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 |
50 REASONS PEOPLE GIVE FOR BELIEVING IN A GOD
[Guy P Harrison]
Many books that challenge religious belief from a sceptical point of view take a combative tone that is almost guaranteed to alienate believers or they present complex philosophical or scientific arguments that fail to reach the average reader. Journalist Guy P Harrison argues that this is an ineffective way of encouraging people to develop critical thinking about religion. In this unique approach to scepticism regarding God, Harrison concisely presents fifty commonly heard reasons people often give for believing in a God and then he raises legitimate questions regarding these reasons, showing in each case that there is much room for doubt. Whether you're a believer, a complete sceptic, or somewhere in between, you'll find Harrison's review of traditional and more recent arguments for the existence of God refreshing, approachable, and enlightening. From religion as the foundation of morality to the authority of sacred books, the compelling religious testimony of influential people, near-death experiences, arguments from Intelligent Design, and much more, Harrison respectfully describes each rationale for belief and then politely shows the deficiencies that any good sceptic would point out. As a journalist who has travelled widely and interviewed many highly accomplished people, quite a number of whom are believers, Harrison appreciates the variety of belief and the ways in which people seek to make religion compatible with scientific thought. Nonetheless, he shows that, despite the prevalence of belief in God or religious belief in intelligent people, in the end there are no unassailable reasons for believing in a God. For sceptics looking for appealing ways to approach their believing friends or believers who are not afraid to consider a sceptical challenge, Harrison's book makes for very stimulating reading.
{
354pp,
155x230mm,
April 2008;
PB,
£11.50,
1591025672:9781591025672
, Prometheus Books
} |
 |
ACQUAINTANCE, ONTOLOGY, & KNOWLEDGE
: Collected Essays in Ontology
[Fred Wilson]
These essays bring together forty years of work in ontology. Intentionality, negation, universals, bare particulars, tropes, general facts, relations, the myth of the 'myth of the given', are among the topics covered. Bergmann, Quine, Sellars, Russell, Wittgenstein, Hume, Bradley, Hochberg, Dummett, Frege, Plato, are among the philosophers discussed. The essays criticise non-Humean notions of cause; they criticise the notion that besides simple atomic facts there are also negative facts and general facts. They defend a realism of properties as universals, against nominalism; bare particulars; a (qualified) realism with regard to logical form; a Russellian account of relations; and an account of minds and intentionality, which is opposed to materialism, but is also a form of (methodological) behaviourism. In general, the ontology is one of logical atomism and empiricist throughout, rooted in a Principle of Acquaintance.
{
726pp,
150x210mm,
June 2007;
HB,
£144.99,
3938793589:9783938793589
, Ontos Verlag
} |
 |
AGNOSTIC READER
[S T Joshi (ed)]
Agnosticism -- the philosophical argument that it is impossible to know whether God exists or not -- has been the point of view of many distinguished thinkers from the 19th century to the present. In contrast to atheism, which asserts that God does not exist, agnosticism holds that reason and the best scientific evidence do not allow one to reach a decisive conclusion regarding the existence of God. This reader prints selections of some of the most profound and pioneering discussions of agnosticism over the past two centuries. Beginning with early formulations of the agnostic perspective by Thomas Henry Huxley (who coined the term), Bertrand Russell, and others, editor S. T. Joshi shows how agnosticism received a strong boost in the later 19th century from the so-called higher criticism of the Bible. Selections from Edward Burnett Tylor, Arthur Schopenhauer, Robert G. Ingersoll, and Edward Westermarck made a strong case that religion was a natural product of primitive development and that the Bible was the product of an age of scientific ignorance and superstition. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Christianity in Europe was in a state of decline among the intellectual classes. The writings of W. E. H. Leckey, Leslie Stephen, and Walter Lippmann show that leading commentators were openly pondering a European society in which Christianity was a thing of the past. The increasing success of the natural sciences during this same time period supported the agnostic viewpoint by accounting for phenomena on a natural, rather than a supernatural, basis. Selections from John William Draper, Albert Einstein, Isaac Asimov, and others demonstrate the scientific respectability of agnosticism. Finally, selections from such thinkers as Frederic Harrison, H. L. Mencken, and Corliss Lamont emphasise how living with agnosticism can be intellectually and morally satisfying, even exhilarating. Overall, "The Agnostic Reader" shows how agnosticism can provide a framework for living with courage and dignity.
{
386pp,
155x230mm,
August 2007;
PB,
£13.99,
1591025338:9781591025337
, Prometheus Books
} |
 |
ALCESTIS, MEDEA, HIPPOLYTUS
[Euripides; Translated by Diane A Svarlien]
This volume of three of Euripides' most celebrated plays offers graceful, economical, metrical translations that convey the wide range of effects of the playwright's verse, from the idiomatic speech of its dialogue to the high formality of its choral odes.
{
206pp,
140x215mm,
October 2007;
HB,
£27.95,
0872208230:9780872208230
/
PB,
£6.95,
0872208222:9780872208223
, Hackett Publishing
} |
 |
ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD
: De lalgèbre universelle à la théologie naturelle
[François Beets, Michel Dupuis & Michel Weber]
Text in French. Les 31 mai, 1er et 2 juin 2006, la Faculté de Théologie de l'Université catholique de Louvain a organisé, en collaboration avec le Centre de philosophie pratique Chromatiques whiteheadiennes, un colloque international consacré à la pensée d'Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947). Les échanges ont privilégié les aspects les plus actuels d'une pensée apte à rencontrer les défis contemporains. Rejoindre l'actualité de Whitehead tant en science et en philosophie qu'en théologie suppose de pratiquer une interdisciplinarité qui est au coeur de ses intuitions. Le dialogue entre scientifiques, philosophes et théologiens a permis d'apporter des précisions importantes sur la manière whiteheadienne d'appréhender les sphères en interaction de la religion, de la science et de la politique.
{
378pp,
150x220mm,
April 2005;
HB,
£71.99,
3937202641:9783937202648
, Ontos Verlag
} |
 |
ANIMAL SUBJECTS
: An Ethical Reader in a Posthuman World
[Jodey Castricano (ed)]
Although Cultural Studies has directed sustained attacks against sexism and racism, the discipline has lagged behind on questions of the animal, including those that address animal suffering in factory farming, product testing and laboratory experimentation, and in zoos, rodeos, circuses, and public aquariums. The contributors to "Animal Subjects" are scholars and writers whose work, from diverse perspectives, calls into question the boundaries that divide humans from animals, focusing on the medical, biological, cultural, philosophical, and ethical concerns between non-human animals and ourselves. This collection, the first of its kind to feature the work of Canadian scholars and writers in this emergent field, aims to include the non-human animal question as part of the ethical purview of Cultural Studies and to explore the question in interdisciplinary terms.
{
312pp,
155x230mm,
June 2008;
PB,
£22.99,
0889205124:9780889205123
, Wilfrid Laurier University Press
} |
 |
ANIMALS, EMOTION & MORALITY
: Marking the Boundary
[B A Dixon]
It seems obvious that animals have emotions. Dogs bark with excitement when their masters return home, snarl aggressively at the approach of a stranger, and cower with anxiety at the vets. Our ordinary ways of talking about animals suggest that animals and humans are emotional kin. In this exploration of our emotional kinship with animals, philosopher B A Dixon invites the reader to consider what is philosophically controversial about the idea that animals have emotions. Dixon guides the reader through a tangle of philosophical issues related to the concept of emotion and the various ways in which emotions are morally significant. She demonstrates that claims about animal emotion often stand in for a more fundamental property it is believed that animals and humans share-namely morality. Do some animals have "morally laden" emotions? Dixon examines various arguments in favour of this idea and finds them lacking. Her close analysis elucidates the concept of emotional kinship, the role of emotions as virtues, Darwin's principle about evolutionary continuity, the nature of primate empathy, the possibility of morally appraising children and animals, and how the animal narrative should be used as a methodology for thinking about the animal mind. Each chapter begins with an animal story or anecdote to illustrate the theme to be covered. Dixon concludes that we are unwarranted in attributing to animals morally laden emotions.
{
240pp,
155x230mm,
July 2008;
PB,
£14.99,
1591026296:9781591026297
, Prometheus Books
} |
 |
APPLIED ONTOLOGY
: An Introduction
[Katherine Munn & Barry Smith (eds)]
Ontology is the philosophical discipline which aims to understand how things in the world are divided into categories and how these categories are related together. This is exactly what information scientists aim for in creating structured, automated representations, called 'ontologies', for managing information in fields such as science, government, industry, and healthcare. Currently, these systems are designed in a variety of different ways, so they cannot share data with one another. They are often idiosyncratically structured, accessible only to those who created them, and unable to serve as inputs for automated reasoning. This volume shows, in a non-technical way and using examples from medicine and biology, how the rigorous application of theories and insights from philosophical ontology can improve the ontologies upon which information management depends. Katherine Munn is a former researcher for the Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science and is currently reading for a PhD in philosophy at Oxford University. Barry Smith is a prominent contributor to both theoretical and applied research in ontology. He is the author of some 450 scientific publications on ontology and related topics. Currently, the primary focus of his research is the application of ontology in biomedicine and biomedical informatics.
{
342pp,
150x210mm,
June 2008;
HB,
£89.50,
3938793988:9783938793985
, Ontos Verlag
} |
 |
APPLIED PROCESS THOUGHT I
: Initial Explorations in Theory & Research
[Dr Mark Dibben & Professor Thomas Kelly (eds)]
Concentrating mainly on the process philosophy developed by Alfred North Whitehead, this series of essays brings together some of the newest developments in the application of process thinking to the physical and social sciences. These essays, by established scholars in the field, demonstrate how a wider and deeper understanding of the world can be obtained using process philosophical concepts, how the distortions and blockages inevitably inherent in substantivist talk can be set aside, and how new and fertile lines of research in the sciences can be opened as a result.
