Reproduction of the original: Moral Philosophy by Joseph Rickaby.

This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic, timeless works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price, in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them.

This admirable volume is the first book of a new translation of the Summa Contra Gentiles by the general editor, Dr. Pegis. Made from the manual Leonine text of 1934, the closest critical edition of St. Thomas, it is meticulously presented with precise references to sources, a concise analysis of argument and a double index of matters and authors. The translation has a clear simplicity which systematically denies itself any attempt to improve the original text: the editor properly thinks it (...) his “business to set down what St. Thomas said, not what he meant” and, therefore, resists the urge to clarify or interpret by personal additions to his statement. The resulting version is so literally faithful that it incorporates some Latin words bodily into the English language. Thus, Ch. 14 is headed: “That to Know God We Must Use the Way of Remotion”. The fifty years’ old version of Fr. Joseph Rickaby has the flowery heading: “That in order to a Knowledge of God we must use the Method of Negative Differentiation”. The new translation is obviously closer to the simple original but its self-discipline tends to sacrifice native idiom and may affront or bewilder the literary reader. (shrink)

Behavioral scientists routinely publish broad claims about human psychology and behavior in the world's top journals based on samples drawn entirely from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. Researchers – often implicitly – assume that either there is little variation across human populations, or that these “standard subjects” are as representative of the species as any other population. Are these assumptions justified? Here, our review of the comparative database from across the behavioral sciences suggests both that there is (...) substantial variability in experimental results across populations and that WEIRD subjects are particularly unusual compared with the rest of the species – frequent outliers. The domains reviewed include visual perception, fairness, cooperation, spatial reasoning, categorization and inferential induction, moral reasoning, reasoning styles, self-concepts and related motivations, and the heritability of IQ. The findings suggest that members of WEIRD societies, including young children, are among the least representative populations one could find for generalizing about humans. Many of these findings involve domains that are associated with fundamental aspects of psychology, motivation, and behavior – hence, there are no obviousa priorigrounds for claiming that a particular behavioral phenomenon is universal based on sampling from a single subpopulation. Overall, these empirical patterns suggests that we need to be less cavalier in addressing questions ofhumannature on the basis of data drawn from this particularly thin, and rather unusual, slice of humanity. We close by proposing ways to structurally re-organize the behavioral sciences to best tackle these challenges. (shrink)

This admirable volume is the first book of a new translation of the Summa Contra Gentiles by the general editor, Dr. Pegis. Made from the manual Leonine text of 1934, the closest critical edition of St. Thomas, it is meticulously presented with precise references to sources, a concise analysis of argument and a double index of matters and authors. The translation has a clear simplicity which systematically denies itself any attempt to improve the original text: the editor properly thinks it (...) his “business to set down what St. Thomas said, not what he meant” and, therefore, resists the urge to clarify or interpret by personal additions to his statement. The resulting version is so literally faithful that it incorporates some Latin words bodily into the English language. Thus, Ch. 14 is headed: “That to Know God We Must Use the Way of Remotion”. The fifty years’ old version of Fr. Joseph Rickaby has the flowery heading: “That in order to a Knowledge of God we must use the Method of Negative Differentiation”. The new translation is obviously closer to the simple original but its self-discipline tends to sacrifice native idiom and may affront or bewilder the literary reader. (shrink)

Joseph Agassi is known primarily among fellow academics as an exemplary historian and philosopher of science; an ardent critic and disciple of Karl Popper; a critical admirer of the work of Michael Polanyi; and a Socratic fly with the “sting of a bee” for all those who wear the intellectual fashions of the day. To most of Agassi’s students he is known primarily as an exemplary model of the Socratic teacher. The question of most urgency for educators today who (...) care about the intellectual development of students is: How do we make ready our educational institutions for more Socratic teachers? The philosophical or theoretical question is: Why do we want Socratic teachers? In outline, of the many of Agassi’s educational essays selected for this book, Agassi answers those questions: authoritarianism (or anti-democracy) blocks the democratic reform of educational institutions where Socratic teachers and students could find a safe haven; and, Socratic teaching is the main anti-dote to authoritarianism. The removal of authoritarianism from education also removes the hazard that education has become to students; to their happiness, creativity, and dignity as autonomous individuals. See Less Copyright Year: 2014 E-Book (PDF) Availability: Published ISBN: 978-94-6209-626-4 Publication date: 01 Jan 2014 Hardback Availability: Published ISBN: 978-94-6209-624-0 Publication date: 01 Jan 2014 Paperback Availability: Published ISBN: 978-94-6209-623-3 Publication date: 01 Jan 2014 Login via Institution Prices from (excl. shipping): -/- $56.00 -/- ​ Available formats Add to Cart View PDF Flyer Get Permissions. (shrink)

