Download or read book Pure written by Mark Anderson and published by Sophia Perennis et Universalis. This book was released on 2009 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pure: Modernity, Philosophy, and the One is an experimental work of philosophy in which the author aspires to think his way back to a "premodern" worldview derived from the philosophical tradition of Platonism. To this end he attempts to identify and elucidate the fundamental intellectual assumptions of modernity and to subject these assumptions to a critical evaluation from the perspective of Platonic metaphysics. The author addresses a broad range of subjects - from ethics, politics, metaphysics, and science to the philosophies of Plato, Plotinus, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche - without losing sight of the single aim of formulating a premodern perspective in opposition to modernity. The work culminates in a series of essays on the practice of purification, a form of intellectual and spiritual discipline acknowledged by ancient and medieval philosophers alike to be a necessary preliminary to metaphysical insight. Pure is informed throughout by rigorous scholarship, but it is not an "academic" work. The author avoids the plodding and professorial tone typical of contemporary philosophical research in favor of a meditative and aphoristic style. The book, in short, is learned without being pedantic. Readers interested in the history of philosophy and the intellectual roots of the crisis of modernity will find in Pure substantial matter for reflection.
Download or read book Music Philosophy and Modernity written by Andrew Bowie and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-02-05 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern philosophers generally assume that music is a problem to which philosophy ought to offer an answer. Andrew Bowie's Music, Philosophy, and Modernity suggests, in contrast, that music might offer ways of responding to some central questions in modern philosophy. Bowie looks at key philosophical approaches to music ranging from Kant, through the German Romantics and Wagner, to Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Adorno. He uses music to re-examine many ideas about language, subjectivity, metaphysics, truth and ethics, and he suggests that music can show how the predominant images of language, communication, and meaning in contemporary philosophy may be lacking in essential ways. His book will be of interest to philosophers, musicologists, and all who are interested in the relation between music and philosophy.
Download or read book Moral Philosophy on the Threshold of Modernity written by Jill Kraye and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-03-30 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past twenty years the transition from the late Middle Ages to the early modern era has received increasing attention from experts in the history of philosophy. In part, this new interest arises from claims, made in literature aimed at a less specialist readership, that this transition was responsible for the subsequent philosophical and theological problems of the Enlightenment. Philosophers like Alasdair MacIntyre and theologians like John Milbank display a certain nostalgia for the medieval synthesis of Thomas Aquinas and, consequently, evaluate the period from 1300 to 1700 in rather negative terms. Other historians of philosophy writing for the general public, such as Charles Taylor, take a more positive view of the Reformation but nevertheless conclude that modernity has been shaped by 1 conflicts which stem from early modern times. Ethics and moral thought occupy a central place in these theories. It is assumed that we have lost something – the concept of virtue, for instance, or the source of common morality. Yet those who put forward such notions do not treat the history of ethics in detail. From the historian’s perspective, their far-reaching theoretical assumptions are based on a quite small body of textual evidence. In reality, there was a rich variety of approaches to moral thinking and ethical theories during the period from 1400 to 1600.
Download or read book The Theological Origins of Modernity written by Michael Allen Gillespie and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010-10-21 with total page 762 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking as his starting point the collapse of the medieval world, Gillespie argues that from the very beginning moderns sought not to eliminate religion but to support a new view of religion and its place in human life- and that they did so not out of hostility but in order to sustain certain religious beliefs. He goes on to explore the ideas of such figures as William of Ockham, Petrarch, Erasmus, Luther, Descartes, and Hobbes, showing that modernity is best understood as the result of a series of attempts to formulate a new and coherent metaphysics or theology.
Download or read book Platonism at the Origins of Modernity written by Douglas Hedley and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-12-22 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays offers an overview of the range and breadth of Platonic philosophy in the early modern period. It examines philosophers of Platonic tradition, such as Cusanus, Ficino, and Cudworth. The book also addresses the impact of Platonism on major philosophers of the period, especially Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Shaftesbury and Berkeley.
Download or read book Modernity and Subjectivity written by Harvie Ferguson and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few concepts have come to dominate the human sciences as much as modernity, yet there is very little agreement over what the term actually means. Every aspect of contemporary human reality--modern society, modern life, modern times, modern art, modern science, modern music, the modern world--has been cited as a part of modernity's distinctive and all-embracing presence. But what is the exact nature of the reality to which the term modern refers? Has not such a promiscuous, ill-defined concept come to obscure and confuse rather than clarify a genuine understanding of our experience? Harvie Ferguson proposes a new view of modernity, arguing that, although it may variously be associated with the Renaissance, the European discovery of the New World, the Reformation, the Industrial Revolution, and many other significant ruptures with primitive or premodern society, modernity fails as an idea if it only defines itself against what it replaced. Instead, he writes, modernity finds its clearest definition through an exploration of subjectivity. For the modern world there is no higher authority than experience. No longer is the human world subordinate to a divine reality beyond the capacity of its own senses. This idea finds its greatest expression in the philosophy of doubt originated by Descartes. Doubt seemed the radical starting point from which to found a wholly modern philosophy that makes the distinction between subject and object, but those who came after Descartes soon reached the limits of self-discovery and became trapped in deepening levels of despair. This despair in turn found expression in the concepts of self and other, and eventually in a dialectic of ego and world, which distinguishes and links together the most important social, cultural, and psychological aspects of modernity. Moving beyond these dualities of subject and object, mind and body, ego and world, and replacing them with the triad of body, soul, and spirit, Ferguson redraws the map of contemporary experience, finding links with the premodern world that modernity's self-founding concealed.
