Continuum Studies in Philosophy – serie

In Hegel's Rabble, Frank Ruda identifies and explores a crucial problem in the Hegelian philosophy of right that strikes at the heart of Hegel's conception of the state. This singular problem, which Ruda argues is the problem of Hegelian political thought, appears in Hegel's text only in a seemingly marginal form under the name of the "rabble": a particular side-effect of the dialectical deduction of the necessity of the existence of state from the contradictory constitution of civil society. Working out from a thorough analysis of this problem and drawing on contemporary discussions in the work of such thinkers as Alain Badiou, Jean-Luc Nancy and Slavoj Zizek, the book proceeds to re-examine and reconstruct Hegel's entire political project. Ruda goes on to argue that only by re-thinking this problem of the rabble' in Hegel's thought the only problem Hegel is able neither to resolve nor to sublate can the early Marxian conception of the proletariat' be properly understood. The book closes with an Afterword from Slavoj Zizek.

This book examines Spinoza's moral and political philosophy and his engagement with Stoicism.Specifically it considers Spinoza's engagement with the themes of Stoicism and his significant contribution to the origins of the European Enlightenment. Firmin DeBrabander explores the problematic view of the relationship between ethics and politics that Spinoza apparently inherited from the Stoics and in so doing asks some important questions that contribute to a crucial contemporary debate. Does ethics provide any foundation for political theory and if so in what way? Likewise, does politics contribute anything essential to the life of virtue? And what is the political place and public role of the philosopher as a practitioner of ethics?In examining Spinoza's "Ethics", his most important and widely-read work, and exploring the ways in which this work echoes Stoic themes regarding the public behaviour of the philosopher, the author seeks to answer these key questions and thus makes a fascinating contribution to the study of moral and political philosophy.

Analytic and Continental philosophy have become increasingly specialised and differentiated fields of endeavour. This important collection of essays details some of the more significant methodological and philosophical differences that have separated the two traditions, as well as examining the manner in which received understandings of the divide are being challenged by certain thinkers whose work might best be described as post-analytic and meta-continental. Together these essays offer a well-defined sense of the field, of its once dominant distinctions and of some of the most productive new areas generating influential ideas and controversy. In an attempt to get to the bottom of precisely what it is that separates the analytic and continental traditions, the essays in this volume compare and contrast them on certain issues, including truth, time and subjectivity.The book engages with a range of key thinkers from phenomenology, post-structuralism, analytic philosophy and post-analytic philosophy, examines the strengths and weaknesses of each tradition, and ultimately encourages enhanced understanding, dialogue and even rapprochement between these sometimes antagonistic adversaries.

This is an important new monograph relating Hegel's aesthetics to his philosophies of religion and history and, in particular, his philosophy of right. "Art, Myth and Society in Hegel's Aesthetics" returns to the student transcripts of Hegel's lectures on aesthetics, some of which have never been published and none of which have been translated into English, in an attempt to systematically relate Hegel's aesthetics to his philosophies of religion and history and, in particular, his philosophy of right. David James develops the idea that these transcripts show that Hegel was primarily interested in understanding art as an historical phenomenon and, in terms of its function in human history, more specifically, its role in the ethical life of the people. The book thus offers a thorough re-evaluation of Hegel's aesthetics and its relation to his theory of objective spirit, exposing the ways in which Hegel's views on this subject are anchored in his reflections on history and on different forms of ethical life.

This is an important new monograph on an overlooked aspect of Kant's aesthetic theory, presenting an innovative approach to one of modern philosophy's greatest works. Taste is ordinarily thought of in terms of two very different idioms - a normative idiom of taste as a standard of appraisal and a non-normative idiom of taste as a purely personal matter. Kant attempts to capture this twofold conception of taste within the terms of his mature critical philosophy by distinguishing between the beautiful and the agreeable. Scholars have largely taken Kant's distinction for granted, but David Berger argues that it is both far richer and far more problematic than it may appear. Berger examines in detail Kant's various attempts to distinguish beauty from agreeableness. This approach reveals the complex interplay between Kant's substantive aesthetic theory and his broader views on metaphysics and epistemology. Indeed, Berger argues that the real interest of Kant's distinction between beauty and agreeableness is ultimately epistemological.His interpretation brings Kant's aesthetic theory into dialogue with questions at the heart of contemporary analytic philosophy and shows how philosophical aesthetics can offer fresh insights into contemporary philosophical debates.

