Scottish Philosophy in America
¥107.81
The Scottish Enlightenment provided the fledgling United States of America and its emerging universities with a philosophical orientation. For a hundred years or more, Scottish philosophers were both taught and emulated by professors at Princeton, Harvard and Yale, as well as newly founded colleges stretching from Rhode Island to Texas. This volume in the Library of Scottish Philosophy demonstrates the remarkable extent of this philosophical influence. Selections from William Smith, John Witherspoon, Samuel Stanhope Smith, Archibald Alexander, Alexander Campbell, W.E. Channing, James McCosh, and C.S. Peirce, together with the editor's introductory and explanatory material, provide the modern reader with unprecedented access to this period of intellectual formation.
Who Was Mrs Willett?
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Here is an account of mentality and human experience, written for a multi-disciplinary readership. The focus is on how mind, consciousness and selves inter-relate, extending into exploration of ideas about the nature of awareness and a search for relevant evidence.'Consciousness studies' has reached something of a crossroads nowadays. Computational approaches to mind and 'quantum consciousness' theories, have not lived up to early hopes. Neuroscience has made huge strides in the last few years, but is still nowhere near able to account for the existence of consciousness itself - as opposed to being able to explain how some of its content gets there. Philosophically, there is lack of consensus over both the nature of consciousness and what questions we should be asking about it.Chris Nunn's book surveys the current situation and argues that, as far as 'mind' is concerned, we need to take the overall dynamics into consideration, which include genetic, environmental and social factors along with neurology. He emphasizes the close links that exist between memory, experience and personhood. What emerges most strongly from this account is that answers to questions about the nature of consciousness are likely to depend on achieving a better understanding of the physics of time.
Beyond Patriotism
¥107.81
Beyond Patriotism argues that some millions of Americans have become "e;post-national"e; people who put the good of humanity ahead of patriotism or national honour. It discusses the decisions that led them from the Vietnamese War, to the attempt to put Pol Pot back into power, to the sanctions against Iraq. Rather than lamenting the hay day of patriotism, post-national people should congratulate themselves on attaining moral maturity. They should clarify their thinking about why nationalism is bankrupt, what American should do to pacify the world, what they owe to their native land, and what they owe to themselves.
James Beattie
¥107.81
James Beattie (1735-1803) was appointed professor of moral philosophy and logic at Marischal College, Aberdeen, Scotland at the age of twenty-five. Though more fond of poetry than philosophy, he became part of the Scottish 'Common Sense' school of philosophy that included Thomas Reid and George Campbell. In 1770 Beattie published the work for which he is best known, An Essay on Truth, an abrasive attack on 'modern scepticism' in general, and on David Hume in particular, subsequently and despite Beattie's attack, Scotland's most famous philosopher. The Essay was a great success, earning its author an honorary degree from Oxford and an audience with George III. Samuel Johnson declared in 1772 that 'We all love Beattie'. Hume, on the other hand, described the Essay as 'a horrible large lie in octavo', and dismissed its author as a 'bigotted silly Fellow'. Although Beattie is no match for Hume as a philosopher, the success of the Essay suggests that, unlike Hume, Beattie voices the characteristic assumptions, and anxieties, of his age. The first part of this selection-the first ever made from Beattie's prose writings-includes several key chapters from the Essay on Truth, along with extracts from all of Beattie's other works on moral philosophy. The topics treated include memory, the existence of God, the nature of virtue, and slavery. The second part of the selection is devoted to Beattie's contributions to literary criticism and aesthetics. Beattie's studies of poetry, music, taste, and the sublime are vital to the understanding of the literary culture out of which developed the early Romanticism of Wordsworth and Coleridge.
Scottish Philosophy of Rhetoric
¥107.81
The popular and successful rhetorical textbooks produced by the 18th century Scottish philosophical tradition, such as George Campbell's The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1776), Hugh Blair's Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1783), and Alexander Bain's English Composition and Rhetoric (1877) have been widely accorded a role in the trajectories of 19th and 20th century literary theory. Scholars have generally overlooked them, however, as philosophical works. The selected writings chosen for this volume show how these rhetorical textbooks were a practical extension of the philosophy of language developed by 18th century Scottish philosophers.Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith, Thomas Reid, Adam Ferguson, Alexander Gerard, and Henry Home, Lord Kames, advanced a radically new paradigm of language as an inherently mediated practice, directed simultaneously to personal and social, moral and aesthetic uses. This Scottish philosophy of rhetoric powerfully influenced the teaching of language and literacy as tools for social and educational innovation.This volume - the first of its kind - offers a wide variety of writings on rhetoric and rhetorical theory, selected in a way that reveals their intimate connection with the Scottish philosophical tradition.
