Learning from Bosnia

$60.00

This book, at the intersections of political sociology,
political philosophy, and theology, reads the legacy
of Bosnia as both a paradigm and an antiparadigm for
the human condition. The adjective Bosnian sums up an
acceptance of the diversity of human attitudes toward
the world and toward God. Yet the Bosnian tradition of
accepting the inevitability of, and thus the right to, differing
Christologies among people who speak the same
language and share the same history has been reduced to
the antiparadigms of confessionalism, ethnicism, and
ultimately nationalism, which seeks either to expel or to
subordinate to the majority everything that is other.

Between Chora and the Good

$95.00

Plato's chora as developed in the Timaeus is a creative matrix in which things arise and stand out in response
to the lure of the Good. Chora is paired with the Good, its polar opposite; both are "beyond being" and the metaphors hitherto thought to disclose the transcendent. They underlie Plato's distinction of a procreative gap between being and becoming. The chiasmus between the Good and chora makes possible their mutual participation in one another. This gap makes possible both phenomenological and cosmological interpretations of Plato.

Metaphor is restricted to beings as they appear in this gap through the crossing of metaphor's terms, terms that dwell with, rather than subulate, one another. Hermeneutically, through its "is" we can see something being engendered or determined by that crossing.

Bigger's larger goal is to align the primacy of the Good in Plato and Christian Neoplatonism with the creator God
of Genesis and the God of love in the New Testament.

Conversion in American Philosophy

$85.00

In this fresh, provocative account of the American philosophical tradition, Roger Ward explores the work of key thinkers through an innovative and counterintuitive lens: religious conversion. From Jonathan Edwards to Cornel West, Ward threads the history of American thought into an extended, multivalent encounter with the religious experience. Looking at Dewey, James, Peirce, Rorty, Corrington, and other thinkers, Ward demonstrates that religious themes have deeply influenced the development of American philosophy.

This innovative reading of the American philosophical tradition will be welcomed not only by philosophers, but also by historians and other students of America's religious, intellectual, and cultural legacy.

Conversion in American Philosophy: Exploring the Practice of Transformation is available from the publisher on an open-access basis.

Cover image for Conversion in American Philosophy, isbn: 9780823223138

Being Jewish/Reading Heidegger

$50.00

This innovative book investigates "being Jewish” not as a sectarian religiosity but as a way of being-in-the-world particularly suited to understanding Heidegger's early phenomenology. At its core is an intimate engagement with “sacred texts,” which grounds “being Jewish” in a way of life constituted as a way of reading—a way of reading transmitted to succeeding generations as a passionate teaching.

Allen Scult argues that Heidegger was similarly involved in a passionate attempt to introduce his students to philosophical practice through a personal engagement with the words of Aristotle. Scult traces the hermeneutical affinity— even intimacy—between Judaism as a way of life, grounded in an intense interpretive relationship to the Torah; and Heidegger's view of philosophical practice, as a similarly intense interpretive relationship to the founding texts of Western philosophy.

In tracing the dynamics of this relationship in Heideggerian and Jewish hermeneutics, Scult not only finds mutually enlightening points of contact between the two, but also uncovers new ways of understanding how Heidegger’s fundamental ontology is grounded in the lived experience of religion.
Allen Scult is National Endowment for the Humanities Professor of Philosophy and Rhetoric at Drake University. He is co-author of Rhetoric and Biblical Interpretation.

Being Jewish/Reading Heidegger ponders what it means to read Heidegger on his own terms, that is, to read him from the place where one is, in Heidegger’s language, in and from the facticity of one’s own Being... To be Jewish, according to Scult, is to be entexted with Torah. Scult argues that this notion of binding one’s being with a textual tradition underlies Heidegger’s theory of Dasein. He uses Heidegger’s lectures on Aristotle’s Rhetoric to illustrate how Heidegger ‘reads Aristotle’ and, in doing so. . . teach[es] the Jew how to be-Jewish-in-the-world through an engagement with a textual tradition (Torah). .Shaul Magid, The Jewish Theological Seminary of America

“a compelling account of how being-Jewish enacts the sort of concrete, revealing relationship to a text and a world that makes meditation on being, as Heidegger - early and late - understands it, possible. Only someone with Allen Scult's trained ear for the subtle interplay of rhetoric and hermeneutics could make us see the remarkable parallels between the Rabbis' reading of the Torah and Heidegger's reading of Aristotle….he makes a trenchant case for ‘a reading of Heidegger not as prophet, but as Rabbinic sage’.”--Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Boston University

Being and Some 20th Century Thomists

$94.00

In this powerfully argued book, Knasas engages a debate at the heart of the revival of Thomistic thought in the twentieth century. Richly detailed and illuminating, his book calls on the tradition established by Gilson, Maritain, and Owen, to build a case for Existential Thomism as a valid metaphysics.

Being and Some Twentieth-Century Thomists is a comprehensive discussion of the major issues and controversies in neo-Thomism, including issues of mind, knowledge, the human subject, free will, nature, grace, and the act of being. Knasas also discusses the Transcendental Thomism of Maréchal, Rahner, Lonergan, and others as he builds a carefully articulated case for completing the Thomist revival.

The Critical Circle

$95.00

The Critical Circle investigates the celebrated hermeneutic circle, especially as it manifests itself in historical inquiry and literary criticism. Formulated variously in different theories of hermeneutics, the circle generally describes how, in the process of understanding an interpretation, part and whole are related in a circular way: in order to understand the while, it is necessary to understand the parts, while to understand the parts it is necessary to have some comprehension of the whole. --from the Foreword

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1982.

Sentience

$95.00

"Man need not be degraded to a machine by being denied to be a ghost in a machine," Gilbert Ryle has said. "He might, after all, be a sort of animal, namely a higher mammal. There has yet to be ventured the hazardous leap to the hypothesis that perhaps he is a man."

Wallace Matson has made the venture. Even though he finds no valid objection to the conception of mind as nothing over and above functioning of the nervous system, he argues that nevertheless no existing or imagined machine models the nature of that function. Sentience is not just reception of information, bit is what he calls "sizing up" -- picking out of a situation those features that are more important, apperceiving the whole which they compose, relating to this while to the creature's interest, and deciding what to do about it. Matson shows how sizing up makes possible free action in the positive sense of action to which conscious deliberation makes a difference.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1976.

Abuses

$95.00

Part travelogue, part meditation, Abuses is a bold exploration of central themes in Continental philosophy by one of the most passionate and original thinkers in that tradition writing today.

A gripping record of desires, obsessions, bodies, and spaces experienced in distant lands, Alphonso Lingis's book offers no less than a new approach to philosophy—aesthetic and sympathetic—which departs from the phenomenology of Levinas and Merleau-Ponty. "These were letters written to friends," Lingis writes, "from places I found myself for months at a time, about encounters that moved me and troubled me. . . . These writings also became no longer my letters. I found myself only trying to speak for others, others greeted only with passionate kisses of parting."

Ranging from the elevated Inca citadel of Machu Picchu, to the living rooms of the Mexican elite, to the streets of Manila, Lingis recounts incidents of state-sponsored violence and the progressive incorporation of third-world peoples into the circuits of exchange of international capitalism. Recalling the work of such writers as Graham Greene, Kathy Acker, and Georges Bataille, Abuses contains impassioned accounts of silence, eros and identity, torture and war, the sublime, lust and joy, and human rituals surrounding carnival and death that occurred during his journeys to India, Bangladesh, Thailand, Bali, the Philippines, Antarctica, and Latin America. A deeply unsettling book by a philosopher of unusual imagination, Abuses will appeal to readers who, like its author, "may want the enigmas and want the discomfiture within oneself."

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1994.

Rights in Moral Lives

$95.00

In Rights in Moral Lives, A. I. Melden, a distinguished philosopher and moral rights theorist, examines important changes that have occurred in our thinking about rights since first mention of them was made in early modern times. His inquiry is framed by an opening question and a concluding response. The question is whether the Greeks had any conception of a moral right. Some argue that they did not, on the ground that they had no word for a right. Others claim that they did, since they employed certain locutions, the equivalents of which in our language are tied to some notion of a moral right.

Melden reviews in detail some of the most important historical conceptions of rights and examines serious questions raised by the fact that there have been striking changes in our thinking about rights. His discussion elucidates the place of moral rights in the broader network of moral concepts, along with the role they should play in our moral lives. Among the fundamental issues raised and discussed are the ways in which we are to understand various sorts of rights, the relation of special moral rights to our basic human rights, the now familiar claim that there are animal rights, the nature of moral progress, and the dream of a moral science.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1988.

Skepticism and Cognitivism

$95.00

Skepticism and Cognitivism addresses the fundamental question of epistemology: Is knowledge possible? It approaches this query with an evaluation of the skeptical tradition in Western philosophy, analyzing thinkers who have claimed that we can know nothing. After an introductory chapter lays out the central issues, chapter 2 focuses on the classical skeptics of the Academic and Pyrrhonistic schools and then on the skepticism of David Hume. Chapters 3 through 5 are devoted to contemporary defenders of skepticism—Keith Lehrer, Arne Næss, and Peter Unger. In chapter 6, author Oliver A. Johnson dons the mantle of skeptic himself and develops and adds theories to the skeptical arsenal. He closes with an examination of the relationship between skepticism and cognitivism, reaching and defending conclusions on the nature and extent of possible human knowledge.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1978.

