Metaphysical Essays

Metaphysical Essays
Author: John Hawthorne
Publisher: Clarendon Press
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2006-04-06
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 019153756X

John Hawthorne is widely regarded as one of the finest philosophers working today. He is perhaps best known for his contributions to metaphysics, and this volume collects his most notable papers in this field. Hawthorne offers original treatments of fundamental topics in philosophy, including identity, ontology, vagueness, and causation. Six of the essays appear here for the first time, and there is a valuable introduction to guide the reader through the selection.

Metaphysical Essays

Metaphysical Essays
Author: John P. Hawthorne
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2006
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780199291236

"This book contains a selection of John Hawthorne's recent essays in metaphysics, including six previously unpublished papers. In these essays, he investigates some of the most fundamental topics in philosophy, including identity, ontology, persistence, vagueness and causation."--BOOK JACKET.

The View of Life

The View of Life
Author: Georg Simmel
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2011-01-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0226757854

Published in 1918, The View of Life is Georg Simmel’s final work. Famously deemed “the brightest man in Europe” by George Santayana, Simmel addressed diverse topics across his essayistic writings, which influenced scholars in aesthetics, epistemology, and sociology. Nevertheless, certain core issues emerged over the course of his career—the genesis, structure, and transcendence of social and cultural forms, and the nature and conditions of authentic individuality, including the role of mindfulness regarding mortality. Composed not long before his death, The View of Life was, Simmel wrote, his “testament,” a capstone work of profound metaphysical inquiry intended to formulate his conception of life in its entirety. Now Anglophone readers can at last read in full the work that shaped the argument of Heidegger’s Being and Time and whose extraordinary impact on European intellectual life between the wars was extolled by Jürgen Habermas. Presented alongside these seminal essays are aphoristic fragments from Simmel’s last journal, providing a beguiling look into the mind of one of the twentieth century’s greatest thinkers.

Idealism

Idealism
Author: Tyron Goldschmidt
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2017
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0198746970

Idealism is a family of metaphysical views each of which gives priority to the mental. The best-known forms of idealism in Western philosophy are Berkeleyan idealism, which gives ontological priority to the mental (minds and ideas) over the physical (bodies), and Kantian idealism, which gives a kind of explanatory priority to the mental (the structure of the understanding) over the physical (the structure of the empirical world). Although idealism was once a dominant view in Western philosophy, it has suffered almost total neglect over the last several decades. This book rectifies this situation by bringing together seventeen essays by leading philosