The End of Ethics in a Technological Society

A critical assessment of the failure of liberal ethics to meet the challenges posed by techno-science.

The Irony of Theology and the Nature of Religious Thought

Donald Wiebe critically examines the pervasive assumption that theology is a form of religious thought that is both compatible with and supportive of religious faith. The irony, he argues, is that theology is in fact detrimental to religion and the religious way of life.

Ideas, Concepts, and Reality

An original exploration of the distinction between subjective ideas and objective concepts.

Studies in Christian Existentialism

Jena Romanticism and Its Appropriation of Jakob Böhme

Interest in German Romanticism has been revitalized in recent years by new post-structural, interdisciplinary, and intertextual perspectives. However until now this renewed interest has not led to a re-examination of Jakob Böhme's formative influence on

The Origins of Walter Rauschenbusch's Social Ethics

Walter Rauschenbusch is known as the father of the Social Concern movement in America. Traditionally, the source of his social ethic has been seen to lie in the single motif of liberalism. Donovan Smucker provides a new perspective, arguing that Rauschenbusch's social ethic was based on not one b...

The Philosophy of Sartre

As a playwright, novelist, political theorist, literary critic, and philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre (1905- 1980) remains an iconic figure. This book examines his philosophical ideas and methods.

Enlightenment and Community

In an age when it has become fashionable to dismiss the Enlightenment as a sinister movement based on instrumental rationality, Benjamin Redekop delves deeper to understand the movement on its own terms. In Enlightenment and Community he shows that the E

A Disciplined Intelligence

This highly original contribution to Canadian intellectual history examines the course of critical inquiry and its relationship to the assertion of moral authority in English-Canadian thought during the Victorian era.

The Philosophy of Husserl

As the founding father of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl has been hugely influential in the development of contemporary continental philosophy. In The Philosophy of Husserl, Burt Hopkins shows that the unity of Husserl's philosophical entreprise is found in its investigation of the origns of cogni...

The Philosophy of Nature

In this general summation of the theory Brian Ellis, at the forefront of developing the new essentialism, introduces students and generalists to an emerging metaphysical perspective that provides a comprehensive new philosophy of nature.

The Career of Toleration

John Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration is one of the canonical English-language texts in the history of the idea of toleration. Its publication in 1689 sparked a heated debate with Anglican cleric Jonas Proast, and in recent years the Locke-Proast cont

Henri Bergson and British Modernism

Mary Ann Gillies shows that French philosopher Henri Bergson played a central role in the development of British literary modernism. While Bergson's influence on modernism has long been debated, this is the first thorough, current examination of the ways in which his ideas are manifest in British...

John Rawls

Cosmopolitanism

Death

Central Works of Philosophy, Volume 3

A primer on the core texts of the Western philosophical canon aimed at undergraduate students and general readers.

The Philosophy of Merleau-Ponty

An introduction to the life and thought of one of the most important French thinkers of the twentieth-century.

Wilfrid Sellars

An impressive exploration of the complexity and range of the work of one of the central philosophical figures of the twentieth century.

An Enlightenment Tory in Victorian Scotland

An Enlightenment Tory in Victorian Scotland is a political and intellectual biography of Sir Archibald Alison (1792-1867), historian, social critic, criminal lawyer, and sheriff of Lanarkshire. The first author to examine the full range of Alison's writin

Freedom, Equality, Community

Accounts of the work of six significant figures in Canadian political thought are used to examine key intellectual debates, including the national unity issue and Canada's relationship with the United States. James Bickerton, Stephen Brooks, and Alain Gagnon analyse the work and influence of Geor...

The Philosophy of Gadamer

The ideas of German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer have had considerable influence both in their own right, as the leading modern exposition of philosophical hermeneutics, and in interpreting the works of others, especially Heidegger, Hegel, and Plato. Jean Grondin provides an authoritative and c...

Meaning

An insightful look at the philosophy of language.

Rule-Following and Meaning

A selection of readings on a central topic in contemporary philosophy of language, mind, and metaphysics.

An Examination of the Philosophy of Bacon

An Examination of the Philosophy of Bacon is one of Joseph de Maistre's most original and important works. Best known for his defence of throne and altar and for his critique of the political and religious thought of the Enlightenment, Maistre also addressed more fundamental philosophical issues....

Evolutionary Intuitionism

It seems impossible that organisms selected to maximize their genetic legacy could also be moral agents in a world in which taking risks for strangers is sometimes morally laudable. Brian Zamulinski argues that it is possible if morality is an evolutionary by-product rather than an adaptation.