The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore

$18.99 $12.34 Save $6.65

The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore (1918) is an academic study by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. Published at the beginning of his career as one of India’s leading professors of comparative religion, the work is a masterful investigation of the teachings of poet-philosopher Rabindranath Tagore. In 1913, Tagore was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first lyricist and non-European to be awarded the distinction. Over the next several decades, Tagore wrote his influential novel The Home and the World (1916), toured dozens of countries, and advocated on behalf of Dalits and other oppressed peoples. “Rabindranath’s teaching, with its vital faith in the redeeming power of the spiritual forces and their up-building energy, has a particular value at the present moment, when the civilized world is passing through the crucible of a ghastly war which, whether or not it purges the nations of their pride and hate, lust for gold and greed of land, at least proclaims, in no uncertain tones, the utter bankruptcy of materialism.” In this masterwork of twentieth century criticism, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan explores the philosophical teachings of Rabindranath Tagore, a leading artist and intellectual of modern India. Divided into five chapters, the book explores the interrelation of poetry and philosophy in Tagore’s work, his influence on Indian culture, and the meaning of his contribution to the nations of the world. This edition of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan’s The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore is a classic of Indian literature reimagined for modern readers.

Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book.

With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.

Laurus Nobilis

$18.99 $12.34 Save $6.65

Laurus Nobilis: Chapters on Art and Life (1909) is a collection of essays by Vernon Lee. Published at the height of her career as a leading proponent of Aestheticism and scholar of the Italian Renaissance, Laurus Nobilis: Chapters on Art and Life follows in the footsteps of Walter Pater, a pioneering art historian of Victorian England. A principled feminist and committed pacifist, Lee was virtually blacklisted by critics and publishers following her opposition to the First World War. Through the efforts of dedicated scholars, however, interest in her works has increased over the past several decades, granting her the readership she deserves as a master of literary horror. “It is a plant of noblest utility, averting, as the ancients thought, lightning from the dwellings it surrounded, even as disinterested love for beauty averts from our minds the dangers which fall on the vain and the covetous; and curing many aches and fevers, even as the contemplation of beauty refreshes and invigorates our spirit. Indeed, we seem to be reading a description no longer of the virtues of the bay laurel, but of the virtues of all beautiful sights and sounds, of all beautiful thoughts and emotions.” Although she is more widely known for her stories of supernatural horror, Lee was also a gifted researcher whose knowledge of art history shines in Laurus Nobilis: Chapters on Art and Life. This collection of essays begins with the image of the bay laurel, a symbol of artistic achievement and divine beauty since the days of ancient Greece. Determined to prove that beauty is an aspect of reality separate from truth and goodness, and therefore worthy of its own pursuit in art, Lee looks back on the work of Pater while offering her own arguments in defense of Aestheticism. Lyrical and personal, meditative and instructive, these essays are essential to her reputation as a leading artist and intellectual of her time. This edition of Vernon Lee’s Laurus Nobilis: Chapters on Art and Life is a classic work of art history reimagined for modern readers.

Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book.

With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.

The History of the Devil

$22.99 $14.94 Save $8.05

The History of the Devil (1900) is a philosophical study by Paul Carus. A lifelong Monist, Carus sought to apply a scientific analysis to the principles of humanity’s religions. Credited with bridging the gap between Eastern and Western beliefs, Carus believed that the dualism rampant in the West could be replaced in order to establish a more equitable world where difference and diversity would be accepted and nurtured, rather than suppressed. “This world of ours is a world of opposites. There is light and shade, there is heat and cold, there is good and evil, there is God and the Devil. The dualistic conception of nature has been a necessary phase in the evolution in human thought.” Recognizing the need for dualism in the history of humanity, Carus sought to promote the principles of Monism in the West, believing it could lead to a universal worldview capable of uniting East and West. A positivist and pantheist, Carus believed that by pursuing “in religion the same path that science travels, […] the narrowness of sectarianism [would] develop into a broad cosmical religion which shall be as wide and truly catholic as is science itself.” To lay the groundwork for this “cosmical religion,” he investigates the figure of the Devil and the historical evolution of the concept of evil, which he saw as predating belief in goodness and God. This edition of Paul Carus’ The History of the Devil is a classic of philosophy reimagined for modern readers.

Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book.

With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.

Wittgenstein's Ethics and Modern Warfare

$34.99

This original and insightful book establishes a reciprocal relationship between Ludwig Wittgenstein’s notion of ethics and the experience of war. It puts forth an interpretation of Wittgenstein’s early moral philosophy that relates it to the philosopher’s own war experience and applies Wittgenstein’s ethics of silence to analyze the ethical dimension of literary and artistic representations of the Great War.

In a compelling book-length essay, the author contends that the emphasis on “unsayability” in Wittgenstein’s concept of ethics is a valuable tool for studying the ethical silences embedded in key cultural works reflecting on the Great War produced by Mary Borden, Ellen N. La Motte, Georges Duhamel, Leonhard Frank, Ernst Friedrich, and Joe Sacco. Exploring their works through the lens of Wittgenstein’s moral philosophy, this book pays particular attention to their suggestion of an ethics of war and peace by indirect means, such as prose poetry, spatial form, collage, symbolism, and expressionism.

This cultural study reveals new connections between Wittgenstein’s philosophy, his experience during the First World War, and the cultural artifacts produced in its aftermath. By intertwining ethical reflection and textual analysis, Wittgenstein’s Ethics and Modern Warfare aspires to place Wittgenstein’s moral philosophy at the centre of discussions on war, literature, and the arts.

Wittgenstein's Ethics and Modern Warfare

Florence Nightingale on Society and Politics, Philosophy, Science, Education and Literature

$157.99

Florence Nightingale on Society and Politics, Philosophy, Science, Education and Literature, Volume 5 in the Collected Works of Florence Nightingale, is the main source of Nightingale’s work on the methodology of social science and her views on social reform. Here we see how she took her “call to service” into practice: by first learning how the laws of God’s world operate, one can then determine how to intervene for good. There is material on medical statistics, the census, pauperism and Poor Law reform, the need for income security measures and better housing, on crime, gender and the family. Her comments on a new edition of The Dialogues of Plato are given, with their impact on the revision of the next edition. We see Nightingale’s condemnation of Plato’s “community of wives,” with her stirring approval of love (even outside marriage!), marriage and the family. In this volume also her views on natural science, education and literature are reported.
Nightingale was an astute behind-the-scenes political activist. Society and Politics publishes (much of it for the first time) her correspondence with such leading political figures as Queen Victoria, W.E. Gladstone and J.S. Mill. There are notes and essays on public administration and personal observations on various members of royalty, prime ministers and ministers, and Indian viceroys. Nightingale’s support of the vote for women (contrary to much in the secondary literature) is here shown. Correspondence and notes on British general elections from 1834 to 1900 is reported, with letters to and for (Liberal) political candidates and fierce condemnations of Conservatives.
Currently, Volumes 1 to 11 are available in e-book version by subscription or from university and college libraries through the following vendors: Canadian Electronic Library, Ebrary, MyiLibrary, and Netlibrary.

Doing Ethics in a Pluralistic World

$89.99

Doing Ethics in a Pluralistic World is an apt title for this collection of essays in honour of Roger C. Hutchinson who, over many decades, has encouraged and participated in shaping a Canadian contextual social ethics. His abiding interest in social ethics and in religious engagement with public issues is reflected in his life’s work — seeking the consensus and self-knowledge required to achieve cooperation in the search for a just, participatory, and sustainable society.
One of Roger Hutchinson’s many notable accomplishments is his development of a method of dialogue for ethical clarification in situations of diversity. Some of the essays collected here apply this method to specific issues, while others discuss how religious persons and organizations can and do co-operate in a pluralistic world to achieve social and ecological well-being. All essays are of keen interest to those concerned with the role and function of ethics at the matrix of religious conviction and social transformation.
For nearly three decades Roger Hutchinson has been based at Victoria University in Toronto, first in religious studies, then at Emmanuel College, where he completed his teaching career as professor of church and society while serving as principal from 1996 to 2001.

The New Republic

$89.99

Colin Starnes radical interpretation of the long-recognized affinity of Thomas More’s Utopia and Plato’s Republic confirms the intrinsic links between the two works. Through commentary on More’s own introduction to Book I, the author shows the Republic is everywhere present as the model of the “best commonwealth,” which More must first discredit as the root cause of the dreadful evils in the collapsing political situation of sixteenth-century Europe. Starnes demonstrates how More, once having shorn the Republic of what was applicable to a society that had for a thousand years accepted and been moved by the Christian revelation, then “Christianized” it to arrive at one of the earliest and most coherent accounts of the ideal modern state: the description of Utopia in Book II.
Knowing this radically new view of a long-recognized position may be questioned, the author has included a criticism and appreciation of the other major lines of interpretation concerning More’s Utopia.

Native American Wisdom

$16.00

We recognize the philosophy of the original Americans as coming from the earth we walk on, from those who preceded us. As we read the wisdom of these peoples, it is possible to feel a reconnection with our land and ourselves. This beautiful collection of the best of Native American wisdom features the thoughts of Chief Joseph, Sitting Bull, Red Cloud, Black Elk, Ohiyesa, and many others on Native American ways of living, learning, and dying. Taken from orations, recorded observations of life and social affairs, and other first-person testimonies, this book selects a wide range of Native American wisdom and distills it to its essence in short, digestible quotes that are meaningful and timeless -- perhaps even more timely now than when they were written.