This is a hugely important collection of essays that examines the significance of philosophical inquiry in relation to the issue of climate change. "Climate Change and Philosophy" presents ten original essays by an international team of expert contributors, exploring the important contribution philosophical inquiry can make to contemporary debates to do with climate change and the global environment. Examining this hugely topical issue through the lens of environmental philosophy, political theory, philosophy of technology, philosophy of education and feminist theory, these essays interrogate some of the presumptions that inform modernity and our interaction with natural processes. The book asks fundamental questions about human nature and, more importantly, the concept of 'nature' itself. The conceptual frameworks presented here contribute to an understanding of the processes of change, of social transformation, and the means of adapting to the constraints that problems such as climate change pose. The book proposes a way of beginning the important task of rethinking the relationship between humanity and the natural environment.Through enquiry into the basic philosophical principles that inform modern society, each author asserts that reflection informs change and that change is both required and possible in the context of the environmental crisis facing us today. "Continuum Studies in Philosophy" presents cutting-edge scholarship in all the major areas of research and study. The wholly original arguments, perspectives and research findings in titles in this series make it an important and stimulating resource for students and academics from a range of disciplines across the humanities and social sciences.

John Mark Mattox's work is the first book-length study of St Augustine's 'just war' theory and is now available in paperback for the first time.The decline of the Roman Empire gave rise to two problems, which combined to form one of the most perplexing philosophical questions of late antiquity.On the one hand, Rome found itself under constant military threat as various tribes from the north and east encroached along its borders to fill the power vacuum left by the receding Empire. On the other hand, adherents to the Empire's new official faith - Christianity - found themselves without clear guidance as to what military roles their faith would permit; the death of the apostles left them without revelatory guidance, and the New Testament writings were not definitive on the subject.The question, then, became: 'Can a Christian answer the empire's call to military duty and still answer a clear conscience before God?'Fifth-century philosopher, St Augustine of Hippo, sought to provide a solution to the two problems. His approach formed the foundation of the 'just war' tradition, which has had enormous influence upon moral-philosophical thought on military issues in the West ever since.This major new study identifies the fundamental Augustinian premises and evaluates them in light of historical, neo-Platonic, and Christian contexts. It also identifies the effect of the Augustinian legacy upon medieval and modern philosophical reflections on the nature of warfare and on how war might be waged justly and morally.

"A very serious undertaking by a scholar who has an excellent knowledge of Kant's philosophy. Kant's aesthetics is a hot topic right now, so this book will be of considerable interest to those in the field." - Donald Crawford, University of Southern California at Santa Barbara. "An alternative account of aesthetic judgment which is rich, interesting and provocative. This is a book which will certainly provoke engagement and debate." - Rachel Jones, Dundee University. Kant's "Critique of Judgment" is widely considered to be the seminal work of modern aesthetics. In recent years it has been the focus of intense interest and debate not only in philosophy but also in literary theory and other disciplines in which the nature of the aesthetic is an issue. "The Aesthetic in Kant" offers a new reading of Kant's problematic text, drawing on the great volume of recent philosophical work on the text and on the context of eighteenth century aesthetics. Kant's text is used as a basis on which to construct a radical alternative solution to the antinomy of taste, the basic problem of the aesthetic.Immanent in Kant's account is a theory of the aesthetic that, far from establishing its 'disinterested' nature, instead makes it symptomatic of what Kant himself describes as the ineradicable human tendency to entertain 'fantastic desires'.

Thomas Aquinas has always been viewed as a highly important figure in Western civilization, and the chief philosopher of Roman Catholicism. In recent decades there has been a renewed interest in Aquinas's thought as scholars have been exploring the relevance of his thought to contemporary philosophical problems. The book will be of interest not only to historians of medieval philosophy, but to philosophers who work on problems associated with the nature of material objects. Because human beings are typically understood to be a kind of material object, the book will also be of interest to philosophers working on topics in the philosophy of religion, philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of human nature. Although the work contains the kinds of details that are necessary for a work of historical scholarship, it is written in a manner that makes it approachable for undergraduate students in philosophy and so it would be a welcomed addition to any university library.

