Online research in philosophy

In today's business world, ethics is not simply a peripheral concern of executive boards or a set of supposed constraints on free enterprise. Ethics stands at the very core of our working lives and of society as a whole, defining the public image of the business community and the ways in which individual companies and people behave. What people do at work--and how they think about work--determines their attitudes and aspirations, affecting and even structuring their personal lives and habits. Working (...) from this premise, Honest Work: A Business Ethics Reader provides a practical overview of business ethics that concentrates on the ethical problems and dilemmas students are most likely to face in their prospective work environments. Classic and recent articles and cases cover a broad spectrum of issues and concerns--from private ethical dilemmas to larger considerations of corporate values--and propose guidelines for thinking about the business world in a moral context. Each reading and case is followed by lively questions for discussion. Offering a welcome alternative to the impersonal tone of most business ethics texts, the editors address students in an appealing and conversational manner. They provide engaging chapter introductions that include personal narratives and also present the ideas of great philosophers in a unique way--as emails. Ideal for introductory undergraduate and MBA courses in business ethics, Honest Work: A Business Ethics Reader can be read as a coherent narrative but also offers instructors great flexibility, as its various chapters, readings, and cases can be pursued in almost any order. A Companion Website featuring chapter objectives and summaries, study questions, self-tests, and off-site links of interest will soon be available. An Instructor's Manual with Test Bank is available to adopters. (shrink)

Philosophy is a truly exciting and accessible subject, and this engaging text acquaints students with the core problems of philosophy and the many ways in which they have been answered. The book insists that philosophy is very much alive today but is also deeply rooted in the past. Accordingly, Introducing Philosophy combines substantial original sources from significant works in the history of philosophy with detailed commentary and explanation that help to clarify the readings. The selections range from the oldest known (...) fragments to cutting-edge essays in feminism, multiculturalism, and cognitive science. -/- Addressing the needs of a new generation of students, editor Robert Solomon has enhanced the eighth edition of Introducing Philosophy with more than 300 new study and review questions. Appearing at the ends of selections, sections, and chapters, these questions provide immediate feedback for students. They encourage students to articulate the central ideas of what they have just read, instead of just "passing through" on the way to the next reading. Each chapter is followed by a summary, a glossary, and a bibliography with suggestions for further readings. Important philosophical terms are carefully introduced within the text and also summarized at the end of each chapter, and brief biographies of the philosophers are provided at the end of the book. The eighth edition also features several new selections that expand and update chapters on religion, knowledge, mind and body, freedom, ethics, politics, and aesthetics. (shrink)

Introduction -- What is ethics? -- Ethics and religion -- The history of ethics -- Ethical questions -- What is the good life? -- Why be good : the problem of justification -- Why be rational : the place of reason in ethics -- Which is right : ethical dilemmas -- Ethical concepts -- Universality -- Prudence and morals -- Happiness and the good -- Egoism and altruism -- Virtue and the virtues -- Facts and values -- Justice and equality (...) -- Rights and duties -- Ethical theories and approaches -- Teleology -- Utilitarianism -- Kant and deontology -- Social contract theory -- Ethical relativism -- Pluralism and history -- Feminist ethics -- Prologue : ethics and religion -- The Hebrew Bible -- The Ten commandments -- The New Testament -- The Qur'an -- Ancient Asia -- India : Hinduism and Buddhism -- Buddhism -- China : Confucianism and Taoism -- China : Taoism -- Plato -- Aristotle -- Epicurus -- Augustine -- Thomas Hobbes -- David Hume -- Immanuel Kant -- Mary Wollstonecraft -- John Stuart Mill -- Friedrich Nietzsche -- John Rawls. (shrink)

The ancient legacy of philosophy -- Consciousness: what a concept! -- God, nature, and spirituality -- Rationality, truth, and the problem of knowledge -- Freedom and responsibility -- How should we live?: morality and ethics -- Philosophy, happiness, and the meaning of life -- Conclusion: why philosophy?

Introducing Philosophy: A Text with integrated Readings , ninth edition, is an engaging introduction to the basic philosophical problems and their potential alternative solutions. It is a topically organized hybrid that includes Soloman's own discussion along with excerpts from prominent thinkers of the last 2500 years on topics such as the nature of reality, the existence and nature of God, the possibility of human knowledge, the mystery of the self, the nature of truth, and the essence of freedom.