Reconstructing Public Philosophy

$95.00

Reconstructing Public Philosophy is William Sullivan’s ambitious effort to recover a richer language of citizenship for American democracy at a moment of cultural exhaustion. Moving between philosophical analysis and cultural criticism, Sullivan examines how leading voices in liberal theory—from political philosophers to public intellectuals—frame questions of justice and policy in ways that reflect, and reinforce, America’s dominant ethos of radical individualism. He acknowledges the historical power of liberalism but argues that its premises—self-interest as the essence of human nature, politics as management of competing interests—cannot provide a convincing account of the common good. By situating these arguments within a broader cultural landscape, Sullivan shows how American public life has been impoverished by its reliance on liberal categories, even as alternative traditions remain latent.

Against this narrowing of political imagination, Sullivan turns to the civic republican tradition, with roots in Aristotle and renewed in the American founding, as a vital resource for rethinking self-rule today. Like Hannah Arendt and Alasdair MacIntyre, he insists that ethics and politics cannot be separated, and that freedom depends on cultivating civic virtue, shared responsibility, and a sense of the public good. Drawing on Tocqueville, Dewey, and contemporary social criticism, Sullivan makes the case for reviving republican ideals as a living “public philosophy” attuned to modern interdependence. At once critical and hopeful, the book delineates how a reconstructed civic tradition could address America’s crisis of legitimacy and restore meaning to democratic citizenship. Its enduring takeaway is that democracy flourishes not when politics is reduced to private interest but when citizens embrace public life as a moral project of mutual care and collective purpose.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1986.

Scientific Realism

$95.00

Scientific Realism edited by Jarrett Leplin assembles a landmark debate over whether—and how—science tells us what the world is really like. Opening with Hilary Putnam’s “no-miracles” provocation, Leplin frames ten characteristic realist theses (about approximate truth, reference, success, progress, and literal construal) and then immediately problematizes consensus: realists disagree on which theses they can jointly endorse. The introduction spotlights two pressure points. First, the historical challenge: theory change in mature sciences looks discontinuous, threatening referential stability and suggesting that empirical success underdetermines belief about unobservables. Second, the explanatory challenge: even true (or “approximately true”) theories might fail empirically for auxiliary-assumption reasons, while false ones might succeed by luck or fit; thus abductive “inference to the best explanation” either begs the question for realism or renders realism explanatorily superfluous. Leplin sketches realist replies—causal theories of reference, nuanced accounts of approximation, and cumulativist readings of history—and also urges a methodological defense: certain scientific practices are unintelligible absent realist commitments.

Across the volume, contributors develop these lines with distinctive emphases. Putnam defends realism via method’s success and reference-preserving continuity; McMullin proposes progress through fertile metaphors that survive conceptual turnover; Leplin advances explanationist realism anchored in independent markers of progress. Method-first strategies include Levin (against instrumentalism’s content thinness), Glymour (comparative explanation and reference), Laymon (idealization and confirmation), Boyd (mature methodology’s reliability implying realism), and Hacking (experimentation’s autonomy underwriting entity realism). Powerful antirealist countermoves come from Laudan (historical rebuttal to theses on truth, reference, and success), van Fraassen (empirical adequacy over truth; underdetermination), and Fine, whose “natural ontological attitude” rejects metaphysical add-ons while preserving scientific inference. The result is a meticulous cartography of positions and problems, showing that realism’s fate hinges as much on philosophy of reference and confirmation as on sober readings of science’s past and present.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1984.

The Stoics

$95.00

The Stoics, edited by John M. Rist, gathers leading scholarship to reassess one of antiquity’s most influential philosophical schools. Once dismissed as pedantic or derivative, the Stoics are now recognized as innovators whose contributions to logic, ethics, physics, and philosophical psychology rival those of Aristotle and Plato. This volume traces that reappraisal, showing how figures such as Chrysippus crafted a system of logic based on propositions rather than terms, developed a rich theory of signs and language, and articulated a vision of human rationality that shaped centuries of intellectual history. Essays range from technical studies of Stoic logic and grammar to explorations of their enduring ethical and metaphysical concerns, offering a multifaceted view of the school’s intellectual achievement.

Designed for both specialists and readers encountering Stoicism in depth for the first time, this collection captures the dynamism of current debates while consolidating the gains of twentieth-century scholarship. By situating Stoic thought alongside modern developments in logic and philosophy of language, the contributors reveal its continued philosophical relevance. The Stoics is not simply a survey but a set of arguments for why Stoicism must be taken seriously today: as a system of logic of startling originality, as a rigorous moral philosophy, and as a comprehensive worldview that continues to provoke, inspire, and challenge. This volume is indispensable for philosophers, classicists, and historians of ideas seeking to understand both the foundations and the lasting significance of Stoic thought.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1978.

Residues of Justice

$95.00

In Residues of Justice, Wai Chee Dimock probes the conceit of justice as a matter of measurable equivalence—those iconic scales that promise perfect balance—and finds what she calls the “residues” left behind by any attempt to translate lived conflicts into commensurate terms. Opening with Aristophanes’ The Frogs and moving through Aristotle’s proportional ethics, Kant, Rawls, and Mill, Dimock shows how justice has long been imagined as a language of ratios, universals, and adequation. Against this dream of objective fit—good for good, evil for evil—she foregrounds the incommensurate: what gets lost in translation when law seeks punishment, philosophy seeks foundations, and both presume a common currency of value. Engaging Michael Sandel’s critique of liberal justice and Carol Gilligan’s “ethic of care,” she reframes justice as one virtue among others, necessarily partial, historically contingent, and never exhaustive.

Dimock’s signal move is to put literature alongside law and philosophy as a third, stubbornly recalcitrant language of justice. Through close readings of American writers—from Whitman’s democratic personhood and Cooper’s punitive zeal to Rebecca Harding Davis’s economic dispossession, Howells’s compensatory aspirations, Warner’s luck, and Chopin’s rights—she tracks where commensuration thins, frays, or fails altogether. The result is a powerful argument that literary representation exposes the limits of juridical and philosophical balancing acts, insisting on the unweighable remnants that any settlement leaves behind—and inviting more capacious, humane supplements to our adjudicative ideals.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1996.

The Measurement of Sensation

$95.00

The Measurement of Sensation: A Critique of Perceptual Psychophysics by C. Wade Savage is a bold rethinking of one of psychology’s oldest problems: how, if at all, we can measure subjective perception. For over a century, psychophysics has sought to define precise mathematical laws relating physical stimuli to psychological experiences—loudness to sound intensity, brightness to light frequency, pain to tissue disturbance. Savage argues that this traditional framework rests on conceptual confusion, blurring the line between sensations and measurable dimensions of the physical world. Through sustained critique of canonical figures from Fechner to Stevens, he dismantles assumptions about “just noticeable differences,” ratio scales, and perceptual magnitudes, showing why efforts to quantify the private world of sensation are philosophically and scientifically untenable.

Rather than proposing new methods to capture elusive inner states, Savage dissolves the very problem of psychophysical measurement. He demonstrates that dimensions like loudness, pitch, and brightness should not be treated as psychological properties of sensation, but as physical attributes of sounds and lights that can be measured with the same rigor as length or weight. This reframing exposes the limits of classical and modern psychophysics while pointing toward a more coherent science of perception, one focused on observable abilities and responses rather than introspective magnitudes. A landmark in the philosophy of psychology, the book offers both a devastating critique of inherited assumptions and a constructive reorientation for future research in perception, measurement theory, and epistemology.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1970.

Essays on the Moral Concepts

$95.00

Essays on the Moral Concepts compiles a collection of his most significant contributions to ethical theory, many of which were previously scattered in academic journals. The volume serves as a convenient collection for students of moral philosophy, offering an expanded view of the perspective presented in his earlier works The Language of Morals and Freedom and Reason. Included is the previously unpublished paper Wrongness and Harm, which engages in the ongoing debate between prescriptivists, like Hare, and descriptivists, such as Mr. Warnock and Mrs. Foot. This paper is a noteworthy addition, as it seeks to identify common ground between Hare and his critics, making it an essential piece for anyone studying contemporary analytical philosophy.

In the preface, Hare reflects on his work and the shifting nature of his philosophical views, acknowledging that his positions are not fixed. While much of the volume consists of critical responses to philosophical positions he disagrees with, Hare also aims to find common ground with those he has previously contested. The inclusion of Wrongness and Harm exemplifies this effort, offering a more provisional and open-minded approach to the moral discussions at hand. This paper, part of a broader seminar on Utilitarianism, benefits from the insights and critiques of philosophers like Professor J. J. C. Smart, Professor Narveson, and Mr. Parfit, whose influence is evident in the evolving arguments presented in the text.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1972.

Ethical Idealism

$95.00

Ethical Idealism: An Inquiry into the Nature and Function of Ideals explores the role of ideals in guiding human thought and action. The book argues that although ideals are often unrealistic and unachievable, they play an essential and productive role in human affairs. The first chapter contends that pursuing unattainable goals is rational if these goals bring about positive results. The second chapter extends this argument by asserting that an obligation remains valid even if its fulfillment is impossible, challenging the traditional ought implies can principle within the confines of real-world limitations. The third chapter critiques the idea that rationality should focus solely on maximization, arguing instead that human goods are too varied to be standardized.