{
389pp,
155x215mm,
February 2008;
HB,
£89.50,
3938793759:9783938793756
, Ontos Verlag
} |
 |
ARE YOU A MACHINE
: The Brain, the Mind, & What It Means to Be Human
[Eliezer J Sternberg; Foreword by Andreas Teuber PhD]
Right now, someone in an artificial intelligence lab is fusing silicon circuitry in an attempt to engineer the human mind. In a hospital, a neurosurgeon is attempting to influence a patient's emotions by firing electrical impulses into his brain. In a classroom, a teacher is explaining how neurons in the brain interact to generate thoughts, feelings, and decisions. The question of where consciousness comes from and how it works is likely the greatest mystery we face. Despite progress in our knowledge of the brain, we still don't know how it allows us to do things like enjoy a sunset, solve a math problem, or use our imagination. For those of us who have ever thought about issues of the mind or free will, these developments pose provocative questions. What would happen if those mysterious processes could be understood? Would a scientist be able to know everything about our minds just from studying the systems in our brains? Could he predict how we will think and act? After all, the brain is an organ just like the heart or stomach, and scientists can figure out when the heart will beat and when the stomach will release bile. If such a thing could be accomplished, would that make me a machine? There are those who approach this question from a technological perspective. Someday, an engineer might be able to build a robot with my memories, opinions, and behaviour. Would that make me a machine? This concise, lucid primer on neuroscience and philosophy of mind takes the reader to the very depths of the mystery of consciousness, exploring it through the eyes of key philosophers, neuroscientists, and technologists. Avoiding jargon and oversimplification, author Eliezer J Sternberg illuminates baffling questions of the brain, mind, and what it means to be human.
REVIEW: "Are our minds merely patterns, replicable in labs? Daniel Dennett (who says yes) and John Searle (who says no) are among the philosophers Sternberg surveys, all while leavening with puckish humor his considerations of famous thought-experiments about the nature of consciousness, and of writings from Descartes to double-helix co-modeler Frances Crick." -- Pittsburgh City Paper, August 9, 2007.
{
176pp,
150x230mm,
January 2007;
PB,
£10.99,
1591024838:9781591024835
, Prometheus Books
} |
 |
ARROW & THE POINT
: Russell & Wittgenstein's Tractatus
[Guido Bonino]
The book aims at a comprehensive account of the relationship between Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Russell's philosophy as it developed between 1903 and 1918. The focus is on the central nucleus of the Tractatus (ie: on its ontology and the picture theory of language). On Russell's side, the multiple-relation theory of judgement has been chosen as the leading theme around which the presentation of several other issues is organised. Whereas the similarity between Russell's and Wittgenstein's problems is pointed out, the deep difference between their solutions is acknowledged, in particular with reference to the opposition between objects and names on the one hand, and facts and propositions on the other.
{
372pp,
150x220mm,
May 2008;
HB,
£89.50,
3938793953:9783938793954
, Ontos Verlag
} |
 |
ASPECTS OF ANCIENT GREEK CULT
: Context, Ritual & Iconography
[Jesper Jensen, George Hinge, Peter Schultz & Bronwen Wickkiser (eds)]
The papers in this volume illustrate the interplay between the studies of classical archaeology, religion, history, and musicology. The eight papers by the young scholars and their Nestor, Richard Hamilton, offer a fresh look at various aspects of ancient cult, including the use of the word cult in the academic disciplines of Archaeology and the History of Religion; the introduction of Asklepios to Athens, and a detailed study of the same god's sanctuary on the south slope of Akropolis, where it will be demonstrated that the layout of the early sanctuary on the east terrace was carefully designed after one central monument. The book also contains an innovative study of the Philippeion at Olympia, where it is argued that the tholos with its sculpture was a prototype for the use of divine images and royal ideology by Hellenistic rulers. Other papers include a statistical approach to the illustration of baskets on Classical votive reliefs, a theoretical study of the role of music in ancient Greek cult, and analysis of the use of the chorus as one of the most important expressions of ancient cult in Sparta.
{
280pp,
170x240mm,
August 2008;
HB,
£22.75,
8779342531:9788779342538
, Aarhus University Press
} |
 |
BASHO OF ECONOMICS
: An Intercultural Analysis of the Process of Economics
[Silja Graupe; Translated & Introduced by Roger Gathman]
In the parlance of modern Japanese philosophy, the term Basho denotes a field of experience underlying all conceptions of reality, while remaining itself conceptually ungraspable. The Basho of Economics, then, refers to the economy's hidden experiential ground, which has never been explicitly scrutinised, as such, by mainstream economics. We uncover this ground by discerning the tacit presuppositions of classical and neo-classical theories from the perspective of modern Japanese philosophy. In particular, we draw attention to the traditional atomist assumptions implicit in their equilibrium-centred models. By breaking through these assumptions, we reconstruct the economy as a functional and relational world of habitual and creative activity outside of the scope of mechanical laws.
REVIEW: "Intercultural thought is not only about finding similarities between cultures, but de-familiarising cultural patterns -- making us see again realities that have become so habitual to us that they have faded into the material of our everyday lives. Graupe, by using Japanese thinking as a tool to unlock one of the truly central Western patterns of thought since the beginning of modernity, opens us not only to the surprising reality of the Other, but to the process by which we have become who we are." -- From the foreword by Roger Gathman.
{
325pp,
150x210mm,
May 2007;
HB,
£71.99,
3938793082:9783938793084
, Ontos Verlag
} |
 |
BASIC WRITINGS
[Anselm. Translated by Thomas Williams]
Ranging from his early treatises, the Monologion (a work written to show his monks how to meditate on the divine essence) and the Proslogion (best known for its advancement of the so-called ontological argument for the existence of God), to his three philosophical dialogues on metaphysical topics such as the relationship between freedom and sin, and late treatises on the Incarnation and salvation, this collection of Anselm's essential writings will be a boon to students of the history of philosophy and theology as well as to anyone interested in examining what Anselm calls "the reason of faith".
{
428pp,
155x230mm,
November 2007;
HB,
£29.00,
0872208966:9780872208964
/
PB,
£9.95,
0872208958:9780872208957
, Hackett Publishing
} |
 |
COMMENTARY ON ARISTOTLE'S POLITICS
[Thomas Aquinas; Translated, with a Preface by Richard J Regan]
The first complete translation into modern English of Aquinas unfinished commentary on Aristotle's Politics, this translation follows the definitive Leonine text of Aquinas and moreover reproduces in English those passages of William of Moerbeke's famously accurate yet elliptical translation of the Politics from which Aquinas worked. Bekker numbers have been added to passages from Moerbeke's translation for easy reference.
{
214pp,
140x215mm,
April 2007;
HB,
£38.00,
0872208702:9780872208704
/
PB,
£12.95,
0872208699:9780872208698
, Hackett Publishing
} |
 |
CONCEPT OF THE NETWORK SOCIETY
: Post-Ontological Reflections
[Niels Lehmann, Lars Qvortrup & Bo Kampmann Walther (eds)]
Our current society has been called a 'network society'. But what lies behind this name? Has society changed, or has our observation of society? There can hardly be any doubt that the conditions for describing the world have changed. Since the turn of the 20th century, at least, we have known that there is no point for observing the world that lies outside the world. This book reflects the consequences of these conditions for observing society. What significance does the 'loss' of metaphysical guarantees have for the description and understanding of the society in which we live and for the epistemological tools at our disposal? The book is a sociological, philosophical and aesthetical study of what 'lies behind' the idea of calling present-day society a 'network society'.
{
210pp,
155x230mm,
December 2007;
PB,
£32.00,
8759311894:9788759311899
, Samfundslitteratur Press
} |
 |
CONCEPTS OF SHAREDNESS
: Essays on Collective Intentionality
[Hans Bernhard Schmid, Katinka Schulte-Ostermann & Nikos Psarros (eds)]
The present volume contains a selection of papers presented at the Fifth Conference on Collective Intentionality held at the University of Helsinki August 31 to September 2, 2006 and two additional contributions. The common aim of the papers is to explore the structure of shared intentional attitudes, and to explain how they underlie the social, cultural and institutional world. The contributions to this volume explore the phenomenology of sharedness, the concept of sharedness, and also various aspects of the structure of collective intentionality in general, and of the intricate relations between sharedness and normativity in particular. Concepts of Sharedness shows how rich and lively the philosophical research focused on the analysis of collective intentionality has become, and will provide further inspiration for future work in this rapidly evolving field.
{
306pp,
150x210mm,
May 2008;
HB,
£80.99,
3938793961:9783938793961
, Ontos Verlag
} |
 |
CONSCIOUSNESS, REALITY & VALUE
: Essays in Honour of T L S Sprigge
[Pierfrancesco Basile & Leemon B McHenry (eds)]
Timothy Sprigge has been a major player on the philosophical scene contributing to discussions as diverse as consciousness, the ontology of time, personal identity, animal rights, punishment, censorship and wider issues in metaphysics, ethics and the history of philosophy. He is, however, less well known for his own highly original system of metaphysics and ethics. a synthesis of Absolute Idealism, panpsychism and utilitarianism. The contributions gathered in this volume, written by philosophers of international reputation or by acknowledged scholars in their specialised fields of inquiry, engage themes in his metaphysics and ethics and provide a critical assessment of his ideas and arguments. In a concluding essay, Sprigge answers the most significant objections raised by his critics: the final result is an engaging dialogue on the perennial and most fundamental questions of philosophy.
