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John L. Austin was one of the leading philosophers of the twentieth century. The William James Lectures presented Austin’s conclusions… in the field to which he directed his main efforts on a wide variety of philosophical problems. These talks became the classic How to Do Things with Words. For this second edition, the editors have returned to Austin’s original lecture notes, amending the printed text where it seemed necessary. Students will find the new text clearer, and, at the same time, more faithful to the actual lectures. An appendix contains literal transcriptions of a number of marginal notes made by Austin but not included in the text. Comparison of the text with these annotations provides new dimensions to the study of Austin’s work.
To most good Vishnuites, and to most Hindus, the Bhagavad Gita is what the New Testament is to good Christians.… It is their chief devotional book, and has been for centuries the principal source of religious inspiration for many millions of Indians. In this two-volume edition, Volume I contains on facing pages a transliteration of original Sanskrit and the Franklin Edgerton’s close translation. Volume II is Mr. Edgerton’s interpretation in which he makes clear the historical setting of the poem and analyzes its influence on later literature and its place in Indian philosophy. Sir Edwin Arnold’s beautiful translation, “The Song Celestial,” is also included in the second volume.
De mundo is a protreptic to philosophy in the form of a letter to Alexander the Great and is traditionally… ascribed to Aristotle. It offers a unique view of the cosmos, God and their relationship, which was inspired by Aristotle but written by a later author. The author provides an outline of cosmology, geography and meteorology, only to argue that a full understanding of the cosmos cannot be achieved without a proper grasp of God as its ultimate cause. To ensure such a grasp, the author provides a series of twelve carefully chosen interlocking analogies, building a complex picture in the reader's mind. The work develops a distinctly Aristotelian picture of God and the cosmos while paying tribute to pre-Aristotelian philosophers and avoiding open criticism of rival schools of philosophy. De mundo exercised considerable influence in late antiquity and then in the Renaissance and Early Modern times.
In this uplifting and practical book, written in collaboration with his biographer, Austen Ivereigh, the preeminent spiritual leader explains why… we must—and how we can—make the world safer, fairer, and healthier for all people now.In the COVID crisis, the beloved shepherd of over one billion Catholics saw the cruelty and inequity of our society exposed more vividly than ever before. He also saw, in the resilience, generosity, and creativity of so many people, the means to rescue our society, our economy, and our planet. In direct, powerful prose, Pope Francis urges us not to let the pain be in vain. He begins Let Us Dream by exploring what this crisis can teach us about how to handle upheaval of any kind in our own lives and the world at large. With unprecedented candor, he reveals how three crises in his own life changed him dramatically for the better. By its very nature, he shows, crisis presents us with a choice: we make a grievous error if we try to return to some pre-crisis state. But if we have the courage to change, we can emerge from the crisis better than before. Francis then offers a brilliant, scathing critique of the systems and ideologies that conspired to produce the current crisis, from a global economy obsessed with profit and heedless of the people and environment it harms, to politicians who foment their people&’s fear and use it to increase their own power at their people&’s expense. He reminds us that Christians&’ first duty is to serve others, especially the poor and the marginalized, just as Jesus did. Finally, the Pope offers an inspiring and actionable blueprint for building a better world for all humanity by putting the poor and the planet at the heart of new thinking. For this plan, he draws not only on sacred sources, but on the latest findings from renowned scientists, economists, activists, and other thinkers. Yet rather than simply offer prescriptions, he shows how ordinary people acting together despite their differences can discover unforeseen possibilities. Along the way, he offers dozens of wise and surprising observations on the value of unconventional thinking, on why we must dramatically increase women&’s leadership in the Church and throughout society, on what he learned while scouring the streets of Buenos Aires with garbage-pickers, and much more. Let Us Dream is an epiphany, a call to arms, and a pleasure to read. It is Pope Francis at his most personal, profound and passionate. With this book and with open hearts, we can change the world.
It was not so long ago that the dominant picture of Kant’s practical philosophy was formalistic, focusing almost exclusively on… his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and Critique of Practical Reason. However, the overall picture of Kant’s wide-ranging philosophy has since been broadened and deepened. We now have a much more complete understanding of the range of Kant’s practical interests and of his contributions to areas as diverse as anthropology, pedagogy, and legal theory. What remains somewhat obscure, however, is how these different contributions hang together in the way that Kant suggests that they must. This book explores these different conceptions of humanity, morality, and legality in Kant as main ‘manifestations’ or ‘dimensions’ of practical normativity. These interrelated terms play a crucial role in highlighting different rational obligations, their source(s), and their applicability in the face of changing circumstances.