Art's Emotions

How is that artistic works have the power to move the human heart? Why does Manet's Woman with a Parrot evoke reverie, and an Edward Elgar cello concerto, nostalgia? What is the value of such experiences? Art's Emotions is a reflective, thought-provoking exploration of the significance that exper...

Modality

This introduction emphasizes the metaphysics of modality

Philosophy of Music

What makes some music a work of art - what we hear, the performance, or something we invent or discover?

Against Rousseau

A fierce opponent of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Joseph de Maistre was a widely read critic of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Against Rousseau provides the English-speaking reader with a rare first-hand view of the intellectual world of the early counter-revolution.

Inauthentic Culture and Its Philosophical Critics

Despite the pervasive feeling that much of the culture of Western democracies has increasingly become inauthentic or phoney, contemporary cultural critics and observers have paid little attention to the traditional philosophical criticism of inauthentic culture that began with Socrates, Aristopha...

The Philosophy of Schopenhauer

A comprehensive introduction that makes even the most difficult of Schopenhauer's ideas accessible without sacrificing any of their complexity.

Analytic versus Continental

A clarifying examination of the differences and similarities between two philosophical schools.

Sophocles' Use of Psychological Terminology

This masterly study examines Sophocles' use of six key psychic terms, analysing how he refers to these terms as sources of thought, emotion, and will. A meticulous synthesis of existing scholarship and philological inquiry, it compares Sophocles' use of language with that of earlier and contempor...

Informal Logic

In this insightful critique of informal logic and critical thinking strategies and techniques, Wayne Grennan examines argument evaluation techniques currently used in both formal and informal logic texts and, finding them lacking, proposes a new system of evaluation.

Dilemmas of Trust

Every human relationship, whether between lovers, friends, family members, or colleagues, involves trust or distrust. When we trust, we take for granted that others are not out to harm us; we relax and feel safe. When we distrust, we are fearful; we withdraw and try to protect ourselves. In Dilem...

Relativism

Relativism lies at the very heart of philosophy since there can be little point to debates in other philosophical areas if the issues surrounding relativism are not resolved. This book offers a systematic discussion of a variety of different relativist positions that are often grouped together un...

Idealism

The rediscovery of Idealism is an unmistakable feature of contemporary philosophy. Heavily criticised by the dominant philosophies of the twentieth century, it is being reconsidered in the twenty-first as a rich and untapped resource for contemporary philosophical arguments and concepts. Idealism...

Joseph de Maistre's Life, Thought, and Influence

In Joseph de Maistre's Life, Thought, and Influence leading Maistre scholars offer interpretations of his thought and make available in English recent French scholarship on his life and work. They provide a portrait of Maistre as a significant thinker in numerous fields, upsetting the image of hi...

Améliorer le leadership dans les services de santé au Canada

How to train senior managers to make better use of evidence to transform health care.

Central Works of Philosophy, Volume 2

A primer on the core texts of the Western philosophical canon for undergraduate students and general readers.

Central Works of Philosophy, Volume 5

Ranging over 2,500 years of philosophical writing, this five-volume collection of essays is an unrivalled companion to the study and reading of philosophy. Central Works of Philosophy provides both an overview of particular works and clear and authoritative expositions of their central ideas, giv...

Karl Polanyi on Ethics and Economics

Breaking new ground in Polanyi scholarship, Gregory Baum explores the relation between ethics, culture, and economics in Karl Polanyi's writings. He identifies and analyses key concepts of Polanyi's thought and shows how they apply to the contemporary debate on ethics and economics.

Possible Worlds

Ever since Kripke and others developed a semantic interpretation for modal logic, "possible worlds" has become a much debated issue in contemporary metaphysics.

Christian Attitudes towards the State of Israel

When the United Nations debated the future of the Mandate of Palestine in 1947, world opinion was powerfully affected by news of the Holocaust and the plight of Jewish refugees. This momentary humanitarian advantage aided Christian Zionists in mobilizing

Kant on History and Religion

Imperial Paradoxes

At war for sixty years, eighteenth-century Britain and France experienced demographic, social, and economic exchanges despite their imperial rivalry. Paradoxically, this rivalry spurred their participation in scientific and industrial developments. Their shared interest in standards of living and...

Universals

Things are particulars and their qualities are universals, but do universals have an existence that is distinct from that of particular things? And what is their nature if they do? In Universals J.P. Moreland addresses these questions, in particular those issues that have been a crucial part of t...

