Michel de Montaigne, the inventor of the essay, has always been acknowledged as a great literary figure but has never been thought of as a philosophical original. This book treats Montaigne as a serious thinker in his own right, taking as its point of departure Montaigne's description of himself as 'an unpremeditated and accidental philosopher'. Whereas previous commentators have treated Montaigne's Essays as embodying a scepticism harking back to classical sources, Ann Hartle offers an account that reveals Montaigne's thought to (...) be dialectical, transforming sceptical doubt into wonder at the most familiar aspects of life. This major reassessment of a much admired but also much underestimated thinker will interest a wide range of historians of philosophy as well as scholars in comparative literature, French studies and the history of ideas. (shrink)

Death and the Disinterested Spectator examines the nature of philosophy in light of philosophy's claim to be a preparation for death.

Montaigne’s _Essays_ are rightfully studied as giving birth to the literary form of that name. Ann Hartle’s _Montaigne and the Origins of Modern Philosophy_ argues that the essay is actually the perfect expression of Montaigne as what he called "a new figure: an unpremeditated and accidental philosopher." Unpremeditated philosophy is philosophy made sociable—brought down from the heavens to the street, where it might be engaged in by a wider audience. In the same philosophical act, Montaigne both transforms philosophy and invents (...) "society," a distinctly modern form of association. Through this transformation, a new, modern character emerges: the individual, who is neither master nor slave and who possesses the new virtues of integrity and generosity. In Montaigne’s radically new philosophical project, Hartle finds intimations of both modern epistemology and modern political philosophy. (shrink)

Ann Hartle - Rousseau: The Sentiment of Existence - Journal of the History of Philosophy 45:3 Journal of the History of Philosophy 45.3 500-501 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Ann Hartle Emory University David Gauthier. Rousseau: The Sentiment of Existence. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pp. xiv + 196. Paper, $22.99. The unity of Rousseau's thought is among the most serious challenges faced by his interpreters. How are we to reconcile the submission of the individual to (...) the general will in the Social Contract with the solitary and free individual of the state of nature in the Discourse on Inequality and the autobiographical works? One of the great merits of this book is that it does offer, as the author promises, a.. (shrink)

Montaigne chooses to write the Essays in French, the vulgar language, rather than in Latin, the language of the learned. He uses only the words that areheard in the streets, markets, and taverns of France. And he speaks about the body and the sexual in a manner that goes beyond the limits of propriety. The language of the Essays perfectly reflects Montaigne’s philosophical project, the re-ordering of philosophy to the lowest rather than the highest, to the ordinary rather than the (...) extraordinary. By bringing the private into the public, he frees the private from shame and creates the new, modern public space, i.e., society. The invention of the essay is the invention of society. (shrink)

Montaigne chooses to write the Essays in French, the vulgar language, rather than in Latin, the language of the learned. He uses only the words that areheard in the streets, markets, and taverns of France. And he speaks about the body and the sexual in a manner that goes beyond the limits of propriety. The language of the Essays perfectly reflects Montaigne’s philosophical project, the re-ordering of philosophy to the lowest rather than the highest, to the ordinary rather than the (...) extraordinary. By bringing the private into the public, he frees the private from shame and creates the new, modern public space, i.e., society. The invention of the essay is the invention of society. (shrink)

The modern philosophical act, as it appears in the Essays of Montaigne, reorders the world by radically altering the relationship between the mind and the world. Montaigne replaces the premodern philosophical act of contemplation with the modern philosophical act of judgment. While contemplation is the natural end or natural completion and perfection of the mind, judgment is the freedom of the mind from nature. Contemplation is the receptive attitude of the mind toward the world; judgment is the attitude of mastery. (...) Contemplation is the ordering of the human to the divine, while judgment reorders man to man himself. This reordering entails a revaluation of all things in relation to man as man. Judgment eliminates the classical distinction between actions that are good in themselves and actions that are for the sake of production, thereby undermining the hierarchy of leisure and work, the foundation of classical civilization. The liberal order is the new form of human association, which replaces the old order. (shrink)

The philosophical ideal of self-knowledge has been all but forgotten in what Walker Percy calls "the age of theory." Hartle attempts to recover that ancient philosophical task and to articulate what that ideal could mean in the context of our historical situation. She considers and rejects claims that we can attain self-knowledge through theory, anti-theory, or narrative and she defends philosophy as a humanistic, rather than scientific, endeavor. Self-Knowledge in the Age of Theory will be of great interest not only (...) to philosophers but to scholars of literature and other humanities. (shrink)

