Kategoria BISAC: Philosophy >> Criticism

Nietzsche has the reputation of being a virulent misogynist, so why are feminists interested in his philosophy? The essays in this volume provide answers to this question from a variety of feminist perspectives.

The organization of the volume into two sets of essays, "Nietzsche's Use of Woman" and "Feminists' Use of Nietzsche," reflects the two general approaches taken to the issue of Nietzsche and woman. First, many debates have focused on how to interpret Nietzsche's remarks about women and femininity. Are all of Nietzsche's comments to be read literally, or is he being ironic,...

Nietzsche has the reputation of being a virulent misogynist, so why are feminists interested in his philosophy? The essays in this volume provide answers to this question from a variety of feminist perspectives.

The organization of the volume into two sets of essays, "Nietzsche's Use of Woman" and "Feminists' Use of Nietzsche," reflects the two general approaches taken to the issue of Nietzsche and woman. First, many debates have focused on how to interpret Nietzsche's remarks about women and femininity. Are all of Nietzsche's comments to be read literally, or is he being ironic,...

How can we experience real emotions when viewing a movie or reading a novel or watching a play when we know the characters whose actions have this effect on us do not exist? This is a conundrum that has puzzled philosophers for a long time, and in this book Robert Yanal both canvasses previously proposed solutions to it and offers one of his own.

First formulated by Samuel Johnson, the paradox received its most famous answer from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who advised his readers to engage in a "willing suspension of disbelief." More recently, philosophers have argued that we are...

Retrieving Political Emotion engages the reader in an excursion through our ancient Greek heritage to recover a concept of emotion useful for enriching political philosophy today. Focusing on thumos (typically translated as "spiritedness," "heart," or "anger"), Barbara Koziak reveals misinterpretations of the concept that have hampered recognition of its possibilities for normative theory. Then, drawing especially on Aristotle's construal of it as a general capacity for emotion and relating this to contemporary multidisciplinary work on emotion, she reformulates...

This book is the first collection of feminist essays on one of the central figures in the history of English-speaking philosophy. Besides providing a rich variety of feminist viewpoints on a wide range of Hume's writings, the contributors introduce new themes into the scholarship on Hume, including gendered metaphors in his metaphysical texts, the role of society in the conception of the human mind, and his conception of human nature in relation to recent rejections of essentialism.

Hume scholarship as a whole still reflects the relative neglect in mainstream analytic philosophy of...

This book is the first collection of feminist essays on one of the central figures in the history of English-speaking philosophy. Besides providing a rich variety of feminist viewpoints on a wide range of Hume's writings, the contributors introduce new themes into the scholarship on Hume, including gendered metaphors in his metaphysical texts, the role of society in the conception of the human mind, and his conception of human nature in relation to recent rejections of essentialism.

Hume scholarship as a whole still reflects the relative neglect in mainstream analytic philosophy of...

How do we ask the great questions? What does it mean to ask so profoundly? What does it mean for us to ask at all? Michael Gelven confronts these questions as he explores humans as self-reflecting thinkers. He recognizes two central phenomena as fundamental: the recognition of our own possibility lying within our existence and the realization of our suspension between total ignorance and complete knowledge.

Using concrete analyses, Gelven investigates the questions we ask that may seem initially unanswerable but are ultimately confronted through our own self-realization. Asking...

Continuing his quest to bring American philosophy back to its roots, Bruce Wilshire connects the work of such thinkers as Thoreau, Emerson, Dewey, and James with Native American beliefs and practices. His search is not for exact parallels, but rather for fundamental affinities between the equally "organismic" thought systems of indigenous peoples and classic American philosophers.

Wilshire gives particular emphasis to the affinities between Black Elk's view of the hoop of the world and Emerson's notion of horizon, and also between a shaman's healing practices and James's ideas of...

The subject of the passions has always haunted Western philosophy and, more often than not, aroused harsh judgments. For the passions represent a force of excess and lawlessness in humanity that produces troubling, confusing paradoxes.

Michel Meyer provides new insight into an age-old dilemma: Does passion torture people because it blinds them, or, on the contrary, does it permit them to apprehend who and what we really are?

The subject of the passions has always haunted Western philosophy and, more often than not, aroused harsh judgments. For the passions represent a force of excess and lawlessness in humanity that produces troubling, confusing paradoxes.

Michel Meyer provides new insight into an age-old dilemma: Does passion torture people because it blinds them, or, on the contrary, does it permit them to apprehend who and what we really are?

