This book is about Enlightenment ideas of "character." It argues for their central importance in eighteenth-century thought and culture. The scope of this volume extends well beyond the confines of literary history. It examines discussions of race, nation, the self, virtue, sociability, and historical progress. The specially commissioned essays in this volume are the first, collectively, to address the broader significance of Enlightenment "character," and to do so from an interdisciplinary perspective. The focus is on the Scottish Enlightenment, but contributors (...) consider these debates in their international contexts and in relation to parallel developments in Britain, Europe, and America. (shrink)

The purpose of the following text is to give readers a general introduction to Gordon Pask’s conversation theory, which is considered here to be a cybernetic and epistemological account of concept-forming and concept-sharing through conversational discourse and practice. While Pask devoted three lengthy tomes to articulate the theory and its applications, I believe it is necessary to give readers who are interested in conversation theory a general introduction to what I believe are the key features of his work in this (...) area. I argue that conversation theory should be considered an inferential account of the theory of concepts rather than a representational account, by virtue of Pask’s argument that a concept must be a process that involves many other concepts. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to compile a selection of the various formalisms found in conversation theory to introduce readers to Pask's discursive algebra. In this way, the text demonstrates how concept sharing and concept formation by means of the interaction of two participants may be formalized. The approach taken in this study is to examine the formal notation system used by Pask and demonstrate how such formalisms may be used to represent concept sharing and concept formation through conversation. (...) The compilation of the discursive algebra using the framework provided by conversation theory could potentially be used as an auxiliary framework to study conversational interactions in multi-agent systems theory. (shrink)

The Essays on the Active Powers of Man was Thomas Reid's last major work. It was conceived as part of one large work, intended as a final synoptic statement of his philosophy. The first and larger part was published three years earlier as Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man. These two works are united by Reid's basic philosophy of common sense, which sets out native principles by which the mind operates in both its intellectual and active aspects. The (...) Active Powers shows how these principles are involved in volition, action, and the ability to judge morally. Reid gives an original twist to a libertarian and realist tradition that was prominently represented in eighteenth-century British thought by such thinkers as Samuel Clarke and Richard Price. (shrink)

This volume assembles ten studies of the life and work of Thomas Harriot (1560-1621). These are based on lectures that have been given annually at Oriel College, Oxford since 1990, by such authorities as Hugh Trevor Roper, David Quinn and John D. North. The contributions to Thomas Harriot. An Elizabethan man of science shed new light on all the main aspects of Harriot's life and stand as an important contribution to the re-evaluation of one of the most gifted (...) and intriguing figures in early modern British science. (shrink)

Thomas Reid was a philosopher who founded the Scottish school of 'common sense'. Much of Reid's work is a critique of his contemporary, David Hume, whose empiricism he rejects. In this work, written after Reid's appointment to a professorship at the university of Glasgow, and published in 1785, he turns his attention to ideas about perception, memory, conception, abstraction, judgement, reasoning and taste. He examines the work of his predecessors and contemporaries, arguing that 'when we find philosophers maintaining that (...) there is no heat in the fire, nor colour in the rainbow … we may be apt to think the whole to be only a dream of fanciful men, who have entangled themselves in cobwebs spun out of their own brain'. Written by one of the Scottish Enlightenment's most important thinkers, this work brings to life the intellectual debates of the time. (shrink)

The Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid first published Essays on Active Powers of Man in 1788 while he was Professor of Philosophy at King's College, Aberdeen. The work contains a set of essays on active power, the will, principles of action, the liberty of moral agents, and morals. Reid was a key figure in the Scottish Enlightenment and one of the founders of the 'common sense' school of philosophy. In Active Powers Reid gives his fullest exploration of sensus communis as (...) the basis of all philosophical inquiry. He uses common sense realism to argue for the existence of a stable external world, the existence of other minds, and to offer a powerful challenge to versions of the Theory of Ideas advocated by Hume and Locke . This is a key work of the Scottish Enlightenment that made important contributions to fundamental debates about the basis of philosophical inquiry. (shrink)

Acclaimed historian Peter LInebaugh provides an original examination of Paine's works and legacy in the introduction to these two influential arguments for liberty of political thought--including Common Sense, which inspired the American Revolution, and The Rights of Man, a defense of the French Revolution. Original.

