Reading Ricoeur -- Freedom and nature -- Ricoeur's turn to hermeneutics -- The fullness of language and figurative discourse -- Selfhood and personal identity -- Memory, recognition, practical wisdom.

A major event in the history of twentieth-century thought, _Notebooks for a Ethics_ is Jean-Paul Sartre's attempt to develop an ethics consistent with the profound individualism of his existential philosophy. In the famous conclusion to _Being and Nothingness_, Sartre announced that he would devote his next philosophical work to moral problems. Although he worked on this project in the late 1940s, Sartre never completed it to his satisfaction, and it remained unpublished until after his death in 1980. Presented here for (...) the first time in English, the _Notebooks_ reveal Sartre at his most productive, crafting a masterpiece of philosophical reflection that can easily stand alongside his other great works. Sartre grapples anew here with such central issues as "authenticity" and the relation of alienation and freedom to moral values. Exploring fundamental modes of relating to the Other—among them violence, entreaty, demand, appeal, refusal, and revolt—he articulates the necessary transition from individualism to historical consciousness. This work thus forms an important bridge between the early existentialist Sartre and the later Marxist social thinker of the _Critique of Dialectical Reason_. The _Notebooks_ themselves are complemented here by two additional essays, one on "the good and subjectivity," the other on the oppression of blacks in the United States. With publication of David Pellauer's lucid translation, English-speaking readers will be able to appreciate this important contribution to moral philosophy and the history of ethics. Jean-Paul Sartre was offered, but declined, the Nobel Prize for literature in 1964. His many works of fiction, drama, and philosophy include the monumental study of Flaubert, _The Family Idiot_, and _The Freud Scenario_, both published in translation by the University of Chicago Press. (shrink)

Pellauer's programmatic study neatly differentiates what he takes to he a proper phenomenology of religion from the works of W. Bede Kristensen, Cornelius Bleeker and Gerhard van der Leeuw. Following Husser's lead, but leaving aside Husser's idealism, Pellauer suggests that Husserl provides a useful theoretical model of experience, one which is "hypothetically applicable to all human experience." Pellauer then critically explores Husser's model. This exploration opens the way for Pellauer to suggest important ways in which the (...) phenomenon of silence should he examined, ways not developed in Dauenhauer's study. What follows is the slightly edited second half of Pellauer's contribution. (shrink)

This essay explores the idea of the just which allowed Ricoeur to move beyond and expand the “little ethics” presented in Oneself as Another . One key development is that he moves beyond the idea of solicitude as a kind of benevolent spontaneity on the basis of the insight that not all intersubjective relations are face-to-face. This recognition that who the other is can be important allows him to show why the just is a notion that explicitly arises at the (...) level of the distant and often anonymous other, which is that of social and political institutions where the question of justice rather than friendship is central. Another related development is that the idea of reciprocity is shown still to fall short of truly mutual recognition. Pursuing a just solution to social problems leads to the question of a limited but bounded pluralism and a concomitant role for tolerance at the level of society and politics.  . (shrink)

When French philosopher Paul Ricoeur died in 2005, he bequeathed to the world a highly regarded, widely influential body of work which established him as one of the greatest thinkers of our time. He also left behind a number of unfinished projects that are gathered here and translated into English for the first time. _Living Up to Death_ consists of one major essay and nine fragments. Composed in 1996, the essay is the kernel of an unrealized book on the subject (...) of mortality. Likely inspired by his wife’s approaching death, it examines not one’s own passing but one’s experience of others dying. Ricoeur notes that when thinking about death the imagination is paramount, since we cannot truly experience our own passing. But those we leave behind do, and Ricoeur posits that the idea of life after death originated in the awareness of our own end posthumously resonating with our survivors. The fragments in this volume were written over the course of the last few months of Ricoeur’s life as his health failed, and they represent his very last work. They cover a range of topics, touching on biblical scholarship, the philosophy of language, and the idea of selfhood he first addressed in _Oneself as Another_. And while they contain numerous philosophical insights, these fragments are perhaps most significant for providing an invaluable look at Ricoeur’s mind at work. As poignant as it is perceptive,_ Living Up to Death_ is a moving testimony to Ricoeur’s willingness to confront his own mortality with serious questions, a touching insouciance, and hope for the future. (shrink)

