This collection of essays by leading American philosophers honors John E. Smith, a major figure in the struggle for the American profession of philosophy to redefine itself and return to its grander traditions.

Let me begin by giving preliminary definition to the two kinds of contingency named in my title, although I shall argue that the distinction between them gets too complicated to sustain in the long run. Cosmological contingency is the contingency of things within the world upon other things within the world, plus perhaps their own spontaneous creativity. Ontological contingency is the contingency of everything in the world that is determinate in any way upon an ontological ground. That ontological ground cannot (...) itself be determinate, and you can recollect Plotinus's One, Thomas Aquinas's Pure Act of To Be, Brahman without qualities, or the Ultimate of Non-Being in Zhou Dunyi's philosophy for sample conceptions of... (shrink)

I. Rights of man; being the first volume of an entirely new and unabridged issue. Ed. by Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner, with a biographical and critical introduction by John M. Robertson. -- II. The age of reason; being the second volume of an entirely new and unabridged issue of the chief works of Thomas paine. Ed., with historical introduction, by Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner.

The paper analyzes the ideas of H. Neville’s philosophical novel “The Isle of Pines”. The scope of the research is to make sense of its place within the context of Early Modern political philosophy, and especially its linkage with the Hobbesian theories of human nature, sovereignty and inevitable conflict engaging pre-political communities into bellum omnium contra omnes. Rethinking Hobbesian views on the natural state Neville replaces his mechanical interpretation of human’s passions and behavioral patterns with a historical perspective. (...) Taking into his account contemporary ethnographical knowledge Neville set a mental experiment and found out that a Hobbesian trap before the emergence of a state was not inevitable as well as the lack of social norms. We argue that Neville’s novel was an attempt to escape Hobbesian pessimism and to describe the emergence of social and political structures as a historical and evolutionary proces. (shrink)

Develops a theory of culture based on a metaphysics that elaborates on the Platonic and Confucian traditions. In Metaphysics of Goodness, Robert Cummings Neville extends Alfred North Whitehead’s project of cultural studies, which was based on a new metaphysics that Whitehead developed in Adventures of Ideas. Neville’s focus is value or goodness in many modes. The metaphysics treated in this book derive from the Platonic and Confucian traditions, with significant modifications of Whitehead, Peirce, Dewey, Confucius, Xunzi, and Zhou (...) Dunyi. Part one develops a theory of form based on a metaphysics of harmony. Part two elaborates a theory of art based on a metaphysics of beauty. Part three sketches a theory of personhood based on a metaphysics of obligation. Part four discusses civilization in a systematic way based on a metaphysics of flourishing. Throughout the book, Neville elaborates a theory of interpretation that is inspired by Peirce, Dewey, and Xunzi but is not limited to their ideas. While the reasoning of the book is concise, it employs methodologies from many kinds of philosophy, art criticism, ethics, and cultural studies, and sees philosophy as needing to learn from all these disciplines. “Neville’s work is informed by a lifelong engagement with the most important philosophers in history, including Plato, Aristotle, Whitehead, and Dewey. Here, he offers an important argument that there is beauty not only in how people see the world, but also in the world itself.” — Kevin Schilbrack, Appalachian State University. (shrink)

translated by Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice, and Paul KnightThe Principle of Hope is one of the great works of the human spirit. It is a critical history of the utopian vision and a profound exploration of the possible reality of utopia. Even as the world has rejected the doctrine on which Bloch sought to base his utopia, his work still challenges us to think more insightfully about our own visions of a better world.The Principle of Hope is published in (...) three volumes: Volume 1 lays the foundations of the philosophy of process and introduces the idea of the Not-Yet-Conscious - the anticipatory element that Bloch sees as central to human thought. It also contains a remarkable account of the aesthetic interpretations of utopian "wishful images" in fairy tales, popular fiction, travel, theater, dance, and the cinema.Volume 2 presents "the outlines of a better world." It examines the utopian systems that progressive thinkers have developed in the fields of medicine, painting, opera, poetry, and ultimately, philosophy. It is nothing less than an encyclopedic account of utopian thought from the Greeks to the present.Volume 3 offers a prescription for ways in which humans can reach their proper "homeland," where social justice is coupled with an openness to change and to the future. (shrink)

Untimely knowledge -- The great transformation : ancient and modern economics -- Before alienation : the classical critique of modern society -- An aesthetic education : the failings of modern culture -- History as nightmare : conceptions of progress and decline -- Allusion and appropriation : the rhetorical uses of antiquity.