{
331pp,
150x210mm,
July 2007;
HB,
£89.50,
3938793716:9783938793718
, Ontos Verlag
} |
 |
CONSTITUTION OF ENGLAND
: Or, An Account of the English Government
[Jean Louis De Lolme]
'The Constitution of England' is one of the most distinguished 18th-century treatises on English political liberty. In the vein of Charles Louis Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws (1748) and William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-1769), Jean Louis De Lolme's account of the English system of government exercised an extensive influence on political debate in Britain, on constitutional design in the US during the Founding era, and on the growth of liberal political thought throughout the 19th century. Originally published in French in Amsterdam in 1771, 'The Constitution of England' was the first book-length analysis of the 'separation of powers' proposed in Book XI of Montesquieu's "Spirit of the Laws", which sketched an institutional distinction between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government. De Lolme was concerned to show the manner in which the English political system provided an alternative to the republican form of government, one which supplied both a more stable and a more extensive system of political freedom than that enjoyed in republican states. In addition, and as part of this critique, De Lolme examined the political teaching of his fellow Genevan, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and repudiated Rousseau's republican attack on England's form of representative government. This edition takes advantage of the work of nineteenth-century editors of De Lolme's text but provides new annotations to elucidate his numerous references to classical, medieval, and early-modern political practices, along with translations of De Lolme's citations from sources in Latin and French.
{
368pp,
155x230mm,
November 2007;
PB,
£8.95,
0865974659:9780865974654
/
HB,
£13.95,
0865974640:9780865974647
, Liberty Fund
} |
 |
CONTEMPORARY ETHICAL ISSUES, 2ND EDITION
: A Personal Perspective
[Walter G Jeffko]
This insightful series of essays explores contemporary ethical problems from a personalistic perspective influenced by the Scottish philosopher John Macmurray (1891-1976). In many books, articles, and other publications spanning fifty years, most notably his Gifford Lectures, "The Form of the Personal", Macmurray developed a robust personalism that emphasises the primacy of persons as rational agents whose self-realisation is achieved in community. Walter G. Jeffko utilises key elements of Macmurray's thought in developing his own viewpoint; and he relates Macmurray's ideas to those of a wide variety of important philosophers, ethicists, and behavioural scientists. In the first two chapters Jeffko develops a personalistic anthropological and ethical theory within a framework that views the person as a communicative and rational agent, reason as the standard of value, and the principle of community as the supreme ethical standard. In successive chapters, this theory is applied to the issues of suicide, abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, euthanasia (including assisted suicide), the death penalty, privacy (including private property and capitalism), Rawl's theory of political liberalism, same-sex marriage, the moral treatment of animals, affirmative action, and environmental problems. Jeffko connects ethics with logic in a lucid style that blends scholarship with readability. This is a fresh and absorbing examination of the key ethical dilemmas of our time.
{
350pp,
155x230mm,
April 2008;
PB,
£18.99,
1591025702:9781591025702
, Prometheus Books (Humanity Books)
} |
 |
CULTURES. CONFLICT -- ANALYSIS -- DIALOGUE
: Proceedings of the 29th International Ludwig Wittgenstein Symposium in Kirchberg am Wechsel, Austria 2006
[Christian Kanzian & Edmund Runggaldier (eds)]
What can systematic philosophy contribute to come from conflict between cultures to a substantial dialogue? This question was the general theme of the 29th international symposium of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society in Kirchberg. Worldwide leading philosophers accepted the invitation to come to the conference, whose results are published in this volume. The sections are dedicated to the philosophy of Wittgenstein, Logics and Philosophy of Language, Decision- and Action Theory, Ethical Aspects of the Intercultural Dialogue, Intercultural Dialogue, and last not least to Social Ontology. Our edition include (among others) contributions by Peter Hacker, Jennifer Hornsby, John Hyman, Michael Kober, Richard Rorty, Hans Rott, Gerhard Schurz, Barry Smith, Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer, Franz Wimmer and Kwasi Wiredu.
{
431pp,
150x210mm,
May 2007;
HB,
£53.99,
393879366X:9783938793664
, Ontos Verlag
} |
 |
DAVID GAUTHIERS MORALISCHER KONTRAKTUALISMUS
: Eine kritische Analyse
[Raffael Iturrizaga]
Rationalität hat religiöse und andere metaphysisch anspruchsvolle Größen in ihrer ehemals privilegierten Stellung als Begründungsinstanzen in der Moralphilosophie abgelöst. David Gauthier hat mit MORALS BY AGREEMENT hier für den moralischen Kontraktualismus die bisher am besten elaborierte Theorie vorgelegt, die auch die Methoden der modernen Entscheidungs- und Spieltheorie einbezieht. Die zentrale Herausforderung besteht in dem Erbringen des Nachweises, dass es in einer Gesellschaft mit ungleicher Machtverteilung für alle Personen rational ist, einen Kooperationsvertrag einzugehen, der von Anfangsbedingungen der Gleichheit ausgeht. Iturrizaga stellt in seiner tief greifenden kritischen Analyse diesen Nachweis in Frage und liefert dabei zugleich eine umfassende Darstellung der Theorie Gauthiers.
{
367pp,
155x215mm,
February 2007;
HB,
£89.50,
3938793600:9783938793602
, Ontos Verlag
} |
 |
DENNETT & RICOEUR ON THE NARRATIVE SELF
[Joan McCarthy]
The main thesis is that the self is best conceived as a narrative unity and that this conception is a positive alternative to traditional philosophical solutions to the problem of human identity which cast the self as either substantial or illusory.
{
298pp,
155x230mm,
September 2007;
PB,
£26.99,
1591025486:9781591025481
, Prometheus Books (Humanity Books)
} |
 |
DIALECTICS
: A Classical Approach to Inquiry
[Nicholas Rescher]
Few ideas have played a more continuously prominent role throughout the history of philosophy than that of dialectic, which has figured on the philosophical agenda from the time of the Presocratics. The present book explores the philosophical promise of dialectic, especially in its dialogical version associated with disputation, debate, and rational controversy. The book's deliberations examine what lessons can be drawn to exhibit the utility of dialectical proceedings for the theory of knowledge in reminding us that the building-up of knowledge is an interpersonally interactive enterprise subject to communal standards.
{
200pp,
150x210mm,
September 2007;
HB,
£71.99,
3938793767:9783938793763
, Ontos Verlag
} |
 |
DILEMMAS OF REACTION IN LENINIST RUSSIA
: The Christian Response to the Revolution in the Works of N A Berdyaev, 1917-1924
[Christian Gottlieb]
In the moral and spiritual vacuum left in Russia by the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989-91 some of the thinkers who first opposed the Leninist revolution of 1917 have come to a new prominence. Important among them is the religious philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev (1874-1948) who is now frequently cited as a source of inspiration in the attempt to overcome the disastrous legacy of the Soviet experiment and in the search for a new national identity. This book focuses particularly on his early post-revolutionary works, which express a passionate protest against the revolution. His was clearly the most comprehensive contemporary critique of the revolutionary project from a Christian perspective. Essential themes of Christian theology and social thought are brought out in a radical way suitable to a radical situation. From his consistently religious perspective he foresaw with precision much of the inhuman and tyrannical potential of the revolutionary project -- later to be abundantly confirmed by the development of the Soviet regime. The dilemmas discerned in his response particularly relate to his call for spiritual resistance and to his expectation of a Christian alternative -- an illustrative instance of the confrontation of Christianity with the modern world. The theological and philosophical investigation conducted in this book provides a new interpretation of Berdyaev’s response in the light of its historical setting and with a view to its contemporary significance in the post-Soviet situation.
{
453pp,
180x260mm,
January 2003;
HB,
£22.75,
8778388074:9788778388070
, University Press of Southern Denmark
} |
 |
ENLIGHTENED NETWORKING
: Import & Export of Enlightenment in 18th Century Denmark
[Thomas Bredsdorff & Anne-Marie Mai (eds)]
Globalisation is a recent term, most often referring to capitalism without frontiers and its many ramifications. Applying the term to events and phenomena occurring 2-3 centuries ago is, of course, an anacronism, but a useful one, reminding us of the intellectual urge at work behind even the murkiest efforts at forging alliances and creating networks: the idea, however embryonic, that men and women around the globe are basically of one nature and may gain by exchange. The Enlightenment was nothing if not an age of networking. People travelled -- in real or imaginary worlds -- in order to connect, deride, improve, and learn. That was the age when the notion of universality took shape, idea travelled, because if rights and wrongs are universal, then sound ideas must be accessible to all and unsound ones challenged by being exposed to foreign scrutiny. No one is claiming that Denmark was a major contributor to the Enlightenment. We do claim, however, that the small kingdom took an active part in Eighteenth-Century Europe its enlightened networking.
{
78pp,
140x215mm,
January 2003;
PB,
£10.00,
8778388589:9788778388582
, University Press of Southern Denmark
} |
 |
EPISTEMIC PRAGMATISM
: & Other Studies in the Theory of Knowledge
[Nicholas Rescher]
The core of pragmatism lies in the concept of functional efficacy -- of utility in short. And epistemic pragmatism accordingly focuses on the utility of our devices and practices in relation to the aims and purposes of the cognitive enterprise -- answering questions, resolving puzzlement, guiding action. The present book revolves around this theme. All papers in this book bear on epistemological topics which have preoccupied Nicholas Rescher for many years. Much as with the thematic structure of this book, this interest expanded from an initial concern with the exact sciences, to encompass the epistemology of the human sciences, and ultimately the epistemology of philosophy itself.
{
174pp,
150x210mm,
July 2008;
HB,
£62.99,
3868380035:9783868380033
, Ontos Verlag
} |
 |
ESSAYS ON THE CHURCH, STATE, & POLITICS
[Christian Thomasius]
The essays selected here for translation derive largely from Thomasius’s work on Staatskirchenrecht, or the political jurisprudence of church law. These works, originating as disputations, theses, and pamphlets, were direct interventions in the unresolved issue of the political role of religion in Brandenburg-Prussia, a state in which a Calvinist dynasty ruled over a largely Lutheran population and nobility as well as a significant Catholic minority. In mandating limited religious toleration within the German states, the provisions of the Peace of Westphalia (1648) also provided the rulers of Brandenburg-Prussia with a way of keeping the powerful Lutheran church in check by guaranteeing a degree of religious freedom to non-Lutherans and thereby detaching the state from the most powerful territorial church. Thomasius’s writings on church-state relations, many of them critical of the civil claims made by Lutheran theologians, are a direct response to this state of affairs. At the same time, owing to the depth of intellectual resources at his disposal, these works constitute a major contribution to the broader discussion of the relation between the religious and political spheres.
