Introduction: Wonder and the births of philosophy -- Socrates' small difficulty -- The wound of wonder -- The death and resurrection of Thaumazein -- The Thales dilemma -- Repetition : Martin Heidegger -- Metaphysics small difficulty -- Wonder and the first beginning -- Wonder and the other beginning -- Theaetetus redux : the ghost of the Pseudes Doxa -- Once again to the cave -- Rethinking Thaumazein -- Openness : Emmanuel Levinas -- Passivity and responsibility -- The ethics of the (...) cave -- Infinity and astonishment -- Opening out : from existent to existence -- Closing down : from existence to existent -- Locking up : totality and infinity -- The phantom of the autrement -- Awakening -- Relation : Jean-Luc Nancy -- The problem of Mitsein -- Mitsein as essential inessentiality -- The myth of essentialism -- Unworking -- Interruption -- Repetition -- Decision : Jacques Derrida -- Thaumazein, the irresponsible, and the undecidable -- Hospitality -- Undecidability revisited -- Much madness is divinest sense (or, who comes after the decision?) -- How to avoid the subject (or, that's not my hedgehog!) -- Undecidability, take three : think here of Kierkegaard -- Mysterium tremendum -- Postlude: Possibility. (shrink)

During the last two centuries, the way economic science is done has changed radically: it has become a social science based on mathematical models in place of words. This book describes and analyses that change - both historically and philosophically - using a series of case studies to illuminate the nature and the implications of these changes. It is not a technical book; it is written for the intelligent person who wants to understand how economics works from the inside out. (...) This book will be of interest to economists and science studies scholars. But it also aims at a wider readership in the public intellectual sphere, building on the current interest in all things economic and on the recent failure of the so-called economic model, which has shaped our beliefs and the world we live in. (shrink)

Here is Lukcs among his friends, lovers, and peers in those important years before 1918, when he converted to Communism and Marxism at the age of thirty-nine.

This paper argues that racist speech in public places ought to be regulable even with teh strict free speech protections of the First Amendment. McGowan argues that the same justification for regulating the hanging of a 'Whites Only' sign applies to racist utterances in public spaces.

Mary Midgley argues in her powerful new book that far from being the opposite of science, myth is a central part of it. In brilliant prose, she claims that myths are neither lies nor mere stories but a network of powerful symbols that suggest particular ways of interpreting the world.

The author applies Albert Hirschman's "Exit, Voice and Loyalty" framework to the dilemmas faced by humanitarian aid workers in complex settings where local or international political and military realities may "taint" the purposes and uses of aid. She reviews the pro and con arguments surrounding the difficult choices of whether to go or not, whether to stay or leave and whether to speak out or remain silent in such circumstances. Because international humanitarians insert themselves into circumstances that are not their (...) own where they see there is need for a humanitarian response, the author suggests a fourth category of choice should be added to Hirschman's three - namely that of "engagement." This option involves entering and/or staying, coupled with a quiet, off-the-record voice intended to work with and try to change from within nefarious circumstances. Concluding that none of the four options is "pure" in that all have direct impacts on the welfare and likelihood of survival of suffering people, the author argues for making each decision on its own particular merits, weighing both the personal/moral and practical/political realities of that situation. She offers guides for how such decisions may best be made, relying on differences of analyses and opinion offered by colleagues to provide grounding for one's own difficult choice. (shrink)

A defense of the thoughtfulness of domestic work, with help from Heidegger.

St. Augustine of Hippo wrote the ’De Trinitate’ to explain to critics of the Nicene Creed how the Christian doctrine of the divinity and coequality of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is present in Scripture. He also wanted to convince philosophers that Christ is the Wisdom they sought. Augustine’s third purpose was to correlate the biblical truth that all human persons are created to image God, a Trinity, a communion of love, with the first two Commandments of the Old and (...) New Testaments. Augustine succeeded in showing the need for combining faith and reason for a greater understanding of Scripture as well as for a greater understanding of the true nature and destiny of human persons. Augustine emphasized the scriptural revelation of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and used reason to convince philosophers that the one and three-Personed God is philosophically and logically defensible. He concluded that the likeness of human persons to Christ and to the Trinity is accomplished not onl. (shrink)

ALTHOUGH the content of Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten's Aesthetica seems to be familiar in German philosophical circles, it is relatively unknown outside Germany. Most of us are aware that it was Baumgarten who coined the name "aesthetics" for the new philosophical discipline his Aesthetica was intended to establish; but as for the content of that work, our acquaintance is likely to be indirect, through two remarks of Kant. Explaining his own use of "Transcendental Aesthetic" in the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant (...) criticizes Baumgarten's "abortive attempt... to bring the critical treatment of the beautiful under rational principles and so to raise its rules to the rank of a science". In the Critique of Judgment, it is generally assumed to be Baumgarten Kant has in mind when, arguing that judgments of beauty are not cognitive or "logical" judgments, he criticizes the view that beauty is perfection known confusedly or indistinctly. Combining Kant's remark with Leibniz's view that beauty is--or, more precisely, flows from--perfection, we might conclude that Baumgarten simply lowered beauty from the level of distinct to that of confused concepts and tried to deduce its rules from the concept of perfection. If this was indeed Baumgarten's project, we might well ask to be excused from pursuing the subject further. (shrink)

. The author first engages the problem of defining the value of a photograph, not in terms of its commercial or monetary value but of its actual or potential use. Walter Benjamin's influential writings on photography are discussed, notably his complex metaphor of "aura" as applied to both handmade art and the photograph, with the author challenging Benjamin's contention that works of art do not require titles, whereas photographs do.