This is a new release of the original 1942 edition.

Collects several works covering a variety of political subjects, including independence from Britain for the American colonies, service in the Continental army, ...

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 6, June 2022.

Thomas Reid saw the three subjects of logic, rhetoric, and the fine arts as closely cohering aspects of one endeavor that he called the culture of the mind. This was a topic on which Reid lectured for many years in Glasgow, and this volume presents as near a reconstruction of these lectures as is now possible. Though virtually unknown today, this material in fact relates closely to Reid's published works and in particular to the late Essays on the Intellectual (...) Powers of Man and Essays on the Active Powers of Man. When composing these works, Reid drew primarily on his lectures on "pneumatology," which presented a theory of the mental powers, broadly conceived. These lectures were basic to the course on the culture of the mind that explained the cultivation of the mental powers. Although the Essays also included some elements from the material on the culture of the mind, the bulk of the latter was left in manuscript form, and Alexander Broadie's edition restores this important extension of Reid's overall work. In addition, this volume continues the attractive combination of manuscript material and published work, in this case Reid's important and well-known essay on Aristotle's logic. This text was corrupted in earlier editions of Reid's works and is now restored to the state in which Reid left it. This volume underscores Reid's great and growing significance, viewed both as a historical figure and as a philosopher. At the same time, it is of great interdisciplinary importance. While the material emerges directly from the core of Reid's philosophy, as now understood, it will appeal widely to people in literary, cultural, historical, and communications studies. In this regard, the present volume is a true fruit of the Scottish Enlightenment. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Incomprehensible Certainty: Metaphysics and Hermeneutics of the Image by Thomas PfauThomas ZingelmannPFAU, Thomas. Incomprehensible Certainty: Metaphysics and Hermeneutics of the Image. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2022. xxiii + 785 pp. Cloth, $80.00Thomas Pfau reconstructs one of the most traditional and possibly most decisive philosophical debates, [End Page 559] namely, the one about the form and function of appearance (Schein). This debate is (...) taken up on the basis of the concept of image. This means that Pfau concentrates historically as well as systematically on a specific topic within this debate. The book is divided into two major sections.In the first section, Pfau examines how the history of the metaphysics and theology of the image develops, starting with Plato in the first chapter. The basic idea in this section is that the image has a crucial epistemic role in the metaphysical and theological systems of the authors addressed. Here Pfau shows that Plato, at the latest in the Sophist, develops a theory of images that revalues appearance contrary to the assumptions in the Republic. Chapter 1 is about the mediation of unity and multiplicity, as it is also shown in Plotinus. Chapter 2 attempts to show how the Byzantine icon embodies the conviction that the invisible truth of the visual world can be revealed only through images. Pfau's demonstration of various epistemic dimensions of the image then begins with chapter 3: the eschatological vision from Augustine to Bonaventure to Julian of Norwich. Chapter 4, the last of the first section, reconstructs Nicholas of Cusa's position, which attempts to understand mystical visions mediated by images of Christ.The second section examines how the metaphysics of the image—in the sense of an epistemology, which tries to establish ultimate justifications—nevertheless persists and even evolves despite two crucial switches in philosophy. On the one hand, this concerns philosophy that subordinates the visual to the abstract (for example, Hegel) and, on the other, the supposedly nonmetaphysical status of the image in the developing natural sciences. Chapter 5 then attempts to show, through Goethe's botanical investigations and reflections, how, despite the establishment of the natural sciences, Goethe attempts to defend intuition as a scientific method and appearance as a scientific object of investigation. This position is then pursued historically in chapter 6, through the work of Lyell, Darwin, and Ruskin, where the visible is understood as the connecting point of the sciences in general. Gerard Manley Hopkins is then identified in chapter 7 as representing a position that combines theological with proto-phenomenological arguments to highlight the epistemic value of images. The last chapter then deals with decisive developments at the beginning of the twentieth century. In phenomenology (Husserl), painting (Cézanne), and poetry (Rilke), a conception develops that epistemically valorizes sensual and intuitive experience.Generally speaking, Pfau attempts to trace historically what arguments and positions have been developed on the relationship between image and knowledge. His work is based on the conviction that the image is the basis for human orientation in the world and is therefore of great epistemological value. Of outstanding importance for his question is that the epistemological value of images is not to be located in the properties of images, that is, an ontology of the image; rather, Pfau is interested in those positions that reflect on the relationship between knowledge and [End Page 560] experience of images. While clarifying the ontological status of images remains important, the epistemological status of images—what role the experience and usage of images has for humans—is in the foreground. Pfau reconstructs positions that hold that the pictorial is a medium of knowledge. He puts forward the thesis that there is a tradition that is of the opinion that in and through the medium of the image—and this closes the arc to the Schein-debate—being can be experienced by man. In other words, the invisible is to become recognizable through the visible. Of particular importance is his reading of the late Platonic dialogues: While appearance and being are still thought of as distinct in these dialogues, they are not opposed, in the sense of an epistemic opposition. Plato's... (shrink)

