The Classics of Western Philosophy A Reader's Guide

by Gracia, Jorge J. E.; Reichberg, Gregory M.; Schumacher, Bernard N.

• ISBN13: 9780631236115
• ISBN10: 0631236112
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-03-07
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

The Classics of Western Philosophy brings together 61 newly-commissioned essays on classic texts ranging from Ancient Greece to the twentieth century. Surveying the history of philosophy, the book focuses on historical texts rather than historical figures and covers the entire range of classics in a single volume. Provides 61 chapters written by leading experts on the classics of Western thought. Includes current references to the scholarly literature in addition to a select bibliography of major articles and books. Contributors include C.D.C. Reeve on Plato's Republic, Terrence Irwin on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Dominic O'Meara on Plotinus' Enneads, James Ross on Aquinas' Summa Theologiae, Don Garrett on Spinoza's Ethics, Allen Wood on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, Stephen Houlgate on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, Michael Dummett on Frege's 'Über Sinn und Bedeutung,' Hanjo Glock on Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and David Woodruff Smith on Husserl's Logical Investigations. Surveys the history of philosophy by focussing on the historical texts rather than historical figures. Covers the entire range of classics in a single volume.

Author Biography

Jorge J. E. Gracia is Samuel P. Capen Chair and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is author of several books, including Hispanic/Latino Identity (Blackwell, 2000) and How Can We Know What God Means? (2001). He is editor, with Timothy B. Noone, of A Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages (Blackwell, 2003).

Gregory M. Reichberg is Senior Research Fellow at the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO) and associate editor of the Journal of Military Ethics. He has published widely on the ethics of war and peace, and on topics in Thomistic philosophy.

Bernard N. Schumacher is Privatdocent of Philosophy at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. He is the author of Une philosophie de l’espérance (2000) and Auseinandersetzung mit dem Tode (2003). He is also the editor of several books, including Penser l’homme et la science (1996).

