There are few who would deny that P. F. Strawson’s “Freedom and Resentment” (1962) ranks among the most significant contributions to modern moral philosophy. Although any number of essays have been devoted to it, Pamela Hieronymi’s 'Freedom, Resentment, and the Metaphysics of Morals' is the first book-length study. The aim of Hieronymi’s study is to show that Strawson’s “central argument” has been “underestimated and misunderstood.” Hieronymi interprets this argument in terms of what she describes as Strawson’s “social naturalism”. Understood (...) this way, Hieronymi maintains, “the argument is powerful”. In what follows I argue that while Hieronymi’s discussion is stimulating and provides valuable insights into “Freedom and Resentment,” neither the interpretation advanced nor the social naturalist position that it describes is convincing. (shrink)

A few decades ago, only isolated groups of philosophers counted the phenomenon of normativity as one of their principal interests. Rules and norms have always, of course, been in the purview of moral philosophers, who often took them as exceedingly abstract entities, if not directly metaphysical. Philosophers from the border territories of philosophy and social sciences, on the other hand, were interested in more concrete norms, namely those that emerge and survive within human societies. Philosophers of law stood between these (...) two extremes, studying law as a matter of socially instituted norms which, however, might be seen as a projection of something more esoteric. The research programs of these groups of philosophers had little overlap. And for philosophers of mind, of language, or of science (with the exception of a few philosophers of social sciences, such as Peter Winch), norms were at most only of marginal interest. This situation has changed hugely over recent decades. I think the catalyst was the interest in rules and norms within the philosophy of language, which was kindled by the ongoing reception of the later Wittgenstein. Other philosophers, like Michael Dummett and Wilfrid Sellars, also deserve part of the credit. Via philosophy of language, interest in norms invaded sections of philosophy of mind, too, and the previously isolated studies of various types of norms slowly became interconnected, if not directly integrated. No wonder that more and more general studies of the nature of rules and norms are now reaching the light of day. Andrei Marmor's Social Conventions is one of the most recent contributions. Marmor sees a social convention as a specific kind of norm characterized especially by its arbitrariness. More precisely, a rule is conventional, according to the author, iff (i) some people follow it; (ii) they have a reason to follow it; and (iii) there is an alternative rule that they could have followed for the same reason. The point of departure for Marmor's analysis is David Lewis's theory of convention F1F, which, however, he considers too narrow and hence extends it considerably. Lewis's idea is that norms result from certain spontaneous processes by which society reacts to coordination problems.. (shrink)

In popular culture, Einstein’s shaggy mustaches and disheveled hairstyle have come to represent the image of physics itself. The most famous physicist of the twentieth century is mainly celebrated as the creator of relativity, intended as both special and general relativity theories. The ubiquitous E = mc2 equation comes hand in hand with pictures of Einstein’s thoughtful wrinkles. Insofar as quantum theory is concerned, Einstein is usually remembered as a strenuous opponent of quantum mechanics who rejected this successful theory on (...) epistemological grounds till the end of his life.In Einstein and the Quantum: The Quest of the Valiant Swabian Douglas Stone—a theoretical physicist specialized in the application of quantum mechanics to solid-state physics—pursues the clearly stated aim of challenging this conventional view. In fact, Einstein made momentous contributions to the quantum theory as the main proponent of novel notions that radically shook the foundat .. (shrink)

At the basis of Schenker's teaching lies the most important possible goal - that of effecting some kind of rapprochement between musical theory and the actual musical thought of the composer. It should be hardly necessary to point out, at this late date, the vital necessity of some such rapprochement. The older theory of harmony, virtually a compilation and standardization of the purely practical teachings of earlier days, consisted in little more than a systematic catalog of "chords"—and what was a (...) chord but the simultaneous sounding of any two or more notes, regardless of their syntactical significance? That the harmony books catalogued only the simplest of such phenomena does not in the slightest alter the fact that fundamentally the conception went no further. While distinctions were made between "harmonic" and "non-harmonic" tones, and the number of possible chords limited by professional fiat, such distinctions and limitations were patently arbitrary and often contrary to the true order beneath what was assumed to be merely conventional, and therefore sanctified by tradition. There even exist harmony books which dogmatically assert the inferiority of certain cadence formulas, on the ground that the masters used them less frequently than others of different structure! Roger Sessions was an American composer who taught at Smith College, Princeton University and the University of California, Berkeley. Sessions received two Pulitzer prizes. (shrink)

