Kategoria BISAC: Philosophy >> Criticism

In chapters 12-18 of "Against Proclus," Philoponus continues to do battle against Proclus' arguments for the beginninglessness and everlastingness of the ordered universe. In this final section there are three notable issues under discussion. The first concerns the composition of the heavens and its manner of movement. Philoponus argues against the Aristotelian thesis that there is a fifth heavenly body that has a natural circular motion. He concludes that even though the celestial region is composed of fire and the other three elements, it can move in a circle by the agency of its soul,...

"This collection of Kojeve's thoughts about Hegel constitutesone of the few important philosophical books of the twentiethcentury a book, knowledge of which is requisite to the fullawareness of our situation and to the grasp of the most modernperspective on the eternal questions of philosophy." Allan Bloom (from the Introduction)

During the years 1933 1939, the Russian-born and German-educated Marxist political philosopher Alexandre Kojeve (1902 1968) brilliantly explicated through a series of lectures the philosophy of Hegel as it was developed in the Phenomenology of...

In Body and Story, Richard Terdiman explores the tension between what might seem to be two fundamentally different ways of understanding the world: as physical reality and as representation in language. In demonstrating the complicated relationship between these two modes of being, he also presents a new bold approach to the problem of conflicts between irreconcilable but equally compelling theoretical ideas.

Enlightenment rationalism is most often understood as maintaining that words can meaningfully refer to and grasp things in the material world, while Postmodernism...

James Doull's remarkable legacy as a teacher, scholar, and thinker has left behind a profound and challenging examination of the philosophical and historical roots of contemporary thought and politics. His life's work was devoted to a reflection on freedom in its philosophical and historical context and, more specifically, to looking beneath the commonly accepted forms of North American and Continental thought and discovering a deeper theoretical and practical development. David Peddle and Neil Robertson have collected Doull's essays on the history of western thought and freedom, from the...

Recent critiques of the foundations of liberalism from communitarian, socialist, postmodern, and other philosophical circles have served to remind liberals of several problematic assumptions at the heart of liberal doctrine from its inception to the present day. Such critiques necessitate a rethinking of the foundations of liberalism, and in particular those regarding the self and rationality that liberal politics presupposes.

Beginning with a wide-ranging discussion of liberal philosophers - including Hobbes, Locke, Kant, Green, Mill, and Rawls - Paul Fairfield proposes that...

Anti-realism entered the philosophical scene some twenty years ago, and has since become a widely accepted view. But although many philosophers espouse anti-realism, the only sustained arguments for the position are due to Michael Dummett and Hilary Putnam. Much discussion of their views has appeared in the journals, especially concerning some of Putnam's pithy and memorable expositions, like the 'Brain in the Vat'; however, this is the first book to provide a thorough examination and rebuttal of their arguments.

Dummett's and Putnam's arguments are long, complex, and often...

Called the most forceful voice of philosophic radicalism that Canada has so far produced, George Grant was a prolific writer, engaged by subjects ranging from Canadian politics to ancient philosophy. The George Grant Reader is the first book to bring together in one volume a comprehensive selection of his work, allowing readers to sample the whole range of his interests.

The reader includes selections from all phases of Grant's career, beginning with The Empire: Yes or No? (1945) and ending with an article on Heidegger, left unfinished at the time of his death in 1988. Forty-six...

Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) has been described by Richard Popkin as the key intellectual figure at the outset of the eighteenth century. Examinations of libraries from the period show him to have been by far the most successful author of the century, and his Historical and Critical Dictionary is in fact the philosophy best-seller of all time. The concepts, distinctions, and arguments found in his work were so widely adopted by later authors that Bayle came to be known as the 'Arsenal of the Enlightenment'. Despite his universally acknowledged importance, however, there has been from his own...

In The Will to Technology and the Culture of Nihilism, Arthur Kroker explores the future of the 21st century in the language of technological destiny. Presenting Martin Heidegger, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Nietzsche as prophets of technological nihilism, Kroker argues that every aspect of contemporary culture, society, and politics is coded by the dynamic unfolding of the 'will to technology.'

Moving between cultural history, our digital present, and the biotic future, Kroker theorizes on the relationship between human bodies and posthuman technology, and more specifically,...

Walter T. Schmid offers the first original interpretation of the Laches since Hermann Bonitz in the nineteenth century in the only full-length commentary on the Laches available in English.

Schmid divides the book into five main discussions: the historical background of the dialogue; the relation of form and content in a Platonic dialogue and specific structural and aesthetic features of the Laches; the first half of the dialogue, which introduces the characters and considers the theme of the education of young men; the inquiry with Laches, which examines the...