This book offers philosophy in the key of life.

This book is Stanley Cavell’s definitive expression on Emerson. Over the past thirty years, Cavell has demonstrated that he is the most emphatic and provocative philosophical critic of Emerson that America has yet known. The sustained effort of that labor is drawn together here for the first time into a single volume, which also contains two previously unpublished essays and an introduction by Cavell that reflects on this book and the history of its emergence. -/- Students and scholars working (...) in philosophy, literature, American studies, history, film studies, and political theory can now more easily access Cavell’s luminous and enduring work on Emerson. Such engagement should be further complemented by extensive indices and annotations. If we are still in doubt whether America has expressed itself philosophically, there is perhaps no better space for inquiry than reading Cavell reading Emerson. (shrink)

"This collection is obviously a labor of love. Fortunately, it is also a labor of editorial care and precision.

-/- Paperback -/- Price: $20.95/£17.99 ISBN: -/- Published: Dec 6, 2016 Copyright: 2015 Pages: 376 Size: 5.5 x 8.5 in. -/- ebook -/- Price: $20.95/£17.99 ISBN: -/- Published: Dec 6, 2016 Copyright: 2015 Pages: 376 Size: 5.5 x 8.5 in. -/- Buy This -/- Common Reading Selection Download Cover -/- Overview Author(s) Praise -/- Our democracy today is fraught with political campaigns, lobbyists, liberal media, and Fox News commentators, all using language to influence the way we think and reason about (...) public issues. Even so, many of us believe that propaganda and manipulation aren’t problems for us—not in the way they were for the totalitarian societies of the mid-twentieth century. In How Propaganda Works, Jason Stanley demonstrates that more attention needs to be paid. He examines how propaganda operates subtly, how it undermines democracy—particularly the ideals of democratic deliberation and equality—and how it has damaged democracies of the past. -/- Focusing on the shortcomings of liberal democratic states, Stanley provides a historically grounded introduction to democratic political theory as a window into the misuse of democratic vocabulary for propaganda’s selfish purposes. He lays out historical examples, such as the restructuring of the US public school system at the turn of the twentieth century, to explore how the language of democracy is sometimes used to mask an undemocratic reality. Drawing from a range of sources, including feminist theory, critical race theory, epistemology, formal semantics, educational theory, and social and cognitive psychology, he explains how the manipulative and hypocritical declaration of flawed beliefs and ideologies arises from and perpetuates inequalities in society, such as the racial injustices that commonly occur in the United States. -/- How Propaganda Works shows that an understanding of propaganda and its mechanisms is essential for the preservation and protection of liberal democracies everywhere. (shrink)

The classical literature on Confucianism exhorted leaders to practice five core virtues as the basis for becoming a noble person and for sustaining harmonious communities built on trust and good example. We present a theory about how the senior management in modern corporations, by enacting the five Junzi virtues through virtuous environmental, social, and governance policies and practices, might inspire virtue-based relationships between superiors and subordinates and between employees. We argue that if middle managers and employees observe and experience that (...) their firm’s ESG policies and practices are virtuous, they would feel encouraged to practice those virtues in their own behavior, and thus embody and promote interpersonal harmony. We provide three types of illustration for our theory. First, we map the five Junzi virtues to the content of a specimen ESG report. Second, we map seven subtypes of servant leadership behavior of middle managers to the five Junzi virtues. Third, we map seven types of employee organizational citizenship behavior to the five Junzi virtues. (shrink)

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries there were many attempts to justify political and social systems on the basis of physics and astronomy. By the early twentieth century such moves increasingly also integrated the life and social sciences. The physical sciences gradually became less appealing as a sole source for sociopolitical thought. The details of this transition help explain the contemporary reluctance to capitalize on an ostensibly rich opportunity for naturalistic social reasoning: the anthropic principle in cosmology, which deals with (...) the apparent “fine-tuning” of the universe for life. (shrink)

This book argues that Wittgenstein's religious thought is misunderstood by its critics, and that their misunderstandings are a result of being oblivious of ...