It is interesting, that with the notable exception of the Cologne-based geneticist Benno Müller-Hill, German historians of medicine have not bothered a great deal with looking into German medical history during the Third Reich. We owe Pennsylvania State University's Robert N Proctor a great deal of gratitude for uncovering more and more of this history, and for making it accessible in a highly readable format. Proctor has established himself rapidly as the pre-eminent US American historian of science on all aspects (...) of Nazi medical research and health policy. In this most recent book Proctor looks at Nazism's pioneering contributions in public health research and policy, as well as in environmental health, occupational health, and preventive medicine. This book holds some disturbing lessons for those who hold the view that basically good people will undertake ethical research, and support good health …. (shrink)

Not only does a shared expertise in classical philosophy and literature inform the works of Martha Nussbaum and Bernard Williams, each has also written and spoken on contemporary social and political issues. Given such ranges of reference, it is not surprising that their two recent books, Frontiers of Justice, a treatise, and In the Beginning Was the Deed, selected essays, confidently take up fundamental political questions. Yet these books differ in their intentions, organising structures, and discursive strategies, and they have (...) little overlap in topics. What then may be hoped from their juxtaposition? That their moral-political perspectives are strongly anti-utilitarian, somewhat anti-Kantian, and self-professedly liberal are unpromising commonplaces. Their juxtaposition can point, I think, toward an alternative to liberalism that is not anti-liberal. Williams considered himself a ‘critical liberal’. But among his contributions to ‘processes of extension’ of liberalism is enlargement of the category of moral agency to some groups in political contexts. And Nussbaum wants to ‘extend the Rawlsian approach’ to liberalism so as to remain a ‘type of political liberal’. But one of her most important conclusions is that it is ‘easy to extend’ justice as political entitlements to nonhumans. Williams 's move toward nonperson moral agents and Nussbaum's toward nonhuman moral patients do not merely ‘extend’ liberalism but, if taken together, leverage a departure beyond it into postliberalism. (shrink)

Liberalism in Dark Times is an important and original contribution to the new wave of historical scholarship on liberalism that emerged around the turn of the century and has gained considerable mo...

As Dana Villa shows, however, Arendt's thought is often poorly understood, both because of its complexity and because her frame has made it easy for critics to write about what she is reputed to have said rather than what she actually wrote. Villa sets out to change that here, explaining clearly, carefully, and forcefully Arendt's major contributions to our understanding of politics, modernity, and the nature of political evil in our century.(publisher, edited).

The Code of Capital significantly advances our understanding of the origins of inequality and provides a framework for evaluating proposed solutions. But reviews have so far missed some of the most important insights of the book, including the author's insistence on the indeterminacy of the law and the corresponding incompleteness of existing solutions to inequality that primarily rely on economic drivers. The review demonstrates the relevance of the book's main contributions for evaluating the shared value thesis for investors and (...) reflects on some of the solutions to the law's indeterminacy proposed in the book, including the author's surprising neglect of the increasing importance of ethics in business when innovation outpaces the law. The review concludes with consideration of the theoretical advancements that The Code of Capital makes for our understanding of inequality in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

Ce livre ambitieux, basé sur des recherches impressionnantes et poussées, représente une contribution importante à l’histoire des femmes et du travail en France. Les objectifs de l’auteur – démontrer les liens entre les évolutions dans le monde de travail, la division sexuelle du travail, et des différentes représentations du travail (p. 15) – sont certainement légitimes. Néanmoins, cet ouvrage est soit trop ambitieux soit ne l’est pas assez, car en choisissant une durée qui va du dix-huitièm..