We live our lives through our emotions, writes Robert Solomon, and it is our emotions that give our lives meaning. What interests or fascinates us, who we love, what angers us, what moves us, what bores us--all of this defines us, gives us character, constitutes who we are. In True to Our Feelings, Solomon illuminates the rich life of the emotions--why we don't really understand them, what they really are, and how they make us human and give meaning to life. (...) Emotions have recently become a highly fashionable area of research in the sciences, with brain imaging uncovering valuable clues as to how we experience our feelings. But while Solomon provides a guide to this cutting-edge research, as well as to what others--philosophers and psychologists--have said on the subject, he also emphasizes the personal and ethical character of our emotions. He shows that emotions are not something that happen to us, nor are they irrational in the literal sense--rather, they are judgements we make about the world, and they are strategies for living in it. Fear, anger, love, guilt, jealousy, compassion--they are all essential to our values, to living happily, healthily, and well. Solomon highlights some of the dramatic ways that emotions fit into our ethics and our sense of the good life, how we can make our emotional lives more coherent with our values and be more "true to our feelings" and cultivate emotional integrity. The story of our lives is the story of our passions. We fall in love, we are gripped by scientific curiosity and religious fervor, we fear death and grieve for others, we humble ourselves in envy, jealousy, and resentment. In this remarkable book, Robert Solomon shares his fascination with the emotions and illuminates our passions in an exciting new way. (shrink)

Dark Feelings, Grim Thoughts is about the early work of Camus and Sartre, including Camus's The Stranger, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Plague, and Sartre's Nausea, No Exit and the concepts of Bad Faith and 'Being-for-Others'.

THE BIG QUESTIONS: A SHORT INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY tackles the tough issues and helps you form your own opinions while presenting the best philosophical ...

Philosophy is an exciting and accessible subject, and this engaging text acquaints students with the core problems of philosophy and the many ways in which they are and have been answered. Introducing Philosophy: A Text with Integrated Readings, Eighth Edition, insists both that philosophy is very much alive today and that it is deeply rooted in the past. Accordingly, it combines substantial original sources from significant works in the history of philosophy and current philosophy with detailed commentary and explanation that (...) help to clarify the readings. The selections range from the oldest known fragments to cutting-edge essays in feminism, multiculturalism, and cognitive science. At the end of each chapter is a summary, a list of review questions, a glossary, and a bibliography with suggestions for further reading. Important philosophical terms are carefully introduced in the text and also summarized at the end of each chapter, and brief biographies of the philosophers are provided at the end of the book. New to the Eighth Edition: Addressing the needs of a new generation of students, Robert C. Solomon has included for the first time more than 300 study and review questions. Appearing throughout the text and at the end of each chapter, these questions require immediate feedback from students. They encourage students to articulate the central ideas of what they have just read, instead of just "passing through" on the way to the next reading . New selections expand and update the chapters on religion, knowledge, mind and body, freedom, ethics, justice, and beauty. The selections include work by Charles Hartshorne, Cory Juhl, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, Sextus Empiricus, Edmund L. Gettier, David Braddon-Mitchell and Frank Jackson, Colin McGinn, Daniel Dennett, Harry Frankfurt, Gilbert Harman, Emma Goldman, and Arthur C. Danto. A companion website at www.oup.com/us/solomon8e features 300 study and review questions (100 multiple-choice, 100 true-or-false, and 100 fill-in-the-blank), discussion questions, chapter overviews and summaries, topical links, suggestions for further reading, and PowerPoint lecture aids. (shrink)

Philosophy has as much to do with feelings as it does with thoughts and thinking. Philosophy, accordingly, requires not only emotional sensitivity but an understanding of the emotions, not as curious but marginal psychological phenomena but as the very substance of life. In this, the second book in a series devoted to his work on the emotions, Robert Solomon presents a defense of the emotions and of sentimentality against the background of what he perceives as a long history of abuse (...) in philosophy and social thought and art and literary criticism. The title piece reopens a classic debate about the role of sentimentality in art and literature. In subsequent chapters, Solomon discusses not only such "moral sentiments" as sympathy and compassion but also grief, gratitude, love, horror, and even vengeance. He also defends, with appropriate caution, the "seven deadly sins." The emotions, at least some emotions--are essential to a well-lived life. They are or can be virtues, features of the human condition without which civilized life would be unimaginable. (shrink)