What happens when the meaning of life based on a divine revelation no longer makes sense? Does the quest for transcendence end in the pursuit of material success and self-absorption? Luc Ferry argues that modernity and the emergence of secular humanism in Europe since the eighteenth century have not killed the search for meaning and the sacred, or even the idea of God, but rather have transformed both through a dual process: the humanization of the divine and the divinization of (...) the human. Ferry sees evidence for the first of these in the Catholic Church's attempts to counter the growing rejection of dogmatism and to translate the religious tradition into contemporary language. The second he traces to the birth of modern love and humanitarianism, both of which demand a concern for others and even self-sacrifice in defense of values that transcend life itself. Ferry concludes with a powerful statement in favor of what he calls "transcendental humanism"—a concept that for the first time in human history gives us access to a genuine spirituality rooted in human beings instead of the divine. (shrink)

"Without music, life would be an error."—Friedrich Nietzsche In his youth, Friedrich Nietzsche yearned to become a great composer and wrote many pieces of music. He later claimed to be "the most musical of all philosophers." Yet most books on Nietzsche fail to explore the importance of music for his thought. _Nietzsche and Music_ provides the first in-depth examination of the fundamental significance of music for Nietzsche's life and work. Nietzsche's views on music are essential for understanding his philosophy as (...) a whole. Part biography and part critical examination, Georges Liébert brilliantly demonstrates that despite failed attempts at a professional career as composer, Nietzsche never fully removed himself from the world of music, but instead, became a composer of philosophy, utilizing the musical form as a template for his own writings and creative thought. Liébert's study surveys Nietzsche's opinions about particular composers and compositions, as well as his more theoretical writings on music and its relation to the other arts. He also explores Nietzsche's listening habits, his playing and style of composition, and his many contacts in the musical world, including his controversial and contentious relationship with Richard Wagner. For Nietzsche, music gave access to a realm of wisdom that transcended thought. Music was Nietzsche's great solace; in his last years, it was his refuge from madness. A virtuoso exploration of this little-known but crucial aspect of Nietzsche's life and work, this volume will be of enormous value to scholars of philosophy, music, aesthetics, and literature. (shrink)

I want to discuss why it makes sense to speak of a linguistic turn in the philosophy of Paul Ricœur. He early on had said that “the word is my kingdom and I am not ashamed of it” without, at that time, spelling out just what this claim meant as regards a broader philosophy of language. Nor would he have had any difficulty in admitting that his attitude toward language and questions about language changed over time. Keywords : Analytic Philosophy, (...) Linguistic Turn. Résumé Je souhaite discuter pourquoi il y a un sens à parler de tournant linguistique dans la philosophie de Paul Ricœur. Il avait dit dès le début de son travail “la parole est mon royaume et je n'en ai point honte,” sans, à ce moment-là, spécifier ce que cette affirmation signifie au regard d'une philosophie du langage. Et il n'aurait pas eu de difficulté à admettre que son attitude envers le langage et les questions sur le langage a changé au fil du temps. Mots-clés: Philosophie analytique, Tournant linguistique. (shrink)

At the time of his death in 2005, French philosopher Paul Ricoeur was regarded as one of the great thinkers of his generation. In more than half a century of writing about the essential questions of human life, Ricoeur’s thought encompassed a vast range of wisdom and experience, and he made landmark contributions that would go on to influence later scholars in such areas as phenomenology, hermeneutics, structuralism, and theology. Toward the end of his life, Ricoeur began to focus directly (...) on ethical questions that he feared had been overshadowed by his other work; the result was a two-volume collection of essays on justice and the law. The University of Chicago Press published the English translation of the first volume, _The Just_, to great acclaim in 2000. Now this translation of the second volume, _Reflections on the Just_, completes the set and makes available to readers the whole of Ricoeur’s meditations on the concept. Consisting of fifteen thematically organized essays, _Reflections on the Just_ continues and expands on the work Ricoeur began in with his “little ethics” in _Oneself as Another_ and _The Just_. In the preface, he considers what revisions he would make were he to start over and how that is reflected in these essays. The opening part brings phenomenology to bear on ethics; the second group of essays comprises shorter, occasional pieces considering the concept of justice in the works of other philosophers, including Max Weber and Charles Taylor. The final part turns to the specific domains of medicine and the law, examining how concepts of right and justice operate in those realms. Cogent, deeply considered, and fully engaged with the realities of the contemporary world, _Reflections on the Just_ is an essential work for understanding the development of Ricoeur’s thought in his final years. (shrink)

I offer some comments from the perspective of someone familiar with the work of Paul Ricoeur on Allan Bell’s proposal that discourse studies take a hermeneutic turn drawing on Ricoeur’s idea of an arc of interpretation. I suggest that such a hermeneutic turn would need to be more radical than Bell proposes in that he limits it largely to questions of method, without really addressing how it might affect our understanding of either the object of discourse studies or the goal (...) of such studies. This does raise the question, however, whether discourse studies should be considered a subdiscipline of hermeneutical philosophy. (shrink)

The essays in this book contain some of Paul Ricoeur's most fascinating ruminations on the nature of justice and the law. His thoughts ranging across a number of topics and engaging the work of thinkers both classical and contemporary, Ricoeur offers a series of important reflections on the juridical and the philosophical concepts of right and the space between moral theory and politics.

