Bøker i Continuum Studies in Philosophy-serien

Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715) was one of the most notorious and pious of Rene Descartes' philosophical followers. This book offers a detailed evaluation of Malebranche's efforts to provide a plausible account of human intellectual and moral agency in the context of his commitment to an infinitely perfect being possessing all causal power.

A comprehensive study of the relationship between Machiavelli and Spinoza's political philosophy. It explores Spinoza's political philosophy by confronting it with that of Niccolo Machiavelli. It shows how closely tied the two thinkers are in relation to realism.

An historical analysis that challenges traditional readings which have reduced two of German idealism's most important thinkers to opposing caricatures: Hegel the uncompromising systematist, blind to the novelty and contingency of human life and Schelling the protean thinker, drawn to all manner of pseudoscientific charlatanry.

Presents a comprehensive study of the roots of the concept of genius in Kant's understanding of nature and his notion of the artist. While many studies have chronicled the Romantic legacy of artistic genius, this book uncovers the roots of the concept of genius in Kant's third Critique, alongside the development of his understanding of nature.

Offers a reading of the work of Kierkegaard in relation to metaphysics and political theory. This title argues that the notion of the person that lies at the heart of the liberal tradition is derived from a Kantian and Cartesian metaphysic. It also offers an alternative metaphysical image of the person that is derived from the work of Kierkegaard.

John Duns Scotus (d 1308), known as the 'subtle doctor' among medieval school men, produced a formidable philosophical theology using and adapting an Aristotelian metaphysical framework. This book shows how Scotus' treatment of the problem of universals is both coherent and, even by contemporary standards, cogent.

Examines Spinoza's moral and political philosophy and his engagement with Stoicism. This book explores the problematic view of the relationship between ethics and politics that Spinoza apparently inherited from the Stoics and in so doing asks some important questions that contribute to a crucial contemporary debate.

Offers an interpretation of Augustine and of a central aspect of medieval thought as a whole. This work seeks to revise a common reading of Augustine's critique of ancient virtue by focusing on that dialogue, while showing that his attitude towards those authors is more sympathetic, and more critical, than one might expect.

Proposes that agents must be motivated correctly to acquire knowledge, even in the case of perception. This book examines the empirical research in cognitive science and moral psychology to build an account of knowledge wherein an agent must perform acts of virtue in order to get knowledge.

Examines prominent feminist ideas regarding how to revise and enrich the concept of objectivity. These theories offer us warnings about 'idealized' concepts of objectivity and propose conceptions of objectivity that are intended to allow us to increase the extent to which our scientific theories are objective.

Argues that a good human being is one who has those traits the possession of which enables someone to achieve those ends natural to beings like us. This book shows that neither 'is-ought' gaps, nor objections concerning teleology pose insurmountable problems for naturalistic virtue ethics.

Provides a defence of metaphysics as central to philosophy and a criticism of the attempts of philosophy to replace it. This work argues that philosophy, and not simply science, has a positive role to play in our understanding of the world.

Addresses our understanding of the origins of early analytic philosophy. This book aims to chart the nature and significance of Frege's break with Kant over the question of whether arithmetic is a synthetic a priori or an analytic a priori science.

Relativism, the view that knowledge is relative to time, culture, group and/or individual, remains a pervasive intellectual position in philosophy. This book investigates several varieties of relativism proposed over the centuries and identifies relativism as a central strand of thought that permeates much of post-colonial and postmodern thinking.

Offers readings of Hegel's central works in order to explain his views on various topics and as such demonstrates that his accounts of representation, the concept and the speculative sentence can be used to create sophisticated theories of language acquisition, universal grammar and linguistic practice.

Shows how tolerance connects with the practice of philosophy. This book examines the virtue of tolerance as it appears in several historical contexts: Socratic philosophy, Stoic philosophy, Pragmatism, and Existentialism.

Offers an innovative interpretation of a key element of Hegel's political thought. The author argues that the basic aim of Hegel's philosophy of right is to accommodate subjectivity within a framework of universally valid ethical norms and that an analysis of how Hegel attempts to do this provides a key to understanding his philosophy of right.

Franz Brentano (1838-1917) is almost unique as a forefather of both Analytic and Continental philosophy. His claim to fame is the reintroduction of intentionality (the 'aboutness' of consciousness) to the modern philosophy of mind. This book offers interpretations of a central philosophical concept employed in the Brentano School.

What is a musical work? This work addresses some of the questions by way of a critical engagement with the New Musicology and other debates in philosophy of music. It puts the case for a qualified Platonist approach that would respect the relative autonomy of musical works as objects of more or less adequate understanding, and appreciation.

Kant argues that beauty is subjective, but the judgment of taste about beauty is capable of universal validity. This work re-examines the relationship between "free play" and the "form of purposiveness" in Kant's aesthetics, and restores the "aesthetic ideas" to their rightful centrality in Kant's theory.

Provides both an elucidation and reinterpretation of a number of concepts central to Leibniz's work, such as "richness", "simplicity", "harmony" and "incompossibility". This book provides an reinterpretation of many of the core themes of Leibniz's philosophy. It serves as a useful entry point into this philosophy.

Nietzsche's work resembles that of the cultural anthropologist who uncovers formal differences in social manners that might explain the development of humankind's most important instincts. This book shows how, like many of his contemporaries, Nietzsche looked to the Greeks in an attempt to alleviate Europe's woes.

St Augustine of Hippo was the earliest thinker to develop a distinctively Christian political and social philosophy. To his mind, all States are imperfect. They can provide justice and peace of a kind, but even the best earthly versions of justice and peace are not true justice and peace. This book describes and analyses this 'transformation'.

How can causal interaction occur between the spiritual mind and the physical body since they have absolutely nothing in common and cannot come into contact with one another? This book shows how Descartes avoids this problem. The author argues that the union of mind and body is not constituted by efficient causal interaction for Descartes.

Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus are arguably the most celebrated representatives of the 'Golden Age' of scholasticism. Looking at the belief of Aquinas maintaining that our knowledge of God is confused and Scotus that it is accurate, here, the author argues that the truth about Aquinas and Scotus lies somewhere in the middle.

Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) is simultaneously one of the most obscure philosophers of the Western world and one of the most influential. This book examines in particular Kierkegaard's understanding of the fall of the self and its recovery and the implications of his entire corpus for the life of the individual.

An original investigation of the structure of human morality, that aims to identify the place and significance of moral deeds. It revokes and renews the tradition of Kant's moral philosophy. Through a novel reading of contemporary approaches to Kant, it draws a new map of the human capacity for morality.

'Can a Christian answer the empire's call to military duty and still answer a clear conscience before God? Fifth-century philosopher, St Augustine of Hippo, sought to provide a solution to the two problems. This title also identifies the effect of the Augustinian legacy upon medieval and modern philosophical reflections on the nature of warfare.