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Wilfrid Sellars and Twentieth-Century Philosophy (Routledge Studies in American Philosophy)
by Stefan Brandt Anke BreunigThis collection features eleven original essays, divided into three thematic sections, which explore the work of Wilfrid Sellars in relation to other twentieth-century thinkers. Section I analyzes Sellars’s thought in light of some of his influential predecessors, specifically Ludwig Wittgenstein, Rudolf Carnap, John Cook Wilson, and Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz. The second group of essays explores from different perspectives Sellars’s place within the analytic tradition, including his relation with analytic Kantianism and analytic pragmatism. The book’s final section extracts some of the most significant lessons Sellars’s work has to offer for contemporary philosophy. These chapters address his views on inference, his views on truth and its connection to recent discussions about truth-relativism and truth-pluralism, his conception of self-knowledge, and his theory of perceptual experience.
Wilfrid Sellars on Truth: Between Immanence and Transcendence (Routledge Studies in American Philosophy)
by Stefanie DachThis book offers an innovative defense of Wilfrid Sellars’s notion of ideal truth.Sellars adopts two attractive ideas about truth: the pragmatist idea that the concept of truth cannot be understood independently from the norms and practices we find ourselves with and the realist idea that there is one ultimate truth about how the world is. Sellars is thus committed both to an immanent notion of truth and an ideal notion of truth. This book discusses these countervailing tendencies and tries to reconcile them. The author’s defense of Sellars’s notion of truth minimizes problematic commitments while still being recognizably rooted in Sellars’s texts. Additionally, the author defends several innovative claims with respect to Sellars’s thinking, for example, about the relative unimportance of his controversial concept of pictorial adequacy and about the neglected significance of considerations concerning context-sensitive expressions in his thought.Wilfrid Sellars on Truth will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working on Wilfrid Sellars, pragmatism, and questions about truth, naturalism, and scientific realism.Chapters 3, 4, and 6 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.This work was supported by the University of West Bohemia.
Wilhelm Dilthey: The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences
by Wilhelm DiltheyThis volume provides Dilthey's most mature and best formulation of his Critique of Historical Reason. It begins with three "Studies Toward the Foundation of the Human Sciences," in which Dilthey refashions Husserlian concepts to describe the basic structures of consciousness relevant to historical understanding.The volume next presents the major 1910 work The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences. Here Dilthey considers the degree to which carriers of history--individuals, cultures, institutions, and communities--can be articulated as productive systems capable of generating value and meaning and of realizing purposes. Hegel's idea of objective spirit is reconceived in a more empirical form to designate the medium of commonality in which historical beings are immersed. Any universal claims about history need to be framed within the specific productive systems analyzed by the various human sciences. Dilthey's drafts for the Continuation of the Formation contain extensive discussions of the categories most important for our knowledge of historical life: meaning, value, purpose, time, and development. He also examines the contributions of autobiography to historical understanding and of biography to scientific history.The finest summary of Dilthey's views on hermeneutics can be found in "The Understanding of Other Persons and Their Manifestations of Life." Here, Dilthey differentiates understanding relative to three kinds of manifestations of life. After giving his analysis of elementary understanding, he examines the role of induction in higher understanding and interpretation, and the relevance of transposition and re-experiencing for grasping individuality.
Wilhelm I as German Emperor: Staging the Kaiser (Palgrave Studies in Modern Monarchy)
by Frederik Frank SterkenburghThis book offers the first-ever scholarly study of Wilhelm I as Germany’s first Kaiser. For decades, Wilhelm has been dismissed by historians as a political nullity and an unwilling imperial figurehead, who was perpetually overruled by chancellor Otto von Bismarck. As a result, scholars concluded that the imperial role did not reach maturity until the accession of Wilhelm II. This book challenges this assumption by analysing how Wilhelm used self-staging to effectuate his role as German emperor and set the precedent for his successors, Friedrich III and Wilhelm II. It explores how he oversaw and intervened in the political and military decision-making processes, his use of politics of history, his understanding and practicing of the imperial role towards other German states and dynasties, his self-presentation in the new German capital, and how his public persona was distorted in German cultural memory after his death in 1888. The book draws on a wealth of previously unexplored sources, including material from Wilhelm’s personal archive, the archives of the Hohenzollern monarchy, the Prussian state, and local archives. It offers a much-needed reassessment of Wilhelm I and makes an important contribution to debates on the role of the Kaiser in German politics, the political system, and culture of the early German nation state, and how the Hohenzollern monarchy adapted to the demands of generating popular support for its new German imperial role.
