From the "New York Times" bestselling author of "If I Stay" Allyson Healeys life is exactly like her suitcase--packed, planned, ordered. Then on the last day of her three-week post-graduation European tour, she meets Willem. A free-spirited, roving actor, Willem is everything shes not, and when he invites her to abandon her plans and come to Paris with him, Allyson says yes. This uncharacteristic decision leads to a day of risk and romance, liberation and intimacy: 24 hours that will transform (...) Allysons life. A book about love, heartbreak, travel, identity, and the "accidents" of fate, "Just One Day" shows us how sometimes in order to get found, you first have to get lost... and how often the people we are seeking are much closer than we know. The first in a sweepingly romantic duet of novels. Willems story--"Just One Year"--is coming soon. (shrink)

THE most prevalent interpretation of Hegel’s political philosophy charges him with a glorification and even a divinization of the Prussian State of his day at the expense of the freedom of the individual. This interpretation has its origins in the existentialist critique of Hegel. Kierkegaard, for example, in his evaluation of Hegel’s philosophy of history abhors the apparent deification of the existing State as the manifestation of the Objective Spirit since it robs the individual of his freedom, responsibility, and dignity. (...) ‘The derelict Hegelian ethics, with its desperate attempt to make the State the court of last resort, is a most unethical attempt to reduce the individual to finitude.…’ Karl Popper has helped to perpetuate this interpretation by the existentialists by claiming that according to Hegel ‘the State is everything and the individual nothing’. William Shirer has claimed that one can trace the rise of the second and third Reichs to Hegel’s ‘ringing glorification of the State as supreme in human life’. In determining the validity of this interpretation we shall examine Hegel’s statements on the nature of the ideal State, his evaluations of existing States and ancient States, and his detailed position on the rights of citizens within his ideal State. (shrink)

This book begins with the assumption that no one can achieve a rational selection of values for his life-style unless he first understands the major modern and contemporary formulations of alternative moral ideals. To assist the reader in determining which values are more basic and deserve his loyalty, the author explores and evaluates the different value systems defended by a wide range of thinkers viz. James, Dewey, Ayn Rand, Hugh Hefner, Marx, Freud, Erich Fromm, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, Barth, Tillich, Cox, (...) Fletcher, Bishop Robinson, Brunner, Reinhold Niebuhr, Ramsey, G E Moore, A J Ayer, Toulmin and R M Hare. (shrink)

In introducing existentialism should one proceed by presenting a separate treatment of each existentialist or should one attempt to identify and isolate the principal themes of existentialism and interrelate the specific contributions of the major figures in the movement to the development of each theme? Professor Sanborn in this introduction inclines toward the latter method. She has organized the work according to the ontology, theory of knowledge, ethics, social philosophy, and philosophy of religion of the major existentialists. In these areas (...) she has dealt with the insights of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Jaspers, Marcel and Sartre. While this method does allow the reader to consider each topic from several viewpoints, it does seem to have two serious limitations. It prevents the reader from appreciating the manner in which an existentialist’s ontology and epistemology often profoundly affects his ethics and his philosophy of religion or vice versa. The reader has to wait until chapter seven to discover how Sartre’s atheism lies at the root of his doctrine of freedom even though earlier chapters make many references to this doctrine. The basic unity of Sartre’s thought is thereby obscured whereas a separate treatment of each existentialist could preserve and disclose this unity, and still could include comparisons with other existentialists on some themes. A second limitation in this introduction is that it usually and almost necessarily because of the restrictions of space permits only a fragmentary consideration of the view of each existentialist on each theme. (shrink)

In his introduction to this selection of writings Hans Reiss makes the claim that Kant is not generally regarded in English-speaking countries as a political philosopher of any special significance. He gives several reasons for this neglect and misunderstanding by historians of philosophy and even by Kantian scholars. These historians have neglected Kant’s political writings because the philosophy of his three critiques has absorbed their attention almost entirely. Then too, they have not focused on his political philosophy because he did (...) not write a masterpiece in this field. Also, Kant’s works of critical philosophy are so formidable that they have made his political writings appear to historians of philosophy as much less weighty and have helped to encourage the mistaken assumption by these historians that the latter are not central to his thought. Furthermore, the rise of nationalism has prevented Kant’s work from being the dominant force in German political thought in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries which it might easily have been. The Romantic mode of thought instilled in German political thought an element of irrationalism which permeated almost all areas of German thinking for a century and a half between the Napoleonic wars and the end of the Second World War. (shrink)

