John Searle claims that intentional states require a set of non-intentional background capacities in order to function. He insists that this ‘Background’ should be construed naturalistically, in terms of the causal properties of biological brains. This paper examines the relationship between Searle's conception of the Background and his commitment to biological naturalism. It is first observed that the arguments Searle ventures in support of the Background's existence do not entail a naturalistic interpretation. Searle's claim that external realism is part of (...) the Background is then addressed. It is shown that this claim implies an implicit understanding of reality, which is presupposed by the intelligibility of any objective, scientific description. As a consequence, Searle's account of the Background's role is incompatible with his insistence that it can be comprehensively characterized in terms of biological capacities. I conclude by showing that, if the tension is resolved by rejecting biological naturalism, Searle's position takes a substantial step in the direction of Heideggerian phenomenology, a move Searle has emphatically resisted in his various exchanges with Hubert Dreyfus. (shrink)

Legal positivists typically describe law as ‘thinly’ normative to distinguish it from the ‘thick’ normative force moral norms have; which legal norms may lack. One popular account of thin normativity is social normativity. But a number of scholars have offered accounts of what it is to be a thin norm that are distinct from social normativity. This paper addresses these alternative accounts of what it is to be a thin norm. It also explores whether law counts as necessarily ‘thinly normative’ (...) on these accounts. I argue that some accounts of thin normativity are so generic (‘super-thin’) that they are unable to distinguish between (thin) norms and nonnormative facts and thus collapse into triviality. I also consider more metaphysically demanding accounts of thin normativity, such as the view that everything is a norm that is essentially represented by deontic modals. However, law might fail to meet the demands of these slightly thicker accounts. I thus propose a view of law as consisting in nonnormative facts (diagnostic categories) and suggest sketching accounts of thin normativity as contingent, rather than necessary, features of laws and legal systems. (shrink)

The Russian philosopher and cultural theorist Mikhail Bakhtin has traditionally been seen as the leading figure in the group of intellectuals known as the Bakhtin Circle. The writings of other members of the Circle are considered much less important than his work, while Bakhtin's achievement has been exaggerated in proportion to the downgrading of the thinkers with whom he associated in the 1920s. This volume, which includes new translations and studies of the work of the most important members of the (...) Circle, sets out to correct the distortions in the established representations of its activity. The original contributions to literary and linguistic theory made by Valentin Voloshinov and Pavel Medvedev (but frequently credited to Bakhtin) are assessed, and the distinctiveness of their approaches is highlighted. (shrink)

This is the first in-depth study of a female audience that shows how and why women went to the theater in Restoration England. Robert challenges the assumption that a "ladies' faction" played an important part in encouraging the playhouses to present a more moral, less bawdy or "satirical" style of comedy, thus changing the course of English drama. He shows that there is no evidence of this faction, and that "sentimental" comedies really did cater to the interest of their female (...) audience by incorporating the fashionable concern for women's rights. Drawing on many sources, including the life of Elizabeth Pepys, the book investigates just who these "ladies" were, what determined their theater-going, how often they went, what they liked and did in the theater, and the role of patronage at the court of three Restoration queens. (shrink)

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

This paper argues that solicitors are required to lawyer relationally when delivering independent legal advice (ILA) to (predominantly) women set to provide suretyship for their intimate partner’s debts. Case law tells us that women providing suretyship may be entering the transaction under the coercion of their partner. Coerced debt is a form of economic abuse, which in turn is a form of domestic abuse. ILA in this context therefore provides an important intervention to potentially assist victims of abuse before entering (...) (potentially more) debt at the hands of their abuser. To make ILA purposeful, solicitors must prioritise relational values/dynamics such as consultation, care, judgement, and empowerment; the anti-thesis of market-exchange lawyering which is characterised by the values such as objectivity and detachment. Market-exchange lawyering is also associated with ethical apathy as lawyers prioritise their client’s means-ends above all else, therefore failing to consider the broader implications of those ends (in terms of their client’s best interests and/or the public interest). Drawing on interview data with 22 solicitors, it is demonstrated that most interviewees provide tick-box ILA prioritising completion. That is, most interviewees prioritised values of commerce over values of care when acting for women who may be experiencing economic abuse. (shrink)

This is the first comprehensive overview of the influence of Platonism on the English literary tradition, showing how English writers, including Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Blake, Wordsworth, Yeats, Pound and Iris Murdoch, used Platonic themes and images within their own imaginative work.