Wilhelm Röpke (1899–1966)
by Patricia Commun Stefan KolevThis volume provides a comprehensive account of Wilhelm Röpke as a liberal political economist and social philosopher. Wilhelm Röpke (1899-1966) was a key protagonist of transatlantic neoliberalism, a prominent public intellectual and a gifted international networker. As an original thinker, he always positioned himself at the interface between political economy and social philosophy, as well as between liberalism and conservatism. Röpke’s endeavors to combine these elements into a coherent whole, as well as his embeddedness in European and American intellectual networks of liberal and conservative thinkers, are a central theme throughout the book. The volume includes papers by international experts from a conference in Geneva on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Röpke’s passing. The first part focuses on new biographical insights into his exile years in Istanbul and Geneva, while the second part discusses his business cycle theory in the context of the Great Depression, and the third part elaborates on his multifaceted social philosophy.Wilhelm Röpke was among the most important thinkers within the classical liberal revival post-WWII, with intriguing tensions between liberalism and conservatism. A highly recommended volume.–– Peter J. Boettke, 2016-2018 President of the Mont Pèlerin Society and Professor of Economics and Philosophy, George Mason University This important collection of papers provides an in-depth assessment of Wilhelm Röpke’s contributions, placing him in the context of his time. A fine contribution. –– Bruce J. Caldwell, Director of the Center for the History of Political Economy and Research Professor of Economics, Duke University
Will as Commitment and Resolve: An Existential Account of Creativity, Love, Virtue, and Happiness
by John J. DavenportIn contemporary philosophy, the will is often regarded as a sheer philosophical fiction. In Will as Commitment and Resolve, Davenport argues not only that the will is the central power of human agency that makes decisions and forms intentions but also that it includes the capacity to generate new motivation different in structure from prepurposive desires. The concept of "projective motivation" is the central innovation in Davenport's existential account of the everyday notion of striving will. Beginning with the contrast between "eastern" and "western" attitudes toward assertive willing, Davenport traces the lineage of the idea of projective motivation from NeoPlatonic and Christian conceptions of divine motivation to Scotus, Kant, Marx, Arendt, and Levinas. Rich with historical detail, this book includes an extended examination of Platonic and Aristotelian eudaimonist theories of human motivation. Drawing on contemporary critiques of egoism, Davenport argues that happiness is primarily a byproduct of activities and pursuits aimed at other agent-transcending goods for their own sake. In particular, the motives in virtues and in the practices as defined by Alasdair MacIntyre are projective rather than eudaimonist. This theory is supported by analyses of radical evil, accounts of intrinsic motivation in existential psychology, and contemporary theories of identity-forming commitment in analytic moral psychology. Following Viktor Frankl, Joseph Raz, and others, Davenport argues that Harry Frankfurt's conception of caring requires objective values worth caring about, which serve as rational grounds for projecting new final ends. The argument concludes with a taxonomy of values or goods, devotion to which can make life meaningful for us.
Will, Imagination and Reason: Irving Babbitt and the Problem of Reality
by Claes G. RynRyn provides a thorough examination of the ideas of Irving Babbitt, leader of the New Humanism movement in the 1920s and 1930s.
Will, Imagination, and Reason: Babbitt, Croce and the Problem of Reality
by Claes G. RynWill, Imagination, and Reason sets forth a new understanding of reality and knowledge with far-reaching implications for the study of man and society. Employing a systematic approach, Claes Ryn goes to the philosophical depths to rethink and reconstitute the epistemology of the humanities and social sciences. He shows that will and imagination, together, constitute our basic outlook on life and that reason derives its material and general orientation from the interaction between them.The imaginative master-minds novelists, poets, composers, painters, and others powerfully affect the sensibility and direction of society. Sometimes a distorting, self-serving willfulness at the base of their visions draws civilization, including reason, into dangerous illusion. More penetrating and balanced vision and rationality spring from a different quality of will. Ryn explains the kind of interplay between will, imagination, and reason that is conducive to a deepened sense of reality and to intellectual understanding. He argues that human life and self-knowledge are inescapably historical. In developing his dialectical view of intellect, he draws from Irving Babbitt, Benedetto Croce, and other philosophers to refute positivistic, formalistic, and ahistorical theories of knowledge and to develop his alternative.Advancing a systematic epistemological argument, Ryn throws much new light on the nature of reason but also on central issues of ethics and aesthetics. This trenchant and original work is indispensable to philosophers, social, political and cultural theorists, literary scholars, and historians.
