Product Description: This study discloses the intellectual context and the personal pretext of Thomas Paine's assault on religion in The Age of Reason. Illustrated.

The premise of this ethical theory anthology is that the study of ethics represents, above all else, participation in the thinking of a long tradition of philosophers. Organized historically by philosopher, the book provides an introductory chapter on ethical concepts and helpful commentary and study questions throughout the reading selections. Morality and the Good Life is substantial enough for a full course in ethics, but it is concise enough to allow the instructor time to include other approaches in addition to the classic texts and materials presented in this volume.

As Plato’s tripartite division of the soul, Descartes’s criterion of clear and distinct ideas, and Kant’s notion of the categorical imperative attest, philosophy has traditionally been wedded to rationalism and its “intellectualist” view of persons. In this book Christopher Williams seeks to wean his fellow philosophers away from an overly rationalistic self-understanding by using resources that are available within the philosophical tradition itself, including some that anticipate strands of Nietzsche’s thought.The book begins by developing Hume’s critique of rationalism, with reference especially to the section of the Treatise that deals with the continuing existence of bodies (an argument that subverts intellectualist criteria by attempting to satisfy them) and to his neglected essay “The Sceptic” where Hume reveals the importance of our embodiment through a comic portrayal of philosophers’ efforts to “correct our sentiments.” Then it moves on to ward off charges of irrationalism by showing that, although our powers of self-correction are more limited than the rationalist thinks they are, a Humean position is able both to sustain a commitment to reflection and to sensitize us to a version of irrationalism, manifest in monotheistic theologies, that is otherwise difficult to detect. The book concludes, more speculatively, with a comparison of persons to artworks in order to show how our aesthetic dimension is the source of some of the normative work previously assigned to rationalist reason.Ranging as it does across subfields from epistemology and history of philosophy to ethics and aesthetics, A Cultivated Reason should appeal to a wide audience of philosophers and to scholars in other fields as well.

An analysis of the disparity between faith and logic in modern society examines the willingness to challenge religious-based belief systems throughout history.

Between Two Worlds is an authoritative commentary on--and powerful reinterpretation of--the founding work of modern philosophy, Descartes's Meditations. Philosophers have tended to read Descartes's seminal work in an occasional way, examining its treatment of individual topics while ignoring other parts of the text. In contrast, John Carriero provides a sustained, systematic reading of the whole text, giving a detailed account of the positions against which Descartes was reacting, and revealing anew the unity, meaning, and originality of the Meditations. Carriero finds in the Meditations a nearly continuous argument against Thomistic Aristotelian ways of thinking about cognition, and shows more clearly than ever before how Descartes bridged the old world of scholasticism and the new one of mechanistic naturalism. Rather than casting Descartes's project primarily in terms of skepticism, knowledge, and certainty, Carriero focuses on fundamental disagreements between Descartes and the scholastics over the nature of understanding, the relation between the senses and the intellect, the nature of the human being, and how and to what extent God is cognized by human beings. Against this background, Carriero shows, Descartes developed his own conceptions of mind, body, and the relation between them, creating a coherent, philosophically rich project in the Meditations and setting the agenda for a century of rationalist metaphysics.

Product Description: Drawing extensively on the whole range of Spinoza’s philosophical writing, Staring into the Void devotes twelve chapters to showing in detail how the architecture of reality as Spinoza saw it rises in stages from a theory of being (the existence of only One Real Thing) to prophetically modern theories of the physical world (actual or possible), of causal law, of perceptual and intuitive knowledge, of determinism (and the kind of freedom that is compatible with determinism), of the roots of human motivation, and of the kinds of civil society that human nature is capable of sustaining...read more

Product Description: This revised edition draws on years of lecturing experience and feedback from students. The result is a popular, lively and accessible book which offers an improved and reader-friendly introduction to the art of clear thinking. Developing and applying critical reasoning skills is globally recognised as a basic competency, like reading and writing...read more

Product Description: German philosopher and significant 18th century late Enlightenment thinker Immanuel Kant wrote "Critique of Judgment" in 1790 to solidify his ideas on aesthetics. Divided into two sections, one on aesthetic judgment and the other on teleological judgment, "Critique" proceeds to analyze the human experience of the beautiful and the sublime...read more

Product Description: Often named the "Prince of Philosophers," Benedict Baruch Spinoza is considered one of the most prominent "Rationalists" in the history of Philosophy. His scientifically grounded work laid the foundation for the 18th century "Enlightenment," and modern biblical criticism...read more

Product Description: In this book Joseph Raz develops his views on some of the central questions in practical philosophy: legal, political, and moral. The book provides an overview of Raz's work on jurisprudence and the nature of law in the context of broader questions in the philosophy of practical reason...read more

The questions have been with us since the dim, dark dusk of early humanity. Who are we? How did we get here? Who is in charge? In The Discovery of Everything, the Creation of Nothing, author Jim Robert Bader communicates his personal philosophy on these age-old enigmas as they apply to modern society. Intended as a primer for the mind of the layman, The Discovery of Everything, the Creation of Nothing presents a manifesto of the soul that insists the truth is not only out there, but easily accessible to anyone. Based on years of research and observation, Bader distills the complexities and addresses relevant topics from an "everyman" perspective by pondering the nature of the universe. He reflects on the thoughts and discoveries of others to bring knowledge to the common man. In The Discovery of Everything, the Creation of Nothing, Bader offers a new way of understanding the world. He confronts old assumptions, and he challenges the traditional way of thinking to better cope with and comprehend the nature of the world around us.