In this article, the author aims to demonstrate how Agamben’s concept of Homo Sacer is ideally epitomized by a soldier in war. A soldier in war holds a peculiar position, as killing of soldiers is considered neither illegal by laws nor immoral by ethics, and so a soldier is not considered to be legally or morally “guilty” in the usual sense of the word if he or she kills another soldier in war. The author analyzes the notion of Homo Sacer (...) – a figure representing a human that can be killed without the killer being punished, but at the same time someone who cannot be sacrificed – and further demonstrates that a soldier in war can be said to hold precisely such a status. The reason why a soldier cannot be sacrificed resides in the fact that he has already been “sacrificed to war” by his own society, in exchange for the safety of all other members of society. Perceiving a soldier as Homo Sacer provides a novel explanation and an additional argument for the moral symmetry of combatants, one of the pillars of non-revisionist Just War Theory, as all soldiers can be understood as persons sacrificed by their own societies. (shrink)

A transcript of three lectures, given at Princeton University in 1970, which deals with (inter alia) debates concerning proper names in the philosophy of language.

_Concept and Judgment in Brentano's Logic Lectures_ provides an analysis of an important feature of Brentano's philosophy in the 19th century. Relevant materials in both German and English are also included in the volume.

Introduction i. Adam Smith's Lectures at Glasgow University Adam Smith was elected to the Chair of Logic at Glasgow University on 9 January, and admitted to ...

An analysis of the interpretation of Christian theology that is found in G. W. F. Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. Peter C. Hodgson argues that these lectures are among the most valuable resources from the nineteenth century for theology as it faces the challenges of modernity and postmodernity.

Language and facticity in Heidegger’s lecture of Saint Augustine. The phenomenological analysis of the Confessions of Saint Augustine gave to Heidegger the opportunity to radicalize the deconstruction of the theoretical path do God and to discover the factical life under the “formal indication” of “the historical”. In Book X of the Confessions Heidegger found an authentic experience of temporality, breaking down with the cosmological concept of time characteristic of Greek philosophy and of metaphysical tradition. The confrontation with such an experience (...) is inscribed in Heidegger’s interpretation of the augustinian concept “cura’‘, that Heidegger will incorporate in Sein und Zeit, as an “existential” accountable for the whole Daseins’s existential structure. So, the phenomenological description of “care”, in the double modality of authenticity or unauthenticity in the Freiburger Vorlesung de 1921 will also lead the heideggerian’s investigation in Sein und Zeit in the direction of the ambiguity of both Daseins’s existence, which moves back and forward, and of Dasein’s language, which swings between Rede und Gerede. (shrink)

Lecture I [Chapter The Function of Theory, pp. 45-53] The direct use of language for definite purposes according to the needs of the moment long preceded grammar, rhetoric and the dictionary. Breathing, eating, digesting, seeing and hearing long preceded anatomy and physiology. We first act to meet special needs and particular occasions. Only afterwards do we reflect upon what we do and how and why we do it, and try to frame general principles, a philosophy of the matter. So with (...) social, coll... (shrink)

The lectures on classical philology that Friedrich Nietzsche delivered in Basel between 1869 and 1879 constitute an extraordinarily promising new field of study that has opened up in recent years to Nietzsche scholars. In this article I intend to offer a novel reconstruction of Greek culture as it emerges from Nietzsche's Lectures on the History of Greek Literature. In a pioneering manner with respect to his time, Nietzsche identifies the dimension of orality, of the spoken word, as the (...) salient character of Greek culture, and he sets it against contemporary culture and education, which are based on writing and learning from books. My purpose is to show how Nietzsche's cultural critique acts, taking its cue from an ancient and obsolete culture to highlight the weaknesses and contradictions of his contemporary culture. (shrink)