An incredible publishing event: a philosopher draws on his own experience of madness as he takes readers on an unforgettble… journey through the philosophy of psychosis and the psychosis of philosophy.In this book, philosopher and linguist Wouter Kusters examines the philosophy of psychosis--and the psychosis of philosophy. By analyzing the experience of psychosis in philosophical terms, Kusters not only emancipates the experience of the psychotic from medical classification, he also emancipates the philosopher from the narrowness of academia, allowing philosphers to engage in real-life praxis, philosophy in vivo. Philosophy and madness--Kusters's preferred, non-medicalized term--coexist, one mirroring the other. Drawing on his own experience of madness--two episodes of psychosis, twenty years apart--Kusters argues that psychosis presents itself to the psychotic as an inescapable truth and reality.
Does critical theory still need psychoanalysis? In Critique on the Couch, Amy Allen offers a cogent and convincing defense of… its ongoing relevance.Countering the overly rationalist and progressivist interpretations of psychoanalysis put forward by contemporary critical theorists such as Jürgen Habermas and Axel Honneth, Allen argues that the work of Melanie Klein offers an underutilized resource. She draws on Freud, Klein, and Lacan to develop a more realistic strand of psychoanalytic thinking that centers on notions of loss, negativity, ambivalence, and mourning. Far from leading to despair, such an understanding of human subjectivity functions as a foundation of creativity, productive self-transformation, and progressive social change.At a time when critical theorists are increasingly returning to psychoanalytic thought to diagnose the dysfunctions of our politics, this book opens up new ways of understanding the political implications of psychoanalysis while preserving the progressive, emancipatory aims of critique.
This book makes a case for infrapolitics as an enactment of intellectual responsibility in the face of a tumultuous world… of war and of technological value extraction on a planetary scale. Infrapolitical Passages proposes to clear a way through some of the dominant political determinations and violent symptoms of contemporary globalization. In doing so, Gareth Williams makes a case for infrapolitics as an enactment of intellectual responsibility in the face of a tumultuous world of war and of technological value extraction on a planetary scale. The book offers a theory of globalization as a gigantic, directionless crisis in humanity’s symbolic organization, as well as a theory of global economic warfare as the very positing of directionlessness and, at the same time, facticity. Williams’s infrapolitics stands at a distance from the biopolitical, which it understands as domination presenting itself as the production of specific forms of subjectivity in the face of the commodity. The subsequent obscuring of being signals the need to circumvent the instrumentalization of life as subordination to the metaphysics of subjectivity, representation, and politics. Infrapolitical Passages works to confront that which is unavailable in subjectivity and representation, opening a way for facticity in the age of globalization in order to make room for the infrapolitical question for existence.
World Literature for the Wretched of the Earth recovers a genealogy of anticolonial thought that advocated collective inexpertise, unknowing, and… unrecognizability. Early-twentieth-century anticolonial thinkers endeavored to imagine a world emancipated from colonial rule, but it was a world they knew they would likely not live to see. Written in exile, in abjection, or in the face of death, anticolonial thought could not afford to base its politics on the hope of eventual success, mastery, or national sovereignty. J. Daniel Elam shows how anticolonial thinkers theorized inconsequential practices of egalitarianism in the service of an impossibility: a world without colonialism. Framed by a suggestive reading of the surprising affinities between Frantz Fanon’s political writings and Erich Auerbach’s philological project, World Literature for the Wretched of the Earth foregrounds anticolonial theories of reading and critique in the writing of Lala Har Dayal, B. R. Ambedkar, M. K. Gandhi, and Bhagat Singh. These anticolonial activists theorized reading not as a way to cultivate mastery and expertise but as a way, rather, to disavow mastery altogether. To become or remain an inexpert reader, divesting oneself of authorial claims, was to fundamentally challenge the logic of the British Empire and European fascism, which prized self-mastery, authority, and national sovereignty. Bringing together the histories of comparative literature and anticolonial thought, Elam demonstrates how these early-twentieth-century theories of reading force us to reconsider the commitments of humanistic critique and egalitarian politics in the still-colonial present.
