Download or read book A Metaphysics for Freedom written by Helen Steward and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-03-08 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Helen Steward argues that determinism is incompatible with agency itself--not only the special human variety of agency, but also powers which can be accorded to animal agents. She offers a distinctive, non-dualistic version of libertarianism, rooted in a conception of what biological forms of organisation might make possible in the way of freedom.
Download or read book A Philosophy of Freedom written by Lars Svendsen and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2014-10-15 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Freedom of speech, religion, choice, will—humans have fought, and continue to fight, for all of these. But what is human freedom really? Taking a broad approach across metaphysics, politics, and ethics, Lars Svendsen explores this question in his engaging book, while also looking at the threats freedom faces today. Though our behaviors, thoughts, and actions are restricted by social and legal rules, deadlines, and burdens, Svendsen argues that the fundamental requirement for living a human life is the ability to be free. A Philosophy of Freedom questions how we can successfully create meaningful lives when we are estranged from the very concept of freedom. Svendsen tackles such issues as the nature of free agency and the possibility of freedom in a universe governed by natural laws. He concludes that the true definition of personal freedom is first and foremost the liberty to devote yourself to what really matters to you—to realize the true value of the life you are living. Drawing on the fascinating debates around the possibility of freedom and its limits within society, this comprehensive investigation provides an accessible and insightful overview that will appeal to academics and general readers alike.
Download or read book Metaphysics of Freedom written by Christian H. Krijnen and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-08-27 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Metaphysics of Freedom? Kant’s Concept of Cosmological Freedom in Historical and Systematic Perspective scrutinizes the mostly neglected cosmological foundation of Kant’s concept of freedom.
Download or read book Time Change and Freedom written by L. Nathan Oaklander and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-08-18 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written in an engaging dialogue style, Smith and Oaklander cover metaphysical topics from a student's perspective and introduce key concepts through a process of explanation, reformulation and critique.
Download or read book Freedom Resentment and the Metaphysics of Morals written by Pamela Hieronymi and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-05-17 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An innovative reassessment of philosopher P. F. Strawson’s influential “Freedom and Resentment” P. F. Strawson was one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century, and his 1962 paper “Freedom and Resentment” is one of the most influential in modern moral philosophy, prompting responses across multiple disciplines, from psychology to sociology. In Freedom, Resentment, and the Metaphysics of Morals, Pamela Hieronymi closely reexamines Strawson’s paper and concludes that his argument has been underestimated and misunderstood. Line by line, Hieronymi carefully untangles the complex strands of Strawson’s ideas. After elucidating his conception of moral responsibility and his division between “reactive” and “objective” responses to the actions and attitudes of others, Hieronymi turns to his central argument. Strawson argues that, because determinism is an entirely general thesis, true of everyone at all times, its truth does not undermine moral responsibility. Hieronymi finds the two common interpretations of this argument, “the simple Humean interpretation” and “the broadly Wittgensteinian interpretation,” both deficient. Drawing on Strawson’s wider work in logic, philosophy of language, and metaphysics, Hieronymi concludes that his argument rests on an implicit, and previously overlooked, metaphysics of morals, one grounded in Strawson’s “social naturalism.” In the final chapter, she defends this naturalistic picture against objections. Rigorous, concise, and insightful, Freedom, Resentment, and the Metaphysics of Morals sheds new light on Strawson’s thinking and has profound implications for future work on free will, moral responsibility, and metaethics. The book also features the complete text of Strawson’s “Freedom and Resentment.”
Download or read book Qualitative Freedom Autonomy in Cosmopolitan Responsibility written by Claus Dierksmeier and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-01-18 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the light of growing political and religious fundamentalism, this open access book defends the idea of freedom as paramount for the attempt to find common ethical ground in the age of globality. The book sets out to examine as yet unexhausted ways to boost the resilience of the principle of liberalism. Critically reviewing the last 200 years of the philosophy of freedom, it revises the principle of liberty in order to revive it. It discusses many different aspects that fall under its three main topics: the metaphysics of freedom, quantitative freedom and qualitative freedom. Open societies worldwide have come under increasing pressure in the last decades. The belief that politics and markets fare best when guided by the principle of liberty presently faces multiple challenges such as terrorism, climate warming, inequality, populism, and financial crises. In the view of its critics, the idea of freedom no longer offers adequate guidance to meet these challenges and should be partially corrected or even entirely replaced by countervailing values. Against the reduction of freedom to the merely quantitative question as to how much liberties individuals call their own, this book draws attention to the qualitative concerns which and whose opportunities society should foster. It argues that, correctly understood, the idea of liberty commits us to defend as well as advance the freedom of each and every world citizen.