First published in Switzerland in 1935 and now available for the first time in English translation, _Heritage of Our Times_ is a bold work of cultural criticism by a major twentieth-century German philosopher. Recalling work by Walter Benjamin and the Frankfurt School, Ernst Bloch's study of everyday life and politics during the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany is a brilliant historical analysis of the cultural conditions leading to German fascism. A half-century later, Bloch's prescient meditations on culture and politics still (...) retain their explosive power and are certain to provoke controversy and discussion among cultural critics, philosophers, social theorists, and historians. In their Introduction, the translators contextualize the book within the political and intellectual tendencies of the period and Bloch's other work. (shrink)

Increasingly, stories are emerging about businesses that engage in ethical behaviors above and beyond mere compliance with regulations. These positive deviations along the ethical continuum provide an opportunity to explore how some companies’ business philosophy leads them to pursue an array of outcomes beyond the bottom line. This paper presents a case study of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, the leading ethical company in the United States as rated by Forbes magazine, exploring the company culture and operating philosophy from a perspective (...) of conscientious capitalism. The three underlying assumptions of conscientious capitalism are: (1) interconnectedness between individuals, businesses, and global society; (2) wealth as a holistically understood state rather than solely a financial status; and (3) relevant time spanning multiple generations. Implications are offered for commerce, business practitioners, and educators. (shrink)

Written by an experienced author with a strong background in both History and Earth Sciences, this text explores the philosophic implications of the dramatic ...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Gothicism and Early Modern Historical EthnographyKristoffer NevilleGothicism: Problems and PossibilitiesEarly-modern Gothicism, or self-identification with the Gothic peoples described by classical authors, has usually been considered a Scandinavian, and particularly Swedish, affair. Particularly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Swedish court and universities insisted militantly that the kingdom was the Gothic homeland, and this has fostered an assumption that Gothicism represents a kind of embryonic nationalism. This interpretation was (...) almost inevitable given the circumstances of modern interest in the phenomenon. Scandinavian scholars were the first to pick up the Gothic thread in the earlier twentieth century, and Swedes in particular have dominated the literature on Gothicism. At least in the early years, this may be [End Page 213] related to a general trend to interpret the past in terms of a relatively inflexible, modern concept of nation. These earlier studies accordingly relied largely on the same, mostly Swedish, sources. Later work has generally not expanded the framework of the discourse, however.1 A number of important early modern texts that show the much broader appeal of Gothicism are not accounted for in the standard narrative of the rise of the phenomenon in the early modern period. I will show that the Scandinavian interpretation has been allowed to overshadow a much broader Gothic tradition that encompassed a broad part of Europe, including the German lands and Spain. Gothicism has thus been reduced to just one aspect of its original scope, and the scholarly nuances and historical jockeying that shaped the narrative have largely been lost. This reduction has had consequences not only for the familiar version of the story, largely derived from Swedish texts, but also for our understanding of history writing in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.The Gothicism debate may be unique in its breadth and in the intensity of interest that it elicited. It is also remarkable for the variety of approaches to historical writing that scholars applied as each tried to develop a more impregnable argument than the last. Linguistic, geographical, archaeological, antiquarian, and textual methods intersected freely, inviting shifting and overlapping versions of the Gothic narrative that sometimes trace the linguistic legacy of the tribe, sometimes the ethnic legacy, and sometimes bind the two together. All of these narratives were basically concerned with the antiquity of the Goths and their legacy in early modern Europe. The implications of this were different for various regions and rulers, but most wanted to claim for themselves the strength, prestige, and antiquity of the tribe that toppled the Roman Empire, thus enhancing their own often dubious historical legitimacy. [End Page 214]This debate often took a polemical character, particularly in the political sphere, where there were fierce disputes over which region was the true homeland of the tribe, and thus which area (or people or ruling dynasty) could claim the greatest honor from their exploits and claim to be their most direct descendants. But there was also a very clear corollary to this contentious discourse. As scholars from across a wide area produced mountains of evidence pointing to the Gothic origins of their own regions, it became possible to think of Gothic origins not only in terms of difference—which kingdom, dynasty, or geographic region could claim the greatest antiquity and eminence—but also in terms of shared history and common identity across political, geographical, and linguistic boundaries. In general, the polemic was restricted to the origins of the Goths. Many writers seem to have accepted that the Gothic lands cumulatively formed a sort of historical unity that was lost through later political divisions, but which could still be traced through other means. Particularly in the Holy Roman Empire—a largely political boundary encompassing many smaller states ruled by famously fractious princes of different confessions and languages—the more conceptual notion of deep-seated Gothic origins opened the way for a different alignment of identity both within and without the boundaries of the Empire, and especially with Scandinavia, which contributed such rich arguments to the debate.There are several significant problems in a study of the early-modern view of the Goths beyond the historiographical ones outlined above. They were widely associated with other tribes... (shrink)