This book offers a fresh look at Edmund Husserl's philosophy as a nonfoundational approach to understanding the self as an embodied presence.

Contrary to the conventional view of Husserl as carrying on the Cartesian tradition of seeking a trustworthy foundation for knowledge in the "pure" observations of a disembodied ego, James Mensch introduces us to the Husserl who, anticipating the later investigations of Merleau-Ponty, explored how the body functions to determine our self-presence, our freedom, and our sense of time. The result is a concept of selfhood that allows us to see how...

The prevailing interpretation of Kant's First Critique in Anglo-American philosophy views his theory of a priori knowledge as basically a theory about the possibility of empirical knowledge (or experience), or the a priori conditions for that possibility (the representations of space and time and the categories). Instead, Robert Greenberg argues that Kant is more fundamentally concerned with the possibility of a priori knowledge--the very possibility of the possibility of empirical knowledge in the first place.

Greenberg advances four central theses: (1) the...

This volume of essays, all but one previously unpublished, investigates the question of Levinas's relationship to feminist thought. Levinas, known as the philosopher of the Other, was famously portrayed by Simone de Beauvoir as a patriarchal thinker who denigrated women by viewing them as the paradigmatic Other. Reconsideration of the validity of this interpretation of Levinas and exploration of what more positively can be derived from his thought for feminism are two of this volume's primary aims.

Levinas breaks with Heidegger's phenomenology by understanding the ethical relation to...

This volume of essays, all but one previously unpublished, investigates the question of Levinas's relationship to feminist thought. Levinas, known as the philosopher of the Other, was famously portrayed by Simone de Beauvoir as a patriarchal thinker who denigrated women by viewing them as the paradigmatic Other. Reconsideration of the validity of this interpretation of Levinas and exploration of what more positively can be derived from his thought for feminism are two of this volume's primary aims.

Levinas breaks with Heidegger's phenomenology by understanding the ethical relation to...

Martin Heidegger's commitment to the idea that Dasein (human existence) is ultimately gender neutral, as well as several other major aspects of his thought, raises significant questions for feminist philosophers. The fourteen essays included in this volume clearly illustrate the ways in which feminist readings can deepen our understanding of his philosophy. They illuminate both the richness and the limitations of the resources his work can provide for feminist thought.

This volume engages the full scope of Heidegger's writings from Being and Time through his latest...

In Germany, Otfried Hoffe has been a leading contributor to debates in moral, legal, political, and social philosophy for close to three decades. Hoffe's work (like that of his contemporary, Jurgen Habermas), brings into relief the relevance of these German discussions to their counterparts in English-language circles.

In this book, originally published in Germany in 1990 and expanded since, Hoffe proposes an extended and original interpretation of Kant' philosophy of law, and social morality. Hoffe articulates his reading of Kant in the context of an account of modernity as a...

Although "the Socratic method" is commonly understood as a style of pedagogy involving cross-questioning between teacher and student, there has long been debate among scholars of ancient philosophy about how this method as attributed to Socrates should be defined or, indeed, whether Socrates can be said to have used any single, uniform method at all distinctive to his way of philosophizing. This volume brings together essays by classicists and philosophers examining this controversy anew.

The point of departure for many of those engaged in the debate has been the identification of...

This book offers a fresh look at Edmund Husserl's philosophy as a nonfoundational approach to understanding the self as an embodied presence.

Contrary to the conventional view of Husserl as carrying on the Cartesian tradition of seeking a trustworthy foundation for knowledge in the "pure" observations of a disembodied ego, James Mensch introduces us to the Husserl who, anticipating the later investigations of Merleau-Ponty, explored how the body functions to determine our self-presence, our freedom, and our sense of time. The result is a concept of selfhood that allows us to see how...

From "Materialism and Revolution" (1946) through Hope Now (1980), Jean-Paul Sartre was deeply engaged with questions about the meaning and justifiability of violence. In the first comprehensive treatment of Sartre's views on the subject, Ronald Santoni begins by tracing the full trajectory of Sartre's evolving thought on violence and shows how the "curious ambiguity" of freedom affirming itself against freedom in his earliest writings about violence developed into his "curiously ambivalent" position through his later writings.

Although "the Socratic method" is commonly understood as a style of pedagogy involving cross-questioning between teacher and student, there has long been debate among scholars of ancient philosophy about how this method as attributed to Socrates should be defined or, indeed, whether Socrates can be said to have used any single, uniform method at all distinctive to his way of philosophizing. This volume brings together essays by classicists and philosophers examining this controversy anew.

The point of departure for many of those engaged in the debate has been the identification of...