{
306pp,
155x230mm,
May 2007;
PB,
£8.95,
0865974993:9780865974999
/
HB,
£13.95,
0865974985:9780865974982
, Liberty Fund
} |
 |
ESSENTIAL ODYSSEY
[Homer. Translated & Edited by Stanley Lombardo. Introduction by Sheila Murnaghan]
This generous abridgement of Stanley Lombardo's translation of the "Odyssey" offers more than half of the epic, including all of its best-known episodes and finest poetry, while providing concise summaries for omitted books and passages. Sheila Murnaghan's Introduction, a shortened version of her essay for the unabridged edition, is ideal for readers new to this remarkable tale of the homecoming of Odysseus.
{
264pp,
140x215mm,
November 2007;
HB,
£24.95,
0872209008:9780872209008
, Hackett Publishing
} |
 |
ETHICAL ISSUES IN THE NEW REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGIES
[Richard T Hull (ed)]
In the last few decades, as new reproductive technologies have been developed, couples desiring children have increasingly turned to various medical interventions when natural conception has been unsuccessful. These new technologies have raised ethical concerns from various quarters, including medical ethics committees, the American Fertility Society, and the Roman Catholic Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In this informative overview of the ethical implications of reproductive technologies, philosopher Richard T Hull offers a cross-section of the thinking of individuals specialising in the ethical and legal problems involved in this new area of medicine. The contributors reflect interests as varied as those of the enthusiastic proponent of the new reproductive technologies, the feminist opposing the exploitation of women, the social critic worrying about erosion of the responsibilities of parenting, and the traditionalist concerned with the transformation of the fundamental moral fabric and social character of the family. Many of the chapters include cases for further discussion and reflection. Also included are three speculative scenarios: selections from Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, and Gena Corea's report of the drive to develop an artificial womb. New to this edition are a glossary, which provides succinct definitions of highly technical terms and Web sites for further information, and a thorough index. This excellent collection of expert articles will stimulate appreciation of the complex and muti-tiered character of moral decision-making as it is experienced by patients, medical professionals, and legislators and jurists charged with preserving, protecting, and applying justly the principles of society.
{
374pp,
155x230mm,
October 2005;
PB,
£13.99,
1591023009:9781591023005
, Prometheus Books
} |
 |
ETHICS AT A STANDSTILL
: History & Subjectivity in Levinas & the Frankfurt School
[Asher Horowitz]
Asher Horowitz explores the philosophies of Levinas and the critical theorists of the Frankfurt School, demonstrating the ways in which their works diverge from and complement each other. As Horowitz explains, the manner in which these thinkers are here related to each other resembles Adorno's suggestion, or even program, for thinking in constellations. Demonstrating an authoritative command of both the thinkers themselves -- including Benjamin, Horkheimer, and Marcuse -- and the various philosophical contexts (German idealism, phenomenology, Marxism, psychoanalysis) in which they are embedded, Horowitz offers a politically thoughtful and philosophically provocative analysis based on a wide range of texts and a critical reconstruction and confrontation between the positions. While a few studies have previously addressed the philosophical relationship between Levinas and Adorno, in particular, Ethics at a Standstill is unique in arguing that each of these ways of thinking calls forth from the other, respectively, a social-critical and ethical supplement that is insufficiently developed in their own work.
{
404pp,
155x230mm,
February 2008;
PB,
£16.99,
0820704083:9780820704081
/
HB,
£38.99,
0820704075:9780820704074
, Duquesne University Press
} |
 |
FOUR TRAGEDIES
: Ajax, Women of Trachis, Electra, Philoctetes
[Sophocles; Translated, with Introduction & Notes by Peter Meineck & Paul Woodruff]
Meineck and Woodruff's new translations of these plays combine accuracy with concision, clarity, and powerful speech. Each translation includes foot-of-the-page notes, stage directions, and line numbers to the Greek. The Introduction discusses the playwright, Athenian theatre and performance, plots and major characters of each play, and major critical interpretations of the plays.
{
267pp,
140x215mm,
October 2007;
HB,
£19.95,
0872207641:9780872207646
/
PB,
£6.95,
0872207633:9780872207639
, Hackett Publishing
} |
 |
FRINGES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
: Cross-perspectives on William James' 'The Varieties of Religious Experience'
[Sergio Franzese & Felicitas Kraemer (eds)]
William James's Varieties of Religious Experience is one of the most renowned works of the famous psychologist and founder of pragmatism, and a fully accomplished anthropological analysis of the phenomenon of religion. In this book a selection of 10 papers from international scholars, previously presented at the International Centennary Conference in Celebration of The Gifford Lectures at University of Edinburgh in 2002, explore the theoretical and historical 'fringes' of James's work in the attempt to provide new insights into some major issues involved therein. The book is divided into two parts. The first part deals with important philosophical and psychological issues related to James's account of religious experience. A second shorter section lays a focus a on the historical sources and reception of James's ideas in American and European culture.
{
210pp,
150x210mm,
May 2007;
HB,
£71.99,
3938793570:9783938793572
, Ontos Verlag
} |
 |
GERMAN PHILOSOPHY
: An Introduction
[Julian Roberts]
This book is a comprehensive introduction to German philosophy, from Kant to the present day. Combining general exposition with detailed textual commentary, it is a scholarly and invaluable aid not only for undergraduate students, but also for anyone who wishes to study one of the richest traditions of Western philosophy. The book focuses on the key figures and major texts of German philosophy. Separate chapters are devoted to Kant, Hegel, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. Roberts also deals extensively with the Marxist tradition, with chapters on Feuerbach, Lukács, and Adorno. This wide-ranging work is drawn together by a set of interrelated themes. Roberts argues that Kant may be seen as the principal source of modern metaphysics, and his heirs as branching off into two opposing streams. This approach enables Roberts to trace some of the underlying connections and oppositions between the major figures of German thought. "German Philosophy" is written in a lively and accessible style. It will be of interest to students of philosophy, of the social sciences, and of European thought and literature.
{
296pp,
140x215mm,
April 1988;
PB,
£17.50,
1573925160:9781573925167
, Prometheus Books
} |
 |
GLOBAL JUSTICE, GLOBAL INSTITUTIONS
[Daniel Weinstock (ed)]
Defining the principles of justice that ought to govern the global economic & political sphere is one of the most urgent tasks that contemporary political philosophers face. But they must also contribute to working through the institutional implications of these principles. How might principles of global justice be realised? Must the institutions that aim to implement them be transnational, or can global justice be attained within the context of the state system? Can institutions of democratic self-governance be imagined beyond the nation-state? These are just some of the questions that still face political philosophers even when issues of abstract principle have been addressed. This volume establishes a dialogue between philosophers working at all levels of abstraction. Some of the authors are concerned with the grounds & scope of the obligations that bind the citizens & governments of rich countries to those of poorer nations. But many examine the question of how these obligations can be satisfied, both within existing institutional frameworks & beyond. Together their essays constitute a major contribution to the advancement of both the theoretical understanding & the practical requirements of global justice.
{
386pp,
140x215mm,
February 2007;
PB,
£26.50,
0919491316:9780919491311
, University of Calgary Press
} |
 |
GOLDEN ASS
: Or, A Book of Changes
[Apuleius. Translated by Joel C Relihan]
Relihan uses alliteration and assonance, rhythm and rhyme, the occasional archaism, the rare neologism, and devices of punctuation and typography, to create a sparkling, luxurious, and readable translation that reproduces something of the linguistic and comic effects of the original Latin. The general Introduction is a masterpiece of clarity, orienting the reader in matters of authorship, narration, genre, religion, structure and style. A generous and browsable index, select bibliography, and maps are included.
{
277pp,
140x215mm,
November 2007;
HB,
£29.95,
0872208885:9780872208889
/
PB,
£8.95,
0872208877:9780872208872
, Hackett Publishing
} |
 |
HANDBOOK OF WHITEHEADIAN PROCESS THOUGHT
: Volumes 1 & 2
[Michel Weber & Will Desmond (eds)]
Gathering 120 entries written by 101 internationally renowned experts in their fields, this handbook aims at canvassing the current state of knowledge in Whiteheadian scholarship and at identifying promising directions for future investigations through (internal) cross-elucidation and (external) interdisciplinary development. Two kinds of entries are weaved together in order to interpret Whitehead secundum Whitehead and to read him from the vantage point of interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary research. The "thematic" entries provide: (i) a broad contextualisation of the issue at stake; (ii) a focus on Whitehead's treatment (if any) or of a possible Whiteheadian treatment of the issue; (iii) a history of relevant scholarship; (iv) a personal assessment by the Author. The "biographical" entries provide: (i) a brief vita of the targeted thinker; (ii) a sketch of his/her categories relevant to the Whiteheadian scholarship; (iii) a personal assessment of the actual (or possible)
{
1411pp,
150x210mm,
June 2008;
HB,
£361.99,
3938793929:9783938793923
, Ontos Verlag
} |
 |
HEIDEGGER'S JEWISH FOLLOWERS
: Essays on Hannah Arendt, Leo Strauss, Hans Jonas, & Emmanuel Levinas
[Samuel Fleischacker (ed)]
Given Heidegger's eventual alliance with Nazism -- which many scholars feel had its roots in his thought from its inception -- it is remarkable that many of his students and followers were Jews. HEIDEGGER'S JEWISH FOLLOWERS addresses very important and relatively unexplored questions, namely, in what way did Heidegger's thought affect his most prominent Jewish students, and how did they respond to this influence? By focusing on four students who certainly came to be important philosophical figures in their own right -- Hannah Arendt, Leo Strauss, Hans Jonas, and Emmanuel Levinas -- these essays by a wide range of scholars weave together philosophical analysis, religious tradition, and historical background.