Demonstrates the dramatic interplay of elements that comprise the concepts of norm, bisexuality, and development.

If Kant's account of rights had continued the "early modern Natural Law tradition", basing rights on some notion of human flourishing, there would be no difficulty about including socio-economic rights for the needy in his theory. However, his division of moral philosophy into Rechtslehre and Tugendlehre limits Rechtspflichten to duties that a moral agent can be coerced to fulfill. If a state is to give the needy statutory rights, the justification for using coercion on its citizens cannot be that they (...) have a duty of virtue to assist the needy. In order to determine whether such a justification can be found, the one innate socio-economic right Kant admits, a child's right to be cared for and educated, is examined and found to be a right against its parents, not against the state. Kant does, however, hold that a state should establish institutions to provide for abandoned children and for the poor in general. His justification for a state's use of coercion with regard to such statutory rights is considered and a criterion is suggested for the possible consent of its non-virtuous citizens to proposed measures for assistance to the needy. It is suggested that if advocates of aid to the needy cannot justify their proposals by such a criterion they will have to provide a very different account of rights than Kant gives in his Rechtslehre , which is concerned with the moral permissibility of using coercion. Wenn Kants Lehre von den subjektiven Rechten nichts anderes wäre als eine Fortsetzung der "ihr vorangehenden modernen Naturrechtstradition" und die subjektiven Rechte infolgedessen auf das eine oder andere Konzept von menschlichem Wohlergehen gestützt hätte, dann wäre es nicht sonderlich schwierig, sozio-ökonomische Rechte für die Bedürftigen in diese Lehre einzubauen. Nun schränkt Kants Einteilung der Moralphilosophie in Rechtslehre und Tugendlehre den Begriff der Rechtspflicht allerdings auf diejenigen Pflichten ein, zu deren Erfüllung ein Mensch gezwungen werden kann. Deshalb kann, wenn ein Staat den Bedürftigen durch ein positives Gesetz irgendwelche Rechte auf Hilfe gewährt, die Rechtfertigung der Anwendung von staatlichem Zwang nicht darin gesucht werden, daß die dadurch in Anspruch genommenen Personen die Tugendpflicht haben, die Bedürftigen zu unterstützen. Um festzustellen, ob sich staatlicher Zwang in bezug auf solche Hilfspflichten überhaupt rechtfertigen läßt, erörtert der Beitrag das Recht des Kindes auf Fürsorge und Ausbildung als das eine und einzige angeborene sozio-ökonomische Recht, das Kant akzeptiert. Freilich ist das Recht des Kindes ein Recht gegen seine Eltern und nicht gegen den Staat. Gleichwohl nimmt Kant an, daß der Staat Einrichtungen schaffen sollte, die für verlassene Kinder und für die Armen im allgemeinen zu sorgen haben. Der Beitrag untersucht die Rechtfertigung, die Kant für die Anwendung von staatlichem Zwang zur Durchsetzung solcher positiv-gesetzlicher Rechte gibt, und arbeitet die Gründe dafür heraus, warum der nicht tugendhafte Staatsbürger in die vorgesehenen Hilfsmaßnahmen für die Bedürftigen einwilligen könnte. Wenn sich die Verfechter von Hilfsmaßnahmen für die Bedürftigen außerstande sehen, ihre Vorschläge auf Gründe dieser Art zu stützen, dann werden sie mit einem Konzept von subjektivem Recht aufwarten müssen, das sich von dem Konzept Kants von Recht und Rechtslehre , bei dem es allein um die moralische Erlaubtheit von Zwangsmaßnahmen geht, ganz erheblich unterscheidet. (shrink)

Mary Astell's A Serious Proposal to the Ladies is one of the most important and neglected works advocating the establishment of women's academies. Its reception was so controversial that Astell responded with a lengthy sequel, also in this volume. The cause of great notoriety, Astell's Proposal was imitated by Defoe in his "An Academy for Women," parodied in the Tatler, satirized on the stage, plagiarized by Bishop Berkeley, and later mocked by Gilbert and Sullivan in Princess Ida.

Routledge is now re-issuing this prestigious series of 204 volumes originally published between 1910 and 1965. The titles include works by key figures such asC.G. Jung, Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget, Otto Rank, James Hillman, Erich Fromm, Karen Horney and Susan Isaacs. Each volume is available on its own, as part of a themed mini-set, or as part of a specially-priced 204-volume set. A brochure listing each title in the "International Library of Psychology" series is available upon request.

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

A virtue ethics look at Dolly Parton's magnificence and greatness of soul. Dolly isn't an exemplar so much as the one who we must "bless rather than praise," and so becomes the focus of broad public honor and even love.

Paper edition (0768-3), $14.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.