Download or read book Self Reason and Freedom written by Andrea Christofidou and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book sheds new light on the role of freedom in Descartes' thought and defends the theory of an internal relation between freedom and reason in his metaphysics.
Download or read book The Renewal of Medieval Metaphysics written by Dragos Calma and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-08-30 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first volume exclusively devoted to the Expositio by Berthold of Moosburg (c.1295-c.1361) on Proclus’ Elements of Theology. The breadth of its vision surpasses every other known commentary on the Elements of Theology, for it seeks to present a coherent account of the Platonic tradition as such (unified through the concord of Proclus and Dionysius) and at the same time to consolidate and transform a legacy of metaphysics developed in the German-speaking lands by Peripatetic authors (like Albert the Great, Ulrich of Strassburg, and Dietrich of Freiberg). This volume aims to provide a basis for further research and discussion of this unduly overlooked commentary, whose historical-philosophical importance as an attempt to refound Western metaphysics is beginning to be recognized. The publication of this volume has received the generous support of the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme through the ERC Consolidator Grant NeoplAT: A Comparative Analysis of the Middle East, Byzantium and the Latin West (9th-16th Centuries), grant agreement No 771640 (www.neoplat.eu). “[...] the volume displays various aspects of the richness hidden in this Commentary on Proclus: the contributions mentioned here are merely representative of such richness. Nonetheless, a desideratum of the research on Berthold remains a closer analysis of his polemical relations with his still unknown adversaries.” -Giuseppe Thomas Vitale, Thomas-Institut der Universität zu Köln, Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie médiévales 89.2
Download or read book Time and Freedom written by Christophe Bouton and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2014-10-30 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christophe Bouton's Time and Freedom addresses the problem of the relationship between time and freedom as a matter of practical philosophy, examining how the individual lives time and how her freedom is effective in time. Bouton first charts the history of modern philosophy's reengagement with the Aristotelian debate about future contingents, beginning with Leibniz. While Kant, Husserl, and their followers would engage time through theories of knowledge, Schopenhauer, Schelling, Kierkegaard, and (later), Heidegger, Sartre, and Levinas applied a phenomenological and existential methodology to time, but faced a problem of the temporality of human freedom. Bouton's is the first major work of its kind since Bergson's Time and Free Will (1889), and Bouton's "mystery of the future," in which the individual has freedom within the shifting bounds dictated by time, charts a new direction.
Download or read book A Social Theory of Freedom written by Mariam Thalos and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-17 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In A Social Theory of Freedom, Mariam Thalos argues that the theory of human freedom should be a broadly social and political theory, rather than a theory that places itself in opposition to the issue of determinism. Thalos rejects the premise that a theory of freedom is fundamentally a theory of the metaphysics of constraint and, instead, lays out a political conception of freedom that is closely aligned with questions of social identity, self-development in contexts of intimate relationships, and social solidarity. Thalos argues that whether a person is free (in any context) depends upon a certain relationship of fit between that agent’s conception of themselves (both present and future), on the one hand, and the facts of their circumstances, on the other. Since relationships of fit are broadly logical, freedom is a logic—it is the logic of fit between one’s aspirations and one’s circumstances, what Thalos calls the logic of agency. The logic of agency, once fleshed out, becomes a broadly social and political theory that encompasses one’s self-conceptions as well as how these self-conceptions are generated, together with how they fit with the circumstances of one’s life. The theory of freedom proposed in this volume is fundamentally a political one.