: What is Hell? Here is one answer: five straight days of conversation with a garrulous, narcissistic, rather depraved lawyer. This is the text, in fact the entire content, of Camus's brilliant quasi-religious novel, The Fall. The book has been read as a meditation on the "deadly" sin of pride, introducing a host of ethical and theological questions. I interpret the book as the story of a virtuous, contented, vulnerable man who is struck down by his own mistaken self-reflection and (...) then forced to re-establish his superiority by way of the resentment that replaces his pride. (shrink)

In this essay, I want to reconsider sympathy as a “natural” emotion or sentiment. Adam Smith famously defended it as such (as did his friend David Hume) but both used the term ambiguously and in a different sense than we use it today. Nevertheless, it seems to me that Smith got it quite right, that the basis of morality and justice is to be found in the realm of affect rather than in theory and principles alone, and that sympathy is (...) a “natural” or should we say a “basic” emotion. But that means that morality may not be an exclusively human characteristic, as many philosophers (including Smith and Hume) have assumed. But some contemporary thinking in psychology and philosophy makes that extension plausible. (shrink)

Philosophers since Aristotle have explored emotion, and the study of emotion has always been essential to the love of wisdom. In recent years Anglo-American philosophers have rediscovered and placed new emphasis on this very old discipline. The view that emotions are ripe for philosophical analysis has been supported by a considerable number of excellent publications. In this volume, Robert Solomon brings together some of the best Anglo-American philosophers now writing on the philosophy of emotion, with chapters from philosophers who have (...) distinguished themselves in the field of emotion research and have interdisciplinary interests, particularly in the social and biological sciences. The reader will find a lively variety of positions on topics such as the nature of emotion, the category of "emotion," the rationality of emotions, the relationship between an emotion and its expression, the relationship between emotion, motivation, and action, the biological nature versus social construction of emotion, the role of the body in emotion, the extent of freedom and our control of emotions, the relationship between emotion and value, and the very nature and warrant of theories of emotion. In addition, this book acknowledges that it is impossible to study the emotions today without engaging with contemporary psychology and the neurosciences, and moreover engages them with zeal. Thus the essays included here should appeal to a broad spectrum of emotion researchers in the various theoretical, experimental, and clinical branches of psychology, in addition to theorists in philosophy, philosophical psychology, moral psychology, and cognitive science, the social sciences, and literary theory. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the most popular and controversial philosophers of the last 150 years. Narcissistic, idiosyncratic, hyperbolic, irreverent--never has a philosopher been appropriated, deconstructed, and scrutinized by such a disparate array of groups, movements, and schools of thought. Adored by many for his passionate ideas and iconoclastic style, he is also vilified for his lack of rigor, apparent cruelty, and disdain for moral decency. In Living with Nietzsche, Solomon suggests that we read Nietzsche from a very different point (...) of view, as a provocative writer who means to transform the way we view our lives. This means taking Nietzsche personally. Rather than focus on the "true" Nietzsche or trying to determine "what Nietzsche really meant" by his seemingly random and often contradictory pronouncements about "the Big Questions" of philosophy, Solomon reminds us that Nietzsche is not a philosopher of abstract ideas but rather of the dazzling personal insight, the provocative challenge, the incisive personal probe. He does not try to reveal the eternal verities but he does powerfully affect his readers, goading them to see themselves in new and different ways. It is Nietzsche's compelling invitation to self-scrutiny that fascinates us, engages us, and guides us to a "rich inner life." Ultimately, Solomon argues, Nietzsche is an example as well as a promulgator of "passionate inwardness," a life distinguished by its rich passions, exquisite taste, and a sense of personal elegance and excellence. (shrink)

Not Passion's Slave is a collection of Solomon's most significant essay-length publications on the nature of emotions over the past twenty-five years. He develops two essential themes throughout the volume: firstly, he presents a "cognitive" theory of emotions in which emotions are construed primarily as evaluative judgments; secondly, he proposes an "existentialist" perspective in which he defends the idea that we are responsible for our emotions and, in a limited sense, "choose" them. The final section presents his current philosophical position (...) on the seeming "passivity" of the passions. Ultimately, Solomon advocates the idea that we have control over, and are essentially responsible for, the emotional and existential quality of our lives. (shrink)

: Fate and fatalism have been powerful notions in many societies, from Homer's Iliad, the Greek moira, the South Asian karma, and the Chinese ming in the ancient world to the modern concept of "destiny." But fate and fatalism are now treated with philosophical disdain or as a clearly inferior version of what is better considered as "determinism." The concepts of fate and fatalism are defended here, and fatalism is clearly distinguished from determinism. Reference is made to the ancient Greek (...) and Chinese versions to explore the various dimensions of these ideas. (shrink)