Reference and Existence, Saul Kripke's John Locke Lectures for 1973, can be read as a sequel to his classic Naming and Necessity. It confronts important issues left open in that work -- among them, the semantics of proper names and natural kind terms as they occur in fiction and in myth; negative existential statements; the ontology of fiction and myth. In treating these questions, he makes a number of methodological observations that go beyond the framework of his earlier book (...) -- including the striking claim that fiction cannot provide a test for theories of reference and naming. In addition, these lectures provide a glimpse into the transition to the pragmatics of singular reference that dominated his influential paper, " Speaker's Reference and Semantic Reference " -- a paper that helped reorient linguistic and philosophical semantics. Some of the themes have been worked out in later writings by other philosophers -- many influenced by typescripts of the lectures in circulation -- but none have approached the careful, systematic treatment provided here. The virtuosity of Naming and Necessity -- the colloquial ease of the tone, the dazzling, on-the-spot formulations, the logical structure of the overall view gradually emerging over the course of the lectures -- is on display here as well. (shrink)

One of the most influential of the Victorian philosophers, Henry Sidgwick also made important contributions to fields such as economics, political theory and classics. A proponent of the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, which he analysed in his classic work The Methods of Ethics , he later turned to the practical side of politics in this work, published in 1891. His aim was to have a 'rational discussion of political questions in modern states', and he offers a (...) thorough examination of Victorian politics, beginning with a discussion of political theory before moving on to more concrete matters such as property and law. The later chapters discuss the function of government through themes such as procedural matters, international affairs, war, political parties, and public participation, giving a comprehensive account of both ideas about and the functioning of late-nineteenth-century government. (shrink)

and communicated it is not, if it be not understood. a The first seven Lectures of the of Logic proper. — Ed. Metaphysical Course, {Lectures on $ For some ...

Excerpt from Science and Ethics: Being a Series of Six Lectures Delivered Under the Auspices of the Natural Law Research League And abroad (germany, France, America, but although within the circumscribed limits of these lectures I have not. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original (...) format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

A recent note by lan Inkster observed that a Parliamentary Act of 1817 to suppress seditious meetings also posed a threat to scientific lecturers and societies between 1817 and 1820. Further evidence is presented here as to the intentions of the 1817 Act and its effects on science. It is particularly important to add to the observations of Inkster, first, that chartered societies were exempt, and second, that the Act expired on 14 July 1818, although further measures were introduced in (...) December 1819. To explain the provisions of these Acts, especially the distinctions made between lectures held by chartered societies as opposed to independent associations, it is relevant to consider how legislation to prevent seditious meetings and societies in the wake of the French Revolution demarcated between seditious blasphemy and legitimate scientific inquiry. The Acts provide an opportunity of locating science in contreversies over the freedom of speech and association. The questions arise of the relation of the 1817 Act to legislation of 1795, 1799, 1801, and 1819 which imposed licensing on lectures, and of the extent to which repressive legislation inhibited the activities of lecturers and societies. The intellectual repercussions were of such magnitude that the mathematician de Morgan observed in retrospect, ‘From 1815 to 1830 the question of revolution or no revolution lurked in all our English discussions’. (shrink)

With the publication of Reason and Existenz, originally delivered as a series of five lectures at the University of Groningen in 1935, one of the most important of Jaspers's philosophic works is made available to the English-speaking world. It concerns itself with a general statement of the principal philosophic categories which have given uniqueness to Jaspers's thinking: existence, freedom, and history, and the limit-situations of death, suffering, and sin. Written shortly after Jaspers's major systematic work and before his analysis (...) of the problem of truth, Reason and Existenz occupies a primary position in the development of his thought. (shrink)

The Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion represent the final and in some ways the decisive element of Hegel's entire philosophical system. His conception and execution of these crucial lectures differed so significantly on each of the occasions he delivered them - in 1821, 1824, 1827, and 1831 - that it is impossible, without destroying the structural integrity of the lectures, to conflate material from different years into an editorially constructed text. These volumes establish for the first (...) time a critical edition, separating the series of lectures and publishing them as autonomous units on the basis of a complete re-editing of the sources. Volume I contains Hegel's Introduction and Part I. (shrink)

