This comprehensive guide to modern philosophy covers the major thinkers and theories of the past three centuries, from Descartes and Hume to Hegel and Nietzsche. Arthur S. Dewing provides a clear and concise overview of the philosophical debates that have shaped our world, exploring questions of ethics, ontology, and epistemology with insight and clarity. Whether you're a philosophy student or simply an interested reader, Introduction to the History of Modern Philosophy is an essential resource. This work has been selected (...) by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Part I: The birth of religious naturalism -- Philosophical religious naturalism -- Theological religious naturalism -- Analyzing the issues -- Interlude religious naturalism in literature -- Part II: The rebirth of religious naturalism -- Sources of religious insight -- Current issues in religious naturalism -- Other current religious naturalists -- Conclusion: Living religiously as a naturalist.

THE CONCEPT of basic action rests upon a not especially controversial observation and a standard sort of philosophical argument. The observation is that there occur a great many actions in which what is said to be done—say a—is not done directly but rather through the agent doing something b, distinct from a, which causes a to happen. Thus I move a stone by pushing against it, and the pushing, itself an action, causes the locomotion of the stone when (...) all relevant conditions are supposed benign. Sometimes an agent m performs an action in which b is done and another occurrence a is caused by b, but as a is only a consequence of b and is not itself said to be done, such cases fall outside the circumference of the observation just described. What falls within that circumference I designate nonbasic actions, leaving it open that there may be species of nonbasic actions other than those specified by this observation. (shrink)

Like most other subjects under discussion today, the theory of nature is largely controlled by considerations of knowledge. Treatment of it is, consequently, incidental to the treatment of these other problems, and is undertaken, in the main, because they compel it. A brief catalogue of characteristic statements about nature will illustrate this. “Nature,” says one writer, “is that which we observe in perception through the senses”; and another writes, “It is not experience which is experienced, but nature—stones, plants, animals, diseases, (...) health, temperature, electricity, and so on.” Nothing is more apparent in these sentences than the fact that it is not nature that the writers are so much concerned with, as with what it is that appears through the senses. The theory of nature, that is, is not so much guided by an analysis of the word's context and usage, as it is by the question: what is the proper object of knowledge? Consequently it is the latter question that is answered and not the question: what is nature? The reason for this is evident in the purpose of these statements and in their history; their purpose: the desire to do away with the separation between experience and nature, and to transform nature into a field familiar and accessible; and their history: the very framework against which they are directed, for they are embedded in the set-up from which they are trying to disentangle themselves. Perhaps something ought to be said to substantiate the thesis that the sentences cited are controlled by the problem of knowledge, especially since their intent seems to be to escape that problem. In any case, their history should serve to clarify them, and render a different approach to the theory of nature more significant. (shrink)

The renowned occult scholar Arthur Edward Waite left no stone unturned when preparing this meticulously researched volume on the life and works of the French mystic Louis Claude de Saint-Martin. Drawing on contemporary biographies, correspondences, and all the source materials that were available to him at the time, he put together a biography and summary of Saint-MartinÍs work that is still unsurpassed to this day. This edition is presented with modernised typography and a new and expanded index.

This collection of essays takes as its starting point Arthur Ripstein's Force and Freedom: Kant's Legal and Political Philosophy, a seminal work on Kant's thinking about law, which also treats many of the contemporary issues of legal and political philosophy. The essays offer readings and elucidations of Ripstein's thought, dispute some of his claims and extend some of his themes within broader philosophical contexts, thus developing the significance of Ripstein's ideas for contemporary legal and political philosophy. -/- All of (...) the essays are contributions to normative philosophy in a broadly Kantian spirit. Prominent themes include rights in the body, the relation between morality and law, the nature of coercion and its role in legal obligation, the role of indeterminacy in law, the nature and justification of political society and the theory of the state. This volume will be of interest to a wide audience, including legal scholars, Kant scholars, and philosophers with an interest in Kant or in legal and political philosophy. (shrink)

Arthur Danto was quite engaged in the world, through campus activism at Columbia and as an early member of Amnesty International USA. Danto's line seems to betray a deeply felt humanism that guided his practical politics. Danto's work with Amnesty was motivated in part by a brief glimpse into France's violence during the war in Algeria. He writes about being in Paris during the 1961 October Massacre and seeing the bodies of Algerian protesters, killed by police, floating in the (...) Seine. The ethic of responsiveness, as well as the desire to be able to narrate the present as past, was something Danto carried over to his philosophy as well. Danto claims that the means of fighting are therefore limited to those that would not prevent the war itself from ending and peace from beginning again. (shrink)