Contains the English version of the author's political and moral philosophy. This title also includes the English translation of "De Homine," chapters X-XV. It also features the English translation of "De Cive.".

Thomas Jefferson is among the most important and controversial of American political thinkers: his influence (libertarian, democratic, participatory, and agrarian-republican) is still felt today. A prolific writer, Jefferson left 18,000 letters, Notes on the State of Virginia, an Autobiography, and numerous other papers. Joyce Appleby and Terence Ball have selected the most important of these for presentation in the Cambridge Texts series: Jefferson's views on topics such as revolution, self-government, the role of women and African-American and Native Americans emerge (...) to give a fascinating insight into a man who owned slaves, yet advocated the abolition of slavery. The texts are supported by a concise introduction, suggestions for further reading and short biographies of key figures, all providing invaluable assistance to the student encountering the breadth and richness of Jefferson's thought for the first time. (shrink)

In Daniel Manus Pinkwater's quirkily illustrated book, The Big Orange Splot, a strange accident leads a man to change his life. The book presents an important claim that the existentialists and other philosophers have embraced: That the life of conformity is one that people ought to avoid, despite its attractiveness. Instead of living a life just like everyone else and fulfilling expectations that others have for us, our lives should resemble the transformed facades of all the homes on Mr. Plumbean's (...) street: reflections of our own, individual dreams. (shrink)

The chapter talks about Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree, which is a favorite of many children, adults, and teachers. The story of a relationship between a boy and a tree is charming for, despite the vicissitudes of the relationship, the two end up together at the end, with the boy — now an old man — sitting contentedly on the tree — itself reduced to a mere stump. The book raises an important issue in the field of environmental ethics. It (...) asks us to recognize that between childhood and old age, people operating within the Western tradition of ethics are not mindful of the value that the non‐human beings in their environment have for them as well as for future generations. Harkening to such warnings, environmental ethicists have attempted to raise important issues about our relationship with the other beings that make up our world. (shrink)

Many people consider Martin Heidegger the most important German philosopher of the twentieth century. He is indisputably controversial and influential. Athough much has been written about Heidegger, this may be the best single volume covering his life, career, and thought. For all its breadth and complexity, Heidegger's perspective is quite simple: he is concerned with the meaning of Being as disclosure. Heidegger's life was almost as simple. He was a German professor, except for a brief but significant period in which (...) he supported the Nazi regime. While that departure from philosophy continues to haunt his name and work, one must question whether his thought from 1912 to 1976 should be measured by the yardstick of his politics from May, 1933, through February, 1934. Th is anthology addresses his complex but simple thought and his simple but complex life. In a real sense, Sheehan claims, there is no content to Heidegger's topic and legacy, only a method. But method must not be taken to mean a technique or procedure for philosophical thinking. Rather, the topic of Heidegger's thought and his pursuit of that topic, the "what" and the "how," are one and the same thing. Heidegger writes, "Alles ist Weg," "Everything is way," and man's Being is to be on-the-way in essential movement. Heidegger, argues in our essence we humans are the topic and the point is not to be led there so much as to come to know what we already know and to become what we already are. This brilliant collection confirms this truism, and is an excellent introduction to the work of this seminal thinker. (shrink)