Download or read book Modernity and Self Identity written by Anthony Giddens and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-30 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This major study develops a new account of modernity and its relation to the self. Building upon the ideas set out in The Consequences of Modernity, Giddens argues that 'high' or 'late' modernity is a post traditional order characterised by a developed institutional reflexivity. In the current period, the globalising tendencies of modern institutions are accompanied by a transformation of day-to-day social life having profound implications for personal activities. The self becomes a 'reflexive project', sustained through a revisable narrative of self identity. The reflexive project of the self, the author seeks to show, is a form of control or mastery which parallels the overall orientation of modern institutions towards 'colonising the future'. Yet it also helps promote tendencies which place that orientation radically in question - and which provide the substance of a new political agenda for late modernity. In this book Giddens concerns himself with themes he has often been accused of unduly neglecting, including especially the psychology of self and self-identity. The volumes are a decisive step in the development of his thinking, and will be essential reading for students and professionals in the areas of social and political theory, sociology, human geography and social psychology.
Download or read book A New Philosophy of Modernity and Sovereignty written by Przemyslaw Tacik and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-07-29 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tackling important philosophical questions on modernity – what it is, where it begins and when it ends – Przemyslaw Tacik challenges the idea that modernity marks a particular epoch, and historicises its conception to offer a radical critique of it. His deconstruction-informed critique collects and assesses reflections on modernity from major philosophers including Hegel, Heidegger, Lacan, Arendt, Agamben, and Žižek. This analysis progresses a new understanding of modernity intrinsically connected to the growth of sovereignty as an organising principle of contemporary life. He argues that it is the idea of 'modernity', as a taken-for-granted era, which is positioned as the essential condition for making linear history possible, when it should instead be history, in and of itself, which dictates the existence of a particular period. Using Hegel's notion of 'spirit' to trace the importance of sovereignty to the conception of the modern epoch within German idealism, Tacik traces Hegel's influence on Heidegger through reference to the 'star' in his late philosophy which represents the hope of overcoming the metaphysical poverty of modernity. This line of thought reveals the necessity of a paradigm shift in our understanding of modernity that speaks to contemporary continental philosophy, theories of modernity, political theory, and critical re-assessments of Marxism.
Download or read book Deleuze s Political Vision written by Nicholas Tampio and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2015-08-06 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and the psychiatrist-activist Félix Guattari’s 1980 book A Thousand Plateaus is widely recognized as a masterpiece of twentieth-century Continental philosophy. Until now, however, few scholars have dared to explain the book’s political importance. Deleuze’s Political Vision reconstructs Deleuze’s conception of pluralism, human nature, the social contract, liberalism, democracy, socialism, feminism, and comparative political theory. Unlike scholars who read Deleuze as a Marxist, author Nicholas Tampio argues that Deleuze was a cutting-edge liberal, concerned about protecting difference from what John Stuart Mill called the tyranny of the majority. The book brings Deleuze into conversation with other contemporary political theorists such as Hannah Arendt, William E. Connolly, Jürgen Habermas, Bruno Latour, Charles Mills, Martha Nussbaum, Carole Pateman, Abdolkarim Soroush, Leo Strauss, and Charles Taylor. Deleuze’s Political Vision translates Deleuze’s ideas into popular vernaculars to realize his political vision and reveal his work as essential to modern discussions of political theory and philosophy.
Download or read book Modernity and Authenticity written by Alessandro Ferrara and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1993-01-01 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study on the contemporary relevance of Rousseaus ethical and social thought, the ethic of authenticity, responds to the tensions of modern morality and rivals the answers generated by the more mainstream tradition of the ethic of autonomy.
Download or read book Ernest Gellner and Modernity written by Michael Harry Lessnoff and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exposition of Gellner's thought, both in terms of the specific areas in which he worked and the underlying consistency of his theoretical principles. It provides a context within which to evaluate Gellner's contribution to social and political thought.
