This compelling collection illuminates new models and metaphors taken from the contemporary sciences and philosophical thought to revitalize and re-contextualize psychoanalysis for the 21st century. The exploration of quantum mechanics, chaos and complexity theory, epigenetics, and neuropsychoanalysis provides the reader with new layers of meaning and understanding that in turn lead to an enrichening of psychoanalytic theory and a deepening of experience in the consulting office. The intersection of psychoanalysis, contemporary sciences, and philosophy leads the reader to new worlds that (...) can transform the lens from which one views the psychoanalytic process. Written for psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, as well as scholars of psychoanalysis that are interested in the intersection of psychoanalysis, contemporary science and philosophy, Enriching Psychoanalysis with Contemporary Science and Philosophy expands the focus and meaning of current psychoanalytic theory and practice. (shrink)

Soul on the Couch is premised on the belief that discourse about the soul and discourse from the couch can inform, and not simply ignore, one another.

Kant argues that the “discipline” of reason holds us to public argument and reflective thought. When we speak the language of reasoned judgment, Kant maintains, we “speak with a universal voice,” expecting and claiming the assent of all other rational beings. This language carries with it a discipline requiring us to submit our judgments to the forum of our rational peers. Remarkably, Kant does not restrict this thought to the realm of politics, but rather treats politics as the model for (...) reason's authority in all the provinces that rational beings inhabit. (shrink)

"God and Subjectivity" is an essentially metaphysical monograph, but one that is cast in an historical mode: it reports on first philosophy as a biography of the concept of being. Its thesis is that St. Anselm's notion of God provided a "pivot" on which philosophy turned from the Aristotelian conception of substance as the object of -first philosophy- to Descartes' conception of the subject as the ground of -science-. The changeover is not new, of course, but Anselm as the catalyst (...) is; and an effort is made to present his role in the development with as much textual support and sustained argument as possible. Even Feuerbach appears, in this light, as a kind of inversion of the Anselmian argument.". (shrink)

Gerald Postema presents the collected writings on legal, political, and moral theory of a key thinker of the 17th century, Sir Matthew Hale. Hale develops a unique and sophisticated account of the nature and foundations of common law, with extended reflections on natural law, moral and legal reasoning, and the legal limits of political authority.

Author of _The Conservative Mind_, Russell Kirk was a principal architect of the American intellectual conservative movement. This book takes a closer look at his works on such subjects as law, history, economics, and statesmanship to introduce a new generation of readers to the depth and range of his thought. Kirk probed the very meaning of conservatism for modern intellectuals, and in _The Postmodern Imagination of Russell Kirk, _Gerald Russello examines such key concepts of his thought as imagination, historical consciousness, (...) the interplay between the individual and tradition, and the role of narrative in constructing individual and societal identity. By stressing the importance of Kirk’s perception of imagination, he offers a new approach to understanding him, showing not only that Kirk laid the groundwork for the “new conservatism” of the 1950s and ’60s, but also that his work evolved into a sophisticated critique of modernity paralleled in the work of some postmodern critics of liberalism. In order to reconstruct Kirk’s attack on modernity, Russello examines his textbook on economics, his fiction, his work on Robert Taft and Orestes Brownson, his writings on the role of the statesman, and his neglected essays such as “The Age of Discussion” and “The Age of Sentiments.” Russello shows that Kirk welcomed the rise of some form of postmodernism, seeing in it a new opportunity for conservatism to engage the wider culture. Through this analysis, he situates Kirk within wider currents of contemporary thought, connecting him not only with such major thinkers as Lyotard, Boorstin, and Koestler but also with such lesser-known figures as Bernard Iddings Bell, Charles Baudouin, and Christopher Dawson. By examining Kirk’s development of the imagination as a tool of conservative discourse, Russello offers an alternative genealogy for conservative thought that melds its antimodernism with postmodern themes. He has forged a lively and provocative work that provides unusual perspectives on Kirk within the wider context of debate over the future of conservatism in a time of shifting alliances—a book that will be a valuable resource for anyone seeking to understand Kirk or conservative thought. (shrink)

