The ancient philosophical topic of scepticism has been the subject of some of the best and most provocative work in philosophy by both epistemologists and also by the world's leading philosophers working in other areas of the discipline. This book collects the most important contributions to each...
Why is ethics part of philosophy? Stephen Darwall s Philosophical Ethics introduces students to ethics from a distinctively philosophical perspective, one that weaves together central ethical questions such as What has value? and What are our moral obligations? with fundamental philosophical...
Winner of the 8th Annual AIA International Architecture Book Award for CriticismCan architecture help us find our place and way in today's complex world? Can it return individuals to a whole, to a world, to a community? Developing Giedion s claim that contemporary architecture's main task is to...
Providing a thorough introduction to current philosophical views on morality, Normative Ethics examines an act s rightness or wrongness in light of such factors as consequences, harm, and consent. Shelly Kagan offers a division between moral factors and theoretical foundations that reflects the...
Baruch de Spinoza (1632-1677) often recognized as the first modern Jewish thinker was also a founder of modern liberal political philosophy. This book is the first to connect systematically these two aspects of Spinoza's legacy. Steven B. Smith shows that Spinoza was a politically engaged theorist...
This first extensive study of Spinoza's philosophy of mind concentrates on two problems crucial to the philosopher's thoughts on the matter: the requirements for having a thought about a particular object, and the problem of the mind's relation to the body. Della Rocca contends that Spinoza's...
The global trend toward democratization of the last two decades has been accompanied by the resurgence of various politics of "identity/difference." From nationalist and ethnic revivals in the countries of east and central Europe to the former Soviet Union, to the politics of cultural separatism in...
Is morality too difficult for human beings? Kant said that it was, except with God's assistance. Contemporary moral philosophers have usually discussed the question without reference to Christian doctrine, and have either diminished the moral demand, exaggerated human moral capacity, or tried to...
What are ethical judgments about? And what is their relation to practice? How can ethical judgment aspire to objectivity? The past few decades have witnessed a resurgence of interest in metaethics, placing questions such as these about the nature and status of ethical judgment at the very center of...
Diagrams are widely used in reasoning about problems in physics, mathematics, and logic, but have traditionally been considered to be only heuristic tools and not valid elements of mathematical proof. This book challenges the prejudice against visualization in the history of logic and mathematics...
This major work in the history of ethics provides the first study of early modern British philosophy in several decades, discerning two distinct traditions feeding into the moral philosophy of the 17th and 18th centuries, based upon their respective definitions of "obligation."
