Wittgenstein's Account of Truth challenges the view that semantic antirealists attribute to Wittgenstein: that we cannot meaningfully call verification-transcendent statements "true." Ellenbogen argues that Wittgenstein would not have held that we should revise our practice of treating certain statements as true or false, but instead would have held that we should revise our view of what it means to call a statement true. According to the dictum "meaning is use," what makes it correct to call a statement "true" is not its correspondence with how things are, but our criterion for determining...

Kant famously confessed that Hume's treatment of cause and effect woke him from his dogmatic slumber. According to Hume, the concept of cause does not arise through reason, but through force of habit. Kant believes this can be avoided through the development of a revolutionary new cognitive framework as presented in the Critique of Pure Reason. Focusing on the Second Analogy and other important texts from the first Critique, as well as texts from the Critique of Judgment, the author discusses the nature of Kant's causal principle, the nature of his proof for this principle, and the status of...

Katerina Deligiorgi interprets Kant's conception of enlightenment within the broader philosophical project of his critique of reason. Analyzing a broad range of Kant's works, including his Critique of Pure Reason, the Critique of Judgment, his lectures on anthropology and logic, as well as his shorter essays, she identifies the theoretical and practical commitments that show the achievement of rational autonomy as an ongoing project for the realization of a culture of enlightenment. Deligiorgi also considers Kant's ideas in relation to the work of Diderot, Rousseau, Mendelssohn, Reinhold,...

In 1942, J. Robert Oppenheimer accepted the leadership of the Manhattan Project at the Los Alamos Laboratory, which produced the first atomic bomb three years later. This book examines the ethics of Oppenheimer's choice to take that job and our judgment of his acceptance, leading to the larger question of the meaning of moral judgment itself. Through an analysis of Oppenheimer's choice, Richard Mason explores questions of responsibility, the justification for the pursuit of scientific curiosity, the purity of research, and many other topics of interest in scientific ethics. This unique look...

This book offers the first account in English of the origin, meaning, and critical significance of Immanuel Kant's Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Kant's book is not empirical psychology, but rather a type of cosmopolitan philosophy meant to teach students to think for themselves and thus be free to actualize their full human destiny. Author Holly L. Wilson innovatively explores how the "philosophical anthropology" exhibited in Kant's Anthropology challenges contemporary theories of human nature, including behaviorism and evolutionary theory. She also details how Kant based his...

Confucian Thought: Selfhood as Creative Transformation is a collection of Tu's seminal essays. It is a sustained deliberation on the substance and worth of the Confucian conception of personhood. This analysis complements Tu's highly acclaimed Humanity and Self-Cultivation: Essays in Confucian Thought as a continued expression of his deepening understanding of Confucianism voiced through various perennial human concerns.

Tu weaves philosophic, historical, anthropological, sociological, and psychological perspectives into a coherent discussion of the Confucian themes that continue to...

Face to Face with Levinas makes available to American readers the best of recent thought on Emmanuel Levinas. The contributors to this volume are some of the most significant and best-known Levinas scholars in the United States and Europe--Maurice Blanchot, Luce Trigaray, Theodore De Boer, Adriaan Peperzak, Jan de Greef, Alphonso Lingis. Most notably, it features an interview with Levinas by Richard Kearney. This elaborate interview provides a succinct introduction to the themes developed within the book and allows Levinas to restate his philosophy in light of the criticisms that...

Beginning with the origins of Western philosophy, the profound creation of the Hellenic genius, Reale presents an appreciation of the Naturalists, the Sophists, Socrates, and the Minor Socratics.

Special attention is paid to the Eleatics because their problems decisively mark Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy.

Interpretation of the Sophists benefits from the recent reevaluation of their thought. Socrates himself would be inconceivable without the Sophists since he is one of them.

Socrates is given major prominence. Plato, Aristotle, and all of Hellenistic philosophy are deeply...

This book assesses the adequacy of the traditional theories of laughter and humor, suggests revised theories, and explores such areas as the aesthetics and ethics of humor, and the relation of amusement to other mental states.

Theories of laughter and humor originated in ancient times with the view that laughter is an expression of feelings of superiority over another person. This superiority theory was held by Plato, Aristotle, and Hobbes. Another aspect of laughter, noted by Aristotle and Cicero and neglected until Kant and Schopenhauer developed it into the incongruity theory, is that...

This book examines the Socratic method of elenchus, or refutation. Refutation by its very nature is a conflict, which in the hands of Plato becomes high drama. The continuing conversation in which it occurs is more a test of character than of intellect. Dialogue and Discovery shows that, in his conversations, Socrates seeks to define moral qualities--moral essences--with the goal of improving the soul of the respondent.

Ethics underlies epistemology because the discovery of philosophic truth imposes moral demands on the respondent. The recognition that moral qualities such as honesty,...