Should the responsibilities of business managers be understood independently of the social circumstances and “market forces”that surround them, or (in accord with empiricism and the social sciences) are agents and their choices shaped by their circumstances,free only insofar as they act in accordance with antecedently established dispositions, their “character”? Virtue ethics, of which I consider myself a proponent, shares with empiricism this emphasis on character as well as an affinity with the social sciences. But recent criticisms of both empiricist and (...) virtue ethical accounts of character deny even this apparent compromise between agency and environment. Here is an account of character that emphasizes dynamic interaction both in the formation and in the interplay between personal agency and responsibility on the one hand and social pressures and the environment on the other. (shrink)

What is an Emotion?, 2/e, draws together important selections from classical and contemporary theories and debates about emotion. Utilizing sources from a variety of subject areas including philosophy, psychology, and biology, editor Robert Solomon provides an illuminating look at the "affective" side of psychology and philosophy from the perspective of the world's great thinkers. Part One of the book features five classic readings from Aristotle, the Stoics, Descartes, Spinoza, and Hume. Part Two offers classic and contemporary theories from the social (...) sciences, presenting selections from such thinkers as Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud alongside recent work from Paul Ekman, Catherine Lutz, and others. Part Three presents some of the extensive work on emotion that developed in Europe over the past century. Part Four includes essays representing the discussion of emotions among British and American analytic philosophers. The volume is enhanced by a comprehensive introduction by the editor and a multidisciplinary bibliography. What is an Emotion? is appropriate for any course in which the nature of emotion plays a major role, including philosophy of emotion, philosophy of mind, history of psychology, emotion and motivation, moral psychology, and history and psychology of consciousness courses. The second edition provides much more material on emotions in the sciences and more from recent philosophical theories, encompassing recent shifts in theorizing on three fronts: the wealth of new information on the central nervous system and the brain; new developments in cross-cultural research and anthropology; and the recent emphasis on "cognition" in emotion, both in philosophy and the social sciences. New selections include work by Antonio Damasio, Ronald De Sousa, Paul Ekman, Nico Frijda, Patricia Greenspan, Paul Griffiths, Richard Lazarus, Catherine Lutz, Martha Nussbaum, and Michael Stocker. (shrink)

Among the figures and topics addressed are Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, Husserl and phenomenology, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, ...

Jerome Neu has been one of the most prominent voices in the philosophy of emotions for more than twenty years, that is, before the field was even a field. His Emotions, Thought, and Therapy (1977) was one of its most original and ground-breaking books. Neu is an uncompromising defender of what has been called the cognitive theory of emotions (as am I). But the ambiguity, controversy, and confusions own by the notion of a cognitive theory of emotion is what I (...) would like to focus on here. In so doing I will indicate some of the way sin which my own theory has developed. (shrink)

As we enter the new millennium, there is an overriding question facing global corporate free enterprise, and that is whether the corporations that now or will control and affect so much of the planet’s humanity and resources can demonstrate not only theirprofitability but their integrity. The old quasi-theological arguments still persist, whether multinational corporations and capitalism ingeneral best serve humanity; whether corporations and capitalism are good or evil or whether they are, at best, amoral; whethercorporations can have a conscience; and (...) whether responsibility can be expected of them. (shrink)

What is Justice? Classic and Contemporary Readings, 2/e, brings together many of the most prominent and influential writings on the topic of justice, providing an exceptionally comprehensive introduction to the subject. It places special emphasis on "social contract" theories of justice, both ancient and modern, culminating in the monumental work of John Rawls and various responses to his work. It also deals with questions of retributive justice and punishment, topics that are often excluded from other volumes on justice. This new (...) edition features expanded and updated readings on justice and punishment and includes more recent responses to John Rawls's work. Part One of the book features selections from classical sources including Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, and Mencius, as well as excerpts from the Bible and the Koran. Part Two provides readings on the state of nature and the social contract, from Hobbes and Locke to Rawls, Nozick, Gauthier, and Baier. Part Three includes the Declaration of Independence and Amendments to the U.S. Constitution in addition to selections on property and social justice by Locke, Hume, Adam Smith, Engels, Marx, Mill, and several contemporary authors. Part Four offers a wide variety of readings on punishment, several of which address the death penalty. Part Five begins with selections from Rawls's work and includes responses from Dworkin, Nagel, Nozick, MacIntyre, Sandel, Walzer, Okin, and Rawls himself. Each selection is preceded by a brief introduction and each of the five parts opens with an introduction. The volume is further enhanced by a general introduction and an updated and extensive bibliography. Ideal for a wide variety of courses including social and political philosophy, ethics, philosophy of law, and contemporary moral problems, What Is Justice?, 2/e, does not assume any philosophical or specialized background. It is also engaging reading for anyone interested in justice. (shrink)