The Will to Being: Plato, Cronus, and the Cult of Sisyphus (Contributions to Hermeneutics #14)
by Manuel CojocaruThis book addresses death and immortality by paralleling Plato’s philosophy of ‘becoming like God’ through exercising one’s intellect and virtues, with the Greek archaic and heroic way of gaining immortal glory through remarkable deeds. In doing so, this study focuses on the explicit and implicit references to earthly immortality and heroism in Plato’s dialogues, arguing for a distinction between the Time-bound ontology of the glory-seeking individual and the Being-centered ontology of the philosopher. Such an underlining of the ontological discrepancy between the ways of the hero and those of the philosopher makes this book a novel academic contribution. The dual focus discloses the clash of ontologies yet also reveals an implicit existential turmoil in Ancient Greek culture as to the anxieties surrounding one’s potential immortality. This title appeals to students and researchers working in Ancient philosophy and existentialism.
The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love
by Bell HooksWith the courage, honesty, and compassion that have made her one of America's most provocative authorities on modern culture, bell hooks takes on the interior lives of men and answers their most intimate questions about love. Everyone needs to love and be loved -- even men. In this groundbreaking book, bell hooks gets to the heart of the matter and shows men how to express the emotions that are a fundamental part of who they are -- whatever their age, ethnicity, or cultural persuasion. Written in response to the author's in-depth discussions with men who were inspired by her trilogy, All About Love, Salvation, and Communion, bell hooks's The Will to Change addresses maleness and masculinity in new and challenging ways. With trademark candor and fierce intelligence, hooks answers the most common concerns of men, such as fear of intimacy and loss of their patriarchal place in society. She believes men can find the way to spiritual unity by getting back in touch with the emotionally open part of themselves. Only through this liberation will they lay claim to the rich and rewarding inner lives that have historically been the exclusive province of women. Men can access these feelings by giving themselves permission to be vulnerable. As they grow more comfortable and start believing that it's okay to feel, to need, and to desire, they will thrive as equal partners in their intimate relationships. Whether they are straight or gay, black or white, The Will to Change helps men to reclaim the best part of themselves.
The Will to Doubt
by Bertrand RussellOne of modern history&’s great thinkers takes on prejudice, superstition, and conventional wisdom, using wit and insight to argue for a rational way of life. In a brilliant series of essays, Bertrand Russell uses challenging skepticism and sharp humor to attack the obstacles to building a society based on reason. Russell&’s thoughts are as lively and pertinent today as when they were written. His topics range from the defects of the education system to the failure of the belief among the younger generation, from our mistaken concepts of democracy to the ever-present threat to freedom throughout the world—even in the West which prides itself so much on being free.
The Will to Doubt (Paperback Ser.)
by Bertrand RussellOne of modern history&’s great thinkers takes on prejudice, superstition, and conventional wisdom, using wit and insight to argue for a rational way of life. In a brilliant series of essays, Bertrand Russell uses challenging skepticism and sharp humor to attack the obstacles to building a society based on reason. Russell&’s thoughts are as lively and pertinent today as when they were written. His topics range from the defects of the education system to the failure of the belief among the younger generation, from our mistaken concepts of democracy to the ever-present threat to freedom throughout the world—even in the West which prides itself so much on being free.
The Will To Imagine: A Justification of Skeptical Religion
by J. L. SchellenbergThe Will to Imagine completes J. L. Schellenberg's trilogy in the philosophy of religion, following his acclaimed Prolegomena to a Philosophy of Religion and The Wisdom to Doubt. This book marks a striking reversal in our understanding of the possibility of religious faith. Where other works treat religious skepticism as a dead end, The Will to Imagine argues that skepticism is the only point from which a proper beginning in religious inquiry-and in religion itself-can be made. For Schellenberg, our immaturity as a species not only makes justified religious belief impossible but also provides the appropriate context for a type of faith response grounded in imagination rather than belief, directed not to theism but to ultimism, the heart of religion. This new and nonbelieving form of faith, he demonstrates, is quite capable of nourishing an authentic religious life while allowing for inquiry into ways of refining the generic idea that shapes its commitments. A singular feature of Schellenberg's book is his claim, developed in detail, that unsuccessful believers' arguments can successfully be recast as arguments for imaginative faith. Out of the rational failure of traditional forms of religious belief, The Will to Imagine fashions an unconventional form of religion better fitted, Schellenberg argues, to the human species as it exists today and as we may hope it will evolve.