In his late lecture course titled “Nature and Logos: The Human Body” (1959-1960), Merleau-Ponty proposed that we understand human symbolism, language, and reason by viewing the human being initially as a variant on animal embodiment and perception prior to being a rational animal. To elaborate this project, he outlined an “esthesiology” informed by the study of evolution. However, in the sketches that survive of “Nature and Logos,” we find neither a detailed explanation of how Merleau-Ponty understood this approach nor its (...) concrete execution with respect to the human body. In this paper I reconstruct Merleau-Ponty’s esthesiology. An animate body possesses two “sides”: it is a sensing organism open onto the world and a sensible part of the natural world. Visual animals such as humans can see, see themselves, and be seen by others. To understand their way of life, we must study not only the body’s capacities for perception and action, but also how those capacities are seen by other organisms, especially conspecifics. The body’s visibility shapes the social prospects of a species and its potential for developing complex sociality, language, and cognition. I apply this basic esthesiological principle to study the human eye. Both in its vision and its visibility, the human eye is a distinctive variation of animality and one that conditions and shapes human sociality and cognition. I develop this insight with respect to a central philosophical theme of Merleau-Ponty’s late work, the relation of the visible and the invisible. I conclude by discussing the importance of Merleau-Ponty’s esthesiology for his late thought and current discussions of the naturalization of phenomenology. (shrink)

Based on lectures given to graduate students by Wilfrid Sellars.

Bioethical issues are practically urgent, politically divisive, and call for resolutions. They often involve questions that are perplexing, deep, and profound. To deal with them adequately requires philosophical tools and imagination. The Lanson Lectures in Bioethics were founded upon the belief that philosophical elucidation can clarify the nature of these difficult issues, and can lead to their resolution. The present volume collects the first five lectures delivered by five preeminent moral philosophers between 2016 and 2022. In the inaugural (...) lecture, Jonathan Glover draws a distinction between two conceptions of dignity, and brings it to bear on the issues of assisted suicide, embryo research, and genetic choices. F. M. Kamm argues that doctors are morally permitted to intentionally cause death, or assist in its being intentionally caused, when either death is imminent anyway and intentionally causing it can alone stop the pain, or if the patient has already decided—not unreasonably—that death is his least bad option. Are smokers who contract lung cancer entitled to state-supported healthcare? T. M. Scanlon argues that the reasons that individuals have for wanting to have the opportunity to engage in activities involving risks need to be compared with the costs society has to bear to provide healthcare for those who suffer illness or injury as a result of these activities. Rejecting Strawson’s view that a psychiatrist can only “treat” an insane patient, Victor Tadros argues that it is often right to reason with (nonresponsible) mentally ill persons because a psychiatrist needs to see things from their perspectives, and that we should communicate to nonresponsible agents that their wrongdoing is a problem for them and for their victims. Peter Singer proposes solutions to the following questions: How to distribute scarce medical resources and vaccines ethically? Whether to relax the standard for volunteers willing to participate in vaccines research? How to compare the trade-off between saving lives and saving the economy regarding lockdowns? How to prevent pandemics in future? Each lecture is followed by a critical commentary by a moral philosophers or physician in Asia. Each commentary (except the inaugural lecture) is followed by a rejoinder. (shrink)

Professor Davis's lecture is a contribution to the discussion of relations between social anthropology and history and archaeology. It is concerned with the ethnographic evidence about different concepts of time, and suggests that (together with other things) they affect the way people understand the past. Professor Davis argues that concepts of identity (which depend essentially on continuity) are highly variable.

This two-volume work bridges the gap between introductory expositions of logic or set theory on one hand, and the research literature on the other. It can be used as a text in an advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate course in mathematics, computer science, or philosophy. The volumes are written in a user-friendly conversational lecture style that makes them equally effective for self-study or class use. Volume II, on formal (ZFC) set theory, incorporates a self-contained 'chapter 0' on proof techniques so (...) that it is based on formal logic, in the style of Bourbaki. The emphasis on basic techniques will provide the reader with a solid foundation in set theory and provides a context for the presentation of advanced topics such as absoluteness, relative consistency results, two expositions of Godel's constructible universe, numerous ways of viewing recursion, and a chapter on Cohen forcing. (shrink)

The Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, developed in four versions from 1821 to 1831, represent the final and in some ways the decisive element of Hegel's entire philosophical system. This is Volume I of the first critical edition of the lectures, based on a complete re-editing of the sources. - ;The Hegel Lectures SeriesSeries Editor: Peter C. Hodgson Hegel's lectures have had as great a historical impact as the works he himself published. Important elements of (...) his system are elaborated only in the lectures, especially those given in Berlin during the last decade of his life. The original. (shrink)

This book grew out of that conviction, and as such it brought a fresh perspective to some of the rarely examined assumptions and methods of analysis.