Thinking on Screen: Film as Philosophy is an accessible and thought-provoking examination of the way films raise and explore complex philosophical ideas. Written in a clear and engaging style, Thomas Wartenberg examines films’ ability to discuss, and even criticize ideas that have intrigued and puzzled philosophers over the centuries such as the nature of personhood, the basis of morality, and epistemological skepticism. Beginning with a demonstration of how specific forms of philosophical discourse are presented cinematically, Wartenberg moves on to (...) offer a systematic account of the ways in which specific films undertake the task of philosophy. Focusing on the films The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Modern Times, The Matrix, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Third Man, The Flicker , and Empire , Wartenberg shows how these films express meaningful and pertinent philosophical ideas. This book is essential reading for students of philosophy with an interest in film, aesthetics, and film theory. It will also be of interest to film enthusiasts intrigued by the philosophical implications of film. (shrink)

The past few years have seen a revival of interest in Thomas Reid's philosophy. His moral theory has been studied by D. D. Raphael (The Moral Sense) and his entire philosophical position by S. A. Grave (The Scottish Philosophy of Common Sense). Prior to both, A. D. Woozley gave us the first modern reprint of Reid's Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man - in fact the first edition of any work by Reid to appear in print since the (...) Philosophical Works was edited in the nineteenth century by Sir William Hamilton. But Reid's aesthetic philosophy has not received its due. Woozley, in abridging the Essays, omitted the whole final essay, "On Taste," which is the only extended work on aesthetic theory that Reid ever published. Raphael, being interested primarily in Reid's moral theory, understand ably, treated aesthetics only as it was related to morality. And Grave, although he did present a short and very cogent resume of Reid's aes thetic position, obviously found himself drawn to other elements of Reid's philosophy. There are, of course, some accounts of Reid's aes thetic theory to be found in the various studies of eighteenth-century British aesthetics and criticism. None, however, appears to me to do any kind of justice to the philosophical questions which Reid treats in his aesthetics and philosophy of art. (shrink)

