Richard Rorty, a Princeton professor who had contributed to the analytic tradition in philosophy, was now attempting to shrug off all the central problems with which it had long been preoccupied. After publication, the Press was barely able to keep up with demand, and the book has since gone on to become one of its all-time best-sellers in philosophy. Rorty argued that, beginning in the seventeenth century, philosophers developed an unhealthy obsession with the notion of representation. They compared the mind to a mirror that reflects reality. In their view, knowledge is concerned with the accuracy of these reflections, and the strategy employed to obtain this knowledge--that of inspecting, repairing, and polishing the mirror--belongs to philosophy. Rorty's book was a powerful critique of this imagery and the tradition of thought that it spawned. He argued that the questions about truth posed by Descartes, Kant, Hegel, and modern epistemologists and philosophers of language simply couldn't be answered and were, in any case, irrelevant to serious social and cultural inquiry. This stance provoked a barrage of criticism, but whatever the strengths of Rorty's specific claims, the book had a therapeutic effect on philosophy. It reenergized pragmatism as an intellectual force, steered philosophy back to its roots in the humanities, and helped to make alternatives to analytic philosophy a serious choice for young graduate students. Twenty-five years later, the book remains a must-read for anyone seriously concerned about the nature of philosophical inquiry and what philosophers can and cannot do to help us understand and improve the world.

    This volume provides a comprehensible guide to his work by a wide range of experts who are actively engaged in new work on Wittgenstein. The essays, which are both expository and original, address central themes in his philosophy of mind, language, logic, and mathematics and clarify the connections among the different stages in the development of his work.

    His friend Norman Malcolm (himself an eminent philosopher) wrote this remarkably vivid personal memoir of Wittgenstein--first published in 1958 to wide acclaim for its moving and truthful portrait of the gifted yet difficult man. And, although much has been published about Wittgenstein since his death, nothing brings us closer to the philosopher himself than this modest classic. Now in a new edition, it includes the complete text of the fifty-seven letters that Wittgenstein wrote to Malcolm over a period of eleven years, revealing how friendship deeply mattered to Wittgenstein: he advises, warns, jokes, and is grateful and affectionate. The volume also features a concise biographical sketch by Georg Henrik von Wright, another leading philosopher and friend of Wittgenstein.

    It redirected philosophical attention to neglected questions of natural and metaphysical necessity and to the connections between these and theories of reference, in particular of naming, and of identity. From a critique of the dominant tendency to assimilate names to descriptions and more generally to treat their reference as a function of their Fregean sense, surprisingly deep and widespread consequences may be drawn. The largely discredited distinction between accidental and essential properties, both of individual things (including people) and of kinds of things, is revived. So is a consequent view of science as what seeks out the essences of natural kinds. Traditional objections to such views are dealt with by sharpening distinctions between epistemic and metaphysical necessity; in particular by the startling admission of necessary a posteriori truths. From these, in particular from identity statements using rigid designators whether of things or of kinds, further remarkable consequences are drawn for the natures of things, of people, and of kinds; strong objections follow, for example to identity versions of materialism as a theory of the mind.This seminal work, to which today's thriving essentialist metaphysics largely owes its impetus, is here published with a substantial new Preface by the author.

    The meeting -- which lasted ten minutes -- did not go well. Their loud and aggressive confrontation became the stuff of instant legend, but precisely what happened during that brief confrontation remained for decades the subject of intense disagreement.An engaging mix of philosophy, history, biography, and literary detection, Wittgenstein's Poker explores, through the Popper/Wittgenstein confrontation, the history of philosophy in the twentieth century. It evokes the tumult of fin-de-siécle Vienna, Wittgentein's and Popper's birthplace; the tragedy of the Nazi takeover of Austria; and postwar Cambridge University, with its eccentric set of philosophy dons, including Bertrand Russell. At the center of the story stand the two giants of philosophy themselves -- proud, irascible, larger than life -- and spoiling for a fight.