In a single richly suggestive word, "song," Sessions sums up all the factors—melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, textural, dynamic, articulative—that contribute to what I have called musical line: "Each one of these various aspects derives its functions from the total and indivisible musical flow - the song. . . . [M]usic can be genuinely organized only on this integral basis, and . . . an attempt to organize its so-called elements as separate factors is, at the very best, to pursue abstraction, and, (...) at the worst, to confuse genuine order with something which is essentially chaotic."1 Analysis, whose functions as a valuable tool for the training of composer and performer Sessions has so well explicated and demonstrated, is now all too often called on to justify and to further this essentially unmusical, or at best nonmusical, pursuit of abstraction. Herein lies the explanation for the increasing doubt of the general usefulness of the discipline that Sessions has lately evidenced.2 For the creation and analysis of art are two distinct activities, confused at the artist's peril. ". . . [A]nalysis cannot reveal anything whatever except the structural aspects of a completed work . . . Discoveries after the fact are necessarily verbalized in terms of preexistent contexts; it hears forward, as it were, in terms of the contexts.3 · 1. "Song and Pattern in Music Today," The Score 17 : 77-78.· 2. See, e.g., "Song and Pattern," p. 78, and "To the Editor," Perspectives of New Music 5 : 92-93.· 3. Questions about Music , pp. 109-110. Edward T. Cone, composer and professor of music at Princeton University, has written Musical Form and Musical Performance and The Composer's Voice, edited Berlioz's Fantastic Symphony, and coedited Perspectives on American Composers and Perspectives on Schoenberg and Stravinsky. In a slightly different form, this essay was delivered as an address at Amherst College on the occasion of a music festival honoring Roger Sessions. (shrink)

With the publication of French Philosophy of the Sixties, Alain Renaut and Luc Ferry in 1985 launched their famous critique against canonical figures such as Foucault, Derrida, and Lacan, bringing under rigorous scrutiny the entire post-structuralist project that had dominated Western intellectual life for over two decades. Their goal was to defend the accomplishments of liberal democracy, particularly in terms of basic human rights, and to trace the reigning philosophers' distrust of liberalism to an "antihumanism" inherited mainly from Heidegger. In (...) The Era of the Individual, widely hailed as Renaut's magnum opus, the author explores the most salient feature of post-structuralism: the elimination of the human subject. At the root of this thinking lies the belief that humans cannot know or control their basic natures, a premise that led to Heidegger's distrust of an individualistic, capitalist modern society and that allied him briefly with Hitler's National Socialist Party. While acknowledging some of Heidegger's misgivings toward modernity as legitimate, Renaut argues that it is nevertheless wrong to equate modernity with the triumph of individualism. Here he distinguishes between individualism and subjectivity and, by offering a history of the two, powerfully redirects the course of current thinking away from potentially dangerous, reductionist views of humanity. Renaut argues that modern philosophy contains within itself two opposed ways of conceiving the human person. The first, which has its roots in Descartes and Kant, views human beings as subjects capable of arriving at universal moral judgments. The second, stemming from Leibniz, Hegel, and Nietzsche, presents human beings as independent individuals sharing nothing with others. In a careful recounting of this philosophical tradition, Renaut shows the resonances of these traditions in more recent philosophers such as Heidegger and in the social anthropology of Louis Dumont. Renaut's distinction between individualism and subjectivity has become an important issue for young thinkers dissatisfied with the intellectual tradition originating in Nietzsche and Heidegger. Moreover, his proclivity toward the Kantian tradition, combined with his insights into the shortcomings of modernity, will interest anyone concerned about today's shifting cultural attitudes toward liberalism. Originally published in 1997. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

In this major contribution to the study of the Chinese classics and comparative religion, John Henderson uses the history of exegesis to illuminate mental patterns that have universal and perennial significance for intellectual history. Henderson relates the Confucian commentarial tradition to other primary exegetical traditions, particularly the Homeric tradition, Vedanta, rabbinic Judaism, ancient and medieval Christian biblical exegesis, and Qur'anic exegesis. In making such comparisons, he discusses some basic assumptions common to all these traditions--such as that the classics or scriptures (...) are comprehensive or that they contain all significant knowledge or truth and analyzes the strategies deployed to support these presuppositions. As shown here, primary differences among commentarial or exegetical traditions arose from variations in their emphasis on one or another of these assumptions and strategies. Henderson demonstrates that exegetical modes of thought were far from arcane: they dominated the post-classical/premodern intellectual world. Some have persisted or re-emerged in modern times, particularly in ideologies such as Marxism. Written in an engaging and accessible style, Scripture, Canon, and Commentary is not only a challenging interpretation of comparative scriptural traditions but also an excellent introduction to the study of the Confucian classics. Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