Naturalism as a guiding philosophy for modern science both disavows any appeal to the supernatural or anything else transcendent to nature, and repudiates any philosophical or religious authority over the workings and conclusions of the sciences. A longstanding paradox within naturalism, however, has been the status of scientific knowledge itself, which seems, at first glance, to be something that transcends and is therefore impossible to conceptualize within scientific naturalism itself. In Articulating the World, Joseph Rouse argues that the most (...) pressing challenge for advocates of naturalism today is precisely this: to understand how to make sense of a scientific conception of nature as itself part of nature, scientifically understood. Drawing upon recent developments in evolutionary biology and the philosophy of science, Rouse defends naturalism in response to this challenge by revising both how we understand our scientific conception of the world and how we situate ourselves within it. (shrink)

This book examines Aristotle's method in ethics from the vantage point of his broader conception of philosophy. Joseph Karbowski challenges longstanding dialectical orthodoxy and argues instead that, in his ethical treatises, Aristotle is seeking the first principles of a demonstrative ethical science, a science of human goodness, using an ethically adapted version of the method described in the second book of his Posterior Analytics. Part I of this volume develops a novel interpretation of Aristotle's conception of philosophy, which highlights (...) its ambition to scientific knowledge and its flexible approach to philosophical inquiry. Part II then demonstrates Aristotle's scientific and flexible approach to philosophy at work in his ethical treatises. The book shows how the aspiration to scientific knowledge is compatible with Aristotle's remarks about ethical precision, the practical aim of ethics, and the particular orientedness of phronēsis. (shrink)

Since the very beginning, Confucianism has been troubled by a serious gap between its political ideals and the reality of societal circumstances. Contemporary Confucians must develop a viable method of governance that can retain the spirit of the Confucian ideal while tackling problems arising from nonideal modern situations. The best way to meet this challenge, Joseph Chan argues, is to adopt liberal democratic institutions that are shaped by the Confucian conception of the good rather than the liberal conception of (...) the right.Confucian Perfectionism examines and reconstructs both Confucian political thought and liberal democratic institutions, blending them to form a new Confucian political philosophy. Chan decouples liberal democratic institutions from their popular liberal philosophical foundations in fundamental moral rights, such as popular sovereignty, political equality, and individual sovereignty. Instead, he grounds them on Confucian principles and redefines their roles and functions, thus mixing Confucianism with liberal democratic institutions in a way that strengthens both. Then he explores the implications of this new yet traditional political philosophy for fundamental issues in modern politics, including authority, democracy, human rights, civil liberties, and social justice.Confucian Perfectionism critically reconfigures the Confucian political philosophy of the classical period for the contemporary era. (shrink)

What are our duties or rights? How should we act? What are we responsible for? Joseph Raz examines the philosophical issues underlying these everyday questions. He explores the nature of normativity--the reasoning behind certain beliefs and emotions about how we should behave--and offers a novel account of responsibility.

Postema's article discusses, lucidly and probingly, a central jurisprudential idea, which he calls the autonomy thesis. In its general form it is shared by many writers who otherwise support divergent accounts of the nature of law. It is, according to Postema, a thesis that is meant to account for a core idea, that the law's “defining aim is to … unify public political judgment and coordinate social interaction.” In some form or another this core idea is probably supported by Postema (...) himself. However, in this article his concern is to criticize what he takes to be the widespread belief that it is explained by the autonomy thesis. The autonomy thesis is flawed and must be rejected. In arguing to that conclusion he succumbs to one of the unattractive tendencies of contemporary legal and political philosophy, namely he does not discuss anyone's view, but a family of views. This allows one to construct one's target by selecting features from a variety of authors so that the combined picture is in fact no one's view, and all those cited as adhering to it would disagree with it. (shrink)

Practical Reason and Norms focuses on three problems: In what way are rules normative, and how do they differ from ordinary reasons? What makes normative systems systematic? What distinguishes legal systems, and in what consists their normativity? All three questions are answered by taking reasons as the basic normative concept, and showing the distinctive role reasons have in every case, thus paving the way to a unified account of normativity. Rules are a structure of reasons to perform the required act (...) and an exclusionary reason not to follow some competing reasons. Exclusionary reasons are explained, and used to unlock the secrets of orders, promises, and decisions as well as rules. Games are used to exemplify normative systems. Inevitably, the analysis extends to some aspects of normative discourse, which is truth-apt, but with a diminished assertoric force. (shrink)

In this volume, John R. Catan has gathered together 18 major essays by the well-known aristotelian scholar Joseph Owens that have influenced current opinion on the philosopher.