{
May 2008;
PB,
£15.50,
0820704148:9780820704142
/
HB,
£37.50,
0820704121:9780820704128
, Duquesne University Press
} |
 |
HOW SUCCESSFUL IS NATURALISM?
[Georg Gasser (ed)]
Naturalism is the reigning creed in analytic philosophy. Naturalists claim that natural science provides a complete account of all forms of existence. According to the naturalistic credo there are no aspects of human existence which transcend methods and explanations of science. Our concepts of the self, the mind, subjectivity, human freedom or responsibility is to be defined in terms of established sciences. The aim of the present volume is to draw the balance of naturalism's success so far. Unlike other volumes it does not contain a collection of papers which unanimously reject naturalism. Naturalists and anti-naturalists alike unfold their positions discussing the success or failure of naturalistic approaches. "How successful is naturalism?" shows where the lines of agreement and disagreement between naturalists and their critics are to be located in contemporary philosophical discussion. With contributions by Rudder Lynne Baker, Johannes Brandl, Helmut Fink, Ulrich Frey, Georg Gasser & Matthias Stefan, Peter S.M. Hacker, Winfried Löffler, Nancey Murphy, Josef Quitterer, Michael Rea, Thomas Sukopp, Konrad Talmont-Kaminski and Gerd Vollmer.
{
300pp,
150x210mm,
June 2007;
HB,
£62.99,
3938793678:9783938793671
, Ontos Verlag
} |
 |
HUMANITY AGAINST ITSELF
: The Retreat From Reason
[Benjamin Kovitz, MD]
In this broad overview of humanity's predicament, psychiatrist Benjamin Kovitz illustrates the parallels between anxiety in the individual and discord in civilisation as a whole. Kovitz emphasises that civilisation rests upon the precarious foundation of human nature, with its age-old tendencies toward self-deception, violence, and pursuit of power. He argues that resistance to facing our hidden motives is what lies at the core of political and religious strife as well as individual anxiety. At the heart of the book is an illuminating chapter on the meaning of anxiety, explaining with clarity and detail how the pathology arises, how it is expressed, and how it can be relieved. The complexities of the condition are portrayed in vivid clinical examples, often using the patients' own words. Kovitz takes issue with the current practice of relying solely on psychiatric medication without addressing the patient's understanding of what his or her symptoms mean. On the societal level, Kovitz shows how evasion of reality complicates our efforts at progress and peaceful coexistence, despite the advances of science and democracy, and how defensive behaviour among nations can culminate in war. Turning to religion, Kovitz explores the psychological underpinnings of our need for religion and briefly summarises the major world faiths with an eye to their underlying attitudes and assumptions. While pointing out the contradictions inherent in a literal approach to religious dogma, the author appreciates the need for faith that transcends logic. In a psychiatric evaluation of the life of Saint Teresa of Avila, Kovitz recognises pathological anxiety yet respects the therapeutic value of her religious visions. Writing with eloquence while avoiding psychological jargon, Kovitz elucidates our human dilemmas with a clarity and depth that can help us move toward sanity in an unpredictable and troubled world.
{
167pp,
155x230mm,
April 2008;
PB,
£17.99,
1591025737:9781591025733
, Prometheus Books
} |
 |
HYPATIA OF ALEXANDRIA
: Mathematician & Martyr
[Michael Deakin]
In the late fourth and early fifth centuries of our era, Hypatia of Alexandria was the world's greatest living mathematician and astronomer. A strikingly beautiful woman and a devoted celibate, she lived in a city as turbulent and troubled as Baghdad or Beirut is today. She achieved fame not only in her special field, but also as a philosopher, religious thinker, and teacher who attracted a large popular following. Her life ended tragically in violence at the hands of a rampaging mob of Christian fanatics, who killed her for her "pagan" beliefs, some say at the instigation of St. Cyril of Alexandria. This is the first biography of Hypatia to integrate all aspects of her life. Mathematician Michael Deakin emphasises that, though she was a philosopher, she was first and foremost a mathematician and astronomer of great accomplishment. In a fascinating narrative that brings to life a richly diverse ancient society, he describes her work so that the mathematics, presented in straightforward terms, finds its true place in the context of her life as a whole. Deakin supplies full detail on the historical, intellectual, and religious context of Hypatia's times. He also analyses the pattern of her life and thought, and finally gives an account of the events leading up to her lynch-mob execution. Although this outrageous crime has made Hypatia a powerful symbol of intellectual freedom and feminist aspiration to this day, Deakin makes clear that the important intellectual contributions of her life's work should not be overshadowed by her tragic death.
REVIEW: "...this is a useful book, particularly given the fact that the sources are included." -- The Mathematical Association of America Online Reviews, August 20, 2007.
{
231pp,
155x230mm,
July 2007;
HB,
£18.99,
1591025206:9781591025207
, Prometheus Books
} |
 |
IDEALISM AND PRAXIS
: The Philosophy of Nicholas Rescher
[Michele Marsonet]
This work manages to present a complete and informative overview of Nicholas Rescher's philosphy. A prominent representative of contemporary pragmatism and of 20th century's thought at large, Rescher wrote an impressive amount of volumes and essays on a wide variety of philosophical topics. The present book purports to make his theses and theories accessible in one single volume. Moreover, it provides an apparatus of references to the relevant literature produced by Rescher's critics, and positions his work in the wider setting of its links with various contemporary American and European philosophers. The mixture of pragmatism and idealism, typical of Rescher's stance, is carefully taken into account, along with his contributions to logic, philosophy of science, metaphysics, theory of knowledge, ethics, social and political philosophy.
{
245pp,
150x210 mm,
June 2008;
HB,
£80.99,
3938793996:9783938793992
, Ontos Verlag
} |
 |
INSTRUMENTS OF DEVOTION
: The Practices & Objects of Religious Piety from the Late Middle Ages to the 20th Century
[Henning Laugerud & Laura Katrine Skinnebach (eds)]
Belief and religion are returning as focal concerns in modern philosophical debate. Interestingly, this 'religious turn' is most clearly seen in so-called post-modern or post-structuralist thinking. Today we are witnessing the dissolution of philosophical theories such as positivist scientism and Marxism, which thought they had definitively liquidated religion. After modernity, there are no more strong philosophical reasons either to be an atheist refusing religion or to be a theist refuting science. The above, or similar, attitudes form a common point of departure for all the contributors to this anthology, and are the reason why we all feel that the studies of matters concerning religion in all aspects of life are of importance. Today's situation in Europe illustrates the need for historical knowledge and perspective on culture and religion, particularly Christianity and all its denominational varieties. Christianity's influence on and in European culture cannot be overestimated, particularly understood as a dynamic and multifaceted force. The European Network on the Instruments of Devotion (ENID), is an international research network coordinated from the University of Bergen, Norway.
{
223pp,
170x240mm,
April 2008;
PB,
£20.95,
8779342000:9788779342002
, Aarhus University Press
} |
 |
INTELLECTUAL ROOTS OF THE ITALIAN ENLIGHTENMENT
: Newtonian Science, Religion & Politics in the Early Eighteenth Century
[Vincenzo Ferrone]
Vincenzo Ferrone has undertaken the ambitious project of examining the diffusion of Newtonianism in Italy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and of delineating its fundamental significance for the culture of the Enlightenment. His innovative view totally changes the traditional interpretation of Italian history of the early eighteenth century, which viewed Italy as a peripheral reality, marginal to the theatre of intellectual confrontations that developed in the so-called crisis of the European mind and gave rise to the Enlightenment. Through a rich and massive archival search that uncovered important secret documents such as private letters between bishops of the Roman church, scientists and Protestant theologians, Ferrone unveils the existence of an original Italian debate about the ideological consequences of the spread of Newtonian theories. In Italy as in Western Europe, modernity started with reflections on the Newtonian Enlightenment, the new natural theology, materialism, freedom of thought, the epistemological basis of political economy, and republicanism. In Rome, the health of Gnosticism, distinguished clericals used Boyles Lecturer and the Anglican apology of Samuel Clarke to reform Catholicism. The ancient project of Galileo and the Academy of Lincei, aimed at founding a great alliance between modern violence and faith, was pursued by these enlightened Catholics through Newtonian natural theology. Ferrone's work presents a classical example of the new intellectual history, examining both the scientific ideas themselves and the cultural and social context in which they were broadcast.
{
396pp,
155x230mm,
March 1995;
HB,
£53.99,
1573924520:9781573924528
, Prometheus Books
} |
 |
ISSUES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
[Nicholas Rescher]
Over the years Nicholas Rescher has published various essays on religious issues from a philosophical point of view. The chapters of the present volume collect these together, joining to them four further pieces which appear here for the first time (Chapters 3, 7, and 8). While these studies certainly do not constitute a system of religious philosophy, they do combine to give a vivid picture of a well-defined point of view on the subject -- the viewpoint of a Roman Catholic philosopher who, in the longstanding manner of this tradition, seeks to harmonise the commitments of faith with the fruits of inquiry proceeding under the auspices of reason.
{
117pp,
150x210mm,
August 2007;
HB,
£53.99,
3938793708:9783938793701
, Ontos Verlag
} |
 |
JOHN DEWEY'S QUEST FOR UNITY
: The Journey of a Promethean Mystic
[Richard M Gale]
In this appreciation of John Dewey's enormous contribution to American philosophy, Richard M Gale argues that what makes Dewey's philosophy unique and exciting is his attempt to synthesise what Gale calls "Prometheanism" with Dewey's unique brand of mysticism. As Gale points out, Dewey celebrated human beings as Promethean creators of meaning and value through the active control of nature. But at the same time, Dewey created a synthesis whereby a sort of mystical unifying experience results from the subject's active engagement with the environment through inquiry. Paradoxically, the active subject becomes passive in this synthesis to achieve unification with a shared spiritual reality, which Dewey expressed as a "common faith". Gale goes on to show that for Dewey artistic creation is the paradigm of this synthesis. In a work of art, both artist and all who appreciate the creation are united in a shared experience that is the result of an active, creative engagement with the environment. But this synthesis also holds for our efforts to gain knowledge and act morally. This in-depth analysis of one of America's great philosophers will make a valuable addition to the libraries of students and scholars of John Dewey and American philosophy.
