Midwest Studies in Philosophy – serie

In this annual volume key thinkers explore evolving trends that philosophy as a discipline is facing.

Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Volume XXIV, Life and Death: Metaphysics and Ethics is an important contribution to the literature on the intersection of issues of metaphysics and issues of ethics. In the Midwest Studies tradition, twenty of the more important philosophers writing in this area have contributed original papers that extend the boundaries of philosophical discussion of issues that are of both theoretical and practical concern to a wide-ranging audience. Topics considered include the concept of human life, the relationship between the concept of personal identity and the understanding of death, normative appraisals of death, capital punishment, euthanasia, the postponement of death and the impact of a theory of death and afterlife on one's ethical perspective.

Analytic philosophy was born from philosophic reflection on logic and mathematics. It has been at its strongest in these and related domains of reflection, domains that are friendly to definition and analytic clarity. From time to time, analytic philosophers, some very distinguished, have produced fine work on literature and the arts. But these areas remain underexplored in the analytic tradition. This volume is focused upon language that does not fit within the usual analytic paradigms. It's highlights include two pieces of original poetry on philosophic subjects (by philosophers who are also published poets), and philosophic reflection on poetry, literature more generally, metaphor, and related subjects.

In this volume leading contemporary philosophical historians of the Renaissance and Early Modern periods examine the works of important figures of the fifteenth through the eighteenth century. While Midwest Studies in Philosophy has produced other volumes devoted to historical periods in philosophy, this is the first to offer such extensive and focused original materials on specific crucial figures as this volume. Original papers by twenty contemporary philosophers writing about the works of the major philosophers of the Fifteenth through the Eighteenth centuriesThis historically and philosophically broad collection extends from such fifteenth century figures as Ficino, Machiavelli, and Pompanazzi to the work of Montesquieu in the eighteenth century

Early Modern Philosophy Reconsidered: Essays in Honor of Paul Hoffman is an international collection of essays from both well-established and younger scholars. In keeping with the example of Hoffman’s own work, the essays are written in the spirit of promoting serious philosophical engagement with the historical figures they discuss. Among the philosophers whose views are explored in the collection are Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Berkeley, and Kant.

The Concept of Evil is dedicated to the analysis of the concept of evil. The term "evil" is used widely in ordinary language and yet philosophers have disagreed on what, if anything, distinguishes an evil act from a wrong act or an evil person from a bad one. Is "evil" a distinct and important moral category? Which agents and acts can and should be classified as "evil"? In which areas of practice does evil arise? These questions indicate three essential categories that belong to a thorough analysis of the concept of evil: meta-evil, the nature of evil, and applied evil. The articles presented in this volume provide insight into these categories.

This volume of the classic series is devoted to the claims, arguments, and perspectives of the New Atheists. The volume collects original work on these topics of leading thinkers in the philosophy of religion, epistemology, and metaphysics, and philosophy of science. These studies are punctuated by an original short story by a leading novelist.

• Explores various aspects of the concept of forward-looking collective responsibility and its application• Presents fifteen articles written by leading philosophers from around the world• Extends the philosophical discussion of collective responsibility and collective morality towards future collective action

The planet is undergoing a global change in climate that has begun to negatively affect populations and is predicted to accelerate in the coming decades. The human beings now on Earth are the first to exist when the climatic dynamics of the planet are scientifically understood. That understanding makes patently clear that the aggregate effects of human activities have a distinct impact on planetary climate and the way humans will live, if they survive, in the future. This appears to be a tipping point time in human history when future climatic catastrophes that threaten generations of humans might be preventable if governments, institutions, and organizations now take mitigating actions. That suggests that the people currently alive on the planet bear a collective responsibility to address the negative human impact on climate.

This volume brings together new analytic and continental philosophic work on the nature of affectivity. Areas represented include philosophy of mind, epistemology, and philosophy of language. But such traditional designations fail to do justice to the new ground broken here. Topics include the nature of moods and emotions, the character of images, the relations between affective states and representational content/intentional states. Particular affective phenomena explored include shame, guilt, regret, grief, and alienation.

A look at an economic disaster from a philosophical perspectiveA decade after the financial crisis, this publication considered the event from the standpoint of philosophy. Moral Responsibility and the Financial Crisis is a Midwest Studies in Philosophy volume that applies analytic philosophy to finance. The issue discusses the normative and meta-ethical challenges brought to light by the crisis. It also explores the individual and collective responsibility for the harm caused during the global economic event.