The essays in this book contain some of Paul Ricoeur's most fascinating ruminations on the nature of justice and the law. His thoughts ranging across a number of topics and engaging the work of thinkers both classical and contemporary, Ricoeur offers a series of important reflections on the juridical and the philosophical concepts of right and the space between moral theory and politics.

This plenary address to the 2013 annual meeting of the North American Society for Philosophical Hermeneutics is intended to shift the discussion beyond the study of individual figures like Gadamer and Ricoeur. Beyond the distinction between ontological and epistemological approaches to hermeneutics, and even that between regional and general hermeneutics, it seeks to pose three areas needing further inves­tigation. At the level of presuppositions and assumptions, more needs to be said about how we can say “we understand”; at the level (...) of practice, there is the question of how one evaluates not just competing interpretations but any interpretation; and at a more basic level constitutive of hermeneutic philosophy, the question of reflexivity—that I/we understand that I/we understand—remains to be explored. (shrink)

Why do major historical events such as the Holocaust occupy the forefront of the collective consciousness, while profound moments such as the Armenian genocide, the McCarthy era, and France's role in North Africa stand distantly behind? Is it possible that history "overly remembers" some events at the expense of others? A landmark work in philosophy, Paul Ricoeur's _Memory, History, Forgetting_ examines this reciprocal relationship between remembering and forgetting, showing how it affects both the perception of historical experience and the production (...) of historical narrative. _Memory, History, Forgetting_, like its title, is divided into three major sections. Ricoeur first takes a phenomenological approach to memory and mnemonical devices. The underlying question here is how a memory of present can be of something absent, the past. The second section addresses recent work by historians by reopening the question of the nature and truth of historical knowledge. Ricoeur explores whether historians, who can write a history of memory, can truly break with all dependence on memory, including memories that resist representation. The third and final section is a profound meditation on the necessity of forgetting as a condition for the possibility of remembering, and whether there can be something like happy forgetting in parallel to happy memory. Throughout the book there are careful and close readings of the texts of Aristotle and Plato, of Descartes and Kant, and of Halbwachs and Pierre Nora. A momentous achievement in the career of one of the most significant philosophers of our age, _Memory, History, Forgetting_ provides the crucial link between Ricoeur's _Time and Narrative_ and _Oneself as Another_ and his recent reflections on ethics and the problems of responsibility and representation. “His success in revealing the internal relations between recalling and forgetting, and how this dynamic becomes problematic in light of events once present but now past, will inspire academic dialogue and response but also holds great appeal to educated general readers in search of both method for and insight from considering the ethical ramifications of modern events.... It is indeed a master work, not only in Ricoeur’s own vita but also in contemporary European philosophy.”—_Library Journal _“Ricoeur writes the best kind of philosophy—critical, economical, and clear.”— _New York Times Book Review _. (shrink)

Why do major historical events such as the Holocaust occupy the forefront of the collective consciousness, while profound moments such as the Armenian genocide, the McCarthy era, and France's role in North Africa stand distantly behind? Is it possible that history "overly remembers" some events at the expense of others? A landmark work in philosophy, Paul Ricoeur's _Memory, History, Forgetting_ examines this reciprocal relationship between remembering and forgetting, showing how it affects both the perception of historical experience and the production (...) of historical narrative. _Memory, History, Forgetting_, like its title, is divided into three major sections. Ricoeur first takes a phenomenological approach to memory and mnemonical devices. The underlying question here is how a memory of present can be of something absent, the past. The second section addresses recent work by historians by reopening the question of the nature and truth of historical knowledge. Ricoeur explores whether historians, who can write a history of memory, can truly break with all dependence on memory, including memories that resist representation. The third and final section is a profound meditation on the necessity of forgetting as a condition for the possibility of remembering, and whether there can be something like happy forgetting in parallel to happy memory. Throughout the book there are careful and close readings of the texts of Aristotle and Plato, of Descartes and Kant, and of Halbwachs and Pierre Nora. A momentous achievement in the career of one of the most significant philosophers of our age, _Memory, History, Forgetting_ provides the crucial link between Ricoeur's _Time and Narrative_ and _Oneself as Another_ and his recent reflections on ethics and the problems of responsibility and representation. “His success in revealing the internal relations between recalling and forgetting, and how this dynamic becomes problematic in light of events once present but now past, will inspire academic dialogue and response but also holds great appeal to educated general readers in search of both method for and insight from considering the ethical ramifications of modern events.... It is indeed a master work, not only in Ricoeur’s own vita but also in contemporary European philosophy.”—_Library Journal _“Ricoeur writes the best kind of philosophy—critical, economical, and clear.”— _New York Times Book Review _. (shrink)

