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In seeking to explain his opinions on a timeless subject--the relations between the sexes--John Stuart Mill admits that he has undertaken an arduous task. For "there are so many causes tending to make the feelings connected with this subject the most intense and most deeply-rooted of all those which gather round and protect old institutions and customs, that we need not wonder to find them as yet less undermined and loosened than any of the rest by the progress of the great modern spiritual and...

The thesis advanced in this book is that feeling and cognition actualize through a process that originates in older brain formations and develops outward through limbic and cortical fields through the self-concept and private space into (as) the world. An iteration of this transition deposits acts, objects, feelings and utterances. Value is a mode of conceptual feeling that depends on the dominant phase in this transition: from desire through interest to object worth. Among the topics covered ar...

This book charts the fate of philosophical theory. Drawing on the anti-instrumentalist strands of Millian thought, Vogler constructs a powerful objection to instrumentalism about practical rationality.

Contemporary politics is faced, on the one hand, with political stagnation and lack of a progressive vision on the side of formal, institutional politics, and, on the other, with various social movements that venture to challenge modern understandings of representation, participation,and democracy. Interestingly, both institutional and anti-institutional sides of this antagonism tend to accuse each other of "nihilism", namely, of mere oppositional destructiveness and failure to offer a construct...

This is a student's introduction to the historical context, key themes and current debates in Utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is the ethical theory advanced by Jeremy Bentham, J.S. Mill and Henry Sidgwick and has contributed significantly to contemporary moral and political philosophy. Yet it is not without controversy and is a subject that students can often find particularly perplexing. "Utilitarianism: A Guide for the Perplexed" offers a concise, yet fully comprehensive introduction to utilita...

From miracles and resurrection, to intelligent design and the nature of faith, this Very Short Introduction explores the central issues in the philosophy of religion. It looks at the arguments for and against the existence of God, discussing the relationship between faith and reason, religion and morality, and the problems raised by the diverse and apparently incompatible claims of different religions.

Contemporary politics is faced, on the one hand, with political stagnation and lack of a progressive vision on the side of formal, institutional politics, and, on the other, with various social movements that venture to challenge modern understandings of representation, participation,and democracy. Interestingly, both institutional and anti-institutional sides of this antagonism tend to accuse each other of "nihilism", namely, of mere oppositional destructiveness and failure to offer a construct...

What does the institution of punishment look like in an ideal political system? Is punishment merely an exercise of violence of the strong against the weak? And what does the phenomenon of revealed religion add to the understanding of punishment? These are some of the many questions contemplated in The Philosophy of Punishment and the History of Political Thought, which provides a provocative exploration of the contributions of nine major thinkers and traditions regarding the question of punitiv...

Feminist history of philosophy has successfully focused thus far on canon revision, canon critique, and the recovery of neglected or forgotten women philosophers. However, the methodology remains underexplored, and it seems timely to ask larger questions about how the history of philosophy is to be done and whether there is, or needs to be, a specifically feminist approach to the history of philosophy. In Empowerment and Interconnectivity, Catherine Gardner examines the philosophy of three negle...

This books is a reprint of the Sixth Book of Mill's A System of Logic ratiocinative and inductive, being a connected view of the principles of evidence and the methods of scientific investigation, first published in 1843. The text has been reset from the eighth edition (1872), the last edition published in Mill's lifetime.

A key figure in British literary circles following the French Revolution, novelist and playwright Thomas Holcroft promoted ideas of reform and equality informed by the philosophy of his close friend William Godwin. Arrested for treason in 1794 and released without trial, Holcroft was notorious in his own time, but today appears mainly as a supporting character in studies of 1790s literary activism. Thomas Holcroft's Revolutionary Drama authoritatively reintroduces and reestablishes this central...

Originally published in 1984. Paul Henri Thiery, Baron d'Holbach (1723-1789), was the center of the radical wing of the philosophers. Holbach wrote, translated, edited, and issued a stream of books and pamphlets, often under other names, that has made him the despair of bibliographers but has connected his name, by innuendo, gossip, and association, with most of what was written in defeense of atheistic materialism in late eighteenth-century France. Holbach is best known for The System of Nature...

This informative text explores: Chomsky's linguistic theory from the groundbreaking Syntactic Structures to the present day; his ideas on child language acquisition and what they all mean to us; his theory of the mind and how it led us to see ourselves as thinking individuals; his fight for human rights; and more.