Is business ethics a contradiction in terms? Absolutely not, says Robert Solomon. In fact, he maintains that sound ethics is a necessary precondition of any long-term business enterprise, and that excellence in business must exist on the foundation of values that most of us hold dear. Drawing on twenty years of experience consulting with major corporations on ethics, Solomon clarifies the difficult ethical choices all people in business are faced with from time to time. He takes an "Aristotelian" approach to (...) ethical questions, reminding readers that a corporation--like an individual--is embedded in a community, and that corporate values such as fairness and honesty are meaningless until transformed into action. Values--coupled with action--become virtues, and virtues make possible any good business corporate relationship. Without a base of shared values, trust and mutual benefits, today's national and international business world will fall apart. In keeping with his conviction that virtue and profit must thrive together, Solomon both examines the ways in which deficient values actually destroy businesses, and debunks the pervasive myths that encourage unethical business practices. Complete with a working catalog of virtues designed to illustrate the importance of integrity in any business situation, this compelling handbook contains a goldmine of wisdom for either the small business manager or the corporate executive struggling with ethical issues. (shrink)

Fifty years ago, two Princeton professors established game theory as an important new branch of applied mathematics. Gametheory has become a celebrated discipline in its own right, and it now plays a prestigious role in many disciplines, including ethics,due in particular to the neo-Hobbesian thinking of David Gauthier and others. Now it is perched at the edge of business ethics. I believethat it is dangerous and demeaning. It makes us look the wrong way at business, reinforcing a destructive obsession with (...) measurableoutcomes and a false sense of competition. It falsely characterizes or insidiously advocates a style of human behavior that is utterlyunacceptable. To put the matter quite crudely, a person who actually practiced the form of "rationality" advocated by game theory wouldbe something of a monster. (shrink)

part 1: lecture 1. What is existentialism? ; lecture 2. Albert Camus : The stranger, part I ; lecture 3. Camus : The stranger, part II ; lecture 4. Camus : The myth of Sisyphus ; lecture 5. Camus : The plague and The fall ; lecture 6. Camus : The fall, part II ; lecture 7. Soren Kierkegaard : On becoming a Christian ; lecture 8. Kierkegaard on subjective truth ; lecture 9. Kierkegaard's existential dialectic ; lecture 10. Friedrich (...) Nietzsche on Nihilism and the death of God ; lecture 11. Nietzsche, the immortalist ; lecture 12. Neitzsche on freedom, fate and responsibility -- Part 2: lecture 1. Nietzsche, the Ubermensch and the will to power ; lecture 2. Three grand inquisitors, Dostoevsky, Kafka, Hesse ; lecture 3. Husserl, Heidegger and phenomenology ; lecture 4. Heidegger on the world and the self ; lecture 5. Heidegger on authenticity ; lecture 6. Jean-Paul Sartre at war ; lecture 7. Sartre on emotions and responsibility ; lecture 8. Sartre's phenomenology ; lecture 9. Satre on bad faith ; lecture 10. Sartre's Being-for-others and No exit ; lecture 11. Sartre on sex and love ; lecture 12. From existentialism to postmodernism. (shrink)

The Joy of Philosophy is a return to some of the perennial questions of philosophy--questions about the meaning of life; about death and tragedy; about the respective roles of rationality and passion in the good life; about love, compassion, and revenge; about honesty, deception, and betrayal; and about who we are and how we think about who we are. Recapturing the heart-felt confusion and excitement that originally brings us all to philosophy, internationally renowned teacher and lecturer Robert C. Solomon offers (...) both a critique of contemporary philosophy and an invitation to engage in philosophy in a different way. He attempts to save philosophy from itself and its self-imposed diet of thin arguments and logical analysis to recover the richness and complexity of life in thought. Solomon defends the passionate life in contrast to the life of thoughtful contemplation idealized by so many philosophers, attempting to recapture the kind of philosophy that Nietzsche celebrated as a "joyful wisdom.". (shrink)

This is a greatly abridged adaptation of Solomon and Higgins' 1995 OUP publication, A Short History of Philosophy. As in the longer book, the authors offer a guided tour of the full panorama of philosophy. Here, however, they concentrate on a few highlights of world philosophical history, offering the general reader a quick and painless introduction to the world's great philosophers.