In volume 1 of this three-volume work, Paul Ricoeur examined the relations between time and narrative in historical writing. Now, in volume 2, he examines these relations in fiction and theories of literature. Ricoeur treats the question of just how far the Aristotelian concept of "plot" in narrative fiction can be expanded and whether there is a point at which narrative fiction as a literary form not only blurs at the edges but ceases to exist at all. Though some semiotic (...) theorists have proposed all fiction can be reduced to an atemporal structure, Ricoeur argues that fiction depends on the reader's understanding of narrative traditions, which do evolve but necessarily include a temporal dimension. He looks at how time is actually expressed in narrative fiction, particularly through use of tenses, point of view, and voice. He applies this approach to three books that are, in a sense, tales about time: Virgina Woolf's _Mrs. Dalloway;_ Thomas Mann's _Magic Mountain;_ and Marcel Proust's _Remembrance of Things Past_. "Ricoeur writes the best kind of philosophy—critical, economical, and clear."—Eugen Weber, _New York Times Book Review _ "A major work of literary theory and criticism under the aegis of philosophical hermenutics. I believe that... it will come to have an impact greater than that of Gadamer's Truth and Method—a work it both supplements and transcends in its contribution to our understanding of the meaning of texts and their relationship to the world."—Robert Detweiler, _Religion and Literature_ "One cannot fail to be impressed by Ricoeur's encyclopedic knowledge of the subject under consideration.... To students of rhetoric, the importance of Time and Narrative... is all too evident to require extensive elaboration."—Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar, _Quarterly Journal of Speech_. (shrink)

_Time and Narrative_ builds on Paul Ricoeur's earlier analysis, in _The Rule of Metaphor_, of semantic innovation at the level of the sentence. Ricoeur here examines the creation of meaning at the textual level, with narrative rather than metaphor as the ruling concern. Ricoeur finds a "healthy circle" between time and narrative: time is humanized to the extent that it portrays temporal experience. Ricoeur proposes a theoretical model of this circle using Augustine's theory of time and Aristotle's theory of plot (...) and, further, develops an original thesis of the mimetic function of narrative. He concludes with a comprehensive survey and critique of modern discussions of historical knowledge, understanding, and writing from Aron and Mandelbaum in the late 1930s to the work of the Annales school and that of Anglophone philosophers of history of the 1960s and 1970s. "This work, in my view, puts the whole problem of narrative, not to mention philosophy of history, on a new and higher plane of discussion."—Hayden White, _History and Theory _ "Superb.... A fine point of entrance into the work of one of the eminent thinkers of the present intellectual age."—Joseph R. Gusfield, _Contemporary Sociology _. (shrink)

In the first two volumes of this work, Paul Ricoeur examined the relations between time and narrative in historical writing, fiction, and theories of literature. This final volume, a comprehensive reexamination and synthesis of the ideas developed in volumes 1 and 2, stands as Ricoeur's most complete and satisfying presentation of his own philosophy. Ricoeur's aim here is to explicate as fully as possible the hypothesis that has governed his inquiry, namely, that the effort of thinking at work in every (...) narrative configuration is completed in a refiguration of temporal experience. To this end, he sets himself the central task of determing how far a poetics of narrative can be said to resolve the "aporias"—the doubtful or problematic elements—of time. Chief among these aporias are the conflicts between the phenomenological sense of time and the cosmological sense on the one hand and the oneness or unitary nature of time on the other. In conclusion, Ricoeur reflects upon the inscrutability of time itself and attempts to discern the limits of his own examination of narrative discourse. "As in his previous works, Ricoeur labors as an imcomparable mediator of often estranged philosophical approaches, always in a manner that compromises neither rigor nor creativity."—Mark Kline Taylor, _Christian Century _ "In the midst of two opposing contemporary options—either to flee into ever more precious readings... or to retreat into ever more safe readings... —Ricoeur's work offers an alternative option that is critical, wide-ranging, and conducive to new applications."—Mary Gerhart, _Journal of Religion_. (shrink)