Scientist in Wonderland
¥107.81
This is the story of the author's life as a doctor and a scientist. Despite a youthful ambition to become a jazz musician, he studied medicine and eventually became a medical research scientist, taking up appointments in Germany, Austria and finally in England. His reverence for the pursuit of truth through the application of scientific methods, coupled with a growing interest in the history of medicine during the Nazi era, did not always endear him to others. At the time he was appointed to the world's first chair in alternative medicine, this was an area of health care that had rarely been studied systematically, and was almost entirely dominated by outspokenly evangelic promoters and enthusiasts - among them, famously, HRH Prince Charles - many of whom exhibited an overtly hostile, anti-scientific attitude towards the objective study of their favoured therapies. Clashes were inevitable, but the sheer ferocity with which advocates of alternative medicine would operate in order to protect their field from scrutiny came as a profound surprise. This memoir provides a unique insight into the cutthroat politics of academic life and offers a sobering reflection on the damage already done by pseudoscience in health care.
Jesus and the Trojan War
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Jesus and the Trojan War looks at ways in which stories are presented and understood; and how story-tellers - and their listeners - may wittingly or unwittingly confuse fact with fiction. This book explores the parallels between four stories (the Trojan war, Moses, King Arthur, and Jesus), and the way their sources relate to their histories and contemporary relevance.
Anxious to do Good
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After nearly three and a half -- rather too exciting -- years as a young war-time sailor, Alan Peacock expected to return to a life of quiet contemplation. Instead he became an activist economist frequently engaged in controversies about the conduct of economic policy lasting all his professional life. His earlier experiences at trying to 'do good' will resonate with all those who have attempted to influence political action, but the account is also designed to inform and entertain those who are curious to know whether economists are actually human.The author has lived long enough to have become a Fellow of both the British Academy and Royal Society of Edinburgh and was knighted for public service in 1987.
What Does It All Mean?
¥107.81
As a young man Bill Adams travelled the world teaching US citizens abroad on behalf of a large state university on the East Coast. Back home he reflected that if there were answers to the great questions of life, then he'd not found them - not in India, in Europe, in China, or Japan. In time he came to see that his lifelong interest in how the mind works could be the clue to the meaning of life. Socrates had been right all along: Know thyself. Adams now sets out a new reasoned argument, based on his experience as a cognitive psychologist and as a human being, to show why Socrates was right: the purpose of life is to recognize ourselves - in each other and in all things. The mind is looking for itself: that is how it works, that is what it does for a living.
Lotteries for Education
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Lotteries are widely used to decide places (seats) at schools, colleges and universities. Conall Boyle explores many examples to find out why. The emotional turmoil that the use of ballots can cause to students and parents alike is graphically described. But lottery selection teaches lessons too; now we can find proper answers to controversial questions like "e;Does choice work?"e;This book will be of interest to parents, pupils and teachers as well as educational administrators. Any student applying for admission to a university course should learn about the amazing weighted lottery for entry to medical schools in the Netherlands. There is a better way: it's a lottery!
Educating Character Through Stories
¥107.81
What could be the point of teaching such works of bygone cultural and literary inheritance as Cervantes' Don Quixote and Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice in schools today? This book argues that the narratives and stories of such works are of neglected significance and value for contemporary understanding of human moral association and character. However, in addition to offering detailed analysis of the moral educational potential of these and other texts, the present work reports on a pioneering project, recently pursued by the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, concerned precisely with the use of these and other stories for moral and character education in schools. The success of the 'Knightly Virtues' project is an inspiring story in its own right and should therefore be of enormous interest to all schools, teachers and parents rightly concerned with this all-important aspect of their children's educational development.
Capitalism and Human Values
¥107.81
Capitalism is not enough. It has brought us prosperity and no other economic system can match its energy and innovation, but it has a dark side of exploitation and instability.Capitalism needs to be bounded by values. But which values? What indeed are values anyway and how do we locate and share values strong enough to balance the power of capitalism in society? Relativism has swept away old certainties and we struggle to agree what should lie at the centre of our lives.In this book we construct a foundation for values based on our common humanity and explore personal, social and political values from a fresh perspective.We show how with values placed on a strong foundation individual lives can reacquire meaning and purpose. Politics can be transformed from the half-corrupted subject of popular indifference it has become. Above all, capitalism can be a tool for good, a servant rather than a master.
James Frederick Ferrier
¥107.81
This volume contains selections from the philosophical writings of James Frederick Ferrier (1808-1864). Ferrier was the Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of St Andrews between 1845 and 1864 and he was one of the earliest post-Hegelian British idealists. He develops a system of absolute idealism via a rejection of the Scottish school of common sense and Enlightenment philosophy in general. These selections focus on his primary philosophical interests: epistemology and ontology. Ferrier denies the possibility of a science of man and suggests that philosophy should focus on self-consciousness, the defining feature of humanity.
