This book examines an important area of Aristotle's philosophy: the generation of substances. While other changes presuppose the existence of a substance (Socrates grows taller), substantial generation results in something genuinely new that did not exist before (Socrates himself). The central argument of this book is that Aristotle defends a 'hylomorphic' model of substantial generation. In its most complete formulation, this model says that substantial generation involves three principles: (1) matter, which is the subject from which the change proceeds; (2) (...) form, which is the end towards which the process advances; and (3) an efficient cause, which directs the process towards that form. By examining the development of this model across Aristotle's works, Devin Henry seeks to deepen our grasp on how the doctrine of hylomorphism - understood as a blueprint for thinking about the world - informs our understanding of the process by which new substances come into being. (shrink)

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Supererogation is the theory that some acts go beyond the call of duty. They are praiseworthy, but their omission is not blameworthy. Notice that supererogation has to do with praise and blame as well as with what is a duty or morally obligatory. Moral duty requires a moral system on the basis of which duty or obligation is assigned. Utilitarianism can provide a criterion of moral obligation, and it can also provide a criterion for moral praise and blame. However, there (...) is no necessity that the utilitarian criteria for praise and blame should be precisely correlated with its criteria of the morally obligatory and permissible. (shrink)

The thesis is two-fold: to show that to be human is to have a nature disposed to inalienable conflict of interests, and to show that creativity is the best principle by which to organize interests.

Liberty is a new, expanded edition of what Isaiah Berlin himself regarded as his most important book - Four Essays on Liberty, a standard text of liberalism and constantly in demand since it was first published in 1969. Berlin's editor, Henry Hardy, has revised the text, incorporating a fifth essay that Berlin himself had hoped to include. He has also added further pieces that bear on the same topic, so that all Berlin's principal statements on liberty are at last (...) available together in one volume. (shrink)

Perkinson provides an original historical interpretation that shows how our intellectual, political, economic, and social institutions emerged out of and are ...

This work is organized alphabetically and more like a dictionary than an encyclopedia.

In an article which appeared in The Philosophical Review Karl Ameriks argues in favour of the rather surprising thesis that Husserl, his own statements and a host of commentators and critics notwithstanding, was a realist, i.e., a philosopher who held that “there are physical objects which exist outside consciousness and are not wholly dependent on it”. More recently, Harrison Hall, in his contribution to the volume Husserl, Intentionality, and Cognitive Science, has argued that in Husserl's view there is no legitimate (...) philosophical issue between realism and idealism, because philosophy is concerned exclusively with meanings. Both interpretations are careful, documenting each point with texts, and contain several elements that are illuminating. Yet they are fundamentally mistaken as regards their main thesis, as I shall argue in this paper. (shrink)

The paper begins with a characterization of its methodological point designed to bring out those features that would recommend it to philosophers. The concept of this method is emphatically distinguished from the scope given to it by philosophers who actually use it. Husserl, For instance, Held that all philosophical questions are accessible by this method of reduction. In the last part of the paper I am suggesting that there is a legitimate form of skepticism which husserl's position fails to recognize.

In the survey and criticism of science and philosophy we are considering systems of knowledge and thought rationally developed from coherent human experience. These rational systems are in a definite sense intellectually organized. Where intellectual and social problems are real and urgent the relevant knowledge and thought should be organized socially and purposively to achieve tentative, if not adequate or definitive solutions.