Working from the Bible to contemporary art, Shibboleth surveys the linguistic performances behind the politics of border crossings and the… policing of identities.In the Book of Judges, the Gileadites use the word shibboleth to target and kill members of a closely related tribe, the Ephraimites, who cannot pronounce the initial shin phoneme. In modern European languages, shibboleth has come to mean a hard-to-falsify sign that winnows identities and establishes and confirms borders. It has also acquired the ancillary meanings of slogan or cliché. The semantic field of shibboleth thus seems keyed to the waning of the logos in an era of technical reproducibility—to the proliferation of technologies and practices of encryption, decryption, exclusion and inclusion that saturate modern life. The various phenomena we sum up as neoliberalism and globalization are unimaginable in the absence of shibboleth-technologies.In the context of an unending refugee crisis and a general displacement, monitoring and quarantining of populations within a global regime of technics, Paul Celan’s subtle yet fierce reorientation of shibboleth merits scrupulous reading. This book interprets the episode in Judges together with Celan’s poems and Jacques Derrida’s reading of them, as well as passages from William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! and Doris Salcedo’s 2007 installation Shibboleth at the Tate Modern. Redfield pursues the track of shibboleth: a word to which no language can properly lay claim—a word that is both less and more than a word, that signifies both the epitome and the ruin of border control technology, and that thus, despite its violent role in the Biblical story, offers a locus of poetico-political affirmation.
From sex and music to religion and politics, a history of irrationality and the ways in which it has always… been with us—and always will beIn this sweeping account of irrationality from antiquity to the rise of Twitter mobs and the election of Donald Trump, Justin Smith argues that irrationality makes up the greater part of human life and history. Ranging across philosophy, politics, and current events, he shows that, throughout history, every triumph of reason has been temporary and reversible, and that rational schemes often result in their polar opposite. Illuminating unreason at a moment when the world appears to have gone mad again, Irrationality is timely, provocative, and fascinating.
The first modern English edition of diverse Enlightenment-era writings by Prussian monarch Frederick the GreatFrederick II of Prussia (1712–1786), best… known as Frederick the Great, was a prolific writer of philosophical discourses, poems, epics, satires, and more, while maintaining extensive correspondence with prominent intellectuals, Voltaire among them. This edition of selected writings, the first to make a wide range of Frederick’s most important ideas available to a modern English readership, moves beyond traditional attempts to see his work only in light of his political aims. In these pages, we can finally appreciate Frederick’s influential contributions to the European Enlightenment—and his unusual role as a monarch who was also a published author.In addition to Frederick’s major opus, the Anti-Machiavel, the works presented here include essays, prefaces, reviews, and dialogues. The subjects discussed run the gamut from ethics to religion to political theory. Accompanied by critical annotations, the texts show that we can understand Frederick’s views of kingship and the state only if we engage with a broad spectrum of his thought, including his attitudes toward morality and self-love. By contextualizing his arguments and impact on Enlightenment beliefs, this volume considers how we can reconcile Frederick’s innovative public musings with his absolutist rule. Avi Lifschitz provides a robust and detailed introduction that discusses Frederick’s life and work against the backdrop of eighteenth-century history and politics.With its unparalleled scope and cross-disciplinary appeal, Frederick the Great’s Philosophical Writings firmly establishes one monarch’s multifaceted relevance for generations of readers and scholars to come.
Tina Turner—living legend, icon to millions, and author of the &“brave and wry&” (Vulture) memoir My Love Story—returns with a… deeply personal book of wisdom that explores her longstanding faith in Buddhism and provides a guide to these timeless principles so you can find happiness in your own life. I dedicate this book to you… in honor of your unseen efforts to triumph over each problem life sends your way. Tina is a global icon of inspiration. And now, with Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good, Tina shows how anyone can overcome life&’s obstacles—even transform the &“impossible&” to possible—and fulfill our dreams. She shows how we, too, can improve our lives, empowering us with spiritual tools and sage advice to enrich our unique paths. Buddhism has been a central part of Tina Turner&’s life for decades and, in music, film, and live performances, she has shined as an example of generating hope from nothing, breaking through all limitations, and succeeding in life. Drawing from the lessons of her own life, from adversity to stratospheric heights, Tina effortlessly shows how the spiritual lessons of Buddhism help her transform from sorrow, adversity, and poverty into joy, stability, and prosperity. Now, Tina offers the wisdom of an extraordinary lifetime in Happiness Becomes You making this the perfect gift of inspiration for you or a loved one.
A beautiful glimpse into the daily practice of a modern contemplative, The Deepest Peace reveals moments of stunning clarity from… the eyes of a Zen priest. Through silence, stillness, and practice, Zenju Earthlyn Manuel transmits how it is possible to cultivate and experience peace.While there is suffering in the world and in each of us, there is also the possibility and the experience of peace. As Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, a Zen priest who has written at length on race, gender, sexual orientation, and homelessness, writes in the introduction: "I have testified many times of my suffering. Before I die, I must speak of peace." The Deepest Peace is a poetic, lyrical ode to the ways contemplative practice illuminates daily life. It is at once a window into Zenju's personal practice, and an invitation to begin our own.