In his introduction to this selection of writings Hans Reiss makes the claim that Kant is not generally regarded in English-speaking countries as a political philosopher of any special significance. He gives several reasons for this neglect and misunderstanding by historians of philosophy and even by Kantian scholars. These historians have neglected Kant’s political writings because the philosophy of his three critiques has absorbed their attention almost entirely. Then too, they have not focused on his political philosophy because he did (...) not write a masterpiece in this field. Also, Kant’s works of critical philosophy are so formidable that they have made his political writings appear to historians of philosophy as much less weighty and have helped to encourage the mistaken assumption by these historians that the latter are not central to his thought. Furthermore, the rise of nationalism has prevented Kant’s work from being the dominant force in German political thought in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries which it might easily have been. The Romantic mode of thought instilled in German political thought an element of irrationalism which permeated almost all areas of German thinking for a century and a half between the Napoleonic wars and the end of the Second World War. (shrink)

As the Minister of Public Instruction in Berlin in 1808 Humboldt founded the University of Berlin and reorganized the Prussian Gymnasium. Later, he served in several diplomatic posts, became a Prussian envoy to the Papal court, and in 1818 was for a brief period Minister of the Interior. However, the reader should be aware that Humboldt wrote The Limits of State Action in 1791 at the age of 24 after resigning his first minor post in the Prussian administration. At that (...) time he admitted that he had found administration ‘geistlos’, and this reaction may have accounted in part for his general antipathy toward state interference on behalf of the positive welfare of citizens. His belief that the vitality of a nation arises solely from the spontaneous and diverse creative energies of its citizens clearly contributed to this antipathy. (shrink)

This volume is a reissue of an 1889 translation of Fichte’s third book, Grundlage des Naturrechts nach Principien der Wissenschaftslehre, which first appeared in Jena in 1796. Fichte here attempts to reconcile his belief in the sacredness of the rights of the individual with his conviction that the individual is a member of a community of rational beings, and thus man develops his moral self only through relationship to others. ‘…Ego is the individual, the rational being determined as such through (...) opposition to another rational being’. His thesis is that human rights are essentially social rights and that, since the freedom of the individual implies responsibility, concrete freedom is necessarily finite. This affirmation of the limitation of a self by its relation to other selves corresponds with Fichte’s exposition of the mutual limitation of the ego and the non-ego in his theory of the intellect in his Science of Knowledge. Fichte declares that the fundamental principle of The Science of Rights is that each individual must restrict his freedom through the conception of the possibility of the freedom of the other. (shrink)

Originally published in 1959, this work, intended as an introduction, attempts to examine the views of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Jaspers, Sartre and Marcel on a wide variety of themes without neglecting some of the influences of Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche and Husserl on the existentialist movement. It provides an analysis of the traditions which inspired the existentialists and of the traditions which they opposed.

To prepare the reader for Schiller’s ideal of freedom, Miller devotes his first chapter to an examination of Kant’s conception of moral freedom. Miller contends that Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason was already concerned with establishing the foundation for moral freedom, and he rejects Heine’s interpretation that the Critique of Practical Reason was an afterthought, a hastily added supplement written to ease Kant’s moral conscience by compensating for the first Critique. Miller observes that it appears that Kant did (...) not hold to his beliefs because of evidence, but rather sought evidence for his beliefs—in this case evidence for his abiding belief in moral freedom. To demonstrate Kant’s intention to defend moral freedom even in the first Critique, he appeals first to Kant’s claim there that freedom cannot be saved if appearances are things-in-themselves, and then to his efforts to develop the distinction between phenomena and noumena so as to allow for the exercise of moral freedom. Thus, by referring natural causality to phenomena and free causality to noumena, Kant in the first Critique had demonstrated the possibility of moral freedom in his resolution of the third antimony. Then too, in the first Critique the failure of speculative reason to trace effects to an original cause suggested the idea of a free intelligible cause operating outside the series of cause and effect. Also, already in the first Critique Kant had introduced the idea of a ‘will’ which resists the tendency of man’s sensuous inclinations to determine his actions. Furthermore, Miller reminds us that Kant in the second Critique makes frequent references to his theory of knowledge which he regards as important also for practical reason and freedom, and that Kant in the preface to the second Critique proclaims that the idea of freedom ‘forms the keystone of the whole building of a system of pure, even of speculative reason …’. Miller endorses the notion that Kant’s consistent aim was to preserve the ‘proper dignity’ of the idea of freedom by removing it from the field of possible knowledge. (shrink)

