Metaphysics Reclaimed


Book Description

Discusses the general nature of philosophy and its values, logic, mathematics, physics, a general approach to ontology, epistemology (the nature - and limits - of human knowledge), an outlook on cosmology, human and animal psychology, human ethics, and the divine reality.




Priority in Aristotle's Metaphysics


Book Description

The idea that some parts of reality are fundamental and others derivative was an important one in Aristotle's philosophical system, and is now again of great current interest in philosophy. Michail Peramatzis presents a new account of priority relations in Aristotle's metaphysics, and draws out their continuing philosophical significance.




Nietzsche's Reclamation of Philosophy


Book Description

Nietzsche is famous for rejecting a great many standard philosophical methods. He does this on the basis of critical assessments of these methods. Nietzsche's historical critiques are justly famous but the question of what his new philosophy is often not explored. The important issue is what Nietzsche believed were some of the possibilities left for philosophy if his criticisms of previous philosophies were correct. This book is called the 'Reclamation of Philosophy' because Nietzsche is engaged in a task of reappropriating certain characteristics of past philosophies into his work. He reclaims philosophical reflection as practiced by French moralists, some Presocratic philosophers, and some German thinkers. As a mature writer he is no longer interested in philosophy simply as a place to display skill in analytic or logical reasoning. He is interested in a philosophy which can address the cultural and personal issues of people constructing themselves in their world. He is particularly interested in using philosophical talents to help to discover the values implicit in practices and assumptions which people hold. These 'values' are not just moral and aesthetic they are also epistemologically relevant. Nietzsche's Reclamation of Philosophy elucidates what Nietzsche has to say about value; particularly what he has to say about moral value, by looking at his views of aesthetic value.




Introduction to Metaphysics


Book Description

Jean Grondin completes the first history of metaphysics and respects both the analytical and the Continental schools while transcending the theoretical limitations of each. He reviews seminal texts by Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and Augustine. He follows the theological turn in the metaphysical thought of Avicenna, Anselm, Aquinas, and Duns Scotus, and he revisits Descartes and the cogito; Spinoza and Leibniz's rationalist approaches; Kant's reclaiming of the metaphysical tradition; and post-Kantian practice up to Hegel. He engages with twentieth century innovations that upended the discipline, particularly Heidegger's revival of the question of Being and the rediscovery of the metaphysics of existence by Sartre and the Existentialists, language by Gadamer and Derrida, and transcendence by Levinas. Metaphysics is often dismissed as a form or epoch of philosophy that must be overcome, yet by promoting a full understanding of its platform and processes, Grondin reveals its cogent approach to reality and foundational influence on modern philosophy and science. By restoring the value of metaphysics for contemporary audiences, Grondin showcases the rich currents and countercurrents of metaphysical thought and its future possibilities.




The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics


Book Description

Some of the world's specialists provide in this handbook essays about what kinds of things there are, in what ways they exist, and how they relate to each other. They give the word on such topics as identity, modality, time, causation, persons and minds, freedom, and vagueness.




Guerrilla Metaphysics


Book Description

In Guerrilla Metaphysics, Graham Harman develops further the object-oriented philosophy first proposed in Tool-Being. Today’s fashionable philosophies often treat metaphysics as a petrified relic of the past, and hold that future progress requires an ever further abandonment of all claims to discuss reality in itself. Guerrilla Metaphysics makes the opposite assertion, challenging the dominant "philosophy of access" (both continental and analytic) that remains quarantined in discussions of language, perception, or literary texts. Philosophy needs a fresh resurgence of the things themselves—not merely the words or appearances themselves. Once these themes are adapted to the needs of an object-oriented philosophy, what emerges is a brand new type of metaphysics—a "guerrilla metaphysics."




Hegel's Critique of Metaphysics


Book Description

Hegel's Science of Logic has received less attention than his Phenomenology of Spirit, but Hegel himself took it to be his highest philosophical achievement and the backbone of his system. The present book focuses on this most difficult of Hegel's published works. Béatrice Longuenesse offers a close analysis of core issues, including discussions of what Hegel means by 'dialectical logic', the role and meaning of 'contradiction' in Hegel's philosophy, and Hegel's justification for the provocative statement that 'what is real is rational, what is rational is real'. She examines both Hegel's debt and his polemical reaction to Kant, and shows in great detail how his project of a 'dialectical' logic can be understood only in light of its relation to Kant's 'transcendental' logic. This book will appeal to anyone interested in Hegel's philosophy and its influence on contemporary philosophical discussion.




Transcendental Idealism and Metaphysics


Book Description

The book offers a systematic reconstruction of the disagreement between Husserl and Heidegger from the former's point of view, but without falling into any form of Husserlian apologetics. The main thesis is that Husserl's critique of Heidegger's existential analytics as a form of philosophical anthropology entails a deeper fundamental thesis, namely, that Heidegger confuses the subject matter of first philosophy (the transcendental subject) with metaphysics (in the Husserlian sense of the expression). At stake in Husserl's critique of Heidegger's philosophy in Being and Time is the refusal to transcendentalize the irrational aspects of our human existence. This second volume focuses on the question of being, clarifying the distinction between ontology and metaphysics in Husserl's thought. In fact, contrary to a long-standing and established interpretive tradition, according to which Husserl's phenomenology is metaphysically neutral, the book shows to what extent Husserl always understood as the ultimate goal of his philosophizing the positive foundation of a metaphysics. This volume appeals to students and researchers.




Emergence


Book Description

Over the last several decades, the theories of emergence and downward causation have become arguably the most popular conceptual tools in scientific and philosophical attempts to explain the nature and character of global organization observed in various biological phenomena, from individual cell organization to ecological systems. The theory of emergence acknowledges the reality of layered strata or levels of systems, which are consequences of the appearance of an interacting range of novel qualities. A closer analysis of emergentism, however, reveals a number of philosophical problems facing this theory. In Emergence, Mariusz Tabaczek offers a thorough analysis of these problems and a constructive proposal of a new metaphysical foundation for both the classic downward causation-based and the new dynamical depth accounts of emergence theory, developed by Terrence Deacon. Tabaczek suggests ways in which both theoretical models of emergentism can be grounded in the classical and the new (dispositionalist) versions of Aristotelianism. This book will have an eager audience in metaphysicians working both in the analytic and the Thomistic traditions, as well as philosophers of science and biology interested in emergence theory and causation.




One Foot in the Finite


Book Description

One Foot in the Finite inspires a radical shift in our view of Melville’s project in Moby-Dick, for its guiding notion is that Melville uses his book to call into question the naturalism that distinguishes the early modern period in Europe. Naturalism is not only the idea that reality is exhausted by nature, or that there exists a domain of physical entities subject to autonomous laws and unaffected by human ingenuity; it also implies a counterpart, a world of pretense and deception, a domain of mental entities ontologically distinct from physical entities and therefore constituting a different realm. To naturalists, whales are part of the background of existing objects against which man assembles his various, subjective, rather arbitrary interpretations. But in Moby-Dick Melville casts upon the world a more ingenious eye, one free of the dualist veil. He confronts a basic misconception: that the contents of consciousness comprise a different order from physical life. He rubs out the dividing line modernity has drawn between the human world of names or concepts and the nonhuman world of plants, creatures, geological features, and natural forces. Melville’s philosophizing, carried by fiction, has dramatic consequence. It overturns our view of language as a system of mental representations that might turn out to represent falsely.