In the first two volumes of this work, Paul Ricoeur examined the relations between time and narrative in historical writing, fiction, and theories of literature. This final volume, a comprehensive reexamination and synthesis of the ideas developed in volumes 1 and 2, stands as Ricoeur's most complete and satisfying presentation of his own philosophy. Ricoeur's aim here is to explicate as fully as possible the hypothesis that has governed his inquiry, namely, that the effort of thinking at work in every (...) narrative configuration is completed in a refiguration of temporal experience. To this end, he sets himself the central task of determing how far a poetics of narrative can be said to resolve the "aporias"—the doubtful or problematic elements—of time. Chief among these aporias are the conflicts between the phenomenological sense of time and the cosmological sense on the one hand and the oneness or unitary nature of time on the other. In conclusion, Ricoeur reflects upon the inscrutability of time itself and attempts to discern the limits of his own examination of narrative discourse. "As in his previous works, Ricoeur labors as an imcomparable mediator of often estranged philosophical approaches, always in a manner that compromises neither rigor nor creativity."—Mark Kline Taylor, _Christian Century _ "In the midst of two opposing contemporary options—either to flee into ever more precious readings... or to retreat into ever more safe readings... —Ricoeur's work offers an alternative option that is critical, wide-ranging, and conducive to new applications."—Mary Gerhart, _Journal of Religion_. (shrink)

This volume presents itself as an exercise in political philosophy, where politics, broadly defined, is taken as having to do with the relationships between ruler and ruled, the issue of authority, problems of social conflict, and the very objectives of social action. What is unusual about its perspective is its attempt to articulate such a philosophy on the basis of a philosophical anthropology, one that is especially influenced by the work of Merleau-Ponty but that also acknowledges the influence of Paul (...) Ricoeur and Gabriel Marcel. One immediate result of such an approach is that politics is seen to be better grounded in terms of hope than in terms of the metaphors of vision or will, neither of which are held be to able to avoid the threat of falling into tyranny or anarchism, both extremes tending to become forms of totalitarianism. (shrink)

David Hume's Enquiry concerning Human Understanding is the definitive statement of the greatest philosopher in the English language. His arguments in support of reasoning from experience, and against the "sophistry and illusion"of religiously inspired philosophical fantasies, caused controversy in the eighteenth century and are strikingly relevant today, when faith and science continue to clash. The Enquiry considers the origin and processes of human thought, reaching the stark conclusion that we can have no ultimate understanding of the physical world, or (...) indeed our own minds. In either sphere we must depend on instinctive learning from experience, recognizing our animal nature and the limits of reason. Hume's calm and open-minded skepticism thus aims to provide a new basis for science, liberating us from the "superstition" of false metaphysics and religion. His Enquiry remains one of the best introductions to the study of philosophy, and his edition places it in its historical and philosophical context. (shrink)

A leading political theorist’s groundbreaking defense of ideal conceptions of justice in political philosophy Throughout the history of political philosophy and politics, there has been continual debate about the roles of idealism versus realism. For contemporary political philosophy, this debate manifests in notions of ideal theory versus nonideal theory. Nonideal thinkers shift their focus from theorizing about full social justice, asking instead which feasible institutional and political changes would make a society more just. Ideal thinkers, on the other hand, question (...) whether full justice is a standard that any society is likely ever to satisfy. And, if social justice is unrealistic, are attempts to understand it without value or importance, and merely utopian? Utopophobia argues against thinking that justice must be realistic, or that understanding justice is only valuable if it can be realized. David Estlund does not offer a particular theory of justice, nor does he assert that justice is indeed unrealizable—only that it could be, and this possibility upsets common ways of proceeding in political thought. Estlund engages critically with important strands in traditional and contemporary political philosophy that assume a sound theory of justice has the overriding, defining task of contributing practical guidance toward greater social justice. Along the way, he counters several tempting perspectives, including the view that inquiry in political philosophy could have significant value only as a guide to practical political action, and that understanding true justice would necessarily have practical value, at least as an ideal arrangement to be approximated. Demonstrating that unrealistic standards of justice can be both sound and valuable to understand, Utopophobia stands as a trenchant defense of ideal theory in political philosophy. (shrink)