Most of Kierkegaard’s thought can best be understood as a series of reactions to what he regarded as the excesses of Hegelian speculation. In this work Professor Hamilton provides a stimulating and comprehensive examination of these reactions. He explains in detail how Hegel’s method of direct communication with its claim to the possession of total truth provoked Kierkegaard to imitate Socrates’ ‘maieutic art’ by employing indirect communication through the use of pseudonyms. Then too, Hegel’s preoccupation with the development of the (...) Absolute in world-history served only to cause Kierkegaard to respond with his emphasis on the significance of the individual. Furthermore, the unification of the finite with the infinite within the System seemed to Kierkegaard to be a crude form of pantheism and aroused him to affirm a gulf between the creature and the Absolute. Hegel’s preoccupation with abstraction and Reason only intensified Kierkegaard’s concern for the concrete historical moment in which the individual must struggle to make his leap of faith in the face of the Absolute Paradox. Partly because the Hegelian System viewed faith as ‘an immediate certainty’, Kierkegaard could reiterate that faith is a process and must be constantly achieved. The System’s concern for objective truth and its reduction of Christianity to a philosophical doctrine only reinforced Kierkegaard’s conviction that truth is subjectivity and cannot be learned through abstractions but must be lived with intense passion. Finally, Hegel’s emphasis on a fluid logic increased Kierkegaard’s enthusiasm for the traditional logic and his insistence that this logic should not be distorted by being used to interpret the movements of freedom. In presenting these oppositions to Hegel the work can help to provide an effective introduction to Kierkegaard. However, the work is limited since it merely assumes that Kierkegaard’s interpretations of Hegel are valid. Recent scholarship, particularly by Knox and Seeberger, would indicate that some of these interpretations are highly debatable. (shrink)

This volume is devoted entirely to exploring the role of animals in the thought of Immanuel Kant. Leading scholars address questions regarding the possibility of objective representation and intentionality in animals, the role of animals in Kant's scientific picture of nature, the status of our moral responsibilities to animals' welfare, and more.

In the last two decades, interest in narrative conceptions of identity has grown exponentially, though there is little agreement about what a "life-narrative" might be. In connecting Kierkegaard with virtue ethics, several scholars have recently argued that narrative models of selves and MacIntyre's concept of the unity of a life help make sense of Kierkegaard's existential stages and, in particular, explain the transition from "aesthetic" to "ethical" modes of life. But others have recently raised difficult questions both for these readings (...) of Kierkegaard and for narrative accounts of identity that draw on the work of MacIntyre in general. While some of these objections concern a strong kind of unity or "wholeheartedness" among an agent's long-term goals or cares, the fundamental objection raised by critics is that personal identity cannot _be_ a narrative, since stories are artifacts made by persons. In this book, Davenport defends the narrative approach to practical identity and autonomy in general, and to Kierkegaard's stages in particular. (shrink)

This book examines Aristotle's critical reaction to the mathematical cosmology of Plato's Academy, and traces the aporetic method by which he developed his own ...

The 1990s saw a revival of interest in Kierkegaard's thought, affecting the fields of theology, social theory, and literary and cultural criticism. The resulting discussions have done much to discredit the earlier misreadings of Kierkegaard's works.

Towards the conclusion of the First Section of the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant describes a process whereby a subject can undergo a kind of moral corruption. This process, which he calls a “natural dialectic”, can cause one to undermine one’s own or¬dinary grasp of the demands of morality. Kant also claims that this natural dialectic is the basis of the need for moral philosophy itself, since first-order moral reasoning is insufficient to protect against it. I show that (...) this passage is closely related to another in the First Section, one where Kant warns against the threat of “misology”, or the hatred of reason. I argue that both these passages must be read as engaging with specific claims from Rousseau’s writings. Uncovering the historical context and rhetorical function of Kant’s account of moral self-deception can re-orient the reader to his ambitions for the Groundwork itself. (shrink)

Pragmatism, Postmodernism and the Future of Philosophy is a vigorous and dynamic confrontation with the task and temperament of philosophy today. In this energetic and far-reaching new book, Stuhr draws persuasively on the resources of the pragmatist tradition of James and Dewey, and critically engages the work of Continental philosophers like Adorno, Foucault, and Deleuze, to explore fundamental questions of how we might think and live differently in the future. Along the way, the book addresses important issues in public policy, (...) university administration, spirituality, and the notion of community and its meaning in a global world of difference. This book is essential reading for anyone concerned with the future of philosophy, and the ways in which philosophical thinking can help us live better, more fulfilling lives. (shrink)

This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, an extensive bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on key terms and ...

Cleary discusses the origin, development, and use of the many senses of priority as a central thesis in Aristotle’s metaphysics. Cleary contends that one of the most revealing problems for the ambiguity of Aristotle’s relationship to Platonism is that of the ontological status of mathematical objects. In support of his claim, Cleary analyzes a curious passage from Aristotle’s _Topics, _where he appears to accept a schema of priorities that makes mathematical entities more substantial than sensible things. How does Aristotle try (...) to reconcile the ordering of things dictated by sciences like mathematics and dialectic with the ordering of sense experience upon which his own physics and metaphysics are based? To find the answer, Cleary reviews three different outlines of the many senses of priority given by Aristotle himself and found in _Categories _12-13, _Metaphysics _Delta 11, and _Metaphysics _Theta 8. Cleary suggests there is an implicit hierarchy for Aristotle that leads him to posit the Prime Mover at its apex as complete actuality and, therefore, as the focus for the concept of priority. Having reviewed Aristotle’s treatment of the many uses of priority, Cleary demonstrates how the concept is used in some typical arguments by Aristotle for his mature metaphysical positions. (shrink)

This article argues for a social proviso concerning capital endowments that is analogous to Locke's original proviso on access to productive natural capital.