{
340pp,
155x230mm,
July 2008;
HB,
£21.99,
159102630X:9781591026303
, Prometheus Books
} |
 |
KEEPING BALANCE
: On Desert & Propriety
[Diana Abad]
What is desert? The aim of this book is to give an analysis of this notion. Starting from Feinberg's seminal paper, the argument goes on to Chisholm, 18th-century British Rationalism, and Kant, who developed the concept of propriety that is the foundation of the concept of desert and the key to understanding it. Beyond the analysis, the concept of desert is applied to two problems of moral philosophy, punishment and moral residue, that can be solved only by means of this notion. Desert is an indispensable moral concept we do well to understand clearly and to incorporate into our moral practice.
{
202pp,
150x210mm,
July 2007;
HB,
£71.99,
393879318X:9783938793183
, Ontos Verlag
} |
 |
KNOWLEDGE
: Living & Working with it
[Anthon Botha]
Book & CD-ROM. We glibly talk about living and working in the knowledge era. Do we know what this means? Do we know knowledge? Do we know what we know or don’t know? In the world of increasingly rapid change we are confronted with problems and opportunities guided by the confluence of several economies -- industrial, information, bio-, nano- and hydrogen, and others to come. We are challenged by the rapids of decision making where knowledge expands faster than we can learn, changes shape depending on who owns it and disappears in its own volatility. This book takes the reader on a journey through knowing, generating, finding, selecting, keeping, measuring, managing, networking, valuing, protecting, selling and respecting knowledge.
{
210pp,
170x245mm,
January 2007;
PB,
£17.50,
0702177024:9780702177026
, Juta Publishing (Academic)
} |
 |
KNOWLEDGE, LANGUAGE & INTERPRETATION
: On the Philosophy of Donald Davidson
[Maria Cristina Amoretti & Nicla Vassallo (eds)]
Thanks to their heterogeneity, the nine essays in this volume offer a clear testimony of Donald Davidson's authority, and they undoubtedly show how much his work - even if it has raised many doubts and criticisms - has been, and still is, highly influential and significant in contemporary analytical philosophy for a wide range of subjects. Moreover, the various articles not only critically and carefully analyse Davidson's theses and arguments (in particular those concerning language and knowledge), but they also illustrate how such theories and ideas, despite their unavoidable difficulties, are still alive and potentially fruitful. Davidson's work is indeed an important and provocative starting point for discussing the future progress of philosophy.
{
224pp,
150x210mm,
July 2008;
HB,
£80.99,
3868380000:9783868380002
, Ontos Verlag
} |
 |
LATIN ELEGY
: An Anthology in Translation
[Edited & Translated, with an Introduction by Steven J Willett]
This collection, designed for use in a broad range of courses including Roman gender, sexuality, and elegy offers scrupulous new translations of Catullus, Tibullus, Sulpicia, Propertius (including the complete Monobiblos) and Ovid (with selections from the Amores, the Ars Amatoria, the Heroides, Tristia and Epistolae ex Ponto). An Introduction discusses the historical background of elegy, the rhythmic and stylistic function of elegiac distich, and introductions to the authors.
{
288pp,
April 2009;
PB,
£7.95,
087220765X:9780872207653
, Hackett Publishing
} |
 |
LAW OF NATIONS
: or Principles of the Law of Nature Applied to the Conduct of Nations & Sovereigns
[Emmeich de Vattel. Edited by T J Hochstrasser]
The significance of THE LAW OF NATIONS resides in its distillation from natural law of an apt model for international conduct of state affairs that carried conviction in both the Old Regime and the new political order of 1789-1815.
{
867pp,
155x230mm,
August 2008;
PB,
£8.95,
0865974519:9780865974517
/
HB,
£13.95,
0865974500:9780865974500
, Liberty Fund
} |
 |
LETTERS & OTHER WRITINGS
: Selected Songs & Poems Translated by Stanley Lombardo & by Barbara Thorburn
[Abelard & Heloise; Translated, with Introduction by William Levitan]
A new translation of the complete correspondence of Abelard and Heloise, this volume also includes a new translation of The Calamities of Abelard, of the letters of Heloise and Peter the Venerable, and of selected songs, hymns, and laments of Abelard. Among the verse selections are translations by Stanley Lombardo and a translation by Barbara Thorburn of a recently discovered 'shaped' poem. A chronology, map, and index are also included.
{
356pp,
140x215mm,
April 2007;
PB,
£9.95,
0872208753:9780872208759
/
HB,
£29.95,
0872208761:9780872208766
, Hackett Publishing
} |
 |
LETTERS TO CYPRUS
: 2nd Edition
[James Shiel]
The meditations in the book grew out of engagement with the participants of a philosophical group at Eastern Mediterranean University when Shiel was a Visiting Professor there. The participants ranged from business and medical professionals, mathematicians, engineers, physicists, chemists to philosophers and professors of literature. The book will interest not only students of philosophy but all readers who wonder about the nature of knowledge and the 'meaning of life' and who would like to get a relatively painless inkling of what some of the best minds have thought about these problems.
{
110pp,
140x215mm,
May 2008;
PB,
£9.50,
9758401327:9789758401321
, Eastern Mediterranean University Press
} |
 |
LEVINAS STUDIES
: Volume 3: An Annual Review
[Jeffrey Bloechl (ed)]
This volume contains essays probing Levinas's thought as it develops a theory of ethical politics capable of attending to themes such as community, statehood, peace, and violence, as well as others examining the relation of that theory to the work of contemporary political philosophers including Antonio Negri, Charles Taylor, and Simone Weil. The volume begins with an interview with Levinas hitherto published only in Dutch.
{
240pp,
155x230mm,
June 2008;
HB,
£37.50,
0820704067:9780820704067
, Duquesne University Press
} |
 |
LOGIC OF HUMAN PERSONALITY
: An Onto-Logical Account
[Mary L O'Hara]
What does the word 'person' mean? The question has bean a theme of Western thought for two thousand years. Around the year 500, Boethius gave a definition that remained standard, though not unchallenged, for over a millennium, although at present little is heard of this meaning. "The Logic of Human Personality" shows how the ancient definition of person remains useful today and explains how it happened to fall into disuse. The history of the word 'person' begins in ancient Rome and Greece, a century before the present era. A survey of some of the Latin and Greek writers who used this word in ancient and patristic times bears out the hypothesis that Greek root of the word had a more physical emphasis than the Latin, and that the loner had about it the air of theatrical role and legal agency. These two emphases have remained in the word as it is used at present; different thinkers tend to emphasise each and thus to draw from them different conclusions. Against Mill and others who have found Aristotle's categories unsatisfactory, "The Logic of Human Personality" argues that in fact they are useful for much psychological and anthropological research today, particularly in the intercultural field.
{
149pp,
145x210mm,
December 1998;
HB,
£39.50,
157392671X:9781573926713
, Prometheus Books
} |
 |
LOGIC OF LIFE
: Seeking Truth to Live By
[Dr P G Nelson]
Life can be difficult. Sometimes we are at a loss to know what to do. Sometimes we wonder what life is all about. In this book the author shows where answers to such questions can be found.
{
62pp,
130x200mm,
July 2008;
PB,
£4.95,
1905575041:9781905575046
, Thankful Media (Avenue Books)
} |
 |
LORD, GIVER OF LIFE
: Toward a Pneumatological Complement to George Lindbeck's Theory of Doctrine
[Jane Barter Moulaison]
George Lindbeck once characterised post-liberalism, which received its initial structure from his book “The Nature of Doctrine”, as an attempt to recover pre-modern scriptural interpretation in contemporary form. In this book, Jane Barter Moulaison explores the success of that effort through a close examination of Lindbeck's own theological contributions. Taking seriously the ecumenical promises of Lindbeck's writing (he was instrumental in advancing Lutheran and Roman Catholic dialogue throughout the 1960s, '70s, and '80s), this book brings Lindbeck's famous cultural-linguistic model of religion into dialogue with Christianity's theological forbears: specifically, the Eastern progenitors of orthodox confession. This constellation of theological voices -- Lindbeck, his supporters and detractors, along with patristic theologians -- is meant not only to test the viability of a religious model but, more importantly, to advance Lindbeck's project in ways that have not yet been pursued. Among the critical questions engaged are: to what degree can the excesses of modern theology be overcome by a return to pre-modern sources? What are the implications of a constructive pneumatology to the cultural-linguistic model? Does this complement address the critiques of post-liberalism, particularly those that consider the role of human agency, rationality, and autonomy? While Lindbeck recovers significant and forgotten elements of pre-modern biblical interpretation, the very formalism of his project sometimes obscures the theological underpinnings of pre-modern insights and practices. Through specific attention to Eastern Trinitarian theologies of the fourth century, this book exposes a rather persistent oversight within Lindbeck's recovery: namely, that alongside the regulative function of canon and doctrine, early biblical interpretation recognises the role of the Holy Spirit in the appropriation of scripture, in the mission of the church, and in the defence of the gospel within the context of an unbelieving world. This book attends to these insights from the early churchs doctrine of the Holy Spirit in appreciative service to the cultural-linguistic model of religion.
{
168pp,
155x230mm,
April 2007;
HB,
£38.50,
0889205019:9780889205017
, Wilfrid Laurier University Press
} |
 |
MEDITATIONS OF THE EMPEROR MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONINUS
[Francis Hutcheson]
This 1742 translation is a collaborative work by Frances Hutcheson and a colleague at Glasgow University, the classicist James Moor. Although Hutcheson was secretive about the extent of his work on the book, he was clearly the leading spirit of the project. This influential classical work offered a vision of a universe governed by a natural law that obliges us to love mankind and to govern our lives in accordance with the natural order of things. In their account of the life of the emperor, prefaced to their translation from the Greek, Hutcheson and Moor celebrated the Stoic ideal of an orderly universe governed by a benevolent God. They contrasted the serenity recommended and practiced by Marcus Aurelius with the divisive sectarianism then exhibited by their fellow Presbyterians in Scotland and elsewhere. They urged their readers and fellow citizens to set aside their narrow prejudices.