Montaigne’s last words in the Essays—the words that capture his entire project—are “sociable wisdom.” Philosophy has been transformed from the “love of wisdom” to “sociable wisdom” and this transformation is, at the same time, the transformation of the human world, the production of society, a new mode of human association. What is “sociable wisdom” and how has it produced this remarkable effect?Philosophy means “the love of wisdom.” Although the term is believed to have been used first by Pythagoras, Socrates presents (...) us with the most complete picture of the life of philosophy as the love of wisdom. And Socrates is the ancient philosopher most admired by Montaigne. However, the Socrates of the Essays is.. (shrink)

The Essays do not look like philosophy in any traditional sense: there are no arguments, conclusions, or proofs, and no apparent philosophical teaching. Yet, Montaigne does describe himself as a philosopher: “a new figure: an unpremeditated and accidental philosopher.” Unpremeditated and accidental philosophy, however, just looks like the formless and disordered thoughts of ordinary life and conversation. While philosophy is invisible, Montaigne himself is always visible. Philosophy disappears into the pre-philosophical at the same time and in the same act by (...) which Montaigne emerges into the public in his concrete particularity. The Essays do not look like philosophy because philosophy is not a teaching but an act, the act of bringing the private, common man into the public. At the same time and in the same act, Montaigne transforms both philosophy and human association: the philosophical act is the invention of modern society. (shrink)

This is the second volume of a two volume study on ethical issues concerning death. Volume 2 is subtitled Death and Whom to Save from It. In this second volume, Kamm deals with rights, duties, and status, developing an account of when it is permissible to harm others, especially when it is permissible to kill others. There is, however, a third book that must be considered if we are to fully understand the import of Volume 2 of Morality, Mortality. This (...) third book is entitled Creation and Abortion. It was originally intended to be included in Morality, Mortality, but, on account of considerations of length, the material on abortion was published separately by Oxford University Press in 1992. Creation and Abortion was prompted by Kamm's attempt to understand and modify Judith Thomson's "A Defense of Abortion.". (shrink)

This book is an attempt to provide a new “ethical framework” that can then be applied to issues in reproductive and perinatal medicine. A new framework is needed because moral theories such as utilitarianism and Kantian ethics have proved to be deficient in deciding specific cases. The author seeks to balance two fundamental values: reproductive freedom and respect for life.

This book is intended to be an introductory textbook or an introduction for the general reader to the subject of metaphysics. Its approach is systematic rather than historical. The author accepts the definition of metaphysics as "the study of ultimate reality" and structures the book roughly along the lines of the threefold division of the subject-matter of metaphysics: the world, God, and man.

In the spring of 1566, a mysterious stranger appeared in Venice and began to preach around the Piazza San Marco. He called himself Dionisio Gallo, and no one has ever discovered whether that was his real name. Dionisio had come from France where he had apparently been rector of the College de Lisieux, although even that small detail of his life has not been established definitively. He claimed that in 1563 the Virgin Mary had anointed him in a mystical vision (...) and that his prophetic mission was initiated with this anointment. Through his preaching and his writing, he criticized many of the same abuses in the Church that had been cited by Luther and by the reform commission established by Pope Paul III. The Council of Trent had completed its sessions, but Dionisio, along with many others, did not believe that the Council had accomplished the work of reform. (shrink)

This book is an attempt to bring together the theory of power and a theory of the psyche, especially, but not exclusively, the theories of Foucault and Freud. According to both Foucault and Althusser, the subject comes into being through submission to power. Yet Foucault does not address the question of the psychic form that power takes. Butler seeks to explore the perspectives from which these two theories illuminate each other. Later in the Introduction she formulates her task as twofold: (...) to consider both “how the formation of the subject involves the regulatory formation of the psyche” and “how we might make such a conception of the subject work as a notion of political agency in postliberatory times”. (shrink)

The question which this book addresses is "What shall governments do?" Oakeshott's aim is to understand the practices of and thoughts about government that have dominated the modern European world. Put more precisely, his question is: "What is the character of modern politics that makes its practice run to ambivalence and its vocabulary run to equivocation?" The most fundamental distinction that can help us to sort through this ambivalence and equivocation is that between "the politics of faith" and "the politics (...) of scepticism," two opposed styles of politics whose interaction is the concordia discors of the past five centuries of European politics. (shrink)