It is by no means impossible that the discussion of epistemological problems, at the present stage of our understanding of the issues involved, may be futile. But so long as anyone desires to “know” anything at all, just so long it will be impossible for thoughtful men to leave the questions of epistemology alone. So, futile or not, this paper is concerned with an analysis of one of the most fundamental of epistemological problems, namely that of the ‘given.’ It is (...) true, the ‘given’ has recently received an unusual amount of attention from philosophers. What with two of the American Philosophical Association's presidential addresses last year having much to say on the subject, and what with the logical positivists making the ‘given’ the cap-stone of their radical empiricism? All of which, it will be claimed, proves the contention that any attack upon the problems of epistemology, from the standpoint of our present knowledge and understanding of the total situation involved, is condemned to hopeless futility. Why, then, add one more hopelessly futile attempt to those of all the rest? If, despite such initial misgivings, I shall proceed to my own analysis of the ‘given,’ I shall do so, first of all, in recognition of the indisputable fact that everyone of us, even though we should be blind, deaf and dumb, do, as a matter fact, find ourselves confronted with something ‘given’; and, secondly, because it appears to me that, as philosophers, it is still our task seriously to concern ourselves with unsolved problems, even though they may not yet be capable of being so stated that a unanimously acceptable solution for them may be—at present—possible. Even the logical positivists, who, of course, are most critical of what philosophy is or ought to be, insist that “the object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts.” Since the ‘given’ is a concept most widely used not only by so-called ‘pseudo-philosophers’ but even by the logical positivists themselves, it certainly cannot be denied that the clarification of the concept of the ‘given’ is decidedly a philosophical task. More than that: it is a necessary philosophical task just so long as there is such wide difference of opinion concerning the ‘given’ among philosophers. (shrink)

Paris is firing all its ammunition into the August night. Against a vast backdrop of water and stone, on both sides of a river awash with history, freedom's barricades are once again being erected. Once again justice must be redeemed with men's blood.Albert Camus wrote these words in August 1944, as Paris was being liberated from German occupation. Although best known for his novels including The Stranger and The Plague, it was his vivid descriptions of the horrors of the (...) occupation and his passionate defense of freedom that in fact launched his public fame. Now, for the first time in English, Camus at 'Combat' presents all of Camus' World War II resistance and early postwar writings published in Combat, the resistance newspaper where he served as editor-in-chief and editorial writer between 1944 and 1947. These 165 articles and editorials show how Camus' thinking evolved from support of a revolutionary transformation of postwar society to a wariness of the radical left alongside his longstanding strident opposition to the reactionary right. These are poignant depictions of issues ranging from the liberation, deportation, justice for collaborators, the return of POWs, and food and housing shortages, to the postwar role of international institutions, colonial injustices, and the situation of a free press in democracies. The ideas that shaped the vision of this Nobel-prize winning novelist and essayist are on abundant display. More than fifty years after the publication of these writings, they have lost none of their force. They still speak to us about freedom, justice, truth, and democracy. (shrink)

The painter "takes his body with him."Nevertheless, Renoir was looking at the sea.Close! stand close to me, Starbuck; let me look into a human eye.The painter takes his body with him—he looks at what he sees and what he sees looks back at him. Perception takes place in the exchange, in time and in the world, not only between people or between living things but also between "subject" and "object," between perceiver and perceived. In this exchange that Maurice Merleau-Ponty calls (...) "the chiasm"—"this mediation through reversal"—something direct and active takes place. Before we can know or say what we're seeing, before we divide what we see into things or kinds of things, before naming and measurement, assertion and... (shrink)

According to Heidegger, "mortals live in the speaking of language"—to respond genuinely to language is to bring human being into existence. The Indo-European root gen -, meaning "to beget"—with derivatives including "kin," "kind," "king," "generation," "gentle," "gender," "native," "nation," and "nature"—is an index to two central questions in Shakespeare's plays: "Are human beings, by nature, kind?" and "Are the gods kind?" King Lear finds himself in a world of gen - topsy-turvy. His response to language and to the absent gods (...) recalls us to our own mortal being. (shrink)

Affective disposition theory explains well the process of enjoying hero narratives but not the appeal of narratives featuring antiheroes. Recent antihero studies suggest that character identification and moral disengagement might be important factors in the enjoyment of such fare. The current study builds on this work. A sample of 101 self-identified fans and nonfans of the television series 24 viewed a condensed version of Season 1, providing evaluation of various protagonist perceptions, moral judgments, and emotional responses to the narrative, as (...) well as overall enjoyment. As expected, fans reported greater liking of the protagonist and greater enjoyment. But more importantly, regression analyses illuminated key differences between the groups in terms of the factors predicting enjoyment, providing a clearer picture of how we enjoy antihero narratives. (shrink)

In the realm of corporate leadership and organisational theory, the work of the German philosopher, Martin Heidegger, has received little if any attention from scholars and practitioners alike. We argue in this paper that Heidegger’s work has an important message to convey with regard to the ability and perhaps the obligation of leaders to enable the ‘releasement’ and ‘opening up’ of the members of an organisational community to their ‘authentic possibilities’ within the realm of the work environment. We apply the (...) Heideggerian concepts of calculative and reflective thinking, as well as his philosophy of ‘being’ to the role of authentic leaders and their leadership possibilities. And we distinguish this approach to leadership from that which we identify as ‘inauthentic’ in which both leaders and members of organisations are alienated from their possibilities. (shrink)

