Kant's Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense


Henry E. Allison - 1983
    It includes a new discussion of the Third Analogy, a greatly expanded discussion of Kant’s Paralogisms, and entirely new chapters dealing with Kant’s theory of reason, his treatment of theology, and the important Appendix to the Dialectic.Praise for the earlier edition:“Probably the most comprehensive and substantial study of the Critique of Pure Reason written by any American philosopher.... This is a splendid book.” —Lewis White Beck“This masterful study ... will most certainly join the canon of required reading for future interpreters of Kant’s theoretical philosophy. Superbly organized and lucidly written.” —Garrett Green, Journal of Religion

Free Market Fairness


John Tomasi - 2012
    Drawing simultaneously on moral insights from defenders of economic liberty such as F. A. Hayek and advocates of social justice such as John Rawls, Tomasi presents a new theory of liberal justice. This theory, free market fairness, is committed to both limited government and the material betterment of the poor. Unlike traditional libertarians, Tomasi argues that property rights are best defended not in terms of self-ownership or economic efficiency but as requirements of democratic legitimacy. At the same time, he encourages egalitarians concerned about social justice to listen more sympathetically to the claims ordinary citizens make about the importance of private economic liberty in their daily lives. In place of the familiar social democratic interpretations of social justice, Tomasi offers a "market democratic" conception of social justice: free market fairness. Tomasi argues that free market fairness, with its twin commitment to economic liberty and a fair distribution of goods and opportunities, is a morally superior account of liberal justice. Free market fairness is also a distinctively American ideal. It extends the notion, prominent in America's founding period, that protection of property and promotion of real opportunity are indivisible goals. Indeed, according to Tomasi, free market fairness is social justice, American style.Provocative and vigorously argued, "Free Market Fairness" offers a bold new way of thinking about politics, economics, and justice--one that will challenge readers on both the left and right.

A Grammar of Motives


Kenneth Burke - 1969
    Burke contributes an introductory and summarizing remark, "What is involved, when we say what people are doing and why they are doing it? An answer to that question is the subject of this book. The book is concerned with the basic forms of through which, in accordance with the nature of the world as all men necessarily experience it, are exemplified in the attributing of motives. These forms of though can be embodied profoundly or trivially, truthfully or falsely. They are equally present in systematically elaborated or metaphysical structures, in legal judgments, in poetry and fiction, in political and scientific works, in news and in bits of gossip offered at random."

A Brief History Of Philosophy: From Socrates To Derrida


Derek Johnston - 2006
    This is the ideal book for teenagers and students coming to philosophy for the first time, or indeed for anyone who just doesn't know where to start. The book examines 18 key thinkers, from Socrates to Derrida, exploring their ideas in relation to each other and to their historical and cultural contexts. Derek Johnston uses clear and accessible language to present an engaging chronological picture of the key figures, events and ideas that have shaped the history of philosophy. No prior knowledge of philosophy is required to enjoy this incisive, reader-friendly introduction. This is the ideal book for general readers looking for a way into this fascinating but very often challenging subject.

Sex and the Failed Absolute


Slavoj Žižek - 2019
    Alongside striking images of the M�bius strip, the cross-cap, and the Klein bottle, Zizek brings alive the Hegelian triad of being-essence-notion. Radical new readings of Hegel, and Kant, sit side by side with characteristically lively commentaries on film, politics, and culture.Here is Zizek at his interrogative best.

Nietzsche: The Man and his Philosophy


R.J. Hollingdale - 1965
    This classic biography of Nietzsche was first published in the 1960s and was enthusiastically reviewed at the time. Long out of print, it is now reissued with its text updated in the light of recent research. The biography chronicles Nietzsche's intellectual evolution and discusses his friendship and breach with Wagner, his attitude toward Schopenhauer, and his indebtedness to Darwin and the Greeks. It follows the years of his maturity and his mental collapse in 1889. The final part of the book considers the development of the Nietzsche legend during his years of madness. R. J. Hollingdale, one of the preeminent translators of Nietzsche, allows Nietzsche to speak for himself in a translation that transmits the vividness and virtuosity of Nietzsche's many styles. This is the ideal book for anyone interested in Nietzsche's life and work who wishes to learn why he is such a significant figure for the development of modern thought. R. J. Hollingdale has translated and edited several of Nietzsche's texts, as well as other prestigious German thinkers. Mr. Hollingdale worked in the editorial department of the Guardian for over twenty years and has written book reviews for the Guardian and the Times Literary Supplement.

Inside Jokes: Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind


Matthew Hurley - 2011
    An evolutionary and cognitive account of the addictive mind candy that is humor.