David Lewis (1941-2001) was Class of 1943 University Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University. His contributions spanned philosophical logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, metaphysics, and epistemology. In On the Plurality of Worlds, he defended his challenging metaphysical position, "modal realism." He was also the author of the books Convention, Counterfactuals, Parts of Classes, and several volumes of collected papers.

My own contribution relates to twentieth-century literature, where "spatialization" enters so fundamentally into the very structure of language and the organization of narrative units that, as [Frank] Kermode is forced to concede, "Frank says quite rightly that a good deal of modern literature is designed to be apprehended thus." His deals with the literature of the past, where "spatialization" was still the tendency which had by no means yet emerged in as radical a manner as in modernity. Both may be (...) seen, and should be seen, as part of a unified theory which has the inestimable advantage of linking experimental modernism with the past in an unbroken continuity, and in viewing the present, not as a break, but rather as a limit-case, an intensification and accentuation of potentialities present in literature almost from the start. One of Kermode's essential aims, in The Sense of an Ending, was precisely to argue in favor of continuity and to reject the schismatic notion that a clean break with the past was either desirable or possible. It seems to me that he succeeded better than he knew, and that in polemicizing with spatial form" he merely perpetuates a schism which the deeper thrust of his own ideas has done much to reveal as nugatory and obsolete. Joseph Frank is professor of comparative literature and director of the Christian Gauss seminars in criticism at Princeton University. His many important contributions include The Widening Gyre: Crisis and Mastery in Modern Literature and Dostoevsky: The Seeds of Revolt, 1821-1849, for which he received the James Russell Lowell Prize of the MLA. (shrink)

What can--and what can't--philosophy do? What are its ethical risks--and its possible rewards? How does it differ from science? In Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline, Bernard Williams addresses these questions and presents a striking vision of philosophy as fundamentally different from science in its aims and methods even though there is still in philosophy "something that counts as getting it right." Written with his distinctive combination of rigor, imagination, depth, and humanism, the book amply demonstrates why Williams was one of (...) the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. Spanning his career from his first publication to one of his last lectures, the book's previously unpublished or uncollected essays address metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, as well as the scope and limits of philosophy itself. The essays are unified by Williams's constant concern that philosophy maintain contact with the human problems that animate it in the first place. As the book's editor, A. W. Moore, writes in his introduction, the title essay is "a kind of manifesto for Williams's conception of his own life's work." It is where he most directly asks "what philosophy can and cannot contribute to the project of making sense of things"--answering that what philosophy can best help make sense of is "being human." Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline is one of three posthumous books by Williams to be published by Princeton University Press. In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument was published in the fall of 2005. The Sense of the Past: Essays in the History of Philosophy is being published shortly after the present volume. (shrink)

In spite of a powerful tradition, more than two thousand years old, that in a valid argument the premises must be relevant to the conclusion, twentieth-century logicians neglected the concept of relevance until the publication of Volume I of this monumental work. Since that time relevance logic has achieved an important place in the field of philosophy: Volume II of Entailment brings to a conclusion a powerful and authoritative presentation of the subject by most of the top people working in (...) the area. Originally the aim of Volume II was simply to cover certain topics not treated in the first volume--quantification, for example--or to extend the coverage of certain topics, such as semantics. However, because of the technical progress that has occurred since the publication of the first volume, Volume II now includes other material. The book contains the work of Alasdair Urquhart, who has shown that the principal sentential systems of relevance logic are undecidable, and of Kit Fine, who has demonstrated that, although the first-order systems are incomplete with respect to the conjectured constant domain semantics, they are still complete with respect to a semantics based on "arbitrary objects." Also presented is important work by the other contributing authors, who are Daniel Cohen, Steven Giambrone, Dorothy L. Grover, Anil Gupta, Glen Helman, Errol P. Martin, Michael A. McRobbie, and Stuart Shapiro. Robert G. Wolf's bibliography of 3000 items is a valuable addition to the volume. Originally published in 1992. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