    "This small but tightly packed volume is easily the most substantial discussion of speech acts since John Austin's How To Do Things With Words and one of the most important contributions to the philosophy of language in recent decades."-Philosophical Quarterly

    Austin was one of the leading philosophers of the twentieth century. The William James Lectures presented Austin's conclusions in the field to which he directed his main efforts on a wide variety of philosophical problems. These talks became the classic How to Do Things with Words.For this second edition, the editors have returned to Austin's original lecture notes, amending the printed text where it seemed necessary. Students will find the new text clearer, and, at the same time, more faithful to the actual lectures. An appendix contains literal transcriptions of a number of marginal notes made by Austin but not included in the text. Comparison of the text with these annotations provides new dimensions to the study of Austin's work.

    It is also an exploration of some of the preeminent thinkers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such as Descartes, Newton, Locke, and Kant.The ultimate edition of Whitehead’s magnum opus, Process and Reality is a standard reference for scholars of all backgrounds.

    Taken from a series of influential lectures delivered by Russell during the second decade of the twentieth century, this is a brilliant introduction to logical atomism and its application to ontology and epistemology.

    Strasser and published in the first volume of Husserliana: Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vortrage, ISBN 90-247-0214-3. Most of Husserl's emendations, as given in the Appendix to that volume, have been treated as if they were part of the text. The others have been translated in footnotes. Secondary consideration has been given to a typescript (cited as "Typescript C") on which Husserl wrote in 1933: "Cartes. Meditationen / Original text 1929 / E. Husserl / fur Dorion Cairns." Its use of emphasis and quotation marks conforms more closely to Husserl's practice, as exemplified in works published during his lifetime. In this respect the translation usually follows Typescript C. Moreover, some of the variant readings n this typescript are preferable and have been used as the basis for the translation. Where that is the case, the published text is given or translated in a footnote. The published text and Typescript C have been compared with the French translation by Gabrielle Pfeiffer and Emmanuel Levinas (Paris, Armand Collin, 1931). The use of emphasis and quotation marks in the French translation corresponds more closely to that in Typescript C than to that in the published text. Often, where the wording of the published text and that of Typescript C differ, the French translation indicates that it was based on a text that corresponded more closely to one or the other - usually to Typescript C. In such cases the French translation has been quoted or cited in a foornote."

    In this engaging Introduction, A.C. Grayling makes Wittgenstein's thought accessible to the general reader by explaining the natureand impact of Wittgenstein's views. He describes both his early and later philosophy, the differences and connections between them, and gives a fresh assessment of Wittgenstein's continuing influence on contemporary thought.

    The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion -- and indeed our future.

    Widely praised for providing a lucid and historically informed account of Wittgenstein's core philosophical concerns.Demonstrates the continuity between Wittgenstein's early and later writings.Provides a persuasive argument for the unity of Wittgenstein's thought.Kenny also assesses Wittgenstein's influence in the latter part of the twentieth century.Inside:PrefaceAbbreviations in References to Works by WittgensteinBiographical Sketch of Wittgenstein's PhilosophyThe Legacy of Frege & RussellThe Criticism of PrincipiaThe Picture Theory of the PropositionThe Metaphysics of Logical AtomismThe Dismantling of Logical AtomismAnticipation, Intentionality & VerificationUnderstanding, Thinking & MeaningLanguage-GamesPrivate LanguagesOn Scepticism & CertaintyThe Continuity of Wittgenstein's PhilosophySuggestions for Further ReadingIndex

    Successfully defended in 1969 as Deleuze's main thesis toward his Doctorat d'Etat at the Sorbonne, the work has been central in initiating the shift in French thought away from Hegel and Marx, towards Nietzsche and Freud. The text follows the development of two central concepts, those of pure difference and complex repetition. It shows how the two concepts are related - difference implying divergence and decentering, and repetition implying displacement and disguising. In its explication the work moves deftly between Hegel, Kierkegaard, Freud, Althusser, and Nietzsche to establish a fundamental critique of Western metaphysics. Difference and Repetition has become essential to the work of literary critics and philosophers alike, and this translation his been long awaited.

    They deal with such broad topics as the relationship between popular and genuine culture, strategies for cultural reform, the task of philosophy, the nature of education, and the relationship among art, science and life. This new edition presents R. J. Hollingdale's translation of the essays and a new introduction by Daniel Breazeale, who places them in their historical context and discusses their significance for Nietzsche's philosophy.