Seventeenth-century Holland was a culture divided. Orthodox Calvinists, loyal to both scholastic philosophy and the quasi-monarchical House of Orange, saw their world turned upside down with the sudden death of Prince William II and no heir to take his place. The Republicans seized this opportunity to create a decentralized government favourable to Holland's trading interests and committed to religious and philosophical tolerance. The now ruling regent class, freshly trained in the new philosophy of Descartes, used it as a weapon to fight against monarchical tendencies and theological orthodoxy. And so began a great pamphlet debate about Cartesianism and its political and religious consequences. This important new book begins by examining key Radical Cartesian pamphlets and Spinoza's role in a Radical Cartesian circle in Amsterdam, two topics rarely discussed in the English literature. Next, Nyden-Bullock examines Spinoza's political writings and argues that they should not be seen as political innovations so much as systemizations of the Radical Cartesian ideas already circulating in his time.The author goes on to reconstruct the development of Spinoza's thinking about the human mind, truth, error, and falsity and to explain how this development, particularly the innovation of parallelism - the lynchpin of his system - allowed Spinoza to provide philosophical foundations for Radical Cartesian political theory. She concludes that, contrary to general opinion, Spinoza's rejection of Cartesian epistemology involves much more than the metaphysical problems of dualism - it involves, ironically, Spinoza's attempt to make coherent a political theory bearing Descartes's name.

St Augustine of Hippo was the earliest thinker to develop a distinctively Christian political and social philosophy. He does so mainly from the perspective of Platonism and Stoicism; but by introducing the biblical and Pauline conceptions of sin, grace and predestination he radically transforms the 'classical' understanding of the political. Humanity is not perfectible through participation in the life of a moral community; indeed, there are no moral communities on earth. Humankind is fallen; we are slaves of self-love and the destructive impulses generated by it. The State is no longer the matrix within which human beings can achieve ethical goods through co-operation with other rational and moral beings. Augustine's response to classical political assumptions and claims therefore transcends 'normal' radicalism. His project is not that of drawing attention to weaknesses and inadequacies in our political arrangements with a view to recommending their abolition or improvement. Nor does he adopt the classical practice of delineating an ideal State. To his mind, all States are imperfect: they are the mechanisms whereby an imperfect world is regulated.They can provide justice and peace of a kind, but even the best earthly versions of justice and peace are not true justice and peace. It is precisely the impossibility of true justice on earth that makes the State necessary. Robert Dyson's new book describes and analyses this 'transformation' in detail and shows Augustine's enormous influence upon the development of political thought down to the thirteenth century.

Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus are arguably the most celebrated representatives of the 'Golden Age' of scholasticism. Primarily, they are known for their work in natural theology, which seeks to demonstrate tenets of faith without recourse to premises rooted in dogma or revelation. Scholars of this Golden Age drew on a wealth of tradition, dating back to Plato and Aristotle, and taking in the Arabic and Jewish interpretations of these thinkers, to produce a wide variety of answers to the question 'How much can we learn of God?' Some responded by denying us any positive knowledge of God. Others believed that we have such knowledge, yet debated whether its acquisition requires some action on the part of God in the form of an illumination bestowed on the knower. Scotus and Aquinas belong to the more empirically minded thinkers in this latter group, arguing against a necessary role for illumination. Many scholars believe that Aquinas and Scotus exhaust the spectrum of answers available to this circle, with Aquinas maintaining that our knowledge is quite confused and Scotus that it is completely accurate.In this study, Alexander Hall argues that the truth about Aquinas and Scotus lies somewhere in the middle. Hall's book recommends itself to the general reader who is looking for an overview of this period in Western philosophy as well as to the specialist, for no other study on the market addresses this long-standing matter of interpretation in any detail.