When accidents occur and people suffer injuries, who ought to bear the loss? Tort law offers a complex set of rules to answer this question, but up to now philosophers have offered little by way of analysis of these rules. In eight essays commissioned for this volume, leading legal theorists examine the philosophical foundations of tort law. Amongst the questions they address are the following: how are the notions at the core of tort practice to be understood? Is an explanation (...) based on a conception of justice feasible? How are concerns of distributive and corrective justice related? What amounts to an adequate explanation of tort law? This collection will be of interest to professionals and advanced students working in philosophy of law, social theory, political theory, and law, as well as anyone seeking a better understanding of tort law. (shrink)

The essays in this volume offer a reassessment of Jeremy Bentham's strikingly original legal philosophy. Early on, Bentham discovered his 'genius for legislation' - 'legislation' included not only lawmaking and code writing, but also political and social institution building and engineering of public spaces for effective control of the exercise of political power. In his general philosophical work, Bentham sought to articulate a public philosophy to guide and direct all of his 'legislative' efforts. 0Part I explores the philosophical foundations of (...) his public philosophy: his theory of meaning and framework for analysis and definition of key concepts, his theory of human affections and motivations, and his utilitarian theory of value. It is argued that, while concepts of pleasure and happiness play nominal roles in his theory of value, concepts of publicity, equality, and interests emerge as the dominant concepts of his public philosophy. Part II explores several dimensions of Bentham's jurisprudence, including his radically revised command model of law, his early reflections on justice and law in adjudication, his theories of judicial evidence, constitutional rights, the rule of law, and international law. The concluding essay demonstrates the centrality of the notion of publicity in his moral, legal and political thought. Emerging from this study is a positivist legal theory and a utilitarian moral-political philosophy that challenge in fundamental ways contemporary understandings of those doctrines. (shrink)

Shaʻar rishon. Hagut hilkhatit u-midrashit be-sifrut Ḥazal -- Shaʻar sheni. Haguto ha-hilkhatit shel ha-Rambam -- Shaʻar shelishi. Hagut ṿa-halakhah bi-yeme ha-benayim -- Shaʻar reviʻi. Hagut rabanit ba-ʻet ha-ḥadashah.

This book offers a philosophical interpretation of the historical debate between Bentham and classical Common Law Theory, a debate that is fundamental to philosophical thought and has shaped contemporary conceptions of nature, tasks, and limits of law and adjudication. The author explores the philosophical foundations of Common Law theory, focusing particularly on the writings of Sir Mathew Hale and David Hume.

Mandeville writes that it was said of Montaigne “that he was pretty well vers’d in the Defects of Man-kind, but unacquainted with the Excellencies of human Nature,” adding, “If I fare no worse, I shall think my self well used.” Mandeville transformed Montaigne’s suggestion into a methodology for his systematic attempt to “anatomize the invisible Parts of Man”. His tale of “the grumbling hive,” and his extensive commentary on it, were designed to demonstrate that “if Mankind could be cured of (...) the Failings they are Naturally guilty of, they would cease to be capable of being rais’d into such vast, potent and polite Societies, as they have been”. (shrink)

Much of Grünbaum's work may be regarded as a careful development and systematic elaboration of the Riemann-Poincaré thesis of the conventionality of congruence, the thesis that the continuous manifolds of space, time, and space-time are intrinsically metrically amorphous, i.e. are devoid of intrinsic metrics. Therefore, to appreciate Grünbaum's philosophical contributions, one must have a clear understanding of what he means by an intrinsic metric. The second and fourth sections of this paper are exegetical; in them we try to piece together, (...) from his sundry remarks about intrinsic metrics, what Grünbaum means by the term 'intrinsic metric.' We shall argue that, the customary carefulness and precision of Grünbaum's writings notwithstanding, there are residual unclarities and difficulties which beset his conception of an intrinsic metric. In the fifth section we shall propose an explication of Grünbaum's notion of an intrinsic metric which seems on the whole faithful to Grünbaum's intuitions and insights and which also seems capable of performing the philosophical services which his work demands of that notion. The third section is a digression on Zeno's metrical paradox of extension. (shrink)

Nowhere has H.L.A. Hart's influence on philosophical jurisprudence in the English-speaking world been greater than in the way its fundamental project and method are conceived by its practitioners. Disagreements abound, of course. Philosophers debate the extent to which jurisprudence can or should proceed without appeal to moral or other values. They disagree about which participant perspective—that of the judge, lawyer, citizen, or “bad man”—is primary and about what taking up the participant perspective commits the theorist to. However, virtually unchallenged is (...) the view that jurisprudence is fundamentally interpretive or “hermeneutic”; that it takes for its subject a certain kind of social practice, constituted by the behavior and understandings of its participants; that its task is to explain this practice and its relations to other important social practices; and that it can properly be explained only by taking full account of participant understandings. It is, perhaps, some measure of the hegemony of Hart's influence that Ronald Dworkin mounts his fundamental challenge to Hart's positivism squarely from within this jurisprudential orthodoxy. Dworkin may have exceeded the limits of the method as Hart conceived it, but, as Stephen Perry has argued, “the seeds of Dworkin's strong version of inter-pretivism were sown by Hart himself.”. (shrink)