Maxims concerning God and man -- Is there a God? -- The problem of evil -- Reflections on the divine nature -- Creation -- The Incarnation -- What is man? -- Human society -- The Corpus Christi sequence.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Philosophy of Belonging: Persons, Politics, Cosmos by James GreenawayThomas W. HolmanGREENAWAY, James. A Philosophy of Belonging: Persons, Politics, Cosmos. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2023. xii + 326 pp. Cloth, $125.00; paper, $50.00“Belonging” is a common theme in contemporary political discourse, but it has not yet garnered much sustained attention in terms of its philosophical significance. James Greenaway’s new book aims to address this (...) issue by offering an original and penetrating exploration into the philosophical meaning of this difficult and laden term. At the heart of his approach lies the concept of the metaxy. As explained in Plato’s Symposium and expanded by Eric Voegelin, it is a state of being-in-tension between two static states or “poles,” which can represent wisdom and ignorance, need and plenty, transcendence and immanence, eternity and time, and so forth. This becomes the foundation for Greenaway’s “hermeneutic of belonging,” which consists of two forces: “existence-from” and “existence-toward.” Existence-toward is a sort of intentionality, a consciousness of “someone or something with whom I am experiencing some kind of an affinity.” It is the “where” or “with whom” I desire to be. Existence-from is an awareness [End Page 717] of the other that a person carries within him- or herself: persons, communities, places, times that are “so significant that I cannot be who I am without them.” Greenaway argues that belonging in the abstract hinges on the metaxic tension between these two poles, variously conceived depending on the context.The second section of the book examines the different contexts in which existence-from and existence-toward play out within each person: between oneself, other persons, and the cosmos. These constitute the various aspects of what Greenaway calls “presence.” Belonging on this level means each person participates “in the grand, continual emergence of reality in all of its variety.” Presence to myself, to others, and to the cosmos as a whole reflects the metaxic tension of the hermeneutic of belonging.In the final section, Greenaway turns to explaining how belonging works in community. He begins by differentiating between the communion, or “bond and order” of a community, and communitas, the “shoulder-to-shoulder stance” that permeates political existence. Communion is a manifestation of the aforementioned hermeneutic of belonging within and among persons and the cosmos. It is the more fundamental principle of community that reflects the primordial intersubjectivity of Buber’s I–Thou: In some sense, each person is or must be involved in or available (in the sense of Gabriel Marcel’s disponibilité) to the other. Without some sort of grounding in communion, communitas becomes impossible. By contrast, communitas is the jostling, back-and-forth movement associated with the practical discernment and attainment of common political goods that Greenaway conceives, with St. Augustine, as objects of common love. These are sought out, argued about, and even fought over in everyday political life, which is marked by a shared commitment to achieving the goals associated with common political goods. The communitas is centered in the tension of belonging between the more fundamental recognition of each person as a bearer of meaning in the cosmos and the everyday business of collectively discerning and implementing the common good.But communion carries a further meaning. In addition to the more fundamental respect for myself and all others in the community as bearers of presence, it is also an awareness of all possible transcendent perfections of the community as a whole. Greenaway calls this second sense “sacramentality.” Yet this mysterious perfection is not necessarily for the here-and-now. It is, rather, another example of the hermeneutic of belonging where transcendent principles intersect with temporal reality. Thus, every community is sealed with seeming contradictions that, far from being irresolvable paradoxes, illustrate its belonging-in-tension alongside mystery. An example of one such paradox is the ideal of universal humanity: we are aware of the claims placed on us by our shared universal humanity, but we are also necessarily situated within a particular place or country or community. The idea of a universal brotherhood of man reflects one way in which transcendent perfection [End Page... (shrink)

Presents selections from Paine's political writings, including "Common Sense," "The Rights of Man," "The American Crisis," and "The Age of Reason".

Eugene Wigner's several general discussions of symmetry and invariance principles are among the canonical texts of contemporary philosophy of physics. Wigner spoke from a position of authority, having pioneered for recognition of the importance of symmetry principles from nuclear to molecular physics. But perhaps recent commentators have not sufficiently stressed that Wigner always took care to situate the notion of invariance principles with respect to two others, initial conditions and laws of nature. Wigner's first such general consideration of invariance principles, (...) an address presented at Einstein's 70th birthday celebration, held in Princeton on 19 March 1949, began by laying out just this distinction, and in a way that seems to suggest that the three notions arise through abstraction in an analysis of the general problem of cognition in the natural sciences: The world is very complicated and it is clearly impossible for the human mind to understand it completely. Man has therefore devised an artifice which permits the complicated nature of the world to be blamed on something which is called accidental and thus permits him to abstract a domain in which simple laws can be found. The complications are called initial conditions; the domain of regularities, laws of nature. the underlying abstraction is probably one of the most fruitful the human mind has made. It has made the natural sciences possible. (shrink)

A central figure in Western history and American political thought, Thomas Paine continues to provoke debate among politicians, activists, and scholars. People of all ideological stripes are inspired by his trenchant defense of the rights and good sense of ordinary individuals, and his penetrating critiques of arbitrary power. This volume contains Paine’s explosive Common Sense in its entirety, including the oft-ignored Appendix, as well as selections from his other major writings: The American Crisis, Rights of Man, and The Age (...) of Reason. It also contains several of Paine’s shorter essays. All the documents have been transcribed directly from the originals, making this edition the most reliable one available. Essays by Ian Shapiro, Jonathan Clark, Jane Calvert, and Eileen Hunt Botting bring Paine into sharp focus, illuminating his place in the tumultuous decades surrounding the American and French Revolutions and his larger historical legacy. (shrink)