However, throughout his career he regularly lectured on a wide range of moral and political philosophers of the past. This volume collects these previously unpublished lectures.

One of the lecture plates in the collection of the Museum of the University of Amsterdam, generally believed to be used by the Dutch botanist Hugo de Vries, has aroused much discussion in relation to the question of whether or not de Vries knew Mendel's laws before he published his rediscovery of them in 1900. The plate suggests that de Vries observed Mendelian segregation ratios in 1895 and 1896 in the progeny of a cross of two varieties of Papaver with (...) different flower colour. According to his own account, it was through this cross that he first deduced the laws of Mendel in 1896. Some researchers have accepted the lecture plate as proof for this claim. My conclusion is that the plate was not made before 1900 but in 1904 for a lecture course in the USA and, as a consequence, that it is not a contemporary piece of evidence. A closer look at the descriptions of the depicted experiment in de Vries' publications revealed that its original goal was not to investigate segregation but to transfer a monstrosity. The segregation of the flower colour was a accidental event. No research notes of the experiment have survived, but a note on an experiment with Veronica, performed in the same successive years as the Papaver experiment and definitely intended to investigate the segregation of flower colour, shows that this experiment was interpreted in a theoretically conceived, more or less Mendelian way. Because of a sloppy performance, no firm conclusions could be drawn from the experiment, but de Vries clearly had the idea of Mendelian segregation in 1896. That he never brought it up before 1900 suggests that he could not establish the general validity of segregation rules, as is shown in the case of Veronica. The reading of Mendel's paper in 1900 immediately put an end to de Vries' doubts. He scrapped the failures and kept the successes, proudly presenting these to the public as proof for the laws of segregation and, at the same time, of the independence of his discovery. (shrink)

This is a unique collection presenting work by Alain Badiou and commentaries on his philosophical theories. It includes three lectures by Badiou, on contemporary politics, the infinite, cinema and theatre and two extensive interviews with Badiou – one concerning the state of the contemporary situation and one wide ranging interview on all facets of his work and engagements. It also includes six interventions on aspects of Badiou's work by established scholars in the field, addressing his concept of history, Lacan, (...) Cinema, poetry, and feminism; and four original essays by young and established scholars in Australia and New Zealand addressing the key concerns of Badiou's 2015 visit to the Antipodal region and the work he presented there. With new material by Badiou previously unpublished in English this volume is a valuable overview of his recent thinking. Critical responses by distinguished and gifted Badiou scholars writing outside of the European context make this text essential reading for anyone interested in the development and contemporary reception of Badiou's thought. (shrink)

The work that helped to determine Paul Feyerabend's fame and notoriety, Against Method,stemmed from Imre Lakatos's challenge: "In 1970 Imre cornered me at a party. 'Paul,' he said, 'you have such strange ideas.

The book contains the transcription of a course on the foundations of probability given by the Italian mathematician Bruno de Finetti in 1979 at the a oeNational Institute of Advanced Mathematicsa in Rome.

“What characterizes the act of justice is not resort to a court and to judges; it is not the intervention of magistrates. What characterizes the juridical act, the process or the procedure in the broad sense, is the regulated development of a dispute. And the intervention of judges, their opinion or decision, is only ever an episode in this development. What defines the juridical order is the way in which one confronts one another, the way in which one struggles. The (...) rule and the struggle, the rule in the struggle, this is the juridical.” - Michel Foucault Penal Theories and Institutions is the title Michel Foucault gave to the lectures he delivered at the Collège de France from November 1971 to March 1972. In these lectures Michel Foucault presents for the first time his approach to the question of power that will be the focus of his research up to the writing of Discipline and Punish and beyond. His analysis starts with a detailed account of Richelieu’s repression of the Nu-pieds revolt and then goes on to show how the apparatus of power developed by the monarchy on this occasion breaks with the system of juridical and judicial institutions of the Middle Ages and opens out onto a “judicial State apparatus”, a “repressive system”, whose function is focused on the confinement of those who challenge its order. Michel Foucault systemizes the approach of a history of truth on the basis of the study of “juridico-political matrices” that he had begun in the previous year’s lectures and which is at the heart of the notion of “knowledge-power”. In these lectures Foucault develops his theory of justice and penal law. The appearance of this volume marks the end of the publication of the series Foucault’s courses at the Collège de France. (shrink)