To Everyone an Answer: A Case for the Christian Worldview: Essays in Honor of Norman L. Geisler


Norman L. Geisler - 2004
    A prior commitment to diversity, with its requisite openness and relativistic outlook, has meant for skeptics, critics and even many Christians that whatever Christianity is, it cannot be exclusively true or salvific.What is needed in this syncretistic era is an authoritative, comprehensive Christian response. Point by point, argument by argument, the Christian faith must be effectively presented and defended. To Everyone an Answer: A Case for the Christian Worldview offers such a response.Editors Francis J. Beckwith, William Lane Craig and J. P. Moreland have gathered together in this book essays covering all major aspects of apologetics, includingfaith and reasonarguments for God's existencethe case for Jesus the problem of evilpostmodernismreligious pluralism and Christian exclusivismPreeminent in their respective fields, the contributors to this volume offer a solid case for the Christian worldview and a coherent defense of the Christian faith.

The Truth about the Truth: De-confusing and Re-constructing the Postmodern World


Walter Truett Anderson - 1995
    Includes essays and excerpts from the works of prominent modern thinkers such as Umberto Eco, Jacques Derrida, and Isaiah Berlin among others.

Spinoza


Michael Della Rocca - 2008
    Ideal for those coming to Spinoza for the first time as well as those already acquainted with his thought, Spinoza is essential reading for anyone studying philosophy.

Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy


Bernard Williams - 2002
    Writing with his characteristic combination of passion and elegant simplicity, he explores the value of truth and finds it to be both less and more than we might imagine.Modern culture exhibits two attitudes toward truth: suspicion of being deceived (no one wants to be fooled) and skepticism that objective truth exists at all (no one wants to be naive). This tension between a demand for truthfulness and the doubt that there is any truth to be found is not an abstract paradox. It has political consequences and signals a danger that our intellectual activities, particularly in the humanities, may tear themselves to pieces.Williams's approach, in the tradition of Nietzsche's genealogy, blends philosophy, history, and a fictional account of how the human concern with truth might have arisen. Without denying that we should worry about the contingency of much that we take for granted, he defends truth as an intellectual objective and a cultural value. He identifies two basic virtues of truth, Accuracy and Sincerity, the first of which aims at finding out the truth and the second at telling it. He describes different psychological and social forms that these virtues have taken and asks what ideas can make best sense of them today. Truth and Truthfulness presents a powerful challenge to the fashionable belief that truth has no value, but equally to the traditional faith that its value guarantees itself. Bernard Williams shows us that when we lose a sense of the value of truth, we lose a lot both politically and personally, and may well lose everything.

Hegel: Three Studies


Theodor W. Adorno - 1963
    The first study focuses on the relationship of reason, the individual, and society in Hegel, defending him against the criticism that he was merely an apologist for bourgeois society. The second examines the experiential content of Hegel's idealism, considering the notion of experience in relation to immediacy, empirical reality, science, and society. The third study, "Skoteinos, " is an unusual and fascinating essay in which Adorno lays out his thoughts on understanding Hegel. In his reflections, which spring from his experience of teaching at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, questions of textual and philosophical interpretation are intertwined.

From Hegel to Nietzsche: The Revolution in Nineteenth-Century Thought


Karl Löwith - 1941
    Beginning with an examination of the relationship between Hegel and Goethe, Lowith discusses how Hegel's students, particularly Marx and Kierkegaard, interpreted----or reinterpreted----their master's thought, and proceeds with an in-depth assessment of the other important philosophers, from Feuerbach, Stirner, and Schelling to Nietzsche.

The Prose of the World


Maurice Merleau-Ponty - 1969
    The book was to constitute the first section of a two-part work whose aim was to offer, as an extension of his Phenomenology of Perception, a theory of truth. This edition's editor, Claude Lefort, has interpreted and transcribed the surviving typescript, reproducing Merleau-Ponty's own notes and adding documentation and commentary.

Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature


M.H. Abrams - 1971
    H. Abrams definitively studies the Romantic Age (1789–1835)—the age in which Shelley claimed that "the literature of England has arisen as it were from a new birth." Abrams shows that the major poets of the age had in common important themes, modes of expression, and ways of feeling and imagining; that the writings of these poets were an integral part of a comprehensive intellectual tendency which manifested itself in philosophy as well as poetry, in England and in Germany; and that this tendency was causally related to drastic political and social changes of the age.But Abrams offers more than a work of scholarship, for he ranges before and after, to place the age in Western culture. he reveals what is traditional and what is revolutionary in the period, providing insights into those same two forces in the ideas of today. He shows that central Romantic ideas and forms of imagination were secularized versions of traditional theological concepts, imagery, and design, and that modern literature participates in the same process. Our comprehension of this age and of our own time is deepened by a work astonishing in its learning, vision, and humane understanding.