The zetetic turn in epistemology raises three questions about epistemic and zetetic norms. First, there is the relationship question: what is the relationship between epistemic and zetetic norms? Are some epistemic norms zetetic norms, or are epistemic and zetetic norms distinct? Second, there is the tension question: are traditional epistemic norms in tension with plausible zetetic norms? Third, there is the reaction question: how should theorists react to a tension between epistemic and zetetic norms? Drawing on an analogy to practical (...) philosophy, I develop a focal point view to resolve these motivating questions. On the focal point view, traditional epistemic norms and zetetic norms answer different types of normative questions. There is nevertheless a familiar type of evaluative tension between traditional epistemic norms and zetetic norms, but this tension is an unavoidable feature of the normative landscape and not a sign that traditional epistemic norms need revision. But if traditional epistemic norms are not zetetic norms, then in what sense is zetetic epistemology a project for epistemologists? I conclude by articulating a sense in which some nontraditional epistemic norms are zetetic norms, and in which zetetic epistemology is an important part of the study of theoretical rationality. (shrink)

One of the enduring concerns of moral philosophy is deciding who or what is deserving of ethical consideration. Much recent attention has been devoted to the "animal question" -- consideration of the moral status of nonhuman animals. In this book, David Gunkel takes up the "machine question": whether and to what extent intelligent and autonomous machines of our own making can be considered to have legitimate moral responsibilities and any legitimate claim to moral consideration. The machine question poses a (...) fundamental challenge to moral thinking, questioning the traditional philosophical conceptualization of technology as a tool or instrument to be used by human agents. Gunkel begins by addressing the question of machine moral agency: whether a machine might be considered a legitimate moral agent that could be held responsible for decisions and actions. He then approaches the machine question from the other side, considering whether a machine might be a moral patient due legitimate moral consideration. Finally, Gunkel considers some recent innovations in moral philosophy and critical theory that complicate the machine question, deconstructing the binary agent--patient opposition itself. Technological advances may prompt us to wonder if the science fiction of computers and robots whose actions affect their human companions could become science fact. Gunkel's argument promises to influence future considerations of ethics, ourselves, and the other entities who inhabit this world. (shrink)

This book is an attempt to get to the bottom of an acute and perennial tension between our best scientific pictures of the fundamental physical structure of the world and our everyday empirical experience of it. The trouble is about the direction of time. The situation (very briefly) is that it is a consequence of almost every one of those fundamental scientific pictures--and that it is at the same time radically at odds with our common sense--that whatever can happen can (...) just as naturally happen backwards. Albert provides an unprecedentedly clear, lively, and systematic new account--in the context of a Newtonian-Mechanical picture of the world--of the ultimate origins of the statistical regularities we see around us, of the temporal irreversibility of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, of the asymmetries in our epistemic access to the past and the future, and of our conviction that by acting now we can affect the future but not the past. Then, in the final section of the book, he generalizes the Newtonian picture to the quantum-mechanical case and (most interestingly) suggests a very deep potential connection between the problem of the direction of time and the quantum-mechanical measurement problem. The book aims to be both an original contribution to the present scientific and philosophical understanding of these matters at the most advanced level, and something in the nature of an elementary textbook on the subject accessible to interested high-school students. Table of Contents: Preface 1. Time-Reversal Invariance 2. Thermodynamics 3. Statistical Mechanics 4. The Reversibility Objections and the Past-Hypothesis 5. The Scope of Thermodynamics 6. The Asymmetries of Knowledge and Intervention 7. Quantum Mechanics Appendix: Gedankenexperiments with Heat Engines Index Reviews of this book: The foundations of statistical mechanisms are often presented in physics textbooks in a rather obscure and confused way. By challenging common ways of thinking about this subject, Time and Chance can do quite a lot to improve this situation. --Jean Bricmont, Science Albert is perfecting a style of foundational analysis that is uniquely his own...It has a surgical precision...and it is ruthless with pretensions. The foundations of thermodynamics is a topic that has accumulated a good deal of dead wood; this is a fire that will burn and burn. --Simon W. Saunders, Oxford University As usual with Albert's work, the exposition is brisk and to the point, and exceptionally clear...The book will be an extremely valuable contribution to the literature on the subject of philosophical issues in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, a literature which has been thin on the ground but is now growing as it deserves to. --Lawrence Sklar, University of Michigan. (shrink)

By means of an example, shows the possibility of beliefs that are separately rational whilst together inconsistent.