Download or read book Modernity and the Ideals of Arab Islamic and Western Scientific Philosophy written by A. Z. Obiedat and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-07-08 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first study to compare the philosophical systems of secular scientific philosopher Mario Bunge (1919-2020), and Moroccan Islamic philosopher Taha Abd al-Rahman (b.1945). In their efforts to establish the philosophical underpinnings of an ideal modernity these two great thinkers speak to the same elements of the human condition, despite their opposing secular and religious worldviews. While the differences between Bunge’s critical-realist epistemology and materialist ontology on the one hand, and Taha’s spiritualist ontology and revelational-mystical epistemology on the other, are fundamental, there is remarkable common ground between their scientific and Islamic versions of humanism. Both call for an ethics of prosperity combined with social justice, and both criticize postmodernism and religious conservatism. The aspiration of this book is to serve as a model for future dialogue between holders of Western and Islamic worldviews, in mutual pursuit of modernity’s best-case scenario.
Download or read book Science and Modernity written by S. Lelas and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Science is a multifaceted, natural and historical phenomenon. It consists of five elements, that is, it happens in five distinct media: biological, linguistic, technological, social, and historical. None of these alone provides an indubitable basis for the truth of scientific knowledge, but combined together they compose a solid ground for our trust in its reliability. The composition, however, is uniquely related to our modern mode of living. Science did not exist before modernity, and it will cease to exist in this form if our way of life should change. The book presents a thorough analysis of all these dimensions and their relations, and thus lays the path for an integral theory of science. Because of this it can be used as a textbook for general courses in the theory of science at both the undergraduate and graduate level.
Download or read book The Natural and the Human written by Stephen Gaukroger and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-21 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stephen Gaukroger presents an original account of the development of empirical science and the understanding of human behaviour from the mid-eighteenth century. Since the seventeenth century, science in the west has undergone a unique form of cumulative development in which it has been consolidated through integration into and shaping of a culture. But in the eighteenth century, science was cut loose from the legitimating culture in which it had had a public rationale as a fruitful and worthwhile form of enquiry. What kept it afloat between the middle of the eighteenth and the middle of the nineteenth centuries, when its legitimacy began to hinge on an intimate link with technology? The answer lies in large part in an abrupt but fundamental shift in how the tasks of scientific enquiry were conceived, from the natural realm to the human realm. At the core of this development lies the naturalization of the human, that is, attempts to understand human behaviour and motivations no longer in theological and metaphysical terms, but in empirical terms. One of the most striking feature of this development is the variety of forms it took, and the book explores anthropological medicine, philosophical anthropology, the 'natural history of man', and social arithmetic. Each of these disciplines re-formulated basic questions so that empirical investigation could be drawn upon in answering them, but the empirical dimension was conceived very differently in each case, with the result that the naturalization of the human took the form of competing, and in some respects mutually exclusive, projects.
Download or read book Modernity in Indian Social Theory written by A. Raghuramaraju and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-12-06 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unlike the West, India presents a fascinating example of a society where the pre-modern continues to co-exist with the modern. Modernity in Indian Social Theory explores the social variance between India and the West to show how it impacted their respective trajectories of modernity. A. Raghuramaraju argues that modernity in the West involved disinheriting the pre-modern, and temporal ordering of the traditional and modern. It was ruthlessly implemented through programmes of industrialization, nationalism, and secularism. This book underscores that India did not merely the Western model of modernity or experience a temporal ordering of society. It situates this sociological complexity in the context of the debates on social theory. The author critically examines various discourses on modernity in India, including Partha Chatterjee’s account of Indian nationalism; Javeed Alam’s reading of Indian secularism; the use of the term pluralism by some Indian social scientists; and Gopal Guru’s emphasis on the lived Dalit experience. He also engages with the readings on key thinkers including Vivekananda, Aurobindo, Gandhi, and Ambedkar.
Download or read book Tradition and Modernity written by Kwame Gyekye and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1997 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gyekye offers a philosophical interpretation and critical analysis of the African cultural experience in modern times, and shows how Western philosophical concepts help in addressing a wide range of specifically African problems.
Download or read book Kantian Subjects written by Karl Ameriks and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-07 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume, Karl Ameriks explores 'Kantian subjects' in three senses. In Part I, he first clarifies the most distinctive features-such as freedom and autonomy-of Kant's notion of what it is for us to be a subject. Other chapters then consider related 'subjects' that are basic topics in other parts of Kant's philosophy, such as his notions of necessity and history. Part II examines the ways in which many of us, as 'late modern,' have been highly influenced by Kant's philosophy and its indirect effect on our self-conception through successive generations of post-Kantians, such as Hegel and Schelling, and early Romantic writers such as Hölderlin, Schlegel, and Novalis, thus making us 'Kantian subjects' in a new historical sense. By defending the fundamentals of Kant's ethics in reaction to some of the latest scholarship in the opening chapters, Ameriks offers an extensive argument that Hölderlin expresses a valuable philosophical position that is much closer to Kant than has generally been recognized. He also argues that it was necessary for Kant's position to be supplemented by the new conception, introduced by the post-Kantians, of philosophy as fundamentally historical, and that this conception has had a growing influence on the most interesting strands of Anglophone as well as Continental philosophy.