The Will To Live On: This is Our Heritage
by Herman WoukHerman Wouk has ranged in his novels from the mighty narrative of The Caine Mutiny and the warm, intimate humor of Marjorie Morningstar to the global panorama of The Winds of War and War and Remembrance. All these powers merge in this major new work of nonfiction, The Will to Live On, an illuminating account of the worldwide revolution that has been sweeping over Jewry, set against a swiftly reviewed background of history, tradition, and sacred literature.Forty years ago, in his modern classic This Is My God, Herman Wouk stated the case for his religious beliefs and conduct. His aim in that work and in The Will to Live On has been to break through the crust of prejudice, to reawaken clearheaded thought about the magnificent Jewish patrimony, and to convey a message of hope for Jewish survival.Although the Torah and the Talmud are timeless, the twentieth century has brought earthquake shocks to the Jews: the apocalyptic experience of the Holocaust, the reborn Jewish state, the precarious American diaspora, and deepening religious schisms. After a lifetime of study, Herman Wouk examines the changes affecting the Jewish world, especially the troubled wonder of Israel, and the remarkable, though dwindling, American Jewry. The book is peppered with wonderful stories of the author's encounters with such luminaries as Ben Gurion, Isidor Rabi, Yitzhak Rabin, Saul Bellow, and Richard Feynan.Learned in general culture, warmly tolerant of other beliefs, this noted author expresses his own other beliefs, this noted author expresses his own faith with a passion that gives the book its fire and does so in the clear, engaging style that--as in all Wouk's fiction--makes the reader want to know what the next page will bring.
The Will to Meaning: Foundations and Applications of Logotherapy
by Viktor E. FranklHolocaust survivor Viktor E. Frankl converted the horrors he experienced in a German concentration camp into the pioneering philosophy he called logotherapy. Unlike Freud's "will to pleasure" and Adler's "will to power," Frankl based logotherapy on three things: the freedom of will, the will to meaning, and the meaning of life. By presenting three methodological concepts, Frankl shows how we can all reinvigorate our experiences and tie them to will and power. Originally published in 1988 and compiling Frankl's speeches on logotherapy, The Will to Meaning is regarded as a seminal work of behavior therapy.
The Will to Power: An Attempted Transvaluation Of All Values V1 (Dover Thrift Editions)
by Friedrich NietzscheThroughout his career, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche explored the concept of the will to power, interpreting it variously as a psychological, biological, and metaphysical principle. This posthumously produced volume, drawn from his unpublished notebooks, collects the nineteenth-century philosopher's thoughts on the force that drives humans toward achievement, dominance, and creative activity. Misunderstandings of Nietzsche's previous works compelled the author to attempt to express his doctrines in a more unequivocal form. These writings elucidate the principle that he held to be the essential factor of all existence — the drive and energy to develop independently according to one's nature, rather than being dominated by outside forces. A work that both illuminates and extends our understanding of Nietzsche's earlier books, this volume offers reflections on art, morality, Christianity, nihilism, and other topics that provide absorbing glimpses into the mind of one of philosophy's great thinkers.
The Will to Power
by Friedrich NietzscheRepresents a selection from Nietzche's notebooks to find out what he wrote on nihilism, art, morality, religion, and the theory of knowledge, among others.Nietzsche's notebooks, kept by him during his most productive years, offer a fascinating glimpse into the workshop and mind of a great thinker, and compare favorably with the notebooks of Gide and Kafka, Camus and Wittgenstein. The Will to Power, compiled from the notebooks, is one of the most famous boooks of the philosophy. Here is the first critical edition in any language. Down through the Nazi period The Will to Power was often mistakenly considered to be Nietzche's crowning systematic labor; since World War II it has frequently been denigrated. In fact, it represents a stunning selection from Nietzsche's notebooks, in a a topical arrangement that enables the reader to find what Nietzsche's wrote on a variety of subjects. Walter Kaufmann, in collaboration with R. J. Holilngdale, brings to this volume his unsurpassed skills as a Nietzsche translator and scholar. Professor Kaufmann has included an approximate date of each note. His running footnote commentary offers information needed to follow Nietzsche's train of thought, and indicates, among other things, which notes were eventually superseded by later formulations. The comprehensive index serves to guide the reader to the extraordinary riches of this book.
Will to Power, Nietzsche’s Last Idol
by Jean-Etienne JoulliéThe book proposes a critique of Nietzsche's works 'from within'. In doing so, it answers the continuing question asked by any reader of Nietzsche: Why did he decide not to write the major work he said he would write?