In the realm of corporate leadership and organisational theory, the work of the German philosopher, Martin Heidegger, has received little if any attention from scholars and practitioners alike. We argue in this paper that Heidegger’s work has an important message to convey with regard to the ability and perhaps the obligation of leaders to enable the ‘releasement’ and ‘opening up’ of the members of an organisational community to their ‘authentic possibilities’ within the realm of the work environment. We apply the (...) Heideggerian concepts of calculative and reflective thinking, as well as his philosophy of ‘being’ to the role of authentic leaders and their leadership possibilities. And we distinguish this approach to leadership from that which we identify as ‘inauthentic’ in which both leaders and members of organisations are alienated from their possibilities. (shrink)

The matrix notation of paper I is extended to include first-rank spinors expressed as two-component spin-vectors. Well-known two-component and four-component spinor equations are expressed in this notation. In addition, it is shown how other covariant wave equations can easily be invented. A certain nonlinear equation is found to have only positive-energy solutions for particles and antiparticles.

We agree with Rachlin's aim to account for altruism within existing theory. However, his argument is implicitly dependent on social and cognitive constructs that are explicitly identified in other social-psychological theories. The account does not advance theory beyond available constructs (e.g., self-categorizations, motives, values, role-identities, and social structure), and Rachlin's implicit use of these strains the behaviorist account.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Arthur A. Krentz DRAMATIC FORM AND PHILOSOPHICAL CONTENT IN PLATO'S DIALOGUES AN intriguing innovation in the history of philosophical discourse is Plato's employment ofdramatic dialogues as his deliberately chosen means ofcommunication. Throughout the history of philosophy scant attention has been focused on this feature of Plato's works. Recently, however, some students of Plato's writings contend that it is crucial for interpreters to give careful attention to the dialogue (...) form in order to reach an essential understanding of the philosophical content. Thus WernerJaeger, commenting in 1934 on the importance of the form of Aristotle's philosophical works, mentions as an aside that, "Even in the case of Plato, the importance of the form for the understanding of his particular thought has often been overlooked for long periods; departmental philosophers and students ofliterature in particular are always prone to consider it as something literary which had no material significance for Plato, in spite of the fact that it is unique in die history of philosophy. By now, however, most persons know mat the study of the development of the form ofhis writing is one of me main keys to a philosophical understanding of him." ' In spite ofJaeger's contention that most contemporary interpreters of Plato are aware of the significance of investigating the dramatic form for an understanding of a dialogue's content, a survey of the literature on Plato shows that interpreters often abandon such a concern in their own approach to his dialogues. For example, many interpreters treat dialogues as treatises, ignoring the dramatic features in order to concentrate on the examination of the logical, epistemológica!, ethical or other philosophical aspects of the argumentation in a single dialogue or group ofdialogues; as a result interpreters tend to separate the content from the form of Plato's works.2 The effect of this approach is one-sided, for, although such interpretations attempt to do justice to the arguments, they ignore the dramatic features of the dialogues and their bearing on an interpretation of die philosophical substance. Currently a growing number of interpreters of Plato in Europe and North America hold that a consideration of the form of Plato's dialogues is important 32 Arthur A. Krentz33 for an understanding oftheir content and philosophical message.3 1 am in agreement with this position and in this article I consider some reasons that may have led Plato to adopt dialogue as his medium of philosophical expression and attempt to show how attention to the dialogue form shapes the interpretation of their content. Unlike his philosophical predecessors who cast their writings in the form of extended poems, aphorisms, or treatises "On Nature," Plato wrote dramas. That the dramatic form ofhis writings is not incidental to his philosophical purposes becomes apparent as one considers how Plato presents philosophy in a fundamentally different way from that of his predecessors and successors who adopted the essay and treatise as the paradigm ofphilosophical communication. In a philosophical work such as a treatise, an author ordinarily attempts to state his own position on issues under discussion as clearly and as forcefully as possible. This, however, is not the primary aim of Plato's works, for certain features of his dramas indicate that he deliberately concealed his own views. Of special note in this regard is the fact that Plato never speaks on his own behalf in the discourses he creates. There is no character named "Plato" unequivocally declaring the author's own position.4 Instead a variety of interlocutors ask questions, investigate philosophical problems, and puzzle over solutions while Plato remains noticeably silent. This silence of Plato indicates that he did not regard the unequivocal presentation of his own views to be of paramount importance. If this had been his aim, Plato had only to write a dialogue which included himselfas one ofthe characters clearly stating his own position. Having engaged in many philosophical discussions with Socrates and with his own students, Plato could have written a dialogue based on such conversations. His not doing so is sufficient to show that he did not use his writings as a primary vehicle for transmitting his own position in his own words. Nor did Plato use... (shrink)

This book provides a reconstructive and critical interpretation of Sartre’s mature dialectical ethics. Taken together, as Sartre intended, the posthumously published key texts demonstrate that the ultimate goal of praxis is “integral humanity” and that “making the human” is always possible because the means to humanity can always be invented.