Death and Philosophy presents a wide ranging and fascinating variety of different philosophical, aesthetic and literary perspectives on death. Death raises key questions such as whether life has meaning of life in the face of death, what the meaning of "life after death" might be and whether death is part of a narrative that can be retold in different ways, and considers the various types of death, such as brain death, that challenge mind-body dualism. The essays also include explorations of (...) Chinese, Japanese and Tibetan perspectives on death and why death in some cultures, such as in Mexico's day of the dead, is celebrated. (shrink)

In this essay, we argue that trust is a dynamic emotional relationship which entails responsibility. Trust is not a social substance, a medium, or a mysterious entity but rather a set of social practices, defined by our choices, to trust or not to trust. We discuss the differences and the relationship between trust and trustworthiness, and we distinguish several different kinds or “levels” of trust, simple trust, basic trust, “blind” trust, and authentic trust. We then argue that trust as an (...) emotional practice, can be “willful,” voluntary and amatter of personal responsibility. (shrink)

The virtue of moral psychology is that it emphasizes what is most human in business, as opposed to the more bloodless conceptsof “obligation,” “duty,” “responsibility” and rights.” The heart of moral psychology is to be found in such concrete phenomena as fear, love, affection, antipathy, loyalty, jealousy, anger, resentment, avarice, ambition, pride, and cowardice. In this essay, I want to explore two of the core virtues of the corporation, conceived of as a community, the “sentiments” of care and compassion. These (...) were taken to be the very core of ethics by Adam Smith. I want to distinguish care and compassion from each other and both from the more principled and rule-bound conceptions of ethics that still dominate philosophy. (shrink)

In this accessible and comprehensive work, Robert Solomon and Kathleen Higgins cover the entire history of philosophy--ancient, medieval, and modern, from cultures both East and West--in its broader historical and cultural contexts. Major philosophers and movements are discussed along with less well-known but interesting figures. The authors examine the early Greek, Indic, and Chinese philosophers and the mythological traditions that preceded them, as well as the great religious philosophies, including Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, and Taoism. Easily understandable to students without specialized (...) knowledge of philosophy, A Short History of Philosophy demonstrates the relevance of philosophy to our times, illuminating the impact of the revolutions wrought by science, industry, colonialism, and sectarian warfare; the two world wars and the Holocaust; and the responses of philosophy in the schools of existentialism, postmodernism, feminism, and multiculturalism. In addition, the authors provide their own twists and interpretations of events, resulting in a broad view of the nature of philosophy as an intellectual discipline and its sometimes odd and dramatic consequences. (shrink)

This book broadens the inquiry into emotion to comprehend a comparative cultural outlook. It begins with an overview of recent work in the West, and then proceeds to the main business of scrutinizing various relevant issues from both Asian and comparative perspectives. Original essays by experts in the field. Finally, Robert Solomon comments and summarizes.

Spinosa, Flores, and Dreyfus have made some valuable suggestions about the important but (in philosophy) much neglected concept of entrepreneurship. An entrepreneur, in the classical economists? lexicon, is a person who founds, organizes, and manages a business. In more modern conversation, he or she is a business hero or heroine. Nowhere is the new emphasis on entrepreneurship more evident than in our largest corporations. The authors analyse the entrepreneur not as an eccentric or a maverick but in terms a specific (...) way of operating within existing social practices. They reject the still prevalent caricature of the avaricious entrepreneur in the grip of greed as well as the too ?genius'?oriented conception of the inventor who cannot manage his own affairs, much less a corporation. An entrepreneur, on their account, is someone who knows how to notice and ?hold on to? an anomaly and creates a market, sometimes where there was no market at all. They argue that entrepreneurship essentially involves conversation. It is not mere inventiveness. This ?reconfiguration? of entrepreneurship explains a great deal about what many corporations ? at considerable expense ? are learning about their own activities and operations, and many established and successful companies are struggling to transform themselves in just the direction that Spinosa, Flores, and Dreyfus have outlined. (shrink)