Central Works of Philosophy, Volume 4

A primer on the core texts of the Western philosophical canon for undergraduate students and general readers.

Scottish Common Sense in Germany, 1768-1800

Proponents of Scottish common-sense philosophy, especially Thomas Reid, James Oswald, and James Beattie, had a substantial influence on late enlightenment German philosophy. In this illuminating study Manfred Kuehn explores the nature and extent of that influence. He finds that the work of these ...

Northern Spirits

Canadians have devoted considerable thought to Hegel - a proposition born out by the work of John Watson, George Grant, and Charles Taylor, three major Canadian political philosophers of the last century. In Northern Spirits, Robert Sibley examines how Watson, Grant, and Taylor found in Hegel the...

Lament for a Nation, 40th Anniversary Edition

The classic masterpiece of political meditation.

Morals and Consent

An evolutionary defence of contractarian ethics as applied to social norms.

Modern Philosophy

Modern Philosophy takes a fresh look at the common themes that dominate this period as well as obvious differences in the work of its six major philosophers: René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, G.W. Leibniz, John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume.

John Toland

This study is the first sympathetic philosophical treatment in English of the complete works of John Toland (1670-1722). Professor Daniel presents Toland as a champion of religious toleration and civil liberty whose writing is important because it brings

Feminist Philosophies of Life

Exploring life’s character, sex, and meaning, while calling attention to the most precarious among us.

The Philosophy of Nietzsche

This fresh introduction to Nietzsche's philosophical work provides students new to Nietzsche with an excellent framework for understanding the central concerns of his philosophical and cultural writings and why Nietzsche's ideas continue to spark controversy in philosophy and in allied disciplines.

How to Understand Language

Why are philosophers, as opposed to, say, linguists and psychologists, puzzled by language? How should we attempt to shed philosophical light on the phenomenon of language? How to Understand Language frames a discussion in light of these two questions and begins by thinking about the reasons that...

Integrity, Second Edition

How to restore integrity so that social values can be upheld and family welfare strengthened.

Scepticism

Ever since Descartes identified the first task of philosophy as the defeat of scepticism, the challenge posed by scepticism has remained a central problem for epistemology. Neil Gascoigne introduces the sceptical arguments and methods of the canonical philosophers from Sextus Empiricus's Pyrrhoni...

Humanizing Mental Illness

Humanizing Mental Illness demonstrates that we need to challenge our explicit and implicit biases and learn to interact with mental illness in more intentional, supportive, and inclusive ways. While most philosophical accounts of the matter are concerned with the question of how much agency a per...

Archives and the Event of God

An innovative approach to thinking about religion through post-structuralist concepts.

The Recovery of Wonder

Environmental degradation. Globalization. The closure of our public life to the transcendent dimensions of human existence. For esteemed philosopher Kenneth Schmitz these are the by-products of modernity and post-modernity. But The Recovery of Wonder is not a denunciation of modern philosophy. In...

David Armstrong

David (D.M.) Armstrong is one of Australia's greatest philosophers. His chief philosophical achievement has been the development of a core metaphysical program that covers the topics of universals, laws, modality, and facts - a naturalistic metaphysics, consistent with a scientific view of the na...

Political Philosophy

Political Philosophy is a comprehensive introduction to the major topics in political theory. It explores the philosophical traditions that have formed and continue to inform our political judgements about fundamental questions such as why and when we can demand freedom, claim rights, complain wh...

Postmodernism and the Ethical Subject

The shock of the modern has given way to global and transnational shifts and cultural displacements. What ethical demands have been created by this and what new models of thinking enable us to meet their challenge?

Donald Davidson

An in-depth examination of Donald Davidson's work.

The Form of Politics

A study of Aristotle’s and Plato’s interpretations of friendship and their significance for political life.

Phenomenal Consciousness

How can the fine-grained phenomenology of conscious experience arise from neural processes in the brain? How does a set of action potentials (nerve impulses) become like the feeling of pain in one's experience? Contemporary neuroscience is teaching us that our mental states correlate with neural ...

Knowledge

What is it about knowledge that makes us value it more highly than mere true belief? This question lies at the heart of epistemology and has challenged philosophers ever since it was first posed by Plato. By examining the historical and contemporary answers, Michael Welbourne provides an excellen...

Herder on Nationality, Humanity, and History

The core of J.G. Herder's philosophy of nationalism lies in the conviction that human creativity must be embedded in the particular culture of a communal language. While he acknowledged that this cultural particular must be integrated into a more universal humanity, he insisted that each culture ...

