An exploration of Immanuel Kant's account of war and the controversies that have arisen from its interpretation. This book brings the ideas of Kant's critical philosophy to bear on one of the leading political and legal questions of our age: under what circumstances, if any, is recourse to war legally and morally justifiable?

This book shows how the traditional concerns of political theory push it increasingly into the study of international relations. This is done, first, by demonstrating how many of the issues usually dealt with by political theory, such as democracy and justice, arise within an increasingly global context and, secondly, by considering how international issues, such as colonialism and war, are best illuminated by building on the work of political theorists. The book suggests that political theory and international relations theory can (...) now both be successfully engaged in as a joint enterprise only. (shrink)

The book is a comparative analysis of all the major social science/political science grand theories. It focuses on developmentalism, dependency theory, the world systems approach, Marxism, institutionalism, rational choice, psychoanalysis, political sociology, sociobiology, environmentalism, neuro-politics, transitions to democracy, and non-Western systems of analysis. To facilitate comparison and analysis, a common framework and outline are employed throughout. An integrating introduction and conclusion help tie the book together.

Modes-of-being figure centrally in Heidegger's masterwork Being and Time. Testimony to this is Heidegger's characterisation of two of his most celebrated enquiries—the Existential analytic and the Zeug analysis—as investigations into the respective modes-of-being of the entities concerned. Yet despite the importance of this concept, commentators disagree widely about what a mode-of-being is. In this paper, I systematically outline and defend a novel and exegetically grounded interpretation of this concept. Strongly opposed to Kantian readings, such as those advocated by Taylor Carman (...) and Cristina Lafont, I interpret a mode-of-being as a universal that defines a district —that is, a natural class of entities that ought to be conceptualised in a special way. As such, every mode-of-being plays an important metaphysical and epistemic role: serving both to unify a natural class of a high degree of generality and as the interpretandum of an act yielding the basic-concepts pertaining to the entities therein. In explicating and arguing for this interpretation, I attribute a characteristically Aristotelian philosophical position to the early Heidegger, encompassing both metaphysical and epistemological realism and a conceptualist theory of universals. (shrink)

In challenging the prevailing paradigm for understanding how the human mind works, Patterns, Thinking, and Cognition is certain to stimulate fruitful debate.

Howard J. Curzer presents a fresh new reading of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, which brings each of the virtues alive. He argues that justice and friendship are symbiotic in Aristotle's view; reveals how virtue ethics is not only about being good, but about becoming good; and describes Aristotle's ultimate quest to determine happiness.

The first full-scale history of cognitive science, this work addresses a central issue: What is the nature of knowledge?

Oxford Scholarly Classics is a new series that makes available again great academic works from the archives of Oxford University Press. Reissued in uniform series design, the reissues will enable libraries, scholars, and students to gain fresh access to some of the finest scholarship of the last century.

In this explosive book, Howard Wainer uses statistical evidence to show why some of the most widely held beliefs in education today--and the policies that have resulted--are wrong.

In his entertaining and informative book Graphic Discovery, Howard Wainer unlocked the power of graphical display to make complex problems clear. Now he's back with Picturing the Uncertain World, a book that explores how graphs can serve as maps to guide us when the information we have is ambiguous or incomplete. Using a visually diverse sampling of graphical display, from heartrending autobiographical displays of genocide in the Kovno ghetto to the "Pie Chart of Mystery" in a New Yorker cartoon, (...) Wainer illustrates the many ways graphs can be used--and misused--as we try to make sense of an uncertain world. Picturing the Uncertain World takes readers on an extraordinary graphical adventure, revealing how the visual communication of data offers answers to vexing questions yet also highlights the measure of uncertainty in almost everything we do. Are cancer rates higher or lower in rural communities? How can you know how much money to sock away for retirement when you don't know when you'll die? And where exactly did nineteenth-century novelists get their ideas? These are some of the fascinating questions Wainer invites readers to consider. Along the way he traces the origins and development of graphical display, from William Playfair, who pioneered the use of graphs in the eighteenth century, to instances today where the public has been misled through poorly designed graphs. We live in a world full of uncertainty, yet it is within our grasp to take its measure. Read Picturing the Uncertain World and learn how. (shrink)

In this major reinterpretation, Howard Caygill argues that all of Benjamin's work is characterized by its focus on a concept of experience derived from Kant but applied by Benjamin to objects as diverse as urban experience, visual art, literature and philosophy. The book analyzes the development of Benjamin's concept of experience in his early writings showing that it emerges from an engagement with visual experience, and in particular the experience of colour. By representing Benjamin as primarily a thinker of (...) the visual field, Caygill is able to bring forward previously neglected texts on inscription and the visual field and to cast many of his more familiar texts, for instance the Work of Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction in a new light. (shrink)

_The Two Pragmatisms - From Peirce to Rorty_ maps the main movements within the pragmatist tradition. Two distinct forms of pragmatism are identified, that of Peirce and that of the `second' pragmatism stemming from James' interpretation of Peirce and seen in the work of Dewey and above all Rorty. Both the influential work of Rorty and the way in which he has transformed contemporary philosophy's understanding of pragmatism are clearly explained. _The Two Pragmatisms - From Peirce to Rorty_ is essential (...) reading for those interested in the history of this increasingly influential movement, whether first-time philosophers or more advanced readers. (shrink)