Subsequent chapters delve deeper into the utility of ideals in human life. Chapter IV supports the value of optimism, even in seemingly hopeless situations, for its positive influence on actions and outcomes. Chapter V draws parallels between ideals and other abstract concepts like the equator or the prime meridian, which, though unattainable in a literal sense, are crucial for navigation and orientation. The final chapter emphasizes that ideals, despite their impractical nature, serve to give meaning to human endeavors and structure our actions toward higher goals. Throughout the book, the central theme is the harmonious relationship between the real and the ideal, with ideals serving as practical tools for guiding behavior and achieving values. The book thus defends the rationality of maintaining ideals, not as literal goals, but as essential instruments for human practice and moral understanding.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1987.

Practical Inferences

$95.00

Practical Inferences is an essential collection of papers by R. M. Hare, the leading advocate of prescriptivism, an influential ethical theory that examines the logical nature of moral language. Expanding upon the ideas presented in The Language of Morals (1952) and Freedom and Reason (1963), this volume offers deeper engagement with core issues in moral philosophy while introducing new discussions that further illuminate the ongoing debate between prescriptivists and their critics, the descriptivists. Through these essays, Hare provides a rigorous defense of his views, demonstrating how moral statements function as action-guiding prescriptions rather than mere descriptions of the world.

This collection is indispensable for those interested in contemporary ethical theory and the linguistic analysis of moral discourse. Hare's work has shaped modern debates in metaethics, and this volume presents a crucial resource for philosophers, scholars, and students seeking to understand the implications of prescriptivism for moral reasoning, autonomy, and ethical decision-making. With the inclusion of previously unpublished materials and a comprehensive bibliography, Practical Inferences stands as a definitive reference for those exploring the intersection of language, logic, and moral philosophy.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1971.

Two Essays on Entropy

$95.00

Two Essays on Entropy by Rudolf Carnap (edited with an introduction by Abner Shimony) brings a major twentieth-century philosopher of science to the front lines of thermodynamics, probability, and inductive logic. Written during Carnap’s 1952–54 fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study, these essays pursue an “abstract concept of entropy” usable for scientific inference while testing, with unusual clarity, the coherence of the physicists’ own statistical notion. Carnap’s guiding claim is bold and bracing: entropy belongs with temperature and pressure as an objective physical magnitude, not a merely logical or informational index. From this stance he scrutinizes the classical formulations of Boltzmann and Gibbs, rejects fashionable identifications of entropy with “negative information,” and articulates a principle of physical magnitudes to require that finer descriptions of a system accord with coarser, thermodynamic attributions. Shimony’s editorial introduction situates Carnap’s project within postwar debates on probability (frequency, propensity, and epistemic readings), ergodicity, and coarse- versus fine-grained ensembles, clarifying both the reach and the limits of Carnap’s proposal.

Presented together for the first time as Carnap had originally envisioned, the essays are lightly but thoughtfully edited: overlapping prefatory sections are removed, a concise “Brief Formulation” is foregrounded, and cross-references rationalized to reveal the architecture of the program as a whole. Readers see Carnap extend Boltzmann’s entropy beyond cell partitions, probe the logical pitfalls of description-dependent definitions, and sketch a continuous, geometry-based alternative aimed at eliminating arbitrary coarse-graining. The result is a rare conversation across philosophy and physics—historically grounded, methodologically incisive, and still sharply relevant to contemporary work in statistical mechanics, information theory, and the foundations of data-driven inference. A vital resource for scholars in philosophy of science, physics, and the history of analytic philosophy, Two Essays on Entropy restores a rigorous, physicalist account of order, randomness, and explanation to center stage.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1977.

The Sciences and the Humanities

$95.00

The Sciences and the Humanities: Conflict and Reconciliation by W. T. Jones confronts one of the most enduring dilemmas of modern culture: the apparent chasm between scientific rationalism and humanistic traditions of value, purpose, and meaning. Opening with vivid analogies drawn from learning experiments with rats faced with indiscernible choices, Jones suggests that contemporary men and women likewise respond neurotically to situations where conceptual frameworks have collapsed, whether in foreign policy crises or private dilemmas. He argues that the roots of this malaise lie not only in political or social disarray but also in mistaken metaphysical assumptions—specifically, an absolutism that few genuinely believe yet continue to carry unconsciously. From Plato’s struggle against relativism to Galileo’s reorganization of the perceptual field and St. Paul’s radically divergent interpretation of his Damascus experience, Jones demonstrates how metaphysical frameworks undergird everyday ways of resolving problems, and how their breakdown generates anxiety.

Against this backdrop, Jones examines the “two cultures” debate of C. P. Snow as not simply a social divide between scientists and humanists, but as an internal rift within modern consciousness. Scientists, he notes, are also husbands, parents, and moral beings; humanists, conversely, cannot evade scientific conceptions. Yet inherited dualisms of mind and matter render their vocabularies incommensurable, producing what Jones calls uninterpretable situations. His analysis traverses literature, art, and philosophy: from Dante’s cosmic justice to Hardy’s mechanistic despair, from Camus’ absurdity to Faulkner’s stoical codes, he shows how twentieth-century art expresses a crisis of meaning born of the scientific worldview’s reductionism. Rejecting both nostalgic revivals of absolutism and escapist existential retreats, Jones proposes that philosophy’s task is to reconstruct a conceptual language that acknowledges relativity, ambiguity, and hazard while reconciling fact with value. The book’s central claim is both diagnostic and prescriptive: only by confronting, rather than evading, the conflict between science and the humanities can modern culture achieve intellectual coherence and moral maturity.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1965.

Max Weber's Vision of History

$95.00

Max Weber's Vision of History: Ethics and Methods delves into the unfinished intellectual pursuits and theoretical frameworks of one of sociology’s most influential figures, Max Weber. Written by Guenther Roth and Wolfgang Schluchter, this collection of essays explores the ethical underpinnings, methodological intricacies, and historical applications of Weber’s work. The book places particular emphasis on two underexamined dimensions of Weber's legacy: his vision for the interplay between science, politics, and religion in a rationalized world, and the methodological structures that underpin his substantive historical analyses.

The essays investigate the philosophical and sociological dimensions of Weber's thought, such as his notions of rationalization, the ethic of responsibility, and the sociological relevance of religion. Schluchter’s contributions, for instance, dissect Weber's seminal works on the sociology of religion and his essays on economic ethics, offering a systematic analysis of his ethical worldview. Roth complements this by addressing Weber's historical methodology, focusing on his use of models and developmental theories, and extending Weber’s ideas to contemporary issues, such as the counterculture movements of the 20th century. Together, these essays provide an intricate view of Weber’s theoretical framework, illuminating its relevance to both historical inquiry and the challenges of modernity.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1979.

The Sources of Value

$115.00

The Sources of Value by Stephen C. Pepper offers a comprehensive exploration of how human beings ground their judgments of good and bad, weaving together insights from psychology, philosophy, anthropology, and biology. Beginning with common-sense notions of value and systematically refining them, Pepper critiques reductive theories while developing an empirical framework that treats value as emerging from purposive behavior, selective systems, and the dynamics of decision-making. His analysis spans from appetition and aversion to cultural patterns, social integration, and biological evolution, resulting in a panoramic study of the ways value operates across individual, social, and natural domains.

Balancing philosophical reflection with empirical findings, Pepper builds on and extends R. B. Perry’s General Theory of Value while bringing in contemporary psychological and behavioral research. The book not only dissects the mechanics of conation, achievement, and affection, but also considers how values are mediated in life-spaces, personalities, and cultural systems, ultimately confronting the challenges of survival value in evolution. Richly integrative and ambitious in scope, The Sources of Value positions itself as both a critical commentary on past theories and a bold hypothesis for understanding the complex interrelations of values in human life.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1958.

History and Will

$95.00

History and Will: Philosophical Perspectives of Mao Tse-tung's Thought delves into the ideological, philosophical, and historical dimensions of Mao Tse-tung's revolutionary vision, focusing on the unique interplay between historical determinism and subjective will in his thought. Against the backdrop of the Cultural Revolution, the book explores Mao's departure from orthodox Marxist-Leninist doctrine, emphasizing his provocative embrace of ongoing revolution and grassroots dynamism over the institutional stability of his own Communist Party.

Through a series of thematic essays, the author investigates Mao's intellectual roots, including his exposure to Kantian idealism, Marxist romanticism, and traditional Chinese metaphysical frameworks. The book juxtaposes Western philosophical constructs with Mao’s adaptations, arguing that his dialectic diverges fundamentally from European rationalist categories. By examining thinkers like K'ang Yu-wei and Rousseau alongside Mao, the work sheds light on how Maoism emerged as a hybrid intellectual language, uniquely blending Chinese and Western traditions. Ultimately, History and Will offers a nuanced perspective on the ideological tensions that shaped China's revolutionary trajectory, culminating in the dramatic contradictions of the Cultural Revolution.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1973.

The Question of Eclecticism

$95.00

The Question of Eclecticism: Studies in Later Greek Philosophy offers a rigorous reexamination of a period often dismissed as intellectually stagnant—the first century B.C. to the second century A.D.—through a critical lens that challenges the pejorative connotations of the term "eclecticism." Traditionally regarded as an era of philosophical decline, characterized by an unoriginal blending of Stoic, Platonic, Aristotelian, and Skeptic doctrines, this collection of essays aims to redefine the intellectual vitality of the time. Rather than seeing this period as a passive transmission of earlier philosophical traditions, the contributors argue that it was marked by an active and innovative engagement with philosophical ideas, where thinkers like Cicero, Philo of Alexandria, Plutarch, and Galen sought to synthesize, refine, and apply inherited doctrines to new intellectual, ethical, and scientific inquiries.