School of Freedom
¥107.81
Liberal education is not a theory. It is the tradition by which Western civilisation has preserved and enriched its inheritance for two and a half thousand years. Yet liberal education is a term that has fallen from use in Britain, its traditional meaning now freely confused with its opposite. This book is intended to correct that misapprehension, through the presentation of original source material from the high points in the liberal education tradition with particular focus on the British experience.Section 1: Origins (c. 450 BC to c. 450 AD)Section 2: The British Tradition (c. 750 to 1950)Section 3: After Tradition (1950 onward)Section 4: Liberal Education Redux (America)
Adam Ferguson
¥107.81
A philosopher and historian, Adam Ferguson occupies a unique place within eighteenth-century Scottish thought. Distinguished by a moral and historical bent, his work is framed within a teleological outlook that upholds the importance of action and virtue.
Art and Enlightenment
¥107.81
During the intellectual and cultural flowering of Scotland in the 18th century few subjects attracted as much interest among men of letters as aesthetics - the study of art from the subjective perspective of human experience. All of the great philosophers of the age - Hutcheson, Hume, Smith and Reid - addressed themselves to aesthetic questions. Their inquiries revolved around a cluster of issues - the nature of taste, beauty and the sublime, how qualitative differences operate upon the mind through the faculty of taste, and how aesthetic sensibility can be improved through education. This volume brings together and provides contextual introductions to the most significant 18th century writing on the philosophy of art. From the pioneering study of beauty by Francis Hutcheson, through Hume's seminal essays on the standard of taste and tragedy, to the end of the tradition in Dugald Stewart, we are swept up in the debate about art and its value that fascinated the philosophers of enlightenment Scotland - and continues to do so to this day.
Paranormal and the Politics of Truth
¥107.81
This book is based on the author's ten-year research into the politics of belief surrounding paranormal ideas. Through a detailed examination of the participants, issues, strategies and underlying factors that constitute the contemporary paranormal debate, the book explores the struggle surrounding the status of paranormal phenomena. It examines, on the one hand, how the principal arbiters of religious and scientific truths - the Church and the academic establishment - reject paranormal ideas as "e;occult"e; and "e;pseudo-scientific"e;, and how, on the other hand, paranormal enthusiasts attempt to resist such labels and instead establish paranormal ideas as legitimate knowledge.The author contends that the paranormal debate is the outcome of wider discursive processes that are concerned with the construction and negotiation of truth in Western society generally. More specifically, the debate is seen as an aspect of the "e;boundary work"e; that defines the contours of religious and scientific orthodoxy.The book paves new ground in understanding the nature of belief relating to a topic that has long held fascination to academics and lay people alike - paranormal ideas. It develops a discursive framework for understanding a contemporary social phenomenon, hence placing the study at the cutting edge of ethnographic development that seeks to integrate discursive perspectives with empirical accounts of sociological phenomena. Most importantly, the study is intended to contribute to the debate surrounding communicative action, by outlining a discursive perspective on the negotiation of ideational differences that goes beyond the incommensurability theories that have dominated the sociology of communication and knowledge.
Scottish Philosophical Theology
¥107.81
This volume concentrates on the period from the beginning of the 18th century to the latter part of the 20th. It is impossible to depict a single school of philosophical theology in Scotland across three centuries, yet several strains have been identified that suggest some recurrent themes or intellectual habits. These include the following: the mutually beneficial cross-fertilisation of the disciplines of philosophy and theology; the tendency to eschew powerful philosophical systems that might threaten to imprison theological ideas; a stress on both the providential limitations and reliability of human reason; a suspicion of reductive theories of a materialist inclination; and a determination to inspect critically the proposals of theology and to place these in positive relation to other disciplines.
Columbanus
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Columbanus ("e;The Dove of the Church"e;), not to be confused with his near-contemporary Columba of Iona, was a towering figure in the religious and political life of Europe in the Dark Ages. In this lively biography of the saint, Carol Richards evokes the violent and unstable age that laid the foundations for the achievements of the Middle Ages.
Nelson, Hitler and Diana
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Clinical psychologist Richard Ryder approaches three iconic celebrities - Horatio Nelson, Adolph Hitler, and Diana Princess of Wales - as though they were his patients and presents a short psycho-biography of each. Beneath their obvious differences he finds striking similarities in their backgrounds and early experience, especially being deprived of their mothers' love. In a short Epilogue the author asks what lessons might be learned for the future from these three famous figures of the past.
Sortition
¥107.81
This volume reflects the up-and-coming academic interest in sortition. It is based on contributions to the first international conference dedicated to the subject held at the University of Political Science (Sciences-Po) in Paris in November 2008.The papers explore important theoretical questions such as how we should recognise and define differing lottery forms; the relationship between sortition and different aspects and forms of democracy; and its potential benefits to current political and commercial practice.Contributors include: Hubertus Buchstein, Gil Delannoi, Oliver Dowlen, Gerhard Goehler, Barbara Goodwin, Michael Hein, Yves Sintomer, Peter Stone and Antoine Vergne.