One of the most fundamental distinctions in the field of emotion is the distinction between emotion generation and emotion regulation. This distinction fits comfortably with folk theories, which view emotions as passions that arise unbidden and then must be controlled. But is it really helpful to distinguish between emotion generation and emotion regulation? In this article, we begin by offering working definitions of emotion generation and emotion regulation. We argue that in some circumstances, the distinction between emotion generation and emotion (...) regulation is indeed useful. We point both to citation patterns, which indicate that researchers from across a number of sub-areas within psychology are making this distinction, and to empirical studies, which indicate the utility of this distinction in many different research contexts. We then consider five ways in which the distinction between emotion generation and emotion regulation can be problematic. We suggest that it is time to move beyond debates about whether this distinction is useful to a more specific consideration of when and in what ways this distinction is useful, and in this spirit, we offer recommendations for future research. (shrink)

In March 1930, Alfred Tarski visited Vienna and delivered few lectures which presented the achievements of the logical branch of the Lvov-Warsaw School. Rudolf Carnap was one of the most careful listeners of these lectures. The same year, in November, Carnap, invited by the Warsaw Philosophical Society, visited Warsaw where he gave three lectures. This was an opportunity for him to meet such members the Lvov-Warsaw School as Jan Łukasiewicz, Stanisław Leśniewski, Tadeusz Kotarbiński, and others. Many years (...) later, Carnap reminisced that he left Warsaw “grateful for many stimulating suggestions and the fruitful exchange of ideas”.In the paper, I reconstruct the details of Carnap’s visit in Warsaw based on Carnap’s diaries, reports published in the Polish Journal Ruch Filozoficzny [Philosophical Movement] and some correspondence. I also discuss some problems presented by Carnap in Warsaw lectures and compare his views to the positons of members of the Lvov-Warsaw School. These problems are: the foundations of psychology, the status of metaphysical sentences, and the character of reasoning. (shrink)

Four lectures on the Philosophy of Religion are included in this compact book along with an extra chapter on the psychology of belief in God. In a search for an acceptable theism, the author examines religious faith and human personality via many theories and facets of thinking, referring to psychologists, theologians and philosophers who have battled with similar questions. Originally published a year after the lectures were presented, this is an interesting classic volume by a well-known theorist of (...) the early Twentieth Century. (shrink)

_Philosophy of Right_ remains among the most influential works in Western political theory. It introduces a notion of civil society that has proven of inestimable importance to diverse philosophical and social agendas. In this transcription of the lectures that formed the initial version of Hegel's text, the philosopher presents his thought with a clarity and directness seldom matched in his later writings. Nowhere does Hegel make clearer the difference between his concept of objective spirit and traditional concepts of natural (...) law. Nowhere does he offer a more prominent treatment of the key notion of recognition. The long-awaited appearance of this first English-language translation of these lectures is a major event for Hegel scholars, philosophers, and political theorists. (shrink)

This edition of John M. Lothian’s transcription of an almost com­plete set of a student’s notes on Smith’s lectures given at the University of Glasgow in 1762–63 brings back into print not only an important discovery but a valuable contribution to eighteenth-century rhetorical theory.

The "Notes of Dr. Smith's Rhetorick Lectures," discovered in 1958 by a University of Aberdeen professor, consists of lecture notes taken by two of Smith's students at the University of Glasgow in 1762-1763. There are thirty lectures in the collection, all on rhetoric and the different kinds or characteristics of style. The book is divided into "an examination of the several ways of communicating our thoughts by speech" and "an attention to the principles of those literary compositions which (...) contribute to persuasion or entertainment." The species of communication discussed include descriptive and narrative (or historical) composition, poetry, demonstrative oratory, panegyric, didactic or scientific language, deliberative oratory, and judicial or forensic oratory. The subjects addressed in his teachings include the style and genius of some of the best of the ancient writers and poets, especially the historians and the English classics. (shrink)

The library of America is dedicated to publishing America's best and most significant writing in handsome, enduring volumes, featuring authoritative texts. Hailed as the "finest-looking, longest-lasting editions ever made", Library of America volumes make a fine gift for any occasion. Now, with exactly one hundred volumes to choose from, there is a perfect gift for everyone.