This book questions the rigid school-based categorizations that have historically shaped our understanding of Greek philosophy, demonstrating that figures often labeled as "eclectic" were, in fact, pursuing rigorous philosophical projects. Through case studies on figures such as Antiochus of Ascalon, Aenesidemus, and Sextus Empiricus, the essays reveal how philosophical debates continued to evolve through critical appropriation rather than mere borrowing. By tracing the conceptual developments in epistemology, ethics, and natural philosophy, The Question of "Eclecticism" sheds new light on a formative period of Western thought, illustrating how the cross-fertilization of ideas laid the groundwork for later Neoplatonism and medieval philosophy. This collection is an essential contribution to the study of later Greek philosophy, offering a nuanced perspective that rehabilitates a historically misunderstood era.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1988.

Genethics

$95.00

Unprecedented advances in medicine, genetic engineering, and demographic forecasting raise new questions that strain the categories and assumptions of traditional ethical theories. Heyd's approach resolves many paradoxes in intergenerational justice, while offering a major test case for the profound problems of the limits of ethics and the nature of value.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1992.

Substance and Structure of Language

$95.00

Substance and Structure of Language, edited by Jaan Puhvel, brings together a landmark series of lectures from the 1966 Linguistic Institute at UCLA, capturing the intellectual vitality of a summer that gathered some of the field’s most influential voices. While two specialized series—the Indo-European and the Mathematical-Computational—were designed as more ephemeral explorations, the General Series was conceived from the outset for publication. This volume codifies those lectures into a lasting record, offering both participants and later readers access to the central questions and methods animating linguistics in the mid-twentieth century. From psycholinguistic experimentation and oral tradition to idioms, semantic structure, and the nature of dynamic comparison, the book reflects the cross-disciplinary currents that have since become central to the study of language.

The collection includes revised versions of lectures by Yehoshua Bar-Hillel, Uriel Weinreich, Wallace Lambert, Shlomo Morag, and Joseph Greenberg, as well as the traditional Collitz Lecture delivered by Werner Winter, the Institute’s Collitz Professor of Comparative Indo-European Grammar. Notably absent—though fondly remembered—are Roman Jakobson’s brilliant presentations on meaning and reference, which could not be prepared for publication in time. Together these essays trace a vivid picture of linguistics as a field negotiating the balance between formal rigor, historical depth, and cognitive insight. Essential for scholars of language history, semantics, and comparative grammar, Substance and Structure of Language stands as both a tribute to a transformative moment in linguistic scholarship and a resource that continues to inform contemporary debates.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1969.

Dignity and Vulnerability

$95.00

In this significant addition to moral theory, George W. Harris challenges a view of the dignity and worth of persons that goes back through Kant and Christianity to the Stoics. He argues that we do not, in fact, believe this view, which traces any breakdowns of character to failures of strength. When it comes to what we actually value in ourselves and others, he says, we are far more Greek than Christian. At the most profound level, we value ourselves as natural organisms, as animals, rather than as godlike beings who transcend nature.

The Kantian-Christian-Stoic tradition holds that if we were fully able to realize our dignity as Kantians, Christians, or Stoics, we would be better, stronger people, and therefore less vulnerable to character breakdown. Dignity and Vulnerability offers an opposing view, that sometimes character breaks down not because of some shortcoming in it but because of what is good about it, because of the very virtues and features of character that give us our dignity. If dignity can make us fragile and vulnerable to breakdown, then breakdown can be benign as well as harmful, and thus the conceptions of human dignity embedded in the tradition leading up to Kant are deeply mistaken. Harris proposes a foundation for our belief in human dignity in what we can actually know about ourselves, rather than in metaphysical or theological fantasy. Having gained this knowledge, we can understand the source of real strength.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1997.

A Common Sky

$95.00

A Common Sky: Philosophy and the Literary Imagination explores the unsettling yet compelling fear of solipsism—the idea that the external world may not exist beyond the confines of individual perception. While solipsism as a formal belief is often dismissed as absurd or comedic, the book delves into its profound psychological and philosophical implications. The author examines how this fear has subtly influenced thought since the 18th century, challenging both philosophers and writers to grapple with its unnerving possibilities. In philosophy, solipsism sparks intricate debates, while in literature, it manifests as a shift in natural intuition, embedding feelings of unreality into the works of poets and novelists alike.

Tracing the echoes of solipsistic unease across philosophy and literature, the book reveals a fascinating interplay between skepticism and imagination. From the analytical rigor of Hume and Bradley to the evocative verse of Wordsworth and Eliot, A Common Sky illustrates how the fear of isolation from a shared reality has shaped modern thought and art. By uncovering these connections, the author offers a nuanced perspective on the rise of solipsism in the human psyche and its profound impact on cultural expression. This work invites readers to confront the paradoxes of perception, belief, and existence, ultimately challenging them to reconsider the boundaries of their own realities.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1974.

A Theory of Language and Mind

$95.00

In his most recent book, Ermanno Bencivenga offers a stylistically and conceptually exciting investigation of the nature of language, mind, and personhood and the many ways the three connect. Bencivenga, one of the most iconoclastic voices to emerge in contemporary American philosophy, contests the basic assumptions of analytic (and also, to an extent, postmodern) approaches to these topics. His exploration leads through fascinating discussions of education, courage, pain, time and history, selfhood, subjectivity and objectivity, reality, facts, the empirical, power and transgression, silence, privacy and publicity, and play—all themes that are shown to be integral to our thinking about language. Relentessly bending the rules, Bencivenga frustrates our expectations of a "proper" theory of language. He invokes the transgressions of Nietzsche and Wittgenstein even as he appropriates the aphoristic style of Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Written in a philosophically playful and experimental mode, A Theory of Language and Mind draws the reader into a sense of continual surprise, therapeutic discomfort, and discovery.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1997.

Inference, Explanation, and Other Frustrations

$95.00

These provocative essays by leading philosophers of science exemplify and illuminate the contemporary uncertainty and excitement in the field. The papers are rich in new perspectives, and their far-reaching criticisms challenge arguments long prevalent in classic philosophical problems of induction, empiricism, and realism. By turns empirical or analytic, historical or programmatic, confessional or argumentative, the authors' arguments both describe and demonstrate the fact that philosophy of science is in a ferment more intense than at any time since the heyday of logical positivism early in the twentieth century.

Contents:

“Thoroughly Modern Meno,” Clark Glymour and Kevin Kelly
“The Concept of Induction in the Light of the Interrogative Approach to Inquiry,” Jaakko Hintikka
“Aristotelian Natures and Modern Experimental Method,” Nancy Cartwright
“Genetic Inference: A Reconsideration of “David Hume's Empiricism,” Barbara D. Massey and Gerald J. Massey
“Philosophy and the Exact Sciences: Logical Positivism as a Case Study,” Michael Friedman
“Language and Interpretation: Philosophical Reflections and Empirical Inquiry,” Noam Chomsky
“Constructivism, Realism, and Philosophical Method,” Richard Boyd
“Do We Need a Hierarchical Model of Science?” Diderik Batens
“Theories of Theories: A View from Cognitive Science,” Richard E. Grandy
“Procedural Syntax for Theory Elements,” Joseph D. Sneed
“Why Functionalism Didn't Work,” Hilary Putnam
“Physicalism,” Hartry Field

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1992.

Inference, Explanation, and Other Frustrations

History and Tropology

$95.00

"The chief business of twentieth-century philosophy” is “to reckon with twentieth-century history," claimed R. G. Collingwood. In this remarkable collection of essays, Frank Ankersmit demonstrates the prescience of that remark and goes a long way toward meeting its challenge. Responding to the work of Hayden White, Arthur Danto, and Hans-Georg Gadamer, he examines such issues as the difference between historical representation and artistic expression, the status of metaphor in historical description, and the relation of postmodernism to historicism. Ankersmit's fluent grasp of European thought and his ability to incorporate concepts from literary theory, art history, the philosophy of science, and political thought into his analyses assure that this collection will interest readers throughout the humanities.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1994.

Song Loves the Masses

$95.00

Distinguished ethnomusicologist Philip V. Bohlman compiles Johann Gottfried Herder’s writings on music and nationalism, from his early volumes of Volkslieder through sacred song to the essays on aesthetics late in his life, shaping them as the book on music that Herder would have written had he gathered the many strands of his musical thought into a single publication. Framed by analytical chapters and extensive introductions to each translation, this book interprets Herder’s musings on music to think through several major questions: What meaning did religion and religious thought have for Herder? Why do the nation and nationalism acquire musical dimensions at the confluence of aesthetics and religious thought? How did his aesthetic and musical thought come to transform the way Herder understood music and nationalism and their presence in global history? Bohlman uses the mode of translation to explore Herder’s own interpretive practice as a translator of languages and cultures, providing today’s readers with an elegantly narrated and exceptionally curated collection of essays on music by two major intellectuals.

