Bøger i Toronto Studies in Philosophy serien

Kant considered it to be scandalous that philosophy still had not found a rational proof of the existence of the external world during his time. Arguably, the scandal continues today because scepticism remains a widely debated and extremely divisive issue among contemporary thinkers. Although scholars have devoted considerable attention to Kant's arguments against Cartesian scepticism, the literature still presents gaps and inaccuracies that obscure a full understanding of this issue and its significance for contemporary philosophy. In Kant and the Scandal of Philosophy, Luigi Caranti corrects this omission, providing a thorough historical analysis of Kant's anti-sceptical arguments from the pre-critical period up to the 'Reflexionen zum Idealismus' (1788-93).Caranti demonstrates how reconstructing Kant's critique of scepticism is crucial for understanding the origin of his philosophy and for avoiding serious mistakes that still serve as obstacles to the proper understanding of the Critique of Pure Reason. In particular, Caranti shows how the sceptical challenge leads Kant to the critical stage of his thought. Moreover, this study responds to recent criticism of transcendental idealism, showing how it can serve as the main premise of a powerful anti-sceptical argument whose main structure is suggested by Kant in the 1781 Fourth Paralogism. Erudite and engaging, Kant and the Scandal of Philosophy fills an important void in the literature and breathes new life into this field of inquiry.

In this major re-examination of Descartes's founding principle, cogito, ergo sum, Murray Miles presents a portrait of Descartes as the Father of Modern Philosophy that is very different from the standard one.Viewing Descartes in both a historical and a systematic perspective, Miles presents a wealth of original analyses, arguments, and re-interpretations of key texts. The result is a fresh and illuminating account of Descartes's metaphysical project and theory of the mind. Descartes's achievement is a radical reversal of the order of knowing, a subjectivism that places knowledge of the mind ahead of knowledge of material things, yet is free of the metaphysical idealism that some of his successors went on to embrace.A meticulous, scholarly, and exhaustive analysis, this book provides a minutely detailed reading of each word of Descartes's founding principle, exploring in great depth the underlying epistemology and ontology. The book will fully repay a careful reading by any serious student of Descartes's philosophy.

James Doull's remarkable legacy as a teacher, scholar, and thinker has left behind a profound and challenging examination of the philosophical and historical roots of contemporary thought and politics. His life's work was devoted to a reflection on freedom in its philosophical and historical context and, more specifically, to looking beneath the commonly accepted forms of North American and Continental thought and discovering a deeper theoretical and practical development. David Peddle and Neil Robertson have collected Doull's essays on the history of western thought and freedom, from the Ancient period to the Post-Modern era, and have provided an introduction that places them in the context of Doull's overall project.Commentaries on his intricate works by twelve former colleagues and students explore various aspects of Doull's history and place it within the context of contemporary scholarship, allowing the reader to judge the depth and rigour of Doull's writing. Together, the texts and commentaries provide a long-overdue introduction to and analysis of Doull's thought, offering further insight into a longstanding and significant dialogue in Canadian philosophy and classical studies, and bringing out a penetrating analysis of the philosophical underpinnings of the contemporary world.

We do not present the whole historical Descartes; what we hope to do is present the point of his enterprise - to set out the details of the logic of the problems that must be solved if we are to have knowledge of the world beyond our own ideas.

This work defends a realist view of universals, kinds, possibilities, and dispositions, while rejecting contemporary accounts of these that are couched in terms of modal logic and 'possible worlds.'

The Hateful and the Obscene is a compelling interpretation of freedom of expression that combines serious philosophical thought with a focus on Canadian law, thus maintaining the breadth to deal with both obscenity and hate literature.

Jeffrey A. Bell here presents a finely constructed survey of the contemporary continental philosophers, focusing on how they have dealt with the problem of difference.

A critical but sympathetic treatment of Pierre Bayle. Once known as the 'Arsenal of the Enlightenment,' his concepts were widely adopted by later thinkers, but since his time there has been nothing but disagreement about how Bayle is to be interpreted.

In each of its five main parts - in turn, focusing on Socrates, Plato, Descartes, Hume, and Sartre - Inroads discusses, from a philosophical rather than a religious or scientific perspective, those questions that make up the common inheritance of academic philosophy and ethico-religious thought.

Braybrooke challenges received scholarly opinion by arguing that canonical theorists Hobbes, Locke, Hume, and Rousseau took St Thomas Aquinas as their point of reference, reinforcing rather than departing from his natural law theory.

