Kategoria BISAC: Philosophy >> Criticism

This volume brings together international scholars working at the intersection of Spinoza studies and critical and feminist philosophy. It is the first book-length study dedicated to the re-reading of Spinoza's ethical and theologico-political works from a feminist perspective. The twelve outstanding chapters range over the entire field of Spinoza's writings--metaphysical, political, theological, ethical, and psychological--drawing out the ways in which his philosophy presents a rich resource for the reconceptualization of friendship, sexuality, politics, and ethics in contemporary...

Commenting on the end of Aristotle On the Heavens Book 3, Simplicius examines Aristotle's criticisms of Plato's theory of elemental chemistry in the Timaeus. Plato makes the characteristics of the four elements depend on the shapes of component corpuscles and ultimately on the arrangement of the triangles which compose them. Simplicius preserves and criticizes the contributions made to the debate in lost works by two other major commentators, Alexander the Aristotelian, and Proclus the Platonist. In Book 4, Simplicius identifies fifteen objections by Aristotle to Plato's...

When ordinary individuals from around the world inexplicably develop superhuman abilities, they question who they are, struggle to cope with new responsibilities, and decide whether to use their new power for good or for evil. Every episode of Tim Kring's hit TV show Heroes is a philosophical quandary. Heroes and Philosophy is the first book to analyze how philosophy makes this show so compelling. It lets you examine questions crucial to our existence as thinking,...

In this volume--the first, focused study of Hume on time and identity--Baxter focuses on Hume's treatment of the concept of numerical identity, which is central to Hume's famous discussions of the external world and personal identity. Hume raises a long unappreciated, and still unresolved, difficulty with the concept of identity: how to represent something as "a medium betwixt unity and number." Superficial resemblance to Frege's famous puzzle has kept the difficulty in the shadows. Hume's way of addressing it makes sense only in the context of his unorthodox theory of time. Baxter shows...

"Not a coda to Zeppelin's legacy, but a blast of metaphysical graffiti as relevant today as...

Concerning embryos, Porphyry takes an original view on issues that had been left undecided by his teacher Plotinus and earlier by the doctor Galen. What role is played in the development of the embryo by the souls or the natures of the father, of the mother, of the embryo, or of the whole world? Porphyry's detailed answer, in contrast to Aristotle's, gives a big role to the soul and to the nature of the mother, without, however, abandoning Aristotle's view that the mother supplies no seed. In the fragments of "On What is in Our Power," "Porphyry" discusses Plato's idea that we choose each...

In one of the most original books of late antiquity, Philoponus argues for the Christian view that matter can be created by God out of nothing. It needs no prior matter for its creation. At the same time, Philoponus transforms Aristotle's conception of prime matter as an incorporeal 'something - I know not what' that serves as the ultimate subject for receiving extension and qualities. On the contrary, says Philoponus, the ultimate subject is extension. It is three-dimensional extension with its exact dimensions and any qualities unspecified. Moreover, such extension is the defining...