The traditional account of mind/body union attributed to Descartes supposes that the immaterial, thinking mind and the material, non-thinking body interact by means of efficient causation - that the mind causes events in the body, e.g. the voluntary raising of an arm, and vice versa, e.g. the visual sensation of a tree. But this gives rise to a notorious philosophical problem: how can this causal interaction occur between the spiritual mind and the physical body since they have absolutely nothing in common and cannot come into contact with one another?Justin Skirry's book shows how Descartes in fact avoids this enormous problem. Skirry argues, through a critical re-examination of Cartesian metaphysics, that the union of mind and body is not, as most scholars have always maintained, constituted by efficient causal interaction for Descartes, because this would not result in one, complete human nature but in an aggregate of two numerically distinct natures. Descartes argues in the 6th Meditation and elsewhere that mind/body union is constituted by what the scholastics called a 'substantial union', i.e. the union that form (mind) has with matter (body).This substantial union produces a whole that is more than the sum of its parts; the capacity for modes of sensation and voluntary bodily movement are emergent properties of the whole, substantially united mind and body. Therefore, the 'Cartesian' problem of mind-body efficient causal interaction is avoided altogether, since efficient causal occurrences between mind and body play no role in explaining the existence of these modes.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau has a claim to be ranked above even Karl Marx as the political philosopher who has most influenced everyday life. His much-read philosophy of education alone would qualify him for a high place, but his political theory is even more important: decisions affecting millions of people were made based on the reading of certain lines of the Social Contract. Yet while politicians and scholars have studied this book for 250 years, almost no agreement exists on how to interpret its central concept: freedom. Rousseau's theory of freedom has led him to be called everything from the greatest prophet of individual liberty to the designer of the first totalitarian state. This book offers a new, unifying interpretation of the theory of freedom in the Social Contract. Simpson gives a careful analysis of Rousseau's theory of the social pact, and then examines the kinds of freedom that it brings about, showing how Rousseau's individualist and collectivist aspects fit into a larger and logically coherent theory of human liberty.Simpson's book not only helps us to understand one of the pre-eminent political minds of the 18th century, but also brings us into closer conversation with those he influenced, who have done so much to shape our world. And in light of the interest in contemporary contractualist philosophers like Rawls, Scanlon, and Gauthier, readers will find it worthwhile to return to the thinker who offers one of the most radical, profound, and insightful theories of the social contract ever devised.

For thousands of years philosophers and theologians have grappled with the problem of evil. Traditionally, evil has been seen as a weakness of sorts: the evil person is either ignorant (does not know the wrong being done), or weak-willed (is incapable of doing the right thing). But in the most horrifying acts of evil (the Holocaust, ethnic cleansing, terrorism, serial murder, etc.), the perpetrators are resolute, deliberate, and well aware of the pain they are causing. There has never been a better time to re-open this most difficult of questions, and to inquire whether any helpful resources exist within our intellectual legacy. David Roberts has done just this. In taking up the problem of evil as it is uniquely found in the work of the Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, Roberts has uncovered a framework that at last allows the notion of radical evil to be properly articulated. His book traces the sources of Kierkegaard's conception from its background in the work of Kant and Schelling, and painstakingly details the matrix of issues that evolved into Kierkegaard's own solution.Kierkegaard's psychological understanding of evil is that it arises out of despair - a despair that can become so vehement and ferocious that it lashes out at existence itself. Starting from this recognition, and drawing on Kierkegaard's view of the self, Roberts shows how the despairing self can become strengthened and intensified through a conscious and free choice against the Good. This type of radical evil is neither ignorant nor weak.