David Lewis

A seminal introduction to the greatest metaphysician since Leibniz.

Canadian Idealism and the Philosophy of Freedom

An intriguing work that considers the shared tradition of Canadian political philosophy.

The Philosophy of Wine

Can a wine really be feminine, profound, or pretentious? Is Château L'Eglise Clinet 1989 really a better wine than Château Belair 1989? Does a sommelier's judgment have any objective validity or is everyone's palette different and the advice of a critic therefore irrelevant? Is a great wine a wor...

War as Paradox

The origin and continued importance of dialectical war theory in the works of Clausewitz and Hegel.

Ontology

This introduction to ontology - the philosophical study of what exists and what it means for something to exist - will provide students of metaphysics with a comprehensive account of the central ideas at the heart of the subject of being.

How to be a Green Liberal

An insightful look at how liberalism can embrace a non-anthropocentric view of nature.

The Experience of Meaning

A provocative exploration of the experience of meaning, and a clarion call for its recovery in contemporary culture.

Rights and Reason

In Rights and Reason Jonathan Gorman sets discussion of the "rights debate" within a wide-ranging philosophical framework, drawing on positions in epistemology, metaphysics, and a theory of human nature.

Philosophy of Language, Second Edition

Alexander Miller's accessible survey shows that philosophy of language is at the centre of the energetic philosophical activity of this century. By interweaving the historical development of the subject with a thematic overview of radically different approaches to theories of meaning he gives rea...

Weakening Philosophy

Gianni Vattimo is one of the world's most important philosophers, yet he has received scant attention in the English-speaking world. The essays in Weakening Philosophy, from leading figures such as Umberto Eco and Charles Taylor, introduce his ideas to a wider audience.

Philosophy, Neuroscience, and Consciousness

Explaining consciousness is one of the last great unanswered scientific and philosophical problems. Immediately known, familiar and obvious, consciousness is also baffling, opaque, and strange. How and when did we become conscious? What exactly is consciousness? A gift from God? Some kind of emer...

Jean-Luc Nancy and the Future of Philosophy

The first introduction to the work of contemporary French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy.

Mind and Body

In Mind and Body Robert Kirk offers an introduction to the complex tangle of questions and puzzles roughly labelled the mind-body problem.

Michael Walzer on War and Justice

This is a book about justice: the justice of a nation's major institutions and the justice of the interaction of nations on the world stage. Michael Walzer, one of North America's most prominent social critics, has written acclaimed works about the morality of warfare, the distribution of health ...

The Philosophy of Heidegger

In The Philosophy of Heidegger, Michael Watts provides an overview of Heidegger's thoughts that is suitable for both beginning and advanced students. Free from jargon and the standard idioms of academic philosophical writing, Watts uses several illustrations and concrete examples to introduce key...

Empty Revelations

A rich and engaging investigation into the nature of literary fiction.

The Philosophy of Habermas

A comprehensive introduction to the thought of Jürgen Habermas.

Paradox

An in-depth examination of paradoxes and the philosophical issues they raise.

Central Works of Philosophy, Volume 1

A primer on the core texts of the Western philosophical canon for undergraduate students and general readers.

Unthinking Modernity

In Unthinking Modernity Judith Stamps reinterprets the communications theory of Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan as a Canadian variant of the critical theory associated with the early Frankfurt school. Stamps argues that Innis and McLuhan used their studies of media to develop a critique of the ...

The Philosophy of Kierkegaard

The author confronts Kierkegaard's "anti-philosophical" reputation and shows that he greatly influenced twentieth-century Continental philosophers and theologians.

Externalism

An examination of the view that mental states and processes are essentially dependent on the world for their nature and contents.

Action

Global Journalism Ethics

An argument for a new system of ethics in journalism that will take into account its global reach and impact.

Critical Reflection

An introductory textbook on critical thinking full of real-life examples and exercises from contemporary sources.

Reason and Self-Enactment in History and Politics

F.M. Barnard goes beyond the seventeenth-century understanding of the social contract by making national self-enactment contingent on public reasons for individual liberty within civic mutuality. He examines the possibilities and limits for a self-enacting, principled politics, acknowledging reas...

The Philosophy of Gesture

A revolutionary pragmatist account of creativity and synthetic reasoning that relies upon gesture, an action that carries on meaning.

The Philosophy of Derrida

Thomas Nagel