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A comprehensive defense of the principle of double effect and the importance of intentions for normative ethics.
This is a decisive volume that seeks to heal the divisions in contemporary philosophy.
A collection of the most important recent work on reasons for action and the question “why be moral?” Some of the most challenging questions in philosophical ethics concern the justification of action. Can you have reasons to do something that you are not, and perhaps cannot be, motivated to do? If reasons rest on desires, why respect the rights and interests of others when doing so prevents us from getting what we want? In other words, why be moral? In his 1979 essay, “Internal and External Reasons,” Bernard Williams framed the dispute about reason and motivation in a way that captured the philosophical imagination. An explosion of work on reasons and action followed, with influenti...
René Descartes (1596–1650) is well-known for his introspective turn away from sensible bodies and toward non-sensory ideas of mind, body, and God. Such a turn is appropriate, Descartes supposes, but only once in the course of life, and only to arrive at a more accurate picture of reality that we then incorporate in everyday embodied life. In this clear and engaging book David Cunning introduces and examines the full range of Descartes’ philosophy. A central focus of the book is Descartes’ view that embodied human beings become more perfect to the degree that they move in the direction of finite approximations of independence, activity, immutability, and increased knowledge. Beginning ...
A comprehensive original ethics of conduct, spanning moral theory, practical ethics, and theories of both obligation and intrinsic value.
The ten essays in this collection were written to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the lectures which became Wilfrid Sellars's Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, one of the crowning achievements of 20th-century analytic philosophy. Both appreciative and critical of Sellars's accomplishment, they engage with his treatment of crucial issues in metaphysics and epistemology. The topics include the standing of empiricism, Sellars's complex treatment of perception, his dissatisfaction with both foundationalist and coherentist epistemologies, his commitment to realism, and the status of the normative (the "logical space of reasons" and the "manifest image"). The volume shows how vibrant Sellarsian philosophy remains in the 21st century.
An accessible and engaging introduction to the philosophy of religion. Written with verve and clarity by a leading philosopher and contributor to the field Places key issues and debates in the philosophy of religion in their historical contexts, highlighting the conditions that led to the development of the field Addresses the core topics, among them the the existence of God, the problem of evil, death and the afterlife, and the problem of religious diversity Rich with argument, yet never obtrusive Forms part of the Fundamentals of Philosophy series, in which renowned scholars explore the fundamental issues and core problems in the major sub-disciplines of philosophy
Apart from a few articles, no comprehensive study has been written about the learned men and women in America with Czechoslovak roots. That’s what this compendium is all about, with the focus on immigration from the period of mass migration and beyond, irrespective whether they were born in their European ancestral homes or whether they have descended from them. Czech and Slovak immigrants, including Bohemian Jews, have brought to the New World their talents, their ingenuity, their technical skills, their scientific knowhow, and their humanistic and spiritual upbringing, reflecting upon the richness of their culture and traditions, developed throughout centuries in their ancestral home. Th...
This volume combines the theoretical and historical perspective focusing on the specific features of a European philosophy of science. On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Institute Vienna Circle the Viennese roots and influences will be addressed, in addition. There is no doubt that contemporary philosophy of science originated mainly in Europe beginning in the 19th century and has influenced decisively the subsequent development of globalized philosophy of science, esp. in North America. Recent research in this field documents some specific characteristics of philosophy of science covering the natural, social, and also cultural sciences in the European context up to the destructi...
Written against the background of her controversial opposition to the University of Oxford's awarding of an honorary degree to Harry S. Truman, Elizabeth Anscombe's Intention laid the groundwork she thought necessary for a proper ethical evaluation of actions like the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The devoutly Catholic Anscombe thought that these actions made Truman a murderer, and thus unworthy of the university's honor-but that this verdict depended on an understanding of intentional action that had been widely rejected in contemporary moral philosophy. Intention was her attempt to work out that understanding and argue for its superiority over a conception of intention as an inner men...