Franz Brentano (1838-1917) is almost unique as a forefather of both Analytic and Continental philosophy. His claim to fame is the reintroduction of intentionality (the 'aboutness' of consciousness) to the modern philosophy of mind. In the Analytic tradition this is treated as (or as closely akin to) representation. In the Continental tradition intentionality is the leitmotiv of phenomenology. Brentano attracted a variety of students during his lifetime, a group of influential philosophers, psychologists, and others. Ryan Hickerson's book offers new interpretations of a central philosophical concept employed in the Brentano School. He argues against the now-standard misreading of Brentano (in both the Analytic and Continental traditions) as Immanentist, i.e. someone who believed that mental contents exist solely within the mind. Hickerson does this by tracing Brentano's notion of a 'phenomenon' back to its origins in the French positivism of August Comte.He then displays Brentano's students as attempting to correct the 'problems' each found in Brentano's treatment of mental content, including: (1) Twardowski's division of subjective contents from worldly objects, his part in a sea change in representational theories at the dawn of the 20th Century; (2) Meinong's ontology of non-existent objects, the reaction to Brentano made infamous by Russell; and (3) Husserl's 'breakthrough to phenomenology,' his advancement of mental contents as ideal. The History of Intentionality is a continuing history; this book will be very valuable for present-day specialists and students in phenomenology and the philosophy of mind.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau is an enigmatic figure in many ways. There is much debate about whether he was an advocate of the Enlightenment project or a critic of it. Sometimes Rousseau seems to be arguing against traditional values and hierarchies. But elsewhere he seems to be an enemy of progress altogether. This book explains Rousseaus true place in the Enlightenment by paying particular attention to his account of virtue. Virtue ethics is one of the main branches in moral philosophy, and its most famous advocate is Aristotle. Many recent philosophers have tried to revive virtue ethics, most notably Alasdair MacIntyre in his 1984 book, After Virtue. MacIntyre argues that the Enlightenment project was doomed to fail precisely because Enlightenment philosophers had discarded Aristotle. They do this by rejecting Aristotles claim that all things are, by nature, directed towards some proper end. The enlightenment figures whom MacIntyre discusses at length in his critique are Hume, Kant, and Kierkegaard. And while Rousseau is mentioned as an Enlightenment thinker, very little attention is paid to him.This book puts Rousseaus ethics into historical perspective, showing that Rousseau shares important characteristics with his contemporaries as well as with the tradition of Aristotle. The dichotomy set up by MacIntyre and others between the ethics of the ancient tradition and that of the Enlightenment is oversimplified. By taking a serious look at Rousseaus ethics, we can see that he forms a bridge between these two rich traditions in the history of Western philosophy.

Descartes held that only ideas are immediately perceived, and that all ideas are really identical to mental states. Yet certain passages in the Meditations seem to assert that some extramental individuals -- the sun, for example, or a piece of wax -- can be immediately perceived (not by the senses, but by the intellect). If so then Descartes was committed to the seemingly absurd claim that extramental things can be really identical to mental states. But the claim is not absurd; as this book shows, it is based on a coherent doctrine of intentional representation that was taught at the Jesuit college of La Fleche that Descartes attended as a youth. On this doctrine, an individual that is outside the mind with one sort of being can be inside it with another. This book brings a fresh perspective to the currently deadlocked debate over whether Descartes was a representationalist or a direct realist, and sheds new light on his difficult notions of material falsity and the self-representational character of thought.

Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgment is widely held to be the seminal work of modern aesthetics. In recent years it has been the focus of intense interest and debate not only in philosophy but also in literary theory and all disciplines concerned with the aesthetic. The Aesthetic in Kant is a new reading of Kant's problematic text. It draws upon the great volume of recent philosophical work on this classic text and on the context of eighteenth century aesthetics. Kant's work is used as a basis on which to construct a radical alternative to the antinomy of taste - the basic problem of the aesthetic. In Kant's account is a theory of the aesthetic that, far from establishing its 'disinterested' nature, instead makes it symptomatic of what Kant himself describes as the ineradicable human tendency to entertain 'fantastic desires'.

The decline of the Roman Empire gave rise to two problems, which combined to form one of the most perplexing philosophical questions of late antiquity. On the one hand, Rome found itself under constant military threat as various tribes from the north an east encroached along its borders to fill the power vacuum left by the receding Empire. On the other hand, adherents to the Empire's new official faith - Christianity - found themselves without clear guidance as to what military roles their faith would permit. The death of the apostles has left Christians without ongoing revelatory guidance, and the New Testament writings alone were not definitive on the subject. The question thus became: 'Can a Christian answer the Empire's call to military duty and still have a clear conscience before God?' Fifth-century philosopher St Augustine of Hippo sought to provide an answer to the question. His approach formed the foundation of the 'just war' tradition, which has has enormous influence upon moral-philosophical thought on military issues in the West ever since.This major new study identifies Augustine's fundamental premises, reconstructs his judt-war theory, and critically evaluates the reconstructed theory in light of the historical context and neo-Platonic and Christian philosophical considerations.John Mark Mattox PhD is a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army. He has lectured and published widely on military ethics, and has taught at the United States Militar Academy, West Point, the University of Maryland in Europe and the NATO School, Oberammergau, Germany.