Table of Contents

Notes on Contributors	xi
Preface	xvii
Pre-Socratics, Fragments (ca. 600--440 BC): The Birth of Philosophical Investigation	1	(9)
T. M. Robinson
Plato, Phaedo (ca. 385 BC): The Soul's Mediation between Corporeality and the Good	10	(10)
Kenneth Dorter
Plato, Republic (ca. 380 BC): The Psycho-politics of Justice	20	(18)
C. D. C. Reeve
Aristotle, Metaphysics (367--323 BC): Substance, Form, and God	38	(18)
Michael J. Loux
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (367--323 BC): A Sort of Political Science	56	(14)
T. H. Irwin
Lucretius, De rerum natura (ca. 99--55 BC): Breaking the Shackles of Religion	70	(6)
David Sedley
Plotinus, Enneads (250--270): A Philosophy for Crossing Boundaries	76	(12)
Dominic J. O'Meara
Augustine, On Free Choice of the Will (388--395): Evil, God's Foreknowledge, and Human Free Will	88	(8)
Gareth B. Matthews
Augustine, Confessions (ca. 400): Real-life Philosophy	96	(9)
Scott MacDonald
Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy (ca. 525): How Far Can Philosophy Console?	105	(6)
John Marenbon
Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogion (ca. 1078): On Thinking of That-than-which-a-Greater-Cannot-Be-Thought	111	(8)
Jasper Hopkins
Averroes, The Incoherence of ``The Incoherence'' (ca. 1180): The Incoherence of the Philosophers	119	(7)
Deborah L. Black
Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed (ca. 1190): The Perplexities of the Guide	126	(11)
Alfred L. Ivry
Thomas Aquinas, On Being and Essence (ante 1256): Toward a Metaphysics of Existence	137	(6)
Jorge J. E. Gracia
Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae (ca. 1273): Christian Wisdom Explained Philosophically	143	(24)
James F. Ross
John Duns Scotus, Questions on the Metaphysics of Aristotle (ca. 1300): A New Direction for Metaphysics	167	(10)
Timothy B. Noone
William of Ockham, Summa logicae (ca. 1324): Nominalism in Thought and Language	177	(6)
Claude Panaccio
Nicholas of Cusa, On Learned Ignorance (ca. 1440): Byzantine Light en route to a Distant Shore	183	(7)
Peter Casarella
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince (1513): Politics as the Pursuit of Power	190	(7)
Bjorn Thommessen
Francisco de Vitoria, De Indis and De iure belli relectiones (1557): Philosophy Meets War	197	(7)
Gregory M. Reichberg
Francisco Suarez, Metaphysical Disputations (1597): From the Middle Ages to Modernity	204	(6)
Jorge J. E. Gracia
Francis Bacon, New Organon (1620): The Politics and Philosophy of Experimental Science	210	(7)
Robert K. Faulkner
Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy (1641): Thought, Existence, and the Project of Science	217	(17)
Emily R. Grosholz
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651): The Right of Nature and the Problem of Civil War	234	(11)
Henrik Syse
Benedict de Spinoza, Ethics (1677): The Metaphysics of Blessedness	245	(15)
Don Garrett
John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690): An Empirical View of Knowledge and Reality	260	(10)
Vere Chappell
George Berkeley, Three Dialogues (1713): Idealism, Skepticism, Common Sense	270	(7)
George Pappas
G. W. Leibniz, Monadology (1714): What There Is in the Final Analysis	277	(8)
Robert Sleigh
Giambattista Vico, The New Science (1730/1744): The Common Nature of Nations	285	(6)
Donald Phillip Verene
David Hume, Treatise of Human Nature (1740): A Genial Skepticism, an Ethical Naturalism	291	(18)
Fred Wilson
Baron de Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws (1748): From Political Philosophy to Political Science	309	(7)
David W. Carrithers
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Of the Social Contract (1762): Transforming Natural Man into Citizen	316	(10)
Richard Velkley
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason (1781): A Lawful Revolution and a Coming of Age in Metaphysics	326	(20)
Allen W. Wood
Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785): Duty and Autonomy	346	(11)
Andrews Reath
Friedrich Schiller, The Aesthetic Education of Man in a Series of Letters (1795): The Play of Beauty as Means and End	357	(7)
Daniel O. Dahlstrom
G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (1807): Thinking Philosophically without Begging the Question	364	(19)
Stephen Houlgate
Karl Marx, The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844: Radical Criticism and a Humanistic Vision	383	(6)
William McBride
Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments (1846): Making Things Difficult for the System and for Christendom	389	(6)
Merold Westphal
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859): The Rational Foundations of Individual Freedom	395	(10)
G. W. Smith
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (1886): Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future	405	(11)
Richard Schacht
Gottlob Frege, ``Uber Sinn und Bedeutung'' (1892): A Fundamental Distinction	416	(7)
Michael Dummett
Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations (1900--1901): From Logic through Ontology to Phenomenology	423	(17)
David Woodruff Smith
William James, Varieties of Religious Experience (1902): Dimensions of Concrete Experience	440	(6)
Sandra B. Rosenthal
G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (1903): Ethical Analysis and Aesthetic Ideals	446	(7)
Thomas Baldwin
Charles Sanders Peirce, 1903 Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism: The Practice of Inquiry	453	(7)
Vincent Colapietro
Bertrand Russell, ``On Denoting'' (1905) and ``Mathematical Logic as Based on the Theory of Types'' (1908): Metaphysics to Logic and Back	460	(7)
Stewart Shapiro
Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution (1907): Analysis and Life	467	(7)
F. C. T. Moore
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-philosophicus (1921): The Essence of Representation	474	(12)
Hans-Johann Glock
John Dewey, Experience and Nature (1925): What You See Is What You Get	486	(8)
John McDermott
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (1927): Authentic Temporal Existence	494	(10)
Bernard N. Schumacher
Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality (1929): Scientific Revolutions and the Search for Covariant Metaphysical Principles	504	(8)
George R. Lucas, Jr.
Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1934): Not Logic but Decision Procedure	512	(7)
Mariam Thalos
Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness (1943): The Prodigious Power of the Negative	519	(6)
Thomas R. Flynn
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (1945): How is the Third-person Perspective Possible?	525	(8)
Stephen Priest
R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (1946): History as the Science of Mind	533	(7)
Jonathan Ree
Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (1949): A Method and a Theory	540	(6)
Laird Addis
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (1953): Clarity versus Pretension	546	(13)
Newton Garver
P. F. Strawson, Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics (1959): The Rehabilitation of Metaphysics	559	(7)
David Bell
W. V. O. Quine, Word and Object (1960): The Metaphysics of Meaning	566	(8)
Randall Dipert
J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (1962): An Active View of Language	574	(6)
Nicholas Fotion
Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962): ``Relativism'' Hits the Headlines	580	(7)
Endre Begby
Name Index	587	(12)
Subject Index	599