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Melvyn Bragg and guests chart 500 years of Western philosophy through its most influential ideas and theorists'Listen to this and you'll never regret it' The IndependentFirst aired in 1998, In Our Time has become one of Radio 4's most beloved and enduring shows, regularly attracting an audience of over 2 million. Each week, Melvyn Bragg and his panel of guest experts take part in an erudite, stimulating discussion on subjects ranging from the Peasants' Revolt to plate tectonics, taking...

Gilles Deleuze: The Intensive Reduction brings together eighteen essays written by an internationally acclaimed team of scholars to provide a comprehensive overview of the work of Gilles Deleuze, one of the most important and influential European thinkers of the twentieth century. Each essay addresses a central issue in Deleuze's philosophy (and that of his regular co-author, Felix Guattari) that remains to this day controversial and unsettled. Since Deleuze's death in 1994, the technical aspec...

Rationality and Feminist Philosophy argues that the Enlightenment conception of rationality that feminists are fond of attacking is no longer a live concept. Deborah K. Heikes shows how contemporary theories of rationality are consonant with many feminist concerns and proposes that feminists need a substantive theory of rationality, which she argues should be a virtue theory of rationality. Within both feminist and non-feminist philosophical circles, our understanding of rationality depends up...

In "Heidegger, Metaphysics and the Univocity of Being", Philip Tonner presents an interpretation of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger in terms of the doctrine of the 'univocity of being'. According to the doctrine of univocity there is a fundamental concept of being that is truly predicable of everything that exists. This book explores Heidegger's engagement with the work of John Duns Scotus, who raised philosophical univocity to its historical apotheosis. Early in his career, Heidegger wrote a...

Alison Assiter argues that the notion of the person that lies at the heart of the liberal tradition is derived from a Kantian and Cartesian metaphysic. This metaphysic, according to her, is flawed and it permeates a number of aspects of the tradition. Significantly it excludes certain individuals, those who are labelled 'mad' or 'evil'. Instead she offers an alternative metaphysical image of the person that is derived largely from the work of Kierkegaard. Assiter argues that there is a strand...

Henry Rosemont puts forth two arguements in this volume: that Western science and education are products of an Abrahamic world view and would not have arisen in a non-Abrahamic religious environment such as India or China; and that all religions, regardless of tradition, enhance our non-material lives by providing direction towards a religious experience, a sense of "fully belonging".

This revisionist history traces an influential theory of practical reason from its origins in ancient Greece to its modern and contemporary permutations.   The Greek discovery of practical reason, as the skilled performance of strategic thinking in public and private affairs, was an intellectual breakthrough that remains both a feature and a bug of our modern world. Countering arguments that rational choice-making is a contingent product of modernity, The Greeks and the Rational traces the lon...

The eighth edition of this introductory textbook anthology presents historic selections, recent material, and opposing points of view on the problems basic to philosophy: knowledge, mind, free will, determinism, responsibility, ethics and God. The text includes whole or substantial portions of classic works, balanced by views of contemporary writers (some of which have been specially commissioned for the book). All major points of view are represented.

The A to Z of Descartes and Cartesian Philosophy includes many entries on Descartes's writings, concepts, and findings. Since it is historical, there are other entries on those who supported him, those who criticized him, those who corrected him, and those who together formed one of the major movements in philosophy, Cartesianism. To better understand the period, the authors drew up a brief chronology, and to see how Descartes and Cartesianism fit into the general picture, they have written an i...

The Social Thought of Talcott Parsons offers an insightful new reading of the work of Talcott Parsons, keeping in view at once the important influences of Max Weber on his sociology and the central place occupied by methodology - which enables us to better understand the relationship between American and European social theory. Revealing American democracy and its nemesis, National Socialism in Germany as the basis of his theory of society, this book explores the debates in which Parsons was en...

A volume on the nature, ingredients, causes and consequences of human happiness by the father and son team of Anthony and Charles Kenny. The book is an updating of Johnson's famous lines: 'How small of all that human hearts endure That part which laws or kings can cause or cure! Still to ourselves in every place consigned Our own felicity we make or find.'

This volume treats the topic of rationality developing a perspective that integrates elements of philosophy of language, phenomenology, pragmatism, and philosophy of life. The two reference authors, Wittgenstein and Ortega, are contemporaries but come from different philosophical traditions. Wittgenstein's early work was influenced by logical positivism. Later he developed an influential approach to philosophy of language. Ortega was influenced by Neo-Kantianism, perspectivism, life philosoph...