What can--and what can't--philosophy do? What are its ethical risks--and its possible rewards? How does it differ from science? In Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline , Bernard Williams addresses these questions and presents a striking vision of philosophy as fundamentally different from science in its aims and methods even though there is still in philosophy "something that counts as getting it right." Written with his distinctive combination of rigor, imagination, depth, and humanism, the book amply demonstrates why Williams was one (...) of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. Spanning his career from his first publication to one of his last lectures, the book's previously unpublished or uncollected essays address metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, as well as the scope and limits of philosophy itself. The essays are unified by Williams's constant concern that philosophy maintain contact with the human problems that animate it in the first place. As the book's editor, A. W. Moore, writes in his introduction, the title essay is "a kind of manifesto for Williams's conception of his own life's work." It is where he most directly asks "what philosophy can and cannot contribute to the project of making sense of things"--answering that what philosophy can best help make sense of is "being human." Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline is one of three posthumous books by Williams to be published by Princeton University Press. In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument was published in the fall of 2005. The Sense of the Past: Essays in the History of Philosophy is being published shortly after the present volume. (shrink)

This volume is a direct result of a conference held at Princeton University to honor George A. Miller, an extraordinary psychologist. A distinguished panel of speakers from various disciplines -- psychology, philosophy, neuroscience and artificial intelligence -- were challenged to respond to Dr. Miller's query: "What has happened to cognition? In other words, what has the past 30 years contributed to our understanding of the mind? Do we really know anything that wasn't already clear to William James?" Each participant (...) tried to stand back a little from his or her most recent work, but to address the general question from his or her particular standpoint. The chapters in the present volume derive from that occasion. (shrink)

On his death in 2007, Richard Rorty was heralded by the New York Times as “one of the world’s most influential contemporary thinkers.” Controversial on the left and the right for his critiques of objectivity and political radicalism, Rorty experienced a renown denied to all but a handful of living philosophers. In this masterly biography, Neil Gross explores the path of Rorty’s thought over the decades in order to trace the intellectual and professional journey that led him to that prominence. (...) The child of a pair of leftist writers who worried that their precocious son “wasn’t rebellious enough,” Rorty enrolled at the University of Chicago at the age of fifteen. There he came under the tutelage of polymath Richard McKeon, whose catholic approach to philosophical systems would profoundly influence Rorty’s own thought. Doctoral work at Yale led to Rorty’s landing a job at Princeton, where his colleagues were primarily analytic philosophers. With a series of publications in the 1960s, Rorty quickly established himself as a strong thinker in that tradition—but by the late 1970s Rorty had eschewed the idea of objective truth altogether, urging philosophers to take a “relaxed attitude” toward the question of logical rigor. Drawing on the pragmatism of John Dewey, he argued that philosophers should instead open themselves up to multiple methods of thought and sources of knowledge—an approach that would culminate in the publication of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature , one of the most seminal and controversial philosophical works of our time. In clear and compelling fashion, Gross sets that surprising shift in Rorty’s thought in the context of his life and social experiences, revealing the many disparate influences that contribute to the making of knowledge. As much a book about the growth of ideas as it is a biography of a philosopher, Richard Rorty will provide readers with a fresh understanding of both the man and the course of twentieth-century thought. (shrink)

Stoic physics, based entirely on the continuum concept, is one of the great original contributions in the history of physical systems. Building on The Physical World of the Greeks, the author describes the main aspects of the Stoic continuum theory, traces its origins back to pre-Stoic science and philosophy, and shows the attempts of the Stoics to work out a coherent system of thought that would explain the essential phenomena of the physical world by a few basic assumptions. Originally (...) published in 1987. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

