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This course provides an overview of the figures and movements of the canonical periods in the history of Western Philosophy that have had a fundamental influence on Western Civilization. Periods to be covered include Ancient, Hellenistic and Medieval, and Modern philosophy.
The Phaedo explores the nature of death, and the question of life after death, in the context of the master’s execution, with its emphasis on the care of the immortal soul and its invective against the body. The Phaedo reflects Pythagorean influence in both its setting and its substance. Its prologue takes place in Phlius, a small town in the north-eastern Peloponnese, where there was a Pythagorean community. The main conversation is narrated by Phaedo of Elis to Echecrates, who was an adherent of Pythagorean philosophy. In its philosophical dimension, the Phaedo combines two principal themes- theory of forms, and theory of ideas.
This book is a selection of the translation of Aristotle’s works. It seeks to provide an accurate and readable translation that will allow the reader to follow Aristotle's use of crucial technical terms and to grasp the details of his argument. This book features notes and glossary adjunct to the translation. The notes suggest alternative translations or more literal translations, and contain some very selective discussion of the course of Aristotle’s argument. The glossary indicates the correspondence between Greek terms and their English renderings, and it tries to explain some of Aristotle’s terms and to sketch some of the philosophical doctrines and assumptions that they convey.
This work is a collection and discussion of the primary sources for Hellenistic philosophy. The schools being studied includes the early Pyrrhonism, Epicureanism, Stoicism, the academics, and the Pyrrhonist revival, which dominated philosophy in the three centuries after the death of Aristotle in 322 B.C. While Volume One collects English translations of the primary sources with philosophical commentary, Volume Two presents the same texts as are translated in Volume One in its original Greek and Latin texts, together with critical apparatus, information on their original contexts, supplementary commentary on technical matters and points of detail, and some additional texts.
Volume I and Volume II provide a completely new translation of the philosophical works of Descartes, based on the best available Latin and French texts. The works collected include some early writings, Rules for the direction of the mind, The world, Treatise on man, Discourse on the method, Optics, Principles of philosophy, Comments on a certain broadsheet, Description of the human body, The passions of the soul, Meditations on first philosophy, Objections and replies, Letter to Father Dinet, The search for truth. Volume III contains 207 of Descartes' philosophical letters.
Leviathan develops Hobbes’ theory of politics that government is primarily viewed as a device for ensuring collective security. Designed to meet the needs of both student and scholar, this edition of Leviathan offers a brilliant introduction by Edwin Curley, modernized spelling and punctuation of the text, and the inclusion, along with historical and interpretive notes, of the most significant variants between the English version of 1651 and the Latin version of 1668. A glossary of seventeenth-century English terms, and indexes of persons, subjects, and scriptural passages help make this the most thoughtfully conceived edition of Leviathan available.
This Hume’s work addresses central questions of human life and knowledge. It considers the origin and processes of human thought, reaching the stark conclusion that we can have no ultimate understanding of the physical world, or indeed our own minds. In either sphere we must depend on instinctive learning from experience, recognizing our animal nature and the limits of reason. This edition reprints the last edition published in 1777, containing corrections made by Hume shortly before his death. A comprehensive introduction and rich Appendices are great tool for further study of this text and Hume.
This is an English translation of all of Kant’s writings on moral and political philosophy, including “Review of Schulz’s Attempt at an introduction to a doctrine of morals for all human beings regardless of different religions”, “An answer to the question: What is Englightenment?” “On the wrongfulness of unauthorized publication of books”, “Groundwork of the metaphysics of morals”, “Review of Gottlieb Hufeland’s Essay on the principle of natural right”, “Kraus’s review of Ulrich’s Eleutheriology”, “Critique of practical reason”, “On the common saying: That may be correct in theory, but it is of no use in practice”, “Toward perpetual peace”, “The metaphysics of morals”, “On a supposed right to lie from philanthropy”, and “On turning out books”.
This masterpiece by Hegel examines the course of experience in progress from ephemeral matter-of-fact appearance, through mounting evidence of an underlying coherency, to a comprehensive result so critically thought through that the inner logical dynamic of the real is manifest. The book discusses sense-certainty, perception, force and understanding, self-consciousness, reason, spirit, religion, and absolute knowledge. Focusing on topics in metaphysics, epistemology, physics, ethics, history, religion, perception, consciousness, and political philosophy, Hegel develops his concepts of dialectic, absolute idealism, ethical life, and Aurhebung in this book, which marked a significant development in German idealism.
This is a book about the history of ethics and about interpretation. This book raises profoundly disquieting issues about the violence of both ethics and interpretation. It seeks to discredit what Nietzsche sees as the dominant moral values of his age, which in essence are the values of Judaeo-Christian ethics-justice, equality, compassion-as they have been inherited and secularized by the Enlightenment tradition. It also sets out to discredit the Victorian scientific critique of these values undertaken by Utilitarian philosophy, associationist psychology, Social Darwinism, and exclusively fact-based historical study. Nietzsche questions moral certainties by showing that religion and science have no claim to absolute truth.