Russon argues that Hegel has not only taken account of the body in his philosophy, but has done so in a way that integrates both modern work on embodiment and the approach to the body found in ancient Greek philosophy.

For nineteenth-century thinkers, the central problem of religious consciousness in the modern West was the tension between prevailing concepts of individual autonomy and the traditional Judaeo-Christian claim for divine revelation. The God Within brings together ten of Professor Emil Fackenheim's essays on the German Idealists who struggled to resolve this tension. All the essays gathered here are concerned with the radical singularity of history and existence on the one hand and the demands of philosophical truth on the other. They are informed by Professor Fackenheim's engagement with the profound philosophical challenges of our day - particularly his efforts, as a Jewish theologian, to confront the horrors of the Holocaust. We see, through Fackenheim's exposition, how these thinkers sought to come to terms with the presence of radical evil, a problem whose modern relevance is explored in this volume's epilogue, the 1988 essay 'Holocaust and Weltanschauung: Philosophical Reflections on Why They Did It.'.

Douglas Walton provides a systematic survey, clarification, and assessment of the different tests currently being used to carry out the tasks involved in argument identification.

Cognitive science has posed some radical challenges to philosophy in recent years, particularly in the study of the cognitive activities and capacities of individuals. In this book Nenad Mis̆c̆ević defends naturalistic rationalism against recent relativist attacks.

In The Sovereignty of Joy: Nietzsche's Vision of Grand Politics, Alex McIntyre suggests that a sense of tragic joy is the legislating experience at the heart of Nietzsche's philosophy. A Dionysian exuberance animates all of Nietzsche's central ideas, which McIntyre argues is the political elaboration of the sovereignty of joy.

This collection examines Hegel's philosophy as it bears on the meaning and relevance of tradition - historical, legal, aesthetic, religious, and philosophical. The thirteen original essays draw upon and celebrate the work of H.S. Harris, who is considered by many to be the most influential interpreter of Hegel in the English-speaking world.

Bunge proposes a clear definition of the concept of emergence to replace that of supervenience and clarifies the notions of system, real possibility, inverse problem, interdiscipline, and partial truth that occur in all fields.

Beginning with a wide-ranging discussion of liberal philosophers, Fairfield proposes that liberalism requires a complete reconception of moral selfhood, one that accommodates elements of the contemporary critiques without abandoning liberal individualism.

Addressing the nature and prospects of aesthetics as a discipline, Sparshott discusses beauty, taste, and the place of imagination, fiction, and fine art in societies.

Far from being a philosopher who turns his back on what is taken to be a mistaken metaphysical tradition, Bell argues that Deleuze is best understood as a thinker who endeavoured to continue the work of traditional metaphysics and philosophy.

The essays explore Peirce's work from various perspectives, considering the philosophical significance of his contributions to logic; the foundations of his philosophical system; his metaphysics and cosmology; his theories of inquiry and truth; and his theories of mind, agency, and selfhood.

The contributors to the volume discuss various approaches to bioethical thinking and the political and institutional contexts of bioethics, addressing underlying concerns about the purposes of its practice.

With Boyle on Atheism, J.J. MacIntosh has culled the Boyle manuscripts held at the Royal Society Library in London and transcribed the portions that relate to atheism, arranging them in the order Boyle appears to have intended.

Assembling the previously scattered works of the Preservationist School, this collection contains all of the most significant works on the basic theory of the preservationist approach to paraconsistent logic.

Hunter Brown shows that Henry James's views of religious experience do not in fact lapse into subjectivismor fideism that critics have accused him of but occasions hardships and self-sacrifice which James describes.

Ultimately, this volume represents a major contribution to the study of Berkeley's philosophy by critiquing the tendency to generalize his thought as a version of theologically modified solipsism. In this way, it is a unique and invaluable addition to Berkeley scholarship.

Real Words presents an original way of understanding one of the most important philosophers in the Western tradition.

In Kant and the Scandal of Philosophy, Luigi Caranti corrects this omission, providing a thorough historical analysis of Kant's anti-sceptical arguments from the pre-critical period up to the 'Reflexionen zum Idealismus' (1788-93).

William Sweet and other leading scholars examine Bosanque';s contribution to some of philosophy's central questions. They provide a solid introduction to British Idealism and the idealist movement as a whole, and bring the scholarship on Bosanquet fully up-to-date.

In Analytical Political Philosophy: From Discourse, Edification, distinguished Canadian philosopher David Braybrooke explores this movement by bringing together some of his earlier free-standing studies of the concepts of needs, rights, and rules.