The philosopher and historian of culture Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911) has had a significant and continuing influence on twentieth-century Continental philosophy and in a broad range of scholarly disciplines. This volume is the third to be published in Princeton University Press's projected six-volume series of his most important works. Part One makes available three of his works on hermeneutics and its history: "Schleiermacher's Hermeneutical System in Relation to Earlier Protestant Hermeneutics" (The Prize Essay of 1860); "On Understanding and Hermeneutics" (1867-68), (...) based on student lecture notes, and the "The Rise of Hermeneutics" (1900), which traces the history of hermeneutics back to Hellenistic Greece. All the addenda to this well-known essay are translated here, some for the first time. In them Dilthey articulates three philosophical aporias concerning hermeneutics and projects an ultimate convergence between understanding and explanation. Part Two provides translations of review essays by Dilthey on Buckle's use of statistical history and on Burckhardt's cultural history; an essay "Friedrich Schlosser and the Problem of Universal History;" and a talk recalling his early years as a student of Boeckh, Jakob Grimm, Mommsen, Ranke, and Ritter. It also contains the important historical essay "The Eighteenth Century and the Historical World," in which Dilthey reexamines the Enlightenment to show its significant contributions to the rise of historical consciousness. (shrink)

Benner, Erica. Machiavelli’s Ethics. Princeton, 2009. 527p bibl index afp; ISBN 9780691141763, $75.00; ISBN 9780691141770 pbk, $35.00.

Reviewed in CHOICE, April 2010

This major new study of Machiavelli’s moral and political philosophy by Benner (Yale) argues that most readings of Machiavelli suffer from a failure to appreciate his debt to Greek sources, particularly the Socratic tradition of moral and political philosophy. Benner argues that when read in the light of his Greek sources, Machiavelli appears as much less the immoralist or (...) sophist he often is taken for and instead as a serious moral philosopher very much concerned with the republican ideals of justice and the rule of law. The author does not ignore Machiavelli’s more infamous dicta, but argues that a careful reading shows that they are expressions of views he ultimately rejects. Particularly noteworthy here is her careful attention to Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories.
Benner’s reading of Machiavelli is far too complex and subtle for such a brief summary. Her research is meticulous and her arguments finely honed. This important contribution to both Machiavelli studies and the history of political philosophy will be indispensable for scholars.
Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students and faculty/researchers. — B. T. Harding

Endorsements:

"Machiavelli's Ethics is a superb scholarly book. Erica Benner does truly impressive work in analyzing Machiavelli's views on the most fundamental ethical issues--including necessity and virtue, justice and injustice, and ends and means. She shows, with very solid evidence, that Machiavelli did in fact worry a lot about justice and that he put it at the core of his republican theory."--Maurizio Viroli, author of Niccolò's Smile: A Biography of Machiavelli

"Machiavelli's Ethics is excellent--learned, subtle, highly original, and a constant pleasure to read. And, since it is really a study of Machiavelli's thought in its entirety, it is also the first book of its kind. Its originality lies in taking seriously the claim by some sixteenth- and seventeenth-century readers--notably Bacon, Spinoza, and Alberico Gentili--that Machiavelli was essentially a moral and political philosopher. Erica Benner does a brilliant job of resurrecting this neglected Machiavelli."--Giulia Sissa, University of California, Los Angeles


About the book, from the publisher:
Machiavelli's Ethics challenges the most entrenched understandings of Machiavelli, arguing that he was a moral and political philosopher who consistently favored the rule of law over that of men, that he had a coherent theory of justice, and that he did not defend the "Machiavellian" maxim that the ends justify the means. By carefully reconstructing the principled foundations of his political theory, Erica Benner gives the most complete account yet of Machiavelli's thought. She argues that his difficult and puzzling style of writing owes far more to ancient Greek sources than is usually recognized, as does his chief aim: to teach readers not how to produce deceptive political appearances and rhetoric, but how to see through them. Drawing on a close reading of Greek authors--including Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato, and Plutarch--Benner identifies a powerful and neglected key to understanding Machiavelli.