Many of us are inclined to accept something like the following principle: We can only be properly morally assessed for what is in our control. And yet our ordinary practices seem to frequently violate this principle. The resulting tension, and the attempt to resolve it, is the problem of moral luck. For example, we tend to punish and think worse of the negligent driver who kills a child than we do the equally negligent driver who was lucky there was no child in his path. Thus, the lucky outcomes of our actions do seem to affect the extent to which we hold and are held responsible, but these are not things over which we exercise control. And, as Thomas Nagel famously illustrated in his response to Bernard Williams (the two of which papers form the founding documents of the moral luck debate), the influence of luck is not limited to outcomes. For the circumstances in which we find ourselves and, indeed, our very constitution are also shaped by luck. Since the publication of Williams’ and Nagel’s papers, the existence and breadth of moral luck has been hotly debated. This debate is not a mere intellectual trifle but, as the essays in this volume illustrate, a debate which lies at the heart of free will, responsibility, identity, causation, and self-creation.

This volume brings together new work in the philosophy of dance for a general philosophical audience. Scholars working across the fields of philosophy, dance studies, and related areas explore the nature of dance as a practice and an artform. This collection of essays covers topics such as the experience of dancing, the nature and appreciation of dance artworks, and the distinctive contribution of dance to philosophical understanding.

This Volume illuminates the notion of meaning in the arts-in literature, painting, music, and dance. Specific topics include theory in the arts; interpretations of meaning; objectivity in meaning; and the consumer as a participant in art. Brings together articles from prominent philosophers and practitioners of the arts, which illuminate the notion of meaning in the arts. Addresses meaning in literature, painting, music, and dance. Explores the relationship between authorial intentions and the viewer's interpretation of meaning; the possibility (or impossibility) of objective meaning; and the role of the consumer as a participant in the work of art.

The American Philosophers contains papers by current leading philosophers and political theorists that explore the work of the major American philosophers from the colonial period to the present, from Jonathan Edwards to David Kaplan. Contains a philosophically and historically broad exploration of the major schools of American philosophyExamines both the pragmatists and the later Twentieth Century analytic philosophers, as well as such shapers of the political and philosophical American scene as Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, Emerson, and Jane Addams

The essays in this volume explore various issues pertaining to human agency, such as the relationship between free will and causal determinism, and the nature and conditions of moral responsibility. Builds on and extends some of the very best recent work in the field.Features lively and vigorous debate.Forges connections between abstract philosophical theorizing and applied work in neuroscience and even criminal law.

This volume of Midwest Studies focuses on the currently hot topic in ethics and action theory of shared intentions and relates it to issues in collective responsibility. Each of the essays in the volume is by an internationally known scholar who has published seminal pieces on various aspects of the concepts of shared intention and collective responsibility. Features all new essays that expand the discussion and invite those interested in the topic to examine a variety of ways for understanding the basic idea and the application of the notion of shared intention to a range of contemporary issues in the ethics of responsibility

This collection of essays focuses on a current issue of central important in contemporary philosophy, the relationship between philosophy and empirical studies. Explores in detail a range of examples which demonstrate how the older paradigm – philosophy as conceptual analysis – is giving way to a more varied set of models of philosophical workEach of the featured papers is a previously unpublished contribution by a major scholar

Truth and Its Deformities is the 32nd volume in the Midwest Studies in Philosophy series. It contains major new contributions on a range of topics related to the general theme of the volume by some of the most important philosophers writing on truth in recent years.

Philosophy and Poetry is the 33rd volume in the Midwest Studies in Philosophy series. It begins with contributions in verse from two world class poets, JohnAshbery and Stephen Dunn, and an article by Dunn on the creative processthat issued in his poem. The volume features new work from an internationalcollection of philosophers exploring central philosophical issues pertinent topoetry as well as the connections between the two domains.

Analytic philosophy was born from philosophic reflection on logic and mathematics. It has been at its strongest in these and related domains of reflection, domains that are friendly to definition and analytic clarity. From time to time, analytic philosophers, some very distinguished, have produced fine work on literature and the arts. But these areas remain underexplored in the analytic tradition. This volume is focused upon language that does not fit within the usual analytic paradigms. It's highlights include two pieces of original poetry on philosophic subjects (by philosophers who are also published poets), and philosophic reflection on poetry, literature more generally, metaphor, and related subjects.