Our intuitions about whether someone knows that p vary even fixing the intuitively epistemic features of that person’s situation. Sometimes they vary with features of our own situation, and sometimes they vary with features of the putative knower’s situation. If the putative knower is in a risky situation and her belief that p is pivotal in achieving a positive outcome of one of the actions available to her, or avoiding a negative one, we often feel she must be in a (...) particularly good epistemic position to know that p. If however she is not in a risky situation, we tend to be considerably more permissive in our attributions of knowledge. Our intuitions about when someone knows that p and when she doesn’t also fluctuate with what is salient, either to the putative knower or ourselves. If someone claims to know where their car is, and I raise the possibility that it has been stolen, she may retract her claim to know. Which of these tendencies, if any, reveal something about the nature of our epistemic terms or concepts? (shrink)

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

"In The Savior of Science Jaki illumines one of the best kept secrets of science history - the role theology has historically played in fruitful scientific development." "The volume begins by portraying a most-neglected yet all-important facet of cultural history - the invariable stillbirths of science in great ancient cultures, including Greece, China, India, and the early Muslim empire. This overview provides the background for the first major thesis of the book: belief in Christ, the only begotten Son of God (...) - a belief absent in all these cultures - secured for science its only viable birth in a period beginning in the High Middle Ages." "In the second part of the book Jaki continues his critique of science history with a number of meticulously argued theses about Christian monotheism. These include the view that Christian monotheism provides intellectual safeguards for the cosmological argument (an argument powerfully supported by modern scientific cosmology), that Christian monotheism vindicates the sense of purpose destroyed by materialist theories of evolution, and that Christian monotheism secures firm ethical guidelines against fearful abuses of scientific know-how."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

From a leading figure in the field of psychotherapy, this new book is the first dedicated to the topic of the fear of contamination. The fear of contamination is the driving force behind compulsive washing, the most common manifestation of obsessive compulsive disorder. It is one of the most extraordinary of all human fears. People who have an abnormally elevated fear of contamination over-estimate the probability and the potential seriousness of becoming contaminated. They believe that they are more susceptible than (...) other people to contamination. People who labour under the illusion that they are particularly vulnerable to contamination are persistently anxious, excessively vigilant and highly avoidant. The fear is complex, powerful, probably universal, easily provoked, intense, and difficult to control. Usually it is caused by physical contact with a contaminant and spreads rapidly and widely. When a person feels contaminated it drives a strong urge to remove the contamination, usually by washing. The fear and subsequent urges over-ride other behaviour. A fear of contamination can also be established mentally and without physical contact. The fear can arise after exposure to violation, physical or non-physical, and from self-contamination. The book starts by defining the disorder, before considering the various manifestations of this fear, examining both mental contamination and contact contamination, and feelings of disgust. Most significantly, it develops a theory for how this problem can be treated, providing clinical guidelines - based around cognitive behavioural techniques. (shrink)

The most comprehensive compilation of the works of Abelard and Heloise ever presented in a single volume in English, _The Letters and Other Writings_ features an accurate and stylistically faithful new translation of both _The Calamities of Peter Abelard_ and the remarkable letters it sparked between the ill-fated twelfth-century philosopher and his brilliant former student and lover—an exchange whose intellectual passion, formal virtuosity, and psychological drama distinguish it as one of the most extraordinary correspondences in European history. Thanks to this (...) edition, Latin-less readers will be better placed than ever to see why this undisputed milestone in the intellectual life of medieval France is also a masterpiece of Western literature. In addition to the _The Calamities_ and the letters--the first complete English translation of all seven in more than eighty years--this volume includes an Introduction, a map, and a chronology, Abelard's _Confession of Faith_, letters between Heloise and Peter the Venerable, the Introduction to _The Questions of Heloise_, and selected songs and poems by Abelard, among them a previously untranslated shaped poem, Open Wide Your Eyes. Extracts of lost letters sometimes ascribed to Abelard and Heloise are given in appendixes. (shrink)

