Kategoria BISAC: Philosophy >> General

"Ihde is perhaps uniquely situated to provide authoritative accounts of such diverse philosophical traditions as those involved in current explorations of the technology of scientific instruments.... Ihde's book breaks new ground and... makes an important debate accessible." --Robert Ackermann

Instrumental Realism has three principal aims: to advocate a "praxis-perception" approach to the philosophy of science; to explore ways in which such an approach offers a mutually illuminating overlap with a philosophy of technology; and to examine comparatively and critically the work of some...

Philosophy has often been criticized for privileging the abstract; this volume attempts to remedy that situation. Focusing on one of the most concrete of human concerns, food, the editors argue for the existence of a philosophy of food. The collection provides various approaches to the subject matter, offering new readings of a number of texts--religious, philosophical, anthropological, culinary, poetic, and economic. Included are readings ranging from Plato's Phaedo and Verses of Sen-No-Rikyu to Peter Singer's "Becoming a Vegetarian" and Jean-Francois Revel's Culture and...

Lyotard is considered one of the most brilliant and influential of French post-structuralist thinkers. Published in 1974 by Minuit, Economie libidinale is, of all his work to date, the most creative in its mode of writing and in its theorizing: a stunning, dense, brilliant piece in which Lyotard, ranging from Marxist and Freudian theory to contemporary arts, argues that political economy is charged with passions and, reciprocally, that passions are infused with the political.

Using the writings of slaves and former slaves, as well as commentaries on slavery, Between Slavery and Freedom explores the American slave experience to gain a better understanding of six moral and political concepts--oppression, paternalism, resistance, political obligation, citizenship, and forgiveness. The authors use analytical philosophy as well as other disciplines to gain insight into the thinking of a group of people prevented from participating in the social/political discourse of their times.

Between Slavery and Freedom rejects the notion that philosophers need not...

..". both an excellent introduction and a thoroughgoing analysis of Kristeva's writing." --Signs

"The book is a brilliant combination of a recuperative and a critical reading of Kristeva's work." --Changes: An International Journal of Psychology & Psychotherapy

..". a thorough, detailed, and critical analysis of the writings of Julia Kristeva." --Elizabeth Grosz

..". the most involved and engaging study of Julia Kristeva's work to date..." --The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory

This first full-scale feminist interpretation of Kristeva's work situates her...

"Eco's essays read like letters from a friend, trying to share something he loves with someone he likes.... Read this brilliant, enjoyable, and possibly revolutionary book." --George J. Leonard, San Francisco Review of Books

..". a wealth of insight and instruction." --J. O. Tate, National Review

"If anyone can make semiotics] clear, it's Professor Eco.... Professor Eco's theme deserves respect; language should be used to communicate more easily without literary border guards." --The New York Times

"The limits of interpretation mark the limits of our world. Umberto Eco's...

"Adventures in Lesbian Philosophy contains many illuminating discussions (of S/M sex, lesbian ethics, lesbian desire, bisexuality), and includes a useful bibliography of lesbian criticism." --Passion

"This new collection edited by Claudia Card includes important articles of interest to feminist philosophy relating to lesbian feminist issues and ethics." --Ethics

..". a fun and engaging conceptual romp." --Journal of the History of Sexuality

These essays explore diverse positive understandings of "lesbian philosophy," from contested sexual behaviors such as pornography and...

Is evil evidence against the existence of God? Even if God and evil are compatible, it remains hotly contested whether evil renders belief in God unreasonable. The Evidential Argument from Evil presents five classic statements on this issue by eminent philosophers and theologians and places them in dialogue with eleven original essays reflecting new thinking by these and other scholars. The volume focuses on two versions of the argument. The first affirms that there is no reason for God to permit either certain specific horrors or the variety and profusion of undeserved suffering. The...

Michel Foucault left a rich legacy of ideas and approaches, many of which still await exposition and analysis. The Final Foucault is devoted to his last published (and some as yet unpublished) work and includes a translation of one of his last interviews, a comprehensive bibliography of his publications, and a biographical chronology.Foucault was still working on his history of sexuality when he died in 1984, but his main concern remained, as throughout his career, a deeper understanding of the nature of truth. His final set of lectures at the College de France, described here by Thomas...

This major work by the German philosopher Hans Blumenberg is a monumental rethinking of the significance of the Copernican revolution for our understanding of modernity. It provides an important corrective to the view of science as an autonomous enterprise and presents a new account of the history of interpretations of the significance of the heavens for man.Hans Blumenberg is Professor of Philosophy, emeritus, at the University of Munster in West Germany. This book is included in the series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy

This volume of Ned Block's writings collects his papers on consciousness, functionalism, and representationism. A number of these papers treat the significance of the multiple realizability of mental states for the mind-body problem -- a theme that has concerned Block since the 1960s. One paper on this topic considers the upshot for the mind-body problem of the possibility of a robot that is functionally like us but physically different -- as is Commander Data of Star Trek's second generation. The papers on consciousness treat such conceptual issues as phenomenal versus access...

Reasoning about knowledge--particularly the knowledge of agents who reason about the world and each other's knowledge--was once the exclusive province of philosophers and puzzle solvers. More recently, this type of reasoning has been shown to play a key role in a surprising number of contexts, from understanding conversations to the analysis of distributed computer algorithms.Reasoning About Knowledge is the first book to provide a general discussion of approaches to reasoning about knowledge and its applications to distributed systems, artificial intelligence, and game theory. It brings...

In this pathbreaking study, Axel Honneth argues that "the struggle for recognition" is, and should be, at the center of social conflicts. Moving smoothly between moral philosophy and social theory, Honneth offers insights into such issues as the social forms of recognition and nonrecognition, the moral basis of interaction in human conflicts, the relation between the recognition model and conceptions of modernity, the normative basis of social theory, and the possibility of mediating between Hegel and Kant.

Theodor W. Adorno died in 1969 and his last major work, Asthetische Theorie, was published posthumously a year later. Few philosophers have been as well versed in contemporary art, especially music, as Adorno, and even fewer have written so much that is of interest to the social sciences. Yet only recently have his aesthetic writings begun to receive sustained attention in the English-speaking world. This collection of essays is an important contribution to the growing discussion of Adorno's aesthetics in Anglo-American scholarship.

The essays in the volume, by many of the...

In The High Price of Materialism, Tim Kasser offers a scientific explanation of how our contemporary culture of consumerism and materialism affects our everyday happiness and psychological health. Other writers have shown that once we have sufficient food, shelter, and clothing, further material gains do little to improve our well-being. Kasser goes beyond these findings to investigate how people's materialistic desires relate to their well-being. He shows that people whose values center on the accumulation of wealth or material possessions face a greater risk of unhappiness,...

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 1999

Academic debates about pluralism and truth have become increasingly polarized in recent years. One side embraces extreme relativism, deeming any talk of objective truth as philosophically naive. The opposition, frequently arguing that any sort of relativism leads to nihilism, insists on an objective notion of truth according to which there is only one true story of the world. Both sides agree that there is no middle path.

In Truth in Context, Michael Lynch argues that there is a middle path, one where metaphysical...