The role of analogy appears in surprisingly different areas of the first Critique. On the one hand, Kant considered the concept to have a specific enough meaning to entitle the principle concerned with causation an analogy; on the other hand we can find Kant referring to analogy in various parts of the Transcendental Dialectic in a seemingly different manner. Whereas in the Transcendental Analytic, Kant takes some time to provide a detailed (if not clear) account of the meaning of the (...) term ‘analogy’ and his reasons for his employment of it, in the Transcendental Dialectic on the other hand, Kant’s employment of the term seems far less technical. It would seem on the face of it, that Kant has two senses of ‘analogy’: one technical sense reserved for those constitutive principles of the understanding as laid out in the Analytic, and another casual and commonplace use of the term. This picture, although it contains elements of truth, is ultimately misleading. I argue for three claims in this paper. Firstly, I suggest that there can be found in the first Critique a unified conception of analogy. Secondly, I argue that Kant self-consciously differentiated his employment of analogy from the employment that can be found in many early modern philosophers, e.g. Locke. Thirdly, I will tentatively suggest that this interpretation of analogy can aid us in addressing certain contentious areas of transcendental idealism, most notably the account of causation. (shrink)

In contemporary philosophy, the will is often regarded as a sheer philosophical fiction. In Will as Commitment and Resolve , Davenport argues not only that the will is the central power of human agency that makes decisions and forms intentions but also that it includes the capacity to generate new motivation different in structure from prepurposive desires. The concept of "projective motivation" is the central innovation in Davenport's existential account of the everyday notion of striving will. Beginning with the contrast (...) between "eastern" and "western" attitudes toward assertive willing, Davenport traces the lineage of the idea of projective motivation from NeoPlatonic and Christian conceptions of divine motivation to Scotus, Kant, Marx, Arendt, and Levinas. Rich with historical detail, this book includes an extended examination of Platonic and Aristotelian eudaimonist theories of human motivation. Drawing on contemporary critiques of egoism, Davenport argues that happiness is primarily a byproduct of activities and pursuits aimed at other agent-transcending goods for their own sake. In particular, the motives involved in virtue and in its practice as understood by Alasdair MacIntyre are projective rather than eudaimonist. This theory is supported by analyses of radical evil, accounts of intrinsic motivation in existential psychology, and contemporary theories of identity-forming commitment in analytic moral psychology. Following Viktor Frankl, Joseph Raz, and others, Davenport argues that Harry Frankfurt's conception of caring requires objective values worth caring about, which serve as rational grounds for projecting new final ends. The argument concludes with a taxonomy of values or goods, devotion to which can make life meaningful for us. (shrink)

This essay argues for a new conception of bad faith based partly on Harry Frankfurt's famous account of personal autonomy in terms of higher‐order volitions and caring, and based partly on Sartre's insights concerning tacit or pre‐thetic attitudes and “transcendent” freedom. Although Sartre and Frankfurt have rarely been connected, Frankfurt's concepts of volitional “wantonness” and “bullshit” (wantonness about truth) are similar in certain revealing respects to Sartre's account of bad faith. However, Sartre leaves no room for Frankfurt's central point that (...) people can volitionally commit themselves to develop certain motives and reduce others, thereby shaping an authentic identity through volitional “identification” and “alienation” of motives. Frankfurt in turn minimizes the role that a sense of liberty to form and alter higher‐order volitions plays in experiences of autonomy, which Sartre recognizes in the transcendence of the “for‐itself.” When these points are combined, we get a tri‐level theory of intrasubjective volitional stances that explains Sartre's cases better than his own theory can, and also clarifies how sincere or procedurally autonomous self‐relation is possible. (shrink)

I argue that Kant’s transcendental idealism and Strawson’s descriptive metaphysics are both examples of what I call methodological conservativism. Methodological conservativism involves the claim that a subset of common first-order beliefs is immune to revision. I argue that there are striking differences between their respective commitments to this position, however. For Kant, his conservativism is based upon a commitment to the reliability of particular results of the sciences of his day. For Strawson, in contrast, his conservativism is based upon his (...) attempted liberation of arguments for the necessity of a certain conceptual scheme from any particular scientific commitments. In fact, for Strawson, no change in scientific commitments could displace the conceptual scheme employed to navigate the manifest world of ordinary perceptual experience. Each approach brings with it challenges with regard to how to accommodate potential scientific theory change. (shrink)