A Free Will

$85.00

Where does the notion of free will come from? How and when did it develop, and what did that development involve? In Michael Frede's radically new account of the history of this idea, the notion of a free will emerged from powerful assumptions about the relation between divine providence, correctness of individual choice, and self-enslavement due to incorrect choice. Anchoring his discussion in Stoicism, Frede begins with Aristotle--who, he argues, had no notion of a free will--and ends with Augustine. Frede shows that Augustine, far from originating the idea (as is often claimed), derived most of his thinking about it from the Stoicism developed by Epictetus.

The Philosopher's Gaze

$63.00

David Michael Levin's ongoing exploration of the moral character and enlightenment-potential of vision takes a new direction in The Philosopher's Gaze. Levin examines texts by Descartes, Husserl, Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Benjamin, Merleau-Ponty, and Lévinas, using our culturally dominant mode of perception and the philosophical discourse it has generated as the site for his critical reflections on the moral culture in which we are living.

In Levin's view, all these philosophers attempted to understand, one way or another, the distinctive pathologies of the modern age. But every one also attempted to envision—if only through the faintest of traces, traces of mutual recognition, traces of another way of looking and seeing—the prospects for a radically different lifeworld. The world, after all, inevitably reflects back to us the character, the reach and range, of our vision.

In these provocative essays, the author draws on the language of hermeneutical phenomenology and at the same time refines phenomenology itself as a method of working with our experience and thinking critically about the culture in which we live.

Substance, Force, and the Possibility of Knowledge

$68.95

A new understanding of Kant’s theory of a priori knowledge and his natural philosophy emerges from Jeffrey Edwards’s mature and penetrating study. In the Third Analogy of Experience, Kant argues for the existence of a dynamical plenum in space. This argument against empty space demonstrates that the dynamical plenum furnishes an a priori necessary condition for our experience and knowledge of an objective world.

Such an a priori existence proof, however, transgresses the limits Kant otherwise places on transcendental arguments in the Critique of Pure Reason because it establishes a material transcendental condition of possible experience. This finding motivates Edwards to examine the broader context of Kant’s views about matter, substance, causal influence, and physical aether in connection with the developmental history of his theory of transcendental idealism. Against the backdrop of early modern metaphysics and contemporaneous physical theory, Edwards explicates the origins of the Third Analogy in Kant’s early work on the metaphysics of nature.

The argument against empty space presented in the Third Analogy reveals a central aspect of Kant’s transcendental theory of experience that Edwards explains lucidly. By clarifying the epistemological standpoint at issue in the Third Analogy, he shows that the fundamental revisions to which Kant subjects his theory of knowledge in the Opus postumum not only originate in his precritical metaphysics of nature but are developments of an argument central to the Critique of Pure Reason itself. Edwards’s work is important to scholars working in the history of philosophy and the history and philosophy of science, as well as to Kant specialists.

Substance, Force, and the Possibility of Knowledge

Agent-Centered Morality

$73.95

What kinds of persons do we aspire to be, and how do our aspirations fit with our ideas of rationality? In Agent-Centered Morality, George Harris argues that most of us aspire to a certain sort of integrity: We wish to be respectful of and sympathetic to others, and to be loving parents, friends, and members of our communities. Against a prevailing Kantian consensus, Harris offers an Aristotelian view of the problems presented by practical reason, problems of integrating all our concerns into a coherent, meaningful life in a way that preserves our integrity. The task of solving these problems is "the integration test."

Systematically addressing the work of major Kantian thinkers, Harris shows that even the most advanced contemporary versions of the Kantian view fail to integrate all of the values that correspond to what we call a moral life. By demonstrating how the meaning of life and practical reason are internally related, he constructs from Aristotle's thought a conceptual scheme that successfully integrates all the characteristics that make a life meaningful, without jeopardizing the place of any. Harris's elucidation of this approach is a major contribution to debates on human agency, practical reason, and morality.

Legitimate Differences

$57.95

Legitimate Differences challenges the usual portrayal of current debates over thorny social issues including abortion, pornography, affirmative action, and surrogate mothering as moral debates. How can it be said that our debates oppose principles of life to those of liberty, principles of liberty to those of equality, principles of equality to those of fairness, and principles of fairness to those of integrity, when we as Americans share all these principles?

Debates over such issues are not, Georgia Warnke argues, moral debates over which principles we should adopt. Rather, they are interpretive debates over the meanings of principles we already possess. Warnke traces the structure of these debates with reference to the work of Jane Austen, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jürgen Habermas, and Bernard Williams. In separate chapters on surrogate mothering, affirmative action, abortion, and pornography she articulates new understandings of the meanings of some of our principles and shows the equal legitimacy of some different interpretations of the meanings of others. Finally, she suggests that the orientation of American public policy ought to be directed less at finding single canonical interpretations of our principles than at accommodating different legitimate understandings of them. The perspective offered by Legitimate Differences should have a significantly beneficial effect on public discussions.

Nietzsche

$57.95

Nietzsche: Naturalism and Interpretation offers a resolution of one of the most vexing problems in Nietzsche scholarship. As perhaps the most significant predecessor of more recent attempts to formulate a postmetaphysical epistemology and ontology, Nietzsche is considered by many critics to share this problem with his successors: How can an antifoundationalist philosophy avoid vicious relativism and legitimate its claim to provide a platform for the critique of arguments, practices, and institutions?

Christoph Cox argues that Nietzsche successfully navigates between relativism and dogmatism, accepting the naturalistic critique of metaphysics and theology provided by modern science, yet maintaining that a thoroughgoing naturalism must move beyond scientific reductionism. It must accept a central feature of aesthetic understanding: acknowledgment of the primacy and irreducibility of interpretation. This view of Nietzsche's doctrines of perspectivism, becoming, and will to power as products of an overall naturalism balanced by a reciprocal commitment to interpretationism will spur new discussions of epistemology and ontology in contemporary thought.

Habermas on Law and Democracy

$68.95

In the first essay, Habermas himself succinctly presents the centerpiece of his theory: his proceduralist paradigm of law. The following essays comprise elaborations, criticisms, and further explorations by others of the most salient issues addressed in his theory. The distinguished group of contributors—internationally prominent scholars in the fields of law, philosophy, and social theory—includes many who have been closely identified with Habermas as well as some of his best-known critics. The final essay is a thorough and lengthy reply by Habermas, which not only engages the most important arguments raised in the preceding essays but also further elaborates and refines some of his own key contributions in Between Facts and Norms. This volume will be essential reading for philosophers, legal scholars, and political and social theorists concerned with understanding the work of one of the leading philosophers of our age.

These provocative, in-depth debates between Jürgen Habermas and a wide range of his critics relate to the philosopher's contribution to legal and democratic theory in his recently published Between Facts and Norms. Drawing upon his discourse theory, Habermas has elaborated a novel and powerful account of law that purports to bridge the gap between democracy and rights, by conceiving law to be at once self-imposed and binding.

The Rule of Law Under Siege

$63.00

In the pathbreaking essays collected here, Neumann and Kirchheimer demonstrate that the death of democracy and the rise of fascism during the first half of the twentieth century suggest crucial lessons for contemporary political and legal scholars. The volume includes writings on constitutionalism, political freedom, Nazism, sovereignty, and both Nazi and liberal law. Most important, the Frankfurt authors point to the continuing efficacy of the rule of law as an instrument for regulating and restraining state authority, as well as ominous evidence of the rule of law's fragility in modern liberal democracy.

The Worth of a Child

$52.95

Thomas Murray's graceful and humane book illuminates one of the most morally complex areas of everyday life: the relationship between parents and children. What do children mean to their parents, and how far do parental obligations go? What, from the beginning of life to its end, is the worth of a child?

Ethicist Murray leaves the rarefied air of abstract moral philosophy in order to reflect on the moral perplexities of ordinary life and ordinary people. Observing that abstract moral terms such as altruism and selfishness can be buried in the everyday doings of families, he maintains that ethical theory needs a richer description than it now has of the moral life of parents and children. How far should adults go in their quest for children? What options are available to women who do not want to bear a child now? Should couples be allowed to reject a child because of genetic disability or "wrong" gender? How can we weigh the competing claims of the genetic and the rearing parents to a particular child?

The Worth of a Child couples impressive learning with a conversational style. Only by getting down to cases, Murray insists, can we reach moral conclusions that are unsentimental, farsighted, and just. In an era of intense public and private acrimony about the place and meaning of "family values," his practical wisdom about extraordinary difficult moral issues offers compelling reading for both experienced and prospective parents, as well as for ethicists, social and behavioral scientists, and legal theorists.

Schopenhauer on the Character of the World

$63.00

The most extensive English-language study of Schopenhauer's metaphysics of the will yet published, this book represents a major contribution to Schopenhauer scholarship. Here, John E. Atwell critically but sympathetically examines the philosopher's main work, The World as Will and Representation, demonstrating that the philosophical system it puts forth does constitute a consistent whole. The author holds that this system is centered on a single thought, "The world is self-knowledge of the will." He then traces this unifying concept through the four books of The World as Will and Representation, and, in the process, dissolves the work's alleged inconsistencies.

Schopenhauer on the Character of the World

Ethics in an Epidemic

$52.95

AIDS strikes most heavily at those already marginalized by conventional society. With no immediate prospect of vaccination or cure, how can liberty, dignity, and reasoned hope be preserved in the shadow of an epidemic? In this humane and graceful book, philosopher Timothy Murphy offers insight into our attempts—popular and academic, American and non-American, scientific and political—to make moral sense of pain.

