effects of music, the ontology of musical works, and the relevance of music's historical context. The volume will be valuable for students and scholars in philosophy and musicology, and all who are interested in the ways in which philosophers throughout history have thought about music.

Prefigurative Democracy
  • Protest, Social Movements and the Political Institution of Society
  • Mathijs van de Sande
  • Published by: Edinburgh University Press
  • Published online: 13 April 2023
  • Print publication: 31 December 2022
  • In the wake of protest movements such as Occupy Wall Street and the Spanish 15-M movement, the past decade has seen an increased interest in prefigurative politics: the attempt of activists to already realise or embody their ideal of a future society within their own movements and practices. Engaging with the concept and its history, this book establishes a radical-democratic theory of prefiguration. Van de Sande builds on the work of political theorists as diverse as Hannah Arendt, Ernesto Laclau, Claude Lefort, Rosa Luxemburg, and Judith Butler to reveal the radical and representative role of protest and social movements today. He gives various accounts of how prefigurative practices and movements may continue to have political relevance long after they have ended.

Deleuze and Guattari and Terror
  • Edited by Anindya Sekhar Purakayastha, Saswat Samay Das
  • Published by: Edinburgh University Press
  • Published online: 25 April 2023
  • Print publication: 31 December 2022
  • What can philosophy offer when we suffer from brutal acts of terror and barbarous acts of counter-terror? Is the very grammar of the network of terror and anti-terror moves locked in the same ideology of power and state-ism that demands a deeper micro-analysis of human fetish for coercion and cruelty? Do we need schizoanalysis of the neurosis of terror and counter-terror where the work of Deleuze and Guattari can offer insight? This collection of essays considers the contribution of Deleuze and Guattari's philosophical ideas in forging a critique of global terror and counter-terror. Deleuze's concept of nomadic thought provides a starting point for this fetish for coercion and terrorizing power. The contributors identify areas of political terror, state terror, capitalist corporate terror, religious terror, cyber-terror, social terror and cultural terror to enable the inherent power structure within all forms of terror to be unpacked.

A Philosopher Looks at the Religious Life
  • Zena Hitz
  • Published online: 23 December 2022
  • Print publication: 12 January 2023
  • What is happiness? Does life have a meaning? If so, is that meaning available in an ordinary life? The philosopher Zena Hitz confronted these questions head-on when she spent several years living in a Christian religious community. Religious life -- the communal life chosen by monks, nuns, friars, and hermits -- has been a part of global Christianity since earliest times, but many of us struggle to understand what could drive a person to renounce wealth, sex, children, and ambition to live a life of prayer and sacrifice. Hitz's lively and accessible book explores questions about faith, sacrifice, asceticism and happiness through philosophy, stories, and examples from religious life. Drawing on personal experience as well as film, literature, history, biography, and theology, it demystifies an important element of contemporary culture, and provides a picture of human flourishing and happiness which challenges and enriches modern-day life.

Wittgenstein and Literary Studies
  • Edited by Robert Chodat, John Gibson
  • Published online: 05 December 2022
  • Print publication: 23 February 2023
  • Wittgenstein is often regarded as the most important philosopher of the twentieth century, and in recent decades, his work has begun to play a prominent role in literary studies, particularly in debates over language, interpretation, and critical judgment. Wittgenstein and Literary Studies solidifies this critical movement, assembling recent critics and philosophers who understand Wittgenstein as a counterweight to longstanding tendencies in both literary studies and philosophical aesthetics. The essays here cover a wide range of topics. Why have contemporary writers been so drawn to Wittgenstein? What is a Wittgensteinian response to New Historicism, Post-Critique, and other major critical movements? How does Wittgenstein help us understand the nature of style, fiction, poetry, and the link between ethics and aesthetics? As the volume makes clear, Wittgenstein's work provides a rare bridge between professional philosophy and literary studies, offering us a way out of entrenched positions and their denials-what Wittgenstein himself called 'pictures' 'that held us captive.'

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