This important new interpretation is based on the most comprehensive study of Machiavelli's writings to date, including a detailed examination of all of his major works: The Prince, The Discourses, The Art of War, and Florentine Histories. It helps explain why readers such as Bacon and Rousseau could see Machiavelli as a fellow moral philosopher, and how they could view The Prince as an ethical and republican text. By identifying a rigorous structure of principles behind Machiavelli's historical examples, the book should also open up fresh debates about his relationship to later philosophers, including Rousseau, Hobbes, and Kant.
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Alonzo Church's mathematical work on computability and undecidability is well-known indeed, and we seem to have an excellent understanding of the context in which it arose. The approach Church took to the underlying conceptual issues, by contrast, is less well understood. Why, for example, was "Church's Thesis" put forward publicly only in April 1935, when it had been formulated already in February/March 1934? Why did Church choose to formulate it then in terms of Gödel's general recursiveness, not his own λ (...) -definability as he had done in 1934? A number of letters were exchanged between Church and Paul Bernays during the period from December 1934 to August 1937; they throw light on critical developments in Princeton during that period and reveal novel aspects of Church's distinctive contribution to the analysis of the informal notion of effective calculability. In particular, they allow me to give informed, though still tentative answers to the questions I raised; the character of my answers is reflected by an alternative title for this paper, Why Church needed Gödel's recursiveness for his Thesis. In Section 5, I contrast Church's analysis with that of Alan Turing and explore, in the very last section, an analogy with Dedekind's investigation of continuity. (shrink)

These are the proceedings of the Workshop on Quantum Logic held in Erice (Sicily), December 2 - 9, 1979, at the Ettore Hajorana Centre for Scientific Culture. A conference of this sort was originally proposed by Giuliano Toraldo di Francia, who suggested the idea to Antonino Zichichi, and thus laid the foundation for the Workshop. To both of them we express our appreciation and thanks, also on behalf of the other participants, for having made this conference possible. There were approximately (...) fifty participants; their names and institutions are listed in the text. Quantum logic, which has now a history of some forty or more years, has seen remarkable growth during the sixties and seventies. The papers in the present volume presuppose, by and large, some acquaintance with the elements of the subject. These may be found in the well-known books by J.H. Jauch (Foundations of Quantum Hechanics; Reading, 1968), V.S. Varadarajan (Geometry of Quantum Theory: Princeton, 1968), and C. Piron (Foundations of Quantum Theory; New York, 1976). The initial program for the conference listed about twenty-five invited papers. But in the context of a very active and qualified attendance, other contributions were offered. This volume contains all of them. The program listed six main topics: I. Classification or different areas of quantum logic, and open problems. II. Comparison and unification of different approaches to quantum theories; problems of interpretation. III. Formal quantum logic; axiomatics. IV. Hodal interpretations of quantum logic. v vi FOREWORD V. Quantum set theory. (shrink)

Bibliographical Note Abstract Explaining things - introductory remarks General attitudes and the standard view Requirements for a definition Life as the natural selection of replicators Life as an autopoietic system Life as a semiotic phenomenon Downward causation Implicitly well-defined general objects Emergence as explanatory strategy: the observer reappears Concluding remarks Acknowledgements Notes References Bibliographical note: Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Princeton History of Science Workshop on "Growing Explanations", Princeton University, February 15, 1997; and at (...) the meeting in the International Society for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Biology (ISHPSSB) in Seattle, USA, July 16-21, 1997. Different parts were published in a modified form as 1) Emmeche (1997): "Autopoietic systems, replicators, and the search for a meaningful biologic definition of life", Ultimate Reality and Meaning 20 (4): 244-264 [the original title was: "Is the definition of life important?"], and 2) Emmeche (1998): "Defining life as a semiotic phenomenon", Cybernetics & Human Knowing 5 (1): 3-17. The present web version below contains the complete argument of both articles. A further thoroughly rewritten version, accessible also for non-specialists, was made in collaboration with Charbel Niño El-Hani, and translated by him into Portuguese as a contribution to a book (this version can be found at www.nbi.dk/~emmeche/coPubl/99.DefVida.CE.EH.html). (shrink)