A social theory of grand corruption from antiquity to the twenty-first century.In contemporary policy discourse, the notion of corruption is… highly constricted, understood just as the pursuit of private gain while fulfilling a public duty. Its paradigmatic manifestations are bribery and extortion, placing the onus on individuals, typically bureaucrats. Sudhir Chella Rajan argues that this understanding ignores the true depths of corruption, which is properly seen as a foundation of social structures. Not just bribes but also caste, gender relations, and the reproduction of class are forms of corruption.Using South Asia as a case study, Rajan argues that syndromes of corruption can be identified by paying attention to social orders and the elites they support. From the breakup of the Harappan civilization in the second millennium BCE to the anticolonial movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, elites and their descendants made off with substantial material and symbolic gains for hundreds of years before their schemes unraveled.Rajan makes clear that this grander form of corruption is not limited to India or the annals of global history. Societal corruption is endemic, as tax cheats and complicit bankers squirrel away public money in offshore accounts, corporate titans buy political influence, and the rich ensure that their children live lavishly no matter how little they contribute. These elites use their privileged access to power to fix the rules of the game—legal structures and social norms—benefiting themselves, even while most ordinary people remain faithful to the rubrics of everyday life.
A renowned philosopher argues that singular causation in the mind is not grounded in general patterns of causation, a claim… on behalf of human distinctiveness, which has implications for the future of social robots.A blab droid is a robot with a body shaped like a pizza box, a pair of treads, and a smiley face. Guided by an onboard video camera, it roams hotel lobbies and conference centers, asking questions in the voice of a seven-year-old. “Can you help me?” “What is the worst thing you’ve ever done?” “Who in the world do you love most?” People pour their hearts out in response.This droid prompts the question of what we can hope from social robots. Might they provide humanlike friendship? Philosopher John Campbell doesn’t think so. He argues that, while a social robot can remember the details of a person’s history better than some spouses can, it cannot empathize with the human mind, because it lacks the faculty for thinking in terms of singular causation.Causation in Psychology makes the case that singular causation is essential and unique to the human species. From the point of view of practical action, knowledge of what generally causes what is often all one needs. But humans are capable of more. We have a capacity to imagine singular causation. Unlike robots and nonhuman animals, we don’t have to rely on axioms about pain to know how ongoing suffering is affecting someone’s ability to make decisions, for example, and this knowledge is not a derivative of general rules. The capacity to imagine singular causation, Campbell contends, is a core element of human freedom and of the ability to empathize with human thoughts and feelings.
Learn more about China's most famous teacher and philosopher, whose ideas are still influential today.Born in 551 BC, Confucius was… a young man when he set his heart and mind on learning as much as he could. By his thirties, he'd become a brilliant teacher who shared his knowledge of several subjects, including arithmetic, history, and poetry, with his students. Confucius wanted to make sure that everyone in China had access to an education and devoted his whole life to learning and teaching so he could transform and improve society. His lessons--now known as Confucianism--are practiced by over six million people in the world. They focus on loving humanity, worshiping ancestors, respecting elders, and self-discipline. Confucianism has become the system that governs a total way of life in East Asia.
Friedrich Nietzsche was one of the most revolutionary and subversive thinkers in Western philosophy, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra remains his… most famous and influential work. It describes how the ancient Persian prophet Zarathustra descends from his solitude in the mountains to tell the world that God is dead and that the Superman, the human embodiment of divinity, is his successor. Nietzsche's utterance 'God is dead', his insistence that the meaning of life is to be found in purely human terms, and his doctrine of the Superman and the will to power were all later seized upon and unrecognisably twisted by, among others, Nazi intellectuals. With blazing intensity and poetic brilliance, Nietzsche argues that the meaning of existence is not to be found in religious pieties or meek submission to authority, but in an all-powerful life force: passionate, chaotic and free.
"It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." -- W. K. Clifford <p> The… above forthright assertion of mathematician and educator W. K. Clifford (1845-1879) in his famous essay "The Ethics of Belief" drew an immediate response from Victorian-era critics, who took issue with his reasoned and brilliantly presented attack on beliefs "not founded on fair inquiry." An advocate of evolutionary theory, Clifford recognized that working hypotheses and assumptions are necessary for belief formation and that testing and assessing one's beliefs in light of new evidence strengthens those worthy of being held. "The Ethics of Belief" is presented here in complete form, along with an insightful biographical introduction by editor Timothy J. Madigan. Also included are four other noteworthy essays by Clifford: "On the Aims and Instruments of Scientific Thought," "Right and Wrong," "The Ethics of Religion," and "The Influence upon Morality of a Decline in Religious Belief."
A concise, lucid and thought-provoking introduction to the most important questions of political philosophy, organised around the major issues. Wolff… provides the structure that beginners' need, whilst also introducing some distinctive ideas of his own.