Dialectic of Romanticism presents a radical new assessment of the aesthetic and philosophical history and future of modernity. An exploration of the internal critique of modernism treats romanticism (later historicism and post-modernism) as central to the development of European modernism alongside enlightenment, and, like the enlightenment, subject to its own dead-ends and fatalities. An external critique of modernism recovers concepts of civilization and civic aesthetics which are trans-historical -simultaneously modern and classically inspired - and provides a counter both to romantic historicism and enlightened models of progress. Finally, a retrospective critique of modernism analyses what happens to modernism's romantic-archaic and technological-futurist visions when they are translated from Europe to America. Dialectic of Romanticism argues that out of the European dialectic of romanticism and enlightenment a new dialectic of modernity is emerging in the New World-one which points beyond modernism and postmodernism.

Philosophers who wish to argue for the rationality of belief in God frequently employ a 'god-of-the-gaps' strategy. This strategy consists in trying to find a phenomenon that cannot be explained by natural science, and insisting that it can be explained only by reference to the activity of God. Philosophical discussion of miracles usually revolves around the attempt to link a miracle to God in just this way. One of the problems with this approach is that it is very difficult to identify anything as being forever beyond the power of science to explain. Science continues to advance upon the territory occupied by the god of the gaps. Thus it is desirable to develop an account of divine agency that will not be subject to revision in the face of scientific progress. This book is just such an account. Drawing on recent work in the theory of action, it shows that we can attribute God's agency to an event in nature without eliminating the possibility that it might be explained scientifically. In bringing God's actions out of the gaps, we avoid the possibility that future discoveries in science will make our talk of divine agency obsolete.

Baruch Spinoza began his studies in the Jewish community of seventeenth century Amsterdam by learning Hebrew and the Talmud, only to be excommunicated at the age of twenty-four for supposed heresy. Because of his radical transformation of the concept of God, he has been characterized, on the one hand, as an atheist, and on the other as the God-intoxicated man. This book is an exploration of what Spinoza understood God to be; how, for him, the infinite and eternal power of God is expressed; and how finite human beings can have a true idea of this greatest of all entities. Sherry Deveaux begins with an analytic discussion of these three questions and an explication of three different views held by contemporary commentators on Spinoza. She then shows that the commonly held views about Spinoza are inconsistent with his texts--especially his magnum opus, the Ethics. Next, she provides analyses of central topics in Spinoza's metaphysics--such as 'power', 'true idea', and 'essence'--that must be understood in order to correctly answer the three questions.Deveaux concludes by arguing (i) that Spinoza defines God's essence as 'absolutely infinite and eternal power' and (ii) that, far from identifying God's essence with the divine attributes (such as thought and extension) as commentators commonly suppose, Spinoza regards God's essence or power as something that is expressed through the divine attributes.

Typically philosophers have either viewed beauty as objective and judgments of beauty as universally valid, or else they have viewed beauty as subjective and regarded judgments of beauty as merely private preferences. Immanuel Kant is famous for his unique third path. Kant argues that beauty is subjective, but the judgment of taste about beauty is capable of universal validity. In his view, the beautiful is not a feature of objects themselves, but merely represents the way we respond to objects. Furthermore, the judgment of taste about beauty is a merely "aesthetic" judgment - i.e., one based on a feeling of pleasure we take in the object. The judgment of taste, on the other hand, possesses "universal validity": to call something beautiful is implicitly to "demand" that all others find it beautiful as well. Kant's views about the taste for the beautiful have long been the subject of controversy. Scholars have differed over the interpretation of the demand contained in a judgment of taste and whether Kant's attempt to legitimate this demand is successful.Brent Kalar argues that the demands of taste should be understood as involving a uniquely aesthetic normativity rooted in Kant's cognitive psychology. If the basis of aesthetic pleasure in the activity of the cognitive faculties is properly understood, then Kant's attempt to legitimate the demands of taste may be regarded as a success. This leads Kalar to give a new interpretation of the nature of the beautiful according to Kant that re-examines the relationship between "free play" and the "form of purposiveness" in Kant's aesthetics, and restores the "aesthetic ideas" to their rightful centrality in Kant's theory.