When they abandoned the analytic-synthetic distinction, analytic philosophers substituted for it uncritical appeals to thought experiments or conceivability arguments. Although the history of philosophy is replete with thought experiments, medieval and early modern philosophers developed sophisticated theories concerning what governs what happens in thought experiments. By contrast, contemporary philosophers subscribe to the thesis of facile conception according to which casual allegations of conceivability or inconceivability are taken as good evidence of possibility or impossibility. Philosophers need to adopt standards of thought (...) experimentation like those found in science and to ground them in a general theory of conceivability. (shrink)

The Matrix exposes us to the uncomfortable worries of philosophical skepticism in an especially compelling way. However, with a bit more reflection, we can see why we need not share the skeptic’s doubts about the existence of the world. Such doubts are appropriate only in the very special context of the philosophical seminar. When we return to normal life we see immediately that they are groundless. Furthermore, we see also the drastic mistake that Cypher commits in turning his back upon (...) reality and re-entering the matrix. Not only does reason compel us to admit the existence of the external world, it also requires us to face this world, to build for ourselves meaningful lives within it, and to engage, as adults, in the serious business of living. (shrink)

This article consists of an annotated edition and translation of a previously unpublished Latin letter to G. J. Vossius from Christianus Ravius, refuting the accusation made by Johann Seyffert in his pamphlet attacking Grotius, Classicum Belli Sacri adversus Hugonem Grotium Papistam , that Grotius, while representative of the Swedish government in Paris, had advised Ravius to convert to Catholicism. The historical introduction outlines the details of and probable reasons for Seyffert's published attacks on Grotius, Grotius's attitude towards those attacks , (...) and the implications for his relationship with the Swedish government and Baron von Degenfeld, commander of the German Protestant mercenary soldiers in the service of the French crown. It also recounts what is known of Ravius's stay in Paris during which he met Grotius, and raises the question why Ravius delayed making a response to Seyffert until well after Grotius was dead. (shrink)

The thesis of this essay is that social conventions of the kind Lewis modeled are generated and maintained by a form of practical reasoning which is essentially common. This thesis is defended indirectly by arguing for an interpretation of the role of salience in Lewis’s account of conventions. The remarkable ability of people to identify salient options and appreciate their practical significance in contexts of social interaction, it is argued, is best explained in terms of their exercise of what I (...) call “salience reasoning,” a form of common practical reasoning. The more widely accepted understanding of salience competence, the “natural salience” understanding, fails as an interpretation of the notion at work in Lewis and Schelling (on whom Lewis relied) and is inadequate as an explanation of salience competence. (shrink)

Rosen argues that Bentham's utilitarian doctrine was sensitive to distributive concerns and would not countenance sacrifice of fundamental individual interests for aggregate gains in happiness in society. This essay seeks to extend and deepen Rosen's argument. It is argued that Bentham's equality-sensitive principle of utility is an expression of an individualist conception of human happiness which contrasts sharply with the orthodox utilitarian abstract conception. Evidence for this interpretation of the basic motivation of Bentham's doctrine is drawn from his view of (...) the relationship between happiness and expectations, from various expressions of his ‘each to count for one’ formula, and from his reformulations of the principle of utility itself late in his career. (shrink)

Is there such a thing as "business ethics?" Author Gerald J. Williams compellingly answers this question in Ethics in Modern Management. Though he agrees that greed and self-interest are at work in the business environment, he also notes that they can be found in just about every area of human endeavor, and it is a fallacy to think that one can justify these vices simply because one operates in the business environment, where such behavior might be more readily condoned. (...) But the book does not stop at establishing the faulty logic behind the "business ethics" concept. It is also designed to help managers with the process of education and moral reflection by describing three approaches to morality--cultural moral relativism, utilitarianism, and Thomistic natural law--and showing how each approach attempts to solve real-life ethical conflicts in the business world. (shrink)