Product Description: A Critical Introduction to Causation and Causal Powers responds to a groundswell of interest in the topic of causal powers in contemporary metaphysics, presenting a fresh systematic overview of the realist literature,debates and arguments...read more

Groff's argument runs counter to the familiar anti-metaphysical habit. Social and political philosophy, she maintains, is not as metaphysically neutral as it may seem. Even the most deontological of theories connects up with an attendant set of philosophical commitments regarding what kinds of things exist, as a fundamental ontological matter, and what they are like. These are topics of interest not just to social and political philosophers, but to social scientists and to philosophers of social science as well. "Ruth Groff has broken new ground in demonstrating the connection between social and political thought and the ontology of causal powers.  Her account of the structure of Humean thinking about agency is excellent.  Especially significant is the role that she assigns to Kantianism in the analysis that she develops.  She moves effortlessly between contemporary metaphysics, political theory, critical social theory, and the history of modern philosophy, offering trenchant insights along the way into the work of thinkers ranging from Hume himself to Mill, Adorno, and Martha Nussbaum, and into debates over agent causation and emergence.  There is even a discussion, in the final chapter, of Spinoza.  This is big-picture philosophy at its best: rigorous and exacting at the level of detail; original, compelling and systematic in the whole."  - Stephen Mumford, Professor of Metaphysics and Dean of the Faculty of Arts, University of Nottingham

Subject & Object is a thematic collection of classic works by Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse, designed to foreground the authors' philosophical concerns, especially in the areas of epistemology, ontology, and method. The volume, which includes lucid introductions to all of the selections, illustrates Frankfurt School approaches to questions such as the nature of reason; the limits of empiricism, pragmatism and Kantian transcendental idealism; the case for materialism; the difficulty of thinking counterfactually; and the ideological character of mainstream social science. Many of the pieces in the volume are otherwise out of print. Subject & Object will be a resource for social, political, and cultural theorists who may be less familiar with the philosophical aspects of the Frankfurt School, for analytic philosophers who may not have had previous exposure to their work at all, and for anyone wanting access to these seminal texts.

Product Description: Powers and Capacities in Philosophy is designed to stake out an emerging, discipline-spanning neo-Aristotelian framework grounded in realism about causal powers. The volume brings together for the first time original essays by leading philosophers working on powers in relation to metaphysics, philosophy of natural and social science, philosophy of mind and action, epistemology, ethics and social and political philosophy...read more

Product Description: This cutting edge collection of new and previously published articles by philosophers and social scientists addresses just what it means to invoke causal mechanisms, or powers, in the context of offering a causal explanation. A unique collection, it offers the reader various disciplinary and inter-disciplinary divides, helping to stake out a new, neo-Aristotelian position within contemporary debate...read more

A collection of articles by philosophers and social scientists addressing just what it means to invoke causal mechanisms, or powers, in the context of offering a causal explanation. This book aims to bridge various disciplinary and sub-disciplinary divides, helping to stake out a neo-Aristotlian position with contemporary debate.