Murphy addresses the complex moral questions raised by AIDS for health-care workers, politicians, policy makers, and even people with AIDS themselves. He ranges widely, analyzing contrasting visions of the origin and the future of the epidemic, the moral and political functions of obituaries, the uncertain value of celebrity involvement in anti-AIDS education, the functional uses of AIDS in the discourse of presidential campaigns, the exclusionary function of HIV testing for immigrants, the priority given to AIDS on the national health agenda, and the hypnotic publicity given to "innocent" victims.

Murphy's discussions of the many social and political confusions about AIDS are unified by his attempt to articulate the moral assumptions framing our interpretations of the epidemic. By understanding those assumptions, we will be in a better position to resist self-serving and invidious moralizing, reckless political response, and social censure of the sick and the dying.

China and the American Dream

$63.00

From the "Red Menace" to Tiananmen Square, the United States and China have long had an emotionally tumultuous relationship. Richard Madsen's frank and innovative examination of the moral history of U.S.-China relations targets the forces that have shaped this surprisingly strong tie between two strikingly different nations. Combining his expertise as a sinologist with the vision of America developed in Habits of the Heart and The Good Society, Madsen studies the cultural myths that have shaped the perceptions of people of both nations for the past twenty-five years.

The dominant American myth about China, born in the 1960s, foresaw Western ideals of economic, intellectual, and political freedom emerging triumphant throughout the world. Nixon's visit to China nurtured this idea, and by the 1980s it was helping to sustain America's hopefulness about its own democratic identity. Meanwhile, Chinese popular culture has focused on the U.S., especially American consumer goods—Coca-Cola was described by the People's Daily as "capitalism concentrated in a bottle."

Today we face a new global institutional and cultural environment in which the old myths no longer work for either Americans or Chinese. Madsen provides a framework for us to think about the relationship between democratic ideals and economic/political realities in the post-Cold War world. What he proposes is no less than the foundation for building a public philosophy for the emerging world order.

Interpretation Radical but Not Unruly

$63.00

With this challenging work, Joseph Margolis continues the project begun in The Flux of History and the Flux of Science (California, 1993). Tackling one of philosophy's master themes, he develops the controversial thesis that the world is a flux. Here he applies this doctrine to Western theories of history and the interpretation of cultural phenomena—offering the first sustained analysis of the logic, methodology, and metaphysics of interpretation committed to a thoroughgoing relativism and the historicized structure of cultural phenomena. Versed in Anglo-American and Continental philosophy, Margolis draws on the best views of Western philosophy to investigate a topic regularly ignored in that tradition. The result is the surprising synthesis of two historically antipathetic approaches to philosophy.

Dilemmas of Enlightenment

$63.00

Oscar Kenshur combines trenchant analyses of important early-modern texts with a powerful critique of postmodern theories of ideology. He thereby contributes both to our understanding of Enlightenment thought and to contemporary debates about cultural studies and critical theory.

While striving to resolve "dilemmas" occasioned by conflicting intellectual and political commitments, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century writers often relied upon ideas originally used by their enemies to support very different claims. Thus, they engaged in what Kenshur calls "intellectual co-optation." In exploring the ways in which Dryden, Bayle, Voltaire, Johnson, and others used this technique, Kenshur presents a historical landscape distinctly different from the one constructed by much contemporary theory.

Yorick's World

$63.00

Peter Caws provides a fresh and often iconoclastic treatment of some of the most vexing problems in the philosophy of science: explanation, induction, causality, evolution, discovery, artificial intelligence, and the social implications of technological rationality.

Caws's work has been shaped equally by the insights of Continental philosophy and a concern with scientific practice. In these twenty-eight essays spanning more than a quarter of a century, he ranges from discussions of the work of French philosopher Gaston Bachelard, to relations between science and surrealism, to the concept of intentionality, to the limits of quantitative description. A lively mix of history, theory, speculation, and analysis, Yorick's World presents a vision of science that includes human history and social life. It will interest professional philosophers and scientists, and at the same time its directness will make it readily accessible to nontechnical readers.

Inhibition

$63.00

In everyday parlance, "inhibition" suggests repression, tight control, the opposite of freedom. In medicine and psychotherapy the term is commonplace, its definition understood. Relating how inhibition—the word and the concept—became a bridge between society at large and the natural sciences of mind and brain, Smith constructs an engagingly original history of our view of ourselves.

Not until the late nineteenth century did the term "inhibition" become common in English, connoting the dependency of reason and of civilization itself on the repression of "the beast within." This usage followed a century of Enlightenment thought about human nature and the nature of the human mind. Smith traces theories of inhibitory control from the moralistic psychologies of the early nineteenth century to the famous twentieth-century schools of Sherrington, Pavlov, and Freud. He finds that the meanings of "inhibition" cross disciplinary boundaries and outline the growth of our belief in the self-regulated person.

Dear Carnap, Dear Van

$68.95

Rudolf Carnap and W. V. Quine, two of the twentieth century's most important philosophers, corresponded at length—and over a long period of time—on matters personal, professional, and philosophical. Their friendship encompassed issues and disagreements that go to the heart of contemporary philosophic discussions. Carnap (1891-1970) was a founder and leader of the logical positivist school. The younger Quine (1908-) began as his staunch admirer but diverged from him increasingly over questions in the analysis of meaning and the justification of belief. That they remained close, relishing their differences through years of correspondence, shows their stature both as thinkers and as friends. The letters are presented here, in full, for the first time.

The substantial introduction by Richard Creath offers a lively overview of Carnap's and Quine's careers and backgrounds, allowing the nonspecialist to see their writings in historical and intellectual perspective. Creath also provides a judicious analysis of the philosophical divide between them, showing how deep the issues cut into the discipline, and how to a large extent they remain unresolved.

Songs without Music

$63.00

In this pathbreaking and provocative analysis of the aesthetics of law, the historian, legal theorist, and musician Desmond Manderson argues that by treating a text, legal or otherwise, as if it were merely a sequence of logical propositions, readers miss its formal and symbolic meanings. Creatively using music as a model, he demonstrates that law is not a sterile, rational structure, but a cultural form to be valued and enhanced through rhetoric and metaphors, form, images, and symbols. To further develop this argument, the book is divided into chapters, each of which is based on a different musical form.

Law, for Manderson, should strive for neither coherence nor integrity. Rather, it is imperfectly realized, constantly reinterpreted, and always in flux. Songs without Music is written in an original, engaging, and often humorous style, and exhibits a deep knowledge of both law and music. It successfully traverses several disciplines and builds an original and persuasive argument for a legal aesthetic. The book will appeal to a broad readership in law, political theory, literary criticism, and cultural studies.

Man and the Word

$85.00

This fully annotated volume offers the first English translation of the orations of Himerius of Athens, a prominent teacher of rhetoric in the fourth century A.D. Man and the Word contains 79 surviving orations and fragments of orations in the grand tradition of imperial Greek rhetoric. The speeches, a rich source on the intellectual life of late antiquity, capture the flavor of student life in Athens, illuminate relations in the educated community, and illustrate the ongoing civic role of the sophist. This volume includes speeches given by Himerius in various cities as he traveled east to join the emperor Julian, customary declamations on imaginary topics, and a noteworthy monody on the death of his son. Extensive introductory notes and annotations place these translations in their literary and historical contexts.

Plato's Parmenides

$63.00

Of all Plato’s dialogues, the Parmenides is notoriously the most difficult to interpret. Scholars of all periods have disagreed about its aims and subject matter. The interpretations have ranged from reading the dialogue as an introduction to the whole of Platonic metaphysics to seeing it as a collection of sophisticated tricks, or even as an elaborate joke. This work presents an illuminating new translation of the dialogue together with an extensive introduction and running commentary, giving a unified explanation of the Parmenides and integrating it firmly within the context of Plato's metaphysics and methodology.

Scolnicov shows that in the Parmenides Plato addresses the most serious challenge to his own philosophy: the monism of Parmenides and the Eleatics. In addition to providing a serious rebuttal to Parmenides, Plato here re-formulates his own theory of forms and participation, arguments that are central to the whole of Platonic thought, and provides these concepts with a rigorous logical and philosophical foundation. In Scolnicov's analysis, the Parmenides emerges as an extension of ideas from Plato's middle dialogues and as an opening to the later dialogues.

Scolnicov’s analysis is crisp and lucid, offering a persuasive approach to a complicated dialogue. This translation follows the Greek closely, and the commentary affords the Greekless reader a clear understanding of how Scolnicov’s interpretation emerges from the text. This volume will provide a valuable introduction and framework for understanding a dialogue that continues to generate lively discussion today.

Thing Knowledge

$85.00

Western philosophers have traditionally concentrated on theory as the means for expressing knowledge about a variety of phenomena. This absorbing book challenges this fundamental notion by showing how objects themselves, specifically scientific instruments, can express knowledge. As he considers numerous intriguing examples, Davis Baird gives us the tools to "read" the material products of science and technology and to understand their place in culture. Making a provocative and original challenge to our conception of knowledge itself, Thing Knowledge demands that we take a new look at theories of science and technology, knowledge, progress, and change. Baird considers a wide range of instruments, including Faraday's first electric motor, eighteenth-century mechanical models of the solar system, the cyclotron, various instruments developed by analytical chemists between 1930 and 1960, spectrometers, and more.