The Will to Technology and the Culture of Nihilism
by Arthur KrokerIn 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, wonders if the body of work offered by thinkers like Heidegger, Marx, and Nietzsche is a part of our past or a harbinger of our technological future. Heidegger, Marx, and Nietzsche intensify our understanding of the contemporary cultural climate. Heidegger's vision posits an increasingly technical society before which we have become 'objectless objects'? driftworks in a 'culture of boredom.' In Marx, the disciplining of capital itself by the will to technology is a code of globalization, first announced as streamed capitalism. Nietzsche mediates between them, envisioning in the gathering shadows of technological society the emergent signs of a culture of nihilism. Like Marx, he insists on thinking of the question of technology in terms of its material signs.In The Will to Technology and the Culture of Nihilism, Kroker consistently enacts an invigorating and innovative vision, bringing together critical theory, art, and politics to reveal the philosophic apparatus of technoculture.
Willful Subjects
by Sara AhmedIn Willful Subjects Sara Ahmed explores willfulness as a charge often made by some against others. One history of will is a history of attempts to eliminate willfulness from the will. Delving into philosophical and literary texts, Ahmed examines the relation between will and willfulness, ill will and good will, and the particular will and general will. Her reflections shed light on how will is embedded in a political and cultural landscape, how it is embodied, and how will and willfulness are socially mediated. Attentive to the wayward, the wandering, and the deviant, Ahmed considers how willfulness is taken up by those who have received its charge. Grounded in feminist, queer, and antiracist politics, her sui generis analysis of the willful subject, the figure who wills wrongly or wills too much, suggests that willfulness might be required to recover from the attempt at its elimination.
The William Desmond Reader
by William DesmondKnown especially for his original system of metaphysics in a trilogy of books published between 1995 and 2008, and for his scholarship on Hegel, William Desmond has left his mark on the philosophy of religion, ethics, and aesthetics. The William Desmond Reader provides for the first time in a single book a point of entry into his original and constructive philosophy, including carefully chosen selections of his works that introduce the key ideas, perspectives, and contributions of his philosophy as a whole. Also featured is an original essay by Desmond himself reflecting synthetically on the topics covered, as well as an interview by Richard Kearney.
William Desmond’s Philosophy between Metaphysics, Religion, Ethics, and Aesthetics: Thinking Metaxologically
by Dennis Vanden AuweeleThis volume collects seventeen new essays by well-established and junior scholars on the philosophical relevance of metaxological philosophy and its main proponent, William Desmond. The volume mines metaxological thought for its salience in contemporary discussions in Continental philosophy, specifically in the fields of metaphysics, philosophy of religion, ethics, and aesthetics. Among others, topics under discussion include the goodness of being, the existence and nature of God, and the aesthetic dimensions of human becoming. Interest in metaxological philosophy has been on the rise in recent years, and this volume provides both a practical introduction and thorough engagements with it by experts in the field. The volume concludes with a series of responses by William Desmond on the issues raised by the contributors.
William E. Connolly: Democracy, Pluralism and Political Theory (Routledge Innovators in Political Theory)
by Terrell Carver Samuel A. ChambersWilliam E. Connolly’s writings have pushed the leading edge of political theory, first in North America and then in Europe as well, for more than two decades now. This book draws on his numerous influential books and articles to provide a coherent and comprehensive overview of his significant contribution to the field of political theory. The book focuses in particular on three key areas of his thinking: Democracy: his work in democratic theory – through his critical challenges to the traditions of Rawlsian theories of justice and Habermasian theories of deliberative democracy – has spurred the creation of a fertile and powerful new literature Pluralism: Connolly's work utterly transformed the terrain of the field by helping to resignify pluralism: from a conservative theory of order based on the status quo into a radical theory of democratic contestation based on a progressive political vision The Terms of Political Theory: Connolly has changed the language in which Anglo-American political theory is spoken, and entirely shuffled the pack with which political theorists work.
William Empson: Prophet Against Sacrifice (Critics of the Twentieth Century)
by Paul H. FryWilliam Empson: Prophet Against Sacrifice provides the most coherent account of Empson's diverse career to date. While exploring the richness of Empson's comic genius, Paul H. Fry serves to discredit the appropriation of his name in recent polemic by the conflicting parties of deconstruction and politicized cultural criticism. He argues that Empson is a larger, more important figure than the orthodox in either camp can acknowledge, deserving to be considered alongside such versatile critics as Walter Benjamin, Kenneth Burke and Roland Barthes.
William James: Essays and Lectures
by William James Daniel Kolak Richard KamberPart of the “Longman Library of Primary Sources in Philosophy,” this edition of the William James' Selected Essays is framed by a pedagogical structure designed to make this important work of philosophy more accessible and meaningful for undergraduates.