Coercion by the recipient of consent renders that consent invalid. But what about when the coercive force comes from a third party, not from the person to whom consent would be proffered? In this paper I analyze how threats from a third party affect consent. I argue that, as with other cases of coercion, we should distinguish threats that render consent invalid from threats whose force is too weak to invalidate consent and threats that are legitimate. Illegitimate controlling third party (...) threats render consent invalid just as they do in two party cases. However, knowing that the consent is invalid is not sufficient to tell the recipient of consent what she may or should do. I argue that when presented with a token of consent from someone whom she thinks is experiencing an illegitimate controlling threat, the recipient may act on that token if and only if doing so represents a reasonable joint decision for her and the victim of coercion. The appropriate action for someone faced with third party coercion therefore depends on the other options open to her and those open to the victim of coercion. (shrink)

Everyone has mistaken one thing for another, such as a stranger for an acquaintance. A person who has mistaken two things, Joseph Camp argues, even on a massive scale, is still capable of logical thought. In order to make that idea precise, one needs a logic of confused thought that is blind to the distinction between the objects that have been confused. Confused thought and language cannot be characterized as true or false even though reasoning conducted in such language (...) can be classified as valid or invalid. To the extent that philosophers have addressed this issue at all, they take it for granted that confusion is a kind of ambiguity. Camp rejects this notion; his fundamental claim is that confusion is not a mental state. To attribute confusion to someone is to take up a paternalistic stance in evaluating his reasoning. Camp proposes a novel characterization of confusion, and then demonstrates its fruitfulness with several applications in the history of philosophy and the history of science. (shrink)

Truth is a pervasive feature of ordinary language, deserving of systematic study, and few theorists of truth have endeavoured to chronicle the tousled conceptual terrain forming the non-philosopher’s ordinary view. Joseph Ulatowski recasts the philosophical treatment of truth in light of historical and recent work in experimental philosophy. He argues that the commonsense view of truth is deeply fragmented along two axes, across different linguistic discourses and among different demographics. Call this endoxic alethic pluralism. To defend this view, four (...) conclusions must be reached: (1) endoxic alethic pluralism should be compatible with how the everyday person uses truth, (2) the common conception of truth should be derivable from empirical data, (3) this descriptive metaphysical project is one aspect of a normative theory of truth, and (4) endoxic alethic pluralism is at least partially immune to challenges facing the ecological method in experimental philosophy and alethic pluralism. (shrink)

Many poor and oppressed people wish to leave their countries of origin in the third world to come to affluent Western societies. This essay argues that there is little justification for keeping them out. The essay draws on three contemporary approaches to political theory - the Rawlsian,the Nozickean, and the utilitarian - to construct arguments for open borders. The fact that all three theories converge upon the same results on this issue, despite their significant disagreements on others, strengthens the case (...) for open borders and reveals its roots in our deep commitment to respect all human beings as free and equal moral persons. The final part of the essay considers communitarian objections to this conclusion, especially those of Michael Walzer. (shrink)

"First published by Oxford University Press, 1916."--Title page verso.

There is an idea, extremely common among social contract theorists, that the primary function of social institutions is to secure some form of cooperative benefit. If individuals simply seek to satisfy their own preferences in a narrowly instrumental fashion, they will find themselves embroiled in collective action problems – interactions with an outcome that is worse for everyone involved than some other possible outcome. Thus they have reason to accept some form of constraint over their conduct, in order to achieve (...) this superior, but out-of-equilibrium outcome. A social institution can be defined as a set of norms that codify these constraints.1 Simplifying somewhat, one can then say that social institutions exist in order to secure gains in Pareto-efficiency. (shrink)

Back to the Rough Ground is a philosophical investigation of practical knowledge, with major import for professional practice and the ethical life in modern society. Its purpose is to clarify the kind of knowledge that informs good practice in a range of disciplines such as education, psychotherapy, medicine, management, and law. Through reflection on key modern thinkers who have revived cardinal insights of Aristotle, and a sustained engagement with the Philosopher himself, it presents a radical challenge to the scientistic assumptions (...) that have dominated how these professional domains have been conceived, practiced, and institutionalized. (shrink)