Essays on Music

$78.95

Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969), one of the principal figures associated with the Frankfurt School, wrote extensively on culture, modernity, aesthetics, literature, and—more than any other subject—music. To this day, Adorno remains the single most influential contributor to the development of qualitative musical sociology which, together with his nuanced intertextual readings of musical works, gives him broad claim as a continuing force in the study of music. This long-awaited collection of twenty-seven essays represents the full range of Adorno's music writing. Nearly half of the essays appear in English for the first time; all of the essays are fully annotated; and the previously translated essays have been corrected and missing text restored, making this volume the definitive resource on Adorno's musical thought.

Prematurity in Scientific Discovery

$34.95

For centuries, observers have noted the many obstacles to intellectual change in science. In a much-discussed paper published in Scientific American in 1972, molecular biologist Gunther Stent proposed an explicit criterion for one kind of obstacle to scientific discovery. He denoted a claim or hypothesis as "premature" if its implications cannot be connected to canonical knowledge by a simple series of logical steps. Further, Stent suggested that it was appropriate for the scientific community to ignore such hypotheses so that it would not be overwhelmed by vast numbers of false leads. In this volume, eminent scientists, physicians, historians, social scientists, and philosophers respond to Stent's thesis.

Gadamer’s Repercussions

$85.00

Certainly one of the key German philosophers of the twentieth century, Hans-Georg Gadamer also influenced the study of literature, art, music, sacred and legal texts, and medicine. Indeed, while much attention has been focused on Gadamer's writings about ancient Greek and modern German philosophy, the relevance of his work for other disciplines is only now beginning to be properly considered and understood. In an effort to address this slant, this volume brings together many prominent scholars to assess, re-evaluate, and question Hans-Georg Gadamer's works, as well as his place in intellectual history. The book includes a recent essay by Gadamer on "the task of hermeneutics," as well as essays by distinguished contributors including Jürgen Habermas, Richard Rorty, Gerald Bruns, Georgia Warnke, and many others.

The contributors situate Gadamer's views in surprising ways and show that his writings speak to a range of contemporary debates—from constitutional questions to issues of modern art. A controversial final section attempts to uncover and clarify Gadamer's history in relation to National Socialism. More an investigation and questioning than a celebration of this venerable and profoundly influential philosopher, this collection will become a catalyst for any future rethinking of philosophical hermeneutics, as well as a significant starting place for rereading and reviewing Hans-Georg Gadamer.

The Triumph of Venus

$85.00

The theory of law and economics that dominates American jurisprudence today views the market as rational and individuals as driven by the desire to increase their wealth. It is a view riddled with misconceptions, as Jeanne Lorraine Schroeder demonstrates in this challenging work, which looks at contemporary debates in legal theory through the lens of psychoanalysis and continental philosophy. Through metaphors drawn from classical mythology and interpreted via Lacanian psychoanalysis and Hegelian philosophy, Schroeder exposes the hidden and repressed erotics of the market. Her work shows how the predominant economic analysis of markets and the standard romantic critique of markets are in fact mirror images, reflecting the misconception that reason and passion are inalterably opposed.

Leviathan

$33.99 $22.09 Save $11.90

Written by one of the founders of modern political philosophy, Thomas Hobbes, during the English civil war, Leviathan is an influential work of nonfiction. Regarded as one of the earliest examples of the social contract theory, Leviathan has both historical and philosophical importance. Social contract theory prioritizes the state over the individual, claiming that individuals have consented to the surrender of some of their freedoms by participating in society. These surrendered freedoms help ensure that the government can be run easily. In exchange for their sacrifice, the individual is protected and given a place in a steady social order. Articulating this theory, Hobbes argues for a strong, undivided government ruled by an absolute sovereign. To support his argument, Hobbes includes topics of religion, human nature and taxation. Separated into four sections, Hobbes claims his theory to be the resolution of the civil war that raged on as he wrote, creating chaos and taking causalities. The first section, Of Man discusses the role human nature and instinct plays in the formation of government. The second section, Of Commonwealth explains the definition, implications, types, and rules of succession in a commonwealth government. Of a Christian Commonwealth imagines the religion’s role government and societal moral standards. Finally, Hobbes closes his argument with Of the Kingdom of Darkness.

Through the use of philosophical theory and historical study, Thomas Hobbes attempts to convince citizens to consider the cost and reward of being governed. Without an understanding of the sociopolitical theories that keep government bodies in power, subjects can easily become complicit or allow society to slip into anarchy. Created during a brutal civil war, Hobbes hoped to educate and persuade his peers. Though Leviathan was a work of controversy in its time, Hobbes’ theories and prose has survived centuries, shaping the ideas of modern philosophy.

This edition of Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes is now presented with a stunning new cover design and is printed in an easy-to-read font. With these accommodations, Leviathan is accessible and applicable to contemporary readers.

Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book.

With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.

Ideas of Good and Evil

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Ideas of Good and Evil (1903) is a collection of wide-ranging essays by Irish poet W.B. Yeats. Writing on such subjects as the art of poetry, politics, and the occult, Yeats proves himself to be not only a master of verse and drama, but an immensely talented essayist and thorough scholar.

“What is ‘Popular Poetry’?” reflects on a changing Irish literary landscape which has, over the course of Yeats’ career, established its own place in world literature apart from, and perhaps surpassing, its English counterpart. Juxtaposing “the poetry of the coteries, which presupposes the written tradition” and “the true poetry of the people, which presupposes the unwritten tradition,” Yeats argues that the spirit of Irish poetry depends on its unfaltering connection to the itinerant bards and storytellers whose gift for musicality and memory kept language alive for a widely illiterate people. In “Magic,” Yeats, a longtime member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, discusses his belief in the occult. Musing on the power of symbol to evoke memories, as well as the revelation of his past lives, Yeats provides personal anecdotes and secondhand accounts of magical occurrences and experiences, exposing a world secrets and hidden meaning for believers and the uninitiated alike. “The Philosophy of Shelley’s Poetry” is an academic essay in which Yeats argues that Shelley’s poems far surpass the radical ideologies of such figures as William Godwin. Ideas of Good and Evil showcases the diverse intellectual and spiritual interests of W.B. Yeats, an icon of Irish literature and one of the twentieth century’s leading poetic voices.

This edition of W.B. Yeats’s Ideas of Good and Evil is a classic of Irish literature reimagined for modern readers.

Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book.

With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.

The Sublime and The Beautiful

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A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) is a philosophical treatise published in pamphlet form by Irish statesman and thinker Edmund Burke. Following in the footsteps of generations of philosophers, especially Aristotle and Hume, Burke sought to describe the inherent difference between beauty and sublimity as emotional responses rooted in human perception. His work was incredibly influential for the growth of Romanticism in Europe and Britain especially, which sought to capture the sublime in both visual art, music, and literature.

Burke begins with a section on the senses in relation to human individuality and society in order to illuminate the collective nature of passions—for which we may read emotions—and to argue that the power of the arts is to shape and effect those emotions. In the second part, Burke observes the passions caused by the sublime, including terror, as well as records the effects of certain sensory perceptions—of sound, light, color, and smell—on creating sublime feelings in the mind. Part three follows the same trajectory but describes the beautiful instead before ultimately comparing the two, and part four attempts to ascertain their causes in nature. Burke concludes his treatise with a brief section on the sublime and beautiful in poetry, laying the groundwork for Romanticism’s use of language, among other things, to purposefully invoke feeling in the reader or observer.

This edition of Edmund Burke’s A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful is a classic of philosophy reimagined for modern readers.

Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book.

With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.

The Consolation of Philosophy

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A conversational text that addresses many philosophical concepts as well as Western religion by questioning good versus evil and the unnecessary suffering of innocent people. Anicius Boethius draws from his own experiences to illustrate these spiritual and ethical struggles.

In The Consolation of Philosophy the author engages in a figurative discussion with Lady Philosophy, a type of teacher. Through their exchange, he poses serious questions regarding the existence of God and human nature. He also acknowledges his own dire circumstances, contemplating the hardships and trauma. Many counterpoints are tied to ideals such as the Wheel of Fortune, highlighting inconsistent and often unfair outcomes. He also focuses on the importance of intangible gifts such as love and intelligence.

The Consolation of Philosophy is an honest analysis of the nature of happiness. It forces the reader to face hard truths about their wants versus needs. It’s a sobering examination of the unpredictable structure of life.

With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of The Consolation of Philosophy is both modern and readable.

Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book.

With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.

Beyond Good and Evil

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In Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche gives an impassioned analysis of Western religion, specifically Christianity, that confronts its authoritative view of humans and nature. Nietzsche introduces a counterargument that dismisses groupthink or herd mentality and emphasizes a person’s “will to power.” He demystifies past ideas, encouraging a bold alternative.

An honest study of different ideologies and their influence on positive and negative behaviors. With nearly 300 aphorisms, the author criticizes the state of philosophy and its link to conventional wisdom. He also rejects a universal code of ethics as it doesn’t account for the distinct characteristics of each individual. Nietzsche suggests every person has a lived experience that affects their outlook on what’s right and wrong.

Nietzsche is one of the most famous and controversial thinkers of all-time. His works are staples within the intellectual community and are used to discuss identity, nobility and personal growth. He is often a point of reference for other scholars, including psychologists, scientists and political leaders.

With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Beyond Good and Evil is both modern and readable.

Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book.

With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.