Download or read book Freedom Determinism and Responsibility written by Neil Campbell and published by Pearson. This book was released on 2002-11 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection introduces the central views and issues involved in the philosophical problem of free will. While the selections represent some of the most important works in the field, they are also accessible enough for readers with very little background in philosophy. KEY TOPICS: Includes classical and contemporary readings to give readers a feel both for the history of the problem and how it is confronted by modern philosophers. Includes section-opening introductions that provide more detailed explanations of subsequent readings than most philosophy books.Features a broad historical perspective that is not restricted to the philosophical views of a particular century. Presents diverse views on issues discussed. MARKET: A readable, comprehensive reference for anyone interested in learning about philosophy.
Download or read book Spinoza on Human Freedom written by Matthew J. Kisner and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-02-10 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spinoza was one of the most influential figures of the Enlightenment, but his often obscure metaphysics makes it difficult to understand the ultimate message of his philosophy. Although he regarded freedom as the fundamental goal of his ethics and politics, his theory of freedom has not received sustained, comprehensive treatment. Spinoza holds that we attain freedom by governing ourselves according to practical principles, which express many of our deepest moral commitments. Matthew J. Kisner focuses on this theory and presents an alternative picture of the ethical project driving Spinoza's philosophical system. His study of the neglected practical philosophy provides an accessible and concrete picture of what it means to live as Spinoza's ethics envisioned.
Download or read book For a Philosophy of Freedom and Strife written by Günter Figal and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1998-01-01 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This first book-length work of the prominent German philosopher Gunter Figal to appear in English offers a radical defense of metaphysical philosophy in the era of postmodern thought. For Figal, metaphysics does not represent an anachronistic and pernicious mode of thought that ought to be overcome but rather is a type of thinking that proceeds from a recognition of the necessary coherence of everything with its opposite. It is this agonistic relationship of opposites that Figal, following Heraclitus, terms strife. Rather than regarding the conflict of opposites as necessarily resulting in the dissolution of meaning and sense, as many contemporary thinkers maintain, Figal contends that sense and meaning can only come into existence metaphysically, that is to say, as a consequence of strife. And, the context within which strife occurs is freedom. Using these concepts of strife and freedom, Figal proposes new and provocative readings of Plato, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Kierkegaard, as well as of some of the most controversial figures of twentieth-century philosophy.
Download or read book The Essence of Human Freedom written by Martin Heidegger and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2005-03-01 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Essence of Human Freedom is a fundamental text for understanding Heidegger's view of Greek philosophy and its relationship to modern philosophy. These previously untranslated lectures were delivered by Heidegger at the University of Freiburg in the summer of 1930.
Download or read book Kant s Moral Metaphysics written by Benjamin J. Bruxvoort Lipscomb and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2010 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent interpreters of Kant's philosophy and contemporary advocates of broadly neo-Kantian views generally minimize the importance of Kant's metaphysical beliefs. This volume re-evaluates these minimizing approaches with particular reference to Kant's moral philosophy, exploring Kantian positions on such topics as moral corruption, the relation between God and ethics, the metaphysics of human freedom, and the possibility of knowledge of God. This volume is the first to place these topics within the context of the Critical philosophy as a whole, encouraging not only a more metaphysical, but also a more holistic reading of Kant.
Download or read book Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy written by Susanne Bobzien and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 1999-01-29 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy is the first comprehensive study of one of the most important intellectual legacies of the ancient Greek world: the Stoic theory of causal determinism. The book identifies the main problems that the Stoics addressed and reconstructs the theory, and explores how they squared their determinism with their conceptions of possibility, action, freedom, and moral responsibility, and how they defended it against objections and criticism by other philosophers. It shows how the Stoics distinguished their causal determinism from ancient theories of logical determinism, fatalism, and necessitarianism. Along the way an authoritative account is given of many other related aspects of Stoic thought, including their views on the predictability of the future, the role of empirical sciences, the determination of character, and moral freedom. Bobzien's study of these central doctrines of Stoicism reveals the considerable philosphical richness and power that they retain today.
Download or read book Freedom and Determinism written by Joseph Keim Campbell and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A state-of-the-art collection of previously unpublished essays on the topics of determinism, free will, moral responsibility, and action theory, written by some of the most important figures in these fields of study.