Bambrough, R. Essay on man.--Quinton, A. Has man an essence?--Warnock, G. J. Kant and anthropology.--Honderich, T. On inequality and violence, and the differences we make between them.--Cherry, C. Agreement, objectivity and the sentiment of humanity in morals.--Gregory, I. Psycho-analysis, human nature and human conduct.--Gosling, J. The natural supremacy of conscience.--Scruton, R. Reason and happiness.--Wollheim, R. Needs, desires, and moral turpitude.--Hollis, M. My role and its duties.--Watkins, J. Three views concerning human freedom.--Letwin, S. R. Nature, history, and morality.--Passmore, J. Attitudes to (...) nature.--Benson, J. Hog in sloth, fox in stealth: man and beast in moral thinking.--Hare, R. Contrasting methods of environmental planning.--Self, P. Techniques and values in policy decisions. (shrink)

Explores the meaning of death, how people of different times, regions, and religions have coped with it, and the progress and effects of the war waged against it by researchers, physicians, and surgeons.

Authority qua empowerment is theweak reading of authority in Hans Kelsen's writings.On the one hand, this reading appears to beunresponsive to the problem of authority as we know itfrom the tradition. On the other hand, it squares withlegal positivism. Is Kelsen a legal positivist?Not without qualification. For he defends anormativity thesis along with the separation thesis,and it is at any rate arguable that the normativitythesis mandates a stronger reading of authority thanthat modelled on empowerment. I offer, in the paper,a prima (...) facie case on behalf of a stronger reading ofauthority in Kelsen. I go on to argue, however, thatthe textual evidence weighs heavily in favour of theweak reading. Both nomostatics and nomodynamics arepervasive points of view in the Pure Theory of Law,and both reflect species of empowerment as theendpoint of Kelsen's reconstructions. (shrink)

These four volumes bring together for the first time some of the most important research on the philosophy of David Hume (1711-1776). Included topics are: Volume 1--Epistemology, Reason, Induction, Scepticism; Volume 2--Space and Time, Ontology, Causality, Personal Identity and the Self, Naturalism, Mental Activity; Volume 3--Ethics, Is/Ought, Reason and the Passions; Volume 4--Religion, Miracles, Politics, Economics, Justice as well as some miscellaneous topics. The papers have been selected for their clarity, their high quality, their originality and their lasting significance. Each (...) volume includes an extensive selected bibliography listing materials according to the topics covered in the particular volume. (shrink)

THE IMPORTANCE OF GREEK THOUGHT for the Hegelian science of wisdom has long been acknowledged. Nevertheless, if one considers the extraordinary increase in Hegel scholarship during the past two decades, it is somewhat surprising how few technical studies have been devoted to the connection between Hegel and the Greeks. The relative lack of attention to the details of this connection is in my opinion the most important reason for a certain imbalance in favor of Hegel’s religious thought which one may (...) notice in the recent literature. This is especially true in the case of the crucial theme of self-consciousness. It is not so difficult to establish the classical antecedents of Hegel’s analyses in the domains of logic, ontology and epistemology. The case of self-consciousness is at first glance quite different. One might be tempted to say that the general problem of subjectivity is modern rather than ancient, Christian rather than pagan. Whereas Hegel’s teaching depends upon the assimilation of Aristotelian noetics, it could seem that Hegel reads Aristotle from the outset in the perspective of Christian Neo-Platonism. Does not Hegel violate the pagan teaching by importing the dimension of self-consciousness into the νόησις τῆς νοήσεως? (shrink)

What follows is a self-contained excerpt from a work in progress, namely, a reconsideration of the Platonic doctrine of Eros, together with a commentary on the non-erotic paradigm of the philosopher to be found in the Theaetetus and Phaedo. My intention is to arrive at a comprehensive understanding of the Platonic view of the philosophical life on the one hand and of the relation binding the so-called Ideas of beauty and the good with truth on the other.