{
February 2008;
PB,
£8.95,
0865975116:9780865975118
/
HB,
£13.95,
0865975108:9780865975101
, Liberty Fund
} |
 |
MENTAL CAUSATION
: Investigating the Mind's Powers in a Natural World
[Jens Harbecke. Ph.D.]
This work is a systematic investigation of a range of solutions offered today for the philosophical problem of mental causation. The premises constituting the problem are analysed before a survey is developed of the most popular theories on mental causation. It is demonstrated in detail why most of these canonical solutions must be considered deficient. In a third part, the "new compatibilist's" approach to mental causation is explored, which is characterised by assertion of a non-identity-but-non-distinctness principle. The last part aims to offer an alternative solution to the problem. On the basis of a certain set of counterfactual conditionals, which are jointly taken to provide a definition of "causal proportionality" that improves the existing definitions, it is shown that a specific, and hitherto widely neglected, version of causal over-determinationism must be considered the most successful solution to the problem of mental causation.
{
434pp,
150x210mm,
April 2008;
HB,
£108.50,
3938793945:9783938793947
, Ontos Verlag
} |
 |
METAPHYSICS & THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF MEANING
[Jonas Pfister]
The book develops the metaphysics of meaning along the lines set up by Paul Grice, defining the three central notions of what is meant, said and implicated. The Gricean notion of what is said is threatened by semantic underdetermination: If the sentence underdetermines the thought it is used to express, what is said cannot be the proposition expressed by the sentence and meant by the speaker. This leads to a number of questions: How far does semantic underdetermination reach? Do we have to extend or restrict the Gricean notion? Is what is said semantic or pragmatic? Keeping these metaphysical questions separate from the epistemological question of how the hearer understands what is meant, which is best explained by generalising the Gricean theory of implicature derivation and combining it with a game-theoretic model, the book provides an original defense of a Gricean view in the ongoing debate about semantics and pragmatics.
{
148pp,
150x210mm,
June 2007;
HB,
£30.99,
393879349X:9783938793497
, Ontos Verlag
} |
 |
METAPHYSICS & TRUTHMAKERS
[Jean-Maurice Monnoyer (ed)]
The essays collected in this volume concern the general question of truthmaking. Most of them also bear upon the metaphysical nature of truthmakers (moments, tropes, property-instances, Aristotelian substances, states of affairs, meanings or essences?). Taking as their starting point a famous seminal paper by K Mulligan, P Simons and B Smith, as well as D Armstrong's outstanding contribution to the subject, they offer a fresh assay of the main concepts involved, in order to assess the explanatory value of truthmakers and truthmaker necessitarianism, and explore such delicate issues as contingent truth, bare possibility, tensed propositions, the ontological irreducibility of relations, the subsistence of facts and the epistemic role of negative truths. The collection as a whole provides a comprehensive and thought-provoking survey of the current debate about truthmaking theory and deserves to be read carefully by anyone interested in the relationship between language, thought and reality.
{
337pp,
148x210mm,
April 2007;
HB,
£89.50,
3938793325:9783938793329
, Ontos Verlag
} |
 |
METHODICAL SYSTEM OF UNIVERSAL LAW
: Or, the Laws of Nature & Nations -- with Supplements & a Discourse by George Turnbull
[Johann Gottlieb Heineccius]
Heineccius's theory of natural law was in many ways an independent development situated both temporally and philosophically between the earlier natural law tradition of Samuel Pufendorf and Christian Thomasius, and the later theories of Christian Wolff, writes of co-editor Peter Schröder. "While Heineccius was influenced by Pufendorf, and to a lesser extent by Thomasius, his natural law theory differs in various crucial aspects. Most importantly, Heineccius did not derive the law of nature from human qualities or human nature, as Pufendorf attempted with his concept of sociability. Heineccius thought that the law of nature was entirely derived from the will of God." Heineccius's Methodical System was first printed in 1737. George Turnbull's translation of 1742 was one of the first to be made and was issued twice. Turnbull (1698-1748) was a key figure in the Scottish Enlightenment. His extensive commentaries on the text present a comprehensive overview of the sophisticated and wide-ranging European discourse on natural law, while his appended Discourse is a work of independent importance in moral thought.
{
687pp,
155x230mm,
March 2008;
PB,
£8.95,
0865974799:9780865974791
/
HB,
£13.95,
0865974780:9780865974784
, Liberty Fund
} |
 |
MIND
: Ontology and Explanation: Collected Papers 1981-2005
[Laird Addis]
In this collection of papers by Laird Addis, published over approximately a quarter century, the main topics are the ontology of mind and the role of mind in the explanation of behavior. Addis defends a theory of natural signs, by which there is, in every conscious state including emotional states, an intrinsically intentional entity. He also argues that explanations of behavior by dispositional mental states, while not themselves causal explanations, presuppose the possibility of such explanations. The theory of dispositions is applied also to the theories of Chomsky and Freud. In broad strokes, Addis holds that, while there is a distinct realm of mental properties, behaviors admit of purely physical explanations.
{
289pp,
150x215mm,
February 2008;
HB,
£71.99,
3938793864:9783938793862
, Ontos Verlag
} |
 |
MORALITY MAZE
: An Introduction to Moral Ecology
[Neil M Daniels]
People still believe that any behaviour is permitted so long as they can get away with it. This attitude makes our current moral situation both confusing and discouraging. In addition, society has lost confidence in traditional methods of strengthening morality, be it the family, the schools, religion, or the law. Our failure to create a peaceful, moral world is all the more disturbing when compared to the tremendous strides we have made in science and its application to business and industry, medicine, communications, transportation, and agriculture. In "The Morality Maze", Neil M Daniels expands the concept of morality by assigning it a scientific base in biology. In the past, each individual immoral behaviour was described and defined, but we failed to discern what they have in common, other than being forbidden. Daniels reveals one simple moral factor that pervades all moral and immoral behaviour. This "common denominator" is a bioenvironmental fact of human ecology. The human ecosystem artefact common to all forms of morality is "property," an innovative component of moral ecology theory that has revolutionary implications for moral philosophy, law, education, and daily life.
{
227pp,
155x230mm,
December 1991;
HB,
£23.50,
0879756977:9780879756970
, Prometheus Books
} |
 |
MULTICULTURAL MYSTIQUE
: The Liberal Case Against Diversity
[H E Baber]
Most literature on multiculturalism assumes, without argument or compelling empirical evidence, that immigrants and members of ethnic minorities prefer to identify with their ancestral cultures. According to the received view, multiculturalism benefits ethnic minorities, who want to maintain distinct cultures and keep to themselves. And it protects them from the pressure to assimilate to the majority culture. Philosopher H E Baber scrutinises these assumptions his critique of the notion of multiculturalism. Baber asks whether it could be that many, or even most, members of ethnic minorities want to shed their ethnic identities and assimilate to the dominant culture. She suggests that multiculturalism imposes ethnic scripts on minorities and thus locks them out of the opportunity to assimilate. In effect, it becomes a form of ethnic stereotyping and discrimination. Multiculturalism, when transformed into an ideology as it often is, benefits cultural preservationists at the expense of members of ethnic minorities who wish to assimilate--arguably the majority. Perversely, it then labels those who would resist such stereotyping as atypical, inauthentic, or even self-hating. Baber argues that liberals, or anyone who favours the expansion of individual liberty, should reject a multiculturalism that restricts personal freedom by classifying and identifying people on the basis of unchosen characteristics such as ancestry and appearance. Like all Americans, ethnic minorities should be encouraged to 'invent themselves', to affiliate with groups of their own choosing and be identified as they wish.
{
260pp,
155x230mm,
April 2008;
HB,
£17.50,
1591025532:9781591025535
, Prometheus Books
} |
 |
NATURE & LIFEWORLD
: Theoretical & Practical Metaphysics
[Carsten Bengt-Pedersen & Niels Thomassen]
Text in English and Danish. A persistent theme of the 20th century has been a critique of metaphysics. But the limitations of this critique are manifesting themselves more and more clearly. Among them is the fact that both inner and outer nature have form and structure. Philosophy of nature becomes unavoidable. The lifeworld of man cannot be thoroughly understood without metaphysical reflection. The theme of this volume is the metaphysical questions about man and nature and the relationship between them, as these questions emerge in the human lifeworld beyond the critique of metaphysics of the 20th century. The contributions provide a comprehensive elucidation of the theoretical and practical problems of metaphysics. They range from the metaphysics of the ecological crisis and the concept of progress to the nature of man and the foundation of science in the human lifeworld.
{
345pp,
180x260mm,
January 2002;
PB,
£11.35,
8778383110:9788778383112
, University Press of Southern Denmark
} |
 |
NEW INTERPRETATIONS OF BERKELEY'S THOUGHT
[Stephen H Daniel (ed)]
In this set of previously unpublished essays, noted scholars from North America and Europe describe how the Irish philosopher George Berkeley (1684-1753) continues to inspire debates about his views on knowledge, reality, God, freedom, mathematics, and religion. Here discussions about Berkeley's account of physical objects, minds, and God's role in human experience are resolved within explicitly ethical and theological contexts. This collection uses debates about Berkeley's immaterialism and theory of ideas to open up a discussion of how divine activity and human experience are reconciled in a recurring appeal to the laws of nature. In that context, objects in the world are linked to one another by means of the perceptions and affections whereby minds come into being. The laws of nature thus become crucial for Berkeley in revealing how objects are unintelligible apart from being apprehended by minds that are themselves connected to one another in virtue of their ideas. Overall, the essays indicate that, for Berkeley, our apprehension of the world as real depends on recognising how the world expressed by our ideas is not a mere aggregate of disconnected bodies but is rather an integrated unity of the things we experience. This provides an antidote against the loss of unity created by Descartes' isolation of the self from nature and Locke's account of objects in terms of simple, discrete ideas. In juxtaposing discussions of Berkeley's later writings with his earlier works, this volume shows not only how, for Berkeley, mind is intrinsically linked to things in nature as the principle of their determination in law-governed ways, but also how minds are practically related to the objects of the physical world, one another, and ultimately God.
