This study is a careful and logical analysis of the concept “free will.” Its aim is to retrieve and defend the idea that the agent has some genuine power of self-determination, that is, that “the agent, as free, is the ultimate creator of her own purposes”. It carefully looks into the mystery of free will without an uncritical jump into speculation. It is logical in that it steadfastly raises arguments on both sides of the issue as it works its way (...) to its thesis. It is a helpful summary of the debate of the last 25 years on free will. In addition to this, the book is a significant advancement. (shrink)

Now that there is more distance from Existentialism as a movement in philosophy, after its influence has passed to other forms, this collection of writings by its founding members can help raise the question about just what existentialism is. Langiulli writes an interesting and freer new introduction to this 25-year-old collection. He makes a good case for looking back to the philosophical sources to see again what existentialism had and still has a hold of. He implies that “post-modernism, deconstructionism, antifoundationalism, (...) historicism, multiculturalism, and diversityism,” while stemming from existentialism, also forget what existentialism was onto. (shrink)

In eight short chapters, McGinn touches on Ethics, Evil, and Fiction from an analytical point of view. First, he approaches the nature of ethics. Here McGinn confronts the issue of moral psychologism and resists the temptation to reduce morality to something that it is not and to what cannot really account for it. His conclusion is that “goodness is a moral property... a separate type of property”. He cites G. E. Moore’s insight into the simplicity of goodness and defends “a (...) strong objectivist or cognitivist” position of moral truth. (shrink)