This volume consists of interviews with eight contemporary French philosophers. The main issue is how contemporary French philosophy is received in Germany, particularly by thinkers such as Juergen Habermas, who tend to characterize the French as irrationalists.

In this rich and detailed study of early modern women's thought, Jacqueline Broad explores the complexity of women's responses to Cartesian philosophy and its intellectual legacy in England and Europe. She examines the work of thinkers such as Mary Astell, Elisabeth of Bohemia, Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway and Damaris Masham, who were active participants in the intellectual life of their time and were also the respected colleagues of philosophers such as Descartes, Leibniz and Locke. She also illuminates the continuities (...) between early modern women's thought and the anti-dualism of more recent feminist thinkers. The result is a more gender-balanced account of early modern thought than has hitherto been available. Broad's clear and accessible exploration of this still-unfamiliar area will have a strong appeal to both students and scholars in the history of philosophy, women's studies and the history of ideas. (shrink)

What are the philosophical views of professional philosophers, and how do these views change over time? The 2020 PhilPapers Survey surveyed around 2000 philosophers on 100 philosophical questions. The results provide a snapshot of the state of some central debates in philosophy, reveal correlations and demographic effects involving philosophers' views, and reveal some changes in philosophers' views over the last decade.

"This rich compendium on the lives and doctrines of philosophers ranges over three centuries, from Thales to Epicurus (to whom the whole tenth book is devoted); 45 important figures are portrayed. Diogenes Laertius carefully compiled his information from hundreds of sources and enriches his accounts with numerous quotations. Diogenes Laertius lived probably in the earlier half of the 3rd century CE, his ancestry and birthplace being unknown. His history, in ten books, is divided unscientifically into two 'Successions' or sections: (...) 'Ionian' from Anaximander to Theophrastus and Chrysippus, including the Socratic schools; 'Italian' from Pythagoras to Epicurus, including the Eleatics and sceptics. It is a very valuable collection of quotations and facts." -- Publisher description. (shrink)

This volume provides a critical survey of the major figures and ideas of 20th century political philosophy.

This text is an innovative exploration of philosophy and madness in the context of the critical engagement of Heidegger's phenomenological ontology with Freudian psychoanalysis. Included is a play in which, after a mental breakdown, Martin Heidegger undergoes psychoanalytic treatment from Dr. Medard Boss. Boss is essentially caught between two intellectual giants: his patient, Heidegger, who challenges him to evolve beyond traditional Freudian psychoanalysis, and his mentor, Freud, who acts as a “ghostly” consultant in facilitating Heidegger's return to health. The dialogue (...) of the play consists of actual quotes taken from the major thinkers themselves, which enhances the authenticity of this fictitious production. In addition, the theoretical perspectives of Freud, Heidegger, Boss, and Ludwig Binswanger are included to enhance the readers' background knowledge. In the process of disclosing these brilliant theorists, this book uncovers what each orientation has to offer the others. (shrink)

Should philosophers address the needs of their societies? If the answer is affirmative, and if today's needs are being inadequately answered within the New Age movement for lack of viable alternatives, philosophers' minimal response could be teaching critical thinking outside the academe, and maximal response would be providing relevant wisdom for the world. The first option requires construing logic and epistemology as practical fields. The second requires reforming part of Philosophy as social thinking which provides relevant wisdom for (...) the world. I expose here the maximal response based on an analysis of society's needs forcosmology and spirituality, the New Age Movement's role in providing for those needs, its dangers and imperviousness to criticism, and philosophers' possible responsibility for and interest in answering the needs for a synoptic vision. (shrink)

W.K.C. Guthrie has written a survey of the great age of Greek philosophy - from Thales to Aristotle - which combines comprehensiveness with brevity. Without pre-supposing a knowledge of Greek or the Classics, he sets out to explain the ideas of Plato and Aristotle in the light of their predecessors rather than their successors, and to describe the characteristic features of the Greek way of thinking and outlook on the world. Thus The Greek Philosophers provides excellent background material for (...) the general reader - as well as providing a firm basis for specialist studies. (shrink)

This study explains how the myths of Greece and Rome were transmitted from antiquity to the Renaissance. Luc Brisson argues that philosophy was ironically responsible for saving myth from historical annihilation. Although philosophy was initially critical of myth because it could not be declared true or false and because it was inferior to argumentation, mythology was progressively reincorporated into philosophy through allegorical exegesis. Brisson shows to what degree allegory was employed among philosophers and how it enabled myth to take (...) on a number of different interpretive systems throughout the centuries: moral, physical, psychological, political, and even metaphysical. How Philosophers Saved Myths also describes how, during the first years of the modern era, allegory followed a more religious path, which was to assume a larger role in Neoplatonism. Ultimately, Brisson explains how this embrace of myth was carried forward by Byzantine thinkers and artists throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance after the triumph of Chistianity, Brisson argues, myths no longer had to agree with just history and philosophy but the dogmas of the Church as well. (shrink)

There is not only moral disagreement among ordinary people: there is also moral disagreement among philosophers. Since philosophers might seem to be in the best possible position to reach the truth about morality, such disagreement may suggest that either there is no single truth about morality, or at least if there is, it is unknowable. The goal of this paper is to rebut this argument: the best explanation of moral disagreement among philosophers is quite compatible with the (...) thesis that many moral truths are widely known. (shrink)

Ever since Kant, moral philosophers have been more or less animated by the mission of discovering inescapable law-like rules that would provide a binding justification for morality. Recently, however, many have started to question whether this is possible and what, after all, this project could achieve. An alternative vision of the task of moral philosophy starts from the pragmatist idea that philosophizing begins and ends in human experiencing. It leads to a view where morality is seen as a “social (...) technology” that aims to make living together possible, and strengthens people's capability to live a good life within a society. The role of moral philosophy is, accordingly, to develop our moral tools further. Moral philosophers become ethical engineers who use their expertise in ethical topics to criticize existing “moral technology” and construct new concepts, tools, and theories that better answer the current challenges for living a good life. (shrink)

The long Nineteenth Century spans a host of important philosophical movements: romanticism, idealism, socialism, Nietzscheanism, and phenomenology, to mention a few. Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Marx are well-known names from this period. This, however, was also a transformative period for women philosophers in German-speaking countries and contexts. Their works are less well-known, yet offer stimulating and path-breaking contributions to nineteenth-century thought. In this period, women philosophers explored a wide range of philosophical topics and styles. Throughout the movements (...) of romanticism, idealism, socialism, and phenomenology, women philosophers helped shape philosophy's agenda and provided unique approaches to existential, political, aesthetic, and epistemological questions. While during the Nineteenth Century women continued to be (largely) excluded from formal education and positions, they developed ways of philosophizing that was accessible, intuitive, and activist in spirit. The present volume makes available to English-language readers--often for the first time--the works of nine significant women philosophers, with the hope of stimulating further interest in and scholarship on their works. The Editors' introductions offer a comprehensive introduction to the contributions of women philosophers in the period, but also to individual figures and movements. The translations are furnished with explanatory footnotes and are designed to be accessible to students as well as scholars. (shrink)

In An Intimate Relation: Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science Presented to Robert E. Butts on his 60th Birthday.