{
319pp,
135x210mm,
December 2007;
HB,
£53.50,
1591025575:9781591025573
, Prometheus Books (Humanity Books)
} |
 |
NEW TALMUDIC READINGS
[Emmanuel Levinas; Translated by Richard A Cohen]
This small but important volume contains three of Emmanuel Levinas's last major lectures on the Talmud, originally presented in 1974, 1988 and 1989. These three readings continue and augment much of Levinas's thought as presented in the earlier works: Nine Talmudic Readings In the Time of the Nations and Beyond Verse. Originally compiled and published in French in early 1996, New Talmudic Readings includes the lectures, The Will of Heaven and the Power of Men, Beyond the State in the State, and Who is Oneself?
{
133pp,
155x230mm,
January 1999;
PB,
£12.99,
0820704032:9780820704036
, Duquesne University Press
} |
 |
NIETZSCHE & THE 'ENGLISH'
: The Influence of British & American Thinking on His Philosophy
[Thomas H Brobjer]
Most of the material relating to Nietzsche's knowledge and reading of British and American thinkers has not previously been available in English. This work contains the first thorough discussion of Nietzsche's relation to Anglo-American culture and philosophy.
{
474pp,
155x230mm,
December 2007;
PB,
£26.99,
1591025478:9781591025474
, Prometheus Books (Humanity Books)
} |
 |
NINETEENTH CENTURY NATION BUILDING & THE LATIN AMERICAN INTELLECTUAL TRADITION
: A Reader
[Janet Burke & Ted Humphrey (eds) & Translators]
This volume provides readings from the works of eighteen Latin American thinkers of the nineteenth century, each of whom were engaged in examining and articulating the problems that Spanish and Portuguese America faced in the one hundred years after securing independence in 1810. All major regions of Latin America are represented, regions that differ significantly with regard to indigenous background, geography, climate and available resources. Nonetheless, their people confronted the common problems that surround the intractable challenges of statecraft and nation-building -- issues of race, international relations, economics, education, and self-understanding. Janet Burke and Ted Humphrey provide fresh, accessible translations; a general Introduction that sets the works to follow in historical and intellectual context; biographical headnotes for each contributor; a glossary; and a bibliography.
{
366pp,
155x230mm,
April 2007;
HB,
£32.00,
0872208389:9780872208384
/
PB,
£11.95,
0872208370:9780872208377
, Hackett Publishing
} |
 |
ON BEING & ESSENCE
[Peter King]
This new translation of a short, classic, early work of Aquinas, which nevertheless offers an elegant and sophisticated exposition of many themes to which he returned in later works, offers more the reader more aids -- including notes and a commentary -- than does any other translation.
{
128pp,
October 2009;
PB,
£9.95,
0872206157:9780872206151
, Hackett Publishing
} |
 |
ONTOLOGY & ANALYSIS
: Essays & Recollections About Gustav Bergmann
[Laird Addis, Greg Jesson & Erwin Tegtmeier]
Gustav Bergmann (1906-1987) was, arguably, the greatest ontologist of the twentieth century in pursuing the fundamental questions of first philosophy as deeply as any philosopher of any time. In 2006 and 2007, international conferences devoted solely to Bergmann's work were held at the University of Iowa in the USA, Université de Provence in France, and Università degli Studi Roma Tre in Italy. The papers in this volume were presented at the first of these conferences, in Iowa City, where Bergmann taught for nearly four decades after escaping from Europe, following the dissolution of the Vienna Circle of which he had been the youngest member. There are nine philosophical papers, reminiscences of three of his students, and a complete bibliography of his published writings.
{
314pp,
150x210mm,
June 2007;
HB,
£89.50,
3938793694:9783938793695
, Ontos Verlag
} |
 |
ORIGIN OF HUMAN NATURE
: A Zen Buddhist Looks at Evolution
[Albert Low]
Offers an original and fertile way to integrate spiritual and scientific views of human evolution. It offers a new and refreshing alternative to the way we think about our origins: random mutation (mechanistic neo-Darwinism), Genesis (God did it all personally), and Intelligent Design (God personally does what we can't otherwise account for). The result is an invigorating perspective on how our best qualities -- our capacity for love, our appreciation of beauty, our altruistic capability, our creativity and intelligence -- have come into being and evolved. How we think about our origin matters: if we think we are machines living among other machines, we will act accordingly. By showing evolution as a creative and intelligent process with its own inherent logic, THE ORIGIN OF HUMAN NATURE resolves the dilemma of how to have, at the same time, both truth and ethics. Instead of starting in an imagined remote and 'uncertain past' and moving to the present, this book starts at the certain and 'immediate present' and works back. That consciousness, creativity, and intelligence exist is certain. The question is: how can these have evolved? Dr Albert Low has made a study of human nature throughout his life. To write this book he draws on his prolonged meditations on creativity and the human condition, his years of providing psychological and spiritual counseling, and a wide-ranging knowledge of Western psychology, philosophy, and science.
REVIEW: "In The Origin of Human Nature, Dr. Albert Low breathes new life into old terms - the transcendent, consciousness, awareness, evolution, creativity, intention - not by going around science, but by going through it. In the current frenzy to purge science of purpose, meaning, direction, and values, Low’s insights are a welcome resource. One might say that our survival depends on the wisdom in this book." -- Larry Dossey, MD, author of The Extraordinary Healing Power of Everyday Things. "The old religious models don’t seem to work for us these days. And so we have turned to secularity, to the cooler gaze of science, especially the neo-Darwinism of Richard Dawkins and others. Albert Low shows that the bloom of their answer - the random-mutation mechanistic evolutionary system - that once seemed so promising, cannot account for our capacity for love, appreciation of beauty, altruism, creativity or intelligence. And it cannot offer us meaning or direction. So we find ourselves in an uncomfortable place of ambiguity... The Origin of Human Nature offers a model that lives creatively in just that ambiguity." -- Professor Robert Forman, Professor Emeritus of Comparative Religion, CUNY, founding Co-Editor of The Journal of Consciousness Studies and author of Grassroots Spirituality. "In this intelligently written book Albert Low gives us a modern Guide for the Perplexed; a richly thoughtful reflection on the roots of human nature that glows with a deep respect for both science and the spirit." Allan Combs, author of The Radiance of Being. "The battles over evolution are fought by two sides that are far too rigid in their thinking, the Biblical literalists on the one hand and the mechanistically committed materialists on the other. But our human and spiritual nature is much bigger than fanatic literalism or scientistic dogmatism, and Low’s refreshing book offers a more open direction to explore the potentials of evolution for real human beings." -- Charles T. Tart is Core Faculty at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology and Professor Emeritus of Psychology at UC Davis. He is the author of many books, including Body Mind Spirit: Exploring the Parapsychology of Spirituality. "I enthusiastically recommend this book. As a hard-core scientist, I was overjoyed to read Dr. Low’s ‘knowing’ centered approach to human origins and nature, as well as his eloquent rebuttal of the ‘selfish gene’ neo-Darwinism that now dominates mainstream views. Dr. Low’s vision dovetails perfectly with the broader scientific vision of evolution that I work with but perhaps it takes a Zen master to communicate the profundity of its human implications to a world so desperate for a deeply felt understanding of purpose and meaning." -- Dr. S. J. Goerner, Director of The Integral Science Institute, and author of After the Clockwork Universe: The Emerging Science and Culture of Integral Society. "Albert Low offers us a strikingly original vision of evolution and human nature. He presents us with a choice that is stark, with implications that are far-reaching. On the one hand, we can take the metaphor of ‘man as machine’ literally and, as a consequence, abandon those very qualities that make us human and make life worth living. On the other hand, we can come to see that the evolutionary process, and therefore ourselves, is fundamentally intelligent and creative. The choice, Low tells us, is fateful and ours to make." -- Dr William Byers is Mathematics Professor at Loyola University, Montreal. He is the author of How Mathematicians Think (Princeton University Press), selected for the Scientific American book club. "Transcending the clichés on both sides of the modern God/evolution debate, Dr. Low’s book offers a most welcome invitation to the joyful work of thinking like a human being about what an evolving human being is and can - for the sake of our world, must - become." -- Jacob Needleman, Professor of Philosophy at San Francisco State University, and author of many books including Why Can’t We Be Good?
{
245pp,
152x229mm,
January 2008;
PB,
£17.99,
1845192605:9781845192600
, Sussex Academic Press
} |
 |
PERFECTIBILISTS
: The 18th Century Bavarian Order of the Illuminati
[Terry Melanson]
Presenting an advanced and authoritative perspective, this definitive study chronicles the rise and fall of the Order of the Illuminati, a mysterious Enlightenment-era guild surrounded by myth. Describing this enigmatic community in meticulous detail, over 1,000 endnotes are included, citing scholars, professors, and academics. Contemporary accounts and the original documents of the Illuminati themselves are covered as well. Copiously illustrated and featuring biographies of over 400 confirmed members, this survey brings to light a 200-year-old mystery.
{
336pp,
125x210mm,
August 2008;
PB,
£13.50,
0977795381:9780977795383
, IPG (Trine Day)
} |
 |
PERSISTENCE
[Christian Kanzian (ed)]
The problem of persistence is as old as the tradition of systematic ontology. How can we explain that the middle-sized standard objects of everyday life are regarded normally as remaining 'the same', even if they change their properties and their material constituents? The aim of this edition is to present new arguments, perspectives, and theoretical backgrounds concerning 'persistence': There is much more to consider than the classical distinction between 'endurantism' and 'perdurantism'. The volume incl |