What can--and what can't--philosophy do? What are its ethical risks--and its possible rewards? How does it differ from science? In Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline, Bernard Williams addresses these questions and presents a striking vision of philosophy as fundamentally different from science in its aims and methods even though there is still in philosophy "something that counts as getting it right." Written with his distinctive combination of rigor, imagination, depth, and humanism, the book amply demonstrates why Williams was one of (...) the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. Spanning his career from his first publication to one of his last lectures, the book's previously unpublished or uncollected essays address metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, as well as the scope and limits of philosophy itself. The essays are unified by Williams's constant concern that philosophy maintain contact with the human problems that animate it in the first place. As the book's editor, A. W. Moore, writes in his introduction, the title essay is "a kind of manifesto for Williams's conception of his own life's work." It is where he most directly asks "what philosophy can and cannot contribute to the project of making sense of things"--answering that what philosophy can best help make sense of is "being human." Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline is one of three posthumous books by Williams to be published by Princeton University Press. In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument was published in the fall of 2005. The Sense of the Past: Essays in the History of Philosophy is being published shortly after the present volume. (shrink)

Since its original publication in Chinese in the 1930s, this work has been accepted by Chinese scholars as the most important contribution to the study of their country's philosophy. In 1952 the book was published by Princeton University Press in an English translation by the distinguished scholar of Chinese history, Derk Bodde, "the dedicated translator of Fung Yu-lan's huge history of Chinese philosophy" (New York Times Book Review). Available for the first time in paperback, it remains the most complete (...) work on the subject in any language. Volume I covers the period of the philosophers, from the beginnings to around 100 B.C., a philosophical period as remarkable as that of ancient Greece. Volume II discusses a period lesser known in the West--the period of classical learning, from the second century B.C. to the twentieth century. (shrink)

In her account of a debate held at Princeton University between herself and Peter Singer, the lawyer and disability rights activist Harriet McBryde Johnson criticizes the ‘terrible purity of Singer's vision’. Although she certainly disagrees with the substance of Singer's arguments concerning disability and infanticide, this remark is best understood as a critique of their form. In this paper, I attempt to make sense of this critique. I argue that Singer's characteristic mode of argument, with its appeal to a (...) universal, neutral point of view, makes it impossible for McBryde Johnson to give voice to her particular experience and thus obscures her humanity. In order to clarify the positive contribution that an appeal to particular experience may make to moral reasoning, I draw a parallel with the transformative effects of the experience of beauty, arguing that McBryde Johnson's writing ought to be regarded as both morally and philosophically instructive. (shrink)

Patrick Aidan Heelan’s The Observable offers the reader a completely articulated development of his 1965 philosophy of quantum physics, Quantum Mechanics and Objectivity. In this previously unpublished study dating back more than a half a century, Heelan brings his background as both a physicist and a philosopher to his reflections on Werner Heisenberg’s physical philosophy. Including considerably broader connections to the contributions of Niels Bohr, Wolfgang Pauli, and Albert Einstein, this study also reflects Heelan’s experience in Eugene Wigner’s laboratory (...) at Princeton along with his reflections on working with Erwin Schrödinger dating from Heelan’s years at the Institute for Advanced Cosmology in Dublin. A contribution to continental philosophy of science, the phenomenological and hermeneutic resources applied in this book to the physical and ontological paradoxes of quantum physics, especially in connection with laboratory science and measurement, theory and model making, will enrich students of the history of science as well as those interested in different approaches to the historiography of science. University courses in the philosophy of physics will find this book indispensable as a resource and invaluable for courses in the history of science. (shrink)

In this fresh, original analysis of Marxist thought, Cornel West makes a significant contribution to today's debates about the relevance of Marxism by putting the issue of ethics squarely on the Marxist agenda. West, professor of religion and director of the Afro-American studies program at Princeton University, shows that not only was ethics an integral part of the development of Marx's own thinking throughout his career, but that this crucial concern has been obscured by such leading and influential interpreters (...) as Engels, Kautsky, Lukcs, and others who diverted Marx's theory into narrow forms of positivism, economism, and Hegelianism. (shrink)