Dale Wilkerson's book shows how, like many of his contemporaries, Nietzsche looked to the Greeks in an attempt to alleviate Europe's woes. His work in this area resembles that of the cultural anthropologist who uncovers formal differences in social manners that might explain the development of humankind's most important instincts-those for carving out personal identity and for forging social unity. Nietzsche and the Greeks is a much needed guide to this fascinating subject matter.

One would expect that so successful and controversial a philosophical school as analytic philosophy would have a clear platform of substantive philosophical views. However, this is not so. For at least 30 years, analytic philosophy has consisted in an increasingly loose and variable amalgam of philosophical topics, views and methods. This state of affairs has led some to claim that, despite its professional entrenchment, analytic philosophy is in a state of crisis. Analytic Philosophy: The History of an Illusion argues that this is so, and that the crisis is deeper and more longstanding than is usually recognized.Synthesizing data from early and recent studies on the historical and philosophical foundations of analytic philosophy as well as from canonical primary texts, it argues (1) that analytic philosophy has never involved significant agreement on substantive philosophical views, and thus that it has always been in this state of crisis, (2) that this fact was long hidden by the illusion that analytic philosophy was originally united in the metaphilosophical thesis that philosophy is linguistic analysis, and (3) that both the rise of analytic philosophy under this illusion and the preservation of its privileged status since the illusion's demise have been facilitated by a scientistic 'stance' that minimizes the traditional philosophical duty to examine one's most fundamental assumptions.

Popper's theory of science has been widely misunderstood and poorly represented in the literature on philosophy of science, over the last three decades. This book discusses the main issues in Popper's theory of science and, after giving a careful characterization of each issue, examines the main objections that have been raised against them and offers ways of circumventing them. It demonstrates that Popper's theory can guide us again to a better understanding of the aim and the structure of science.

"Leibniz Re-interpreted" tackles head on the central idea in Leibniz's philosophy, namely that we live in the best of all possible worlds. Strickland argues that Leibniz's theory has been consistently misunderstood by previous commentators. In the process Strickland provides both an elucidation and reinterpretation of a number of concepts central to Leibniz's work, such as "richness", "simplicity", "harmony" and "incompossibility", and shows where previous attempts to explain these concepts have failed. Thus the book provides an unignorable reinterpretation of many of the core themes of Leibniz's philosophy. This clear and concise study is tightly focussed and assumes no prior acquaintance with Leibniz or optimism. It thus serves as an ideal entry point into Leibniz's philosophy.

What is a musical work? What are its identity-conditions and the standards (if any) that they set for a competent, intelligent, and musically perceptive act of performance or audition? Should the work-concept henceforth be dissolved as some New Musicologists would have it into the various, everchanging socio-cultural or ideological contexts that make up its reception-history to date? Can music be thought of as possessing certain attributes, structural features, or intrinsically valuable qualities that are response-transcendent, i.e., that might always elude or surpass the best state of (current or future) informed opinion? These are some of the questions that Christopher Norris addresses by way of a sustained critical engagement with the New Musicology and other debates in recent philosophy of music. His book puts the case for a qualified Platonist approach that would respect the relative autonomy of musical works as objects of more or less adequate understanding, appreciation, and evaluative judgement.At the same time this approach would leave room for listeners share the phenomenology of musical experience in so far as those works necessarily depend for their repeated realisation from one performance or audition to the next upon certain subjectively salient modalities of human perceptual and cognitive response. Norris argues for a more philosophically and musically informed treatment of these issues that combines the best insights of the analytic and the continental traditions. Perhaps the most distinctive feature of Norris's book, true to this dual orientation, is its way of raising such issues through a constant appeal to the vivid actuality of music as a challenge to philosophic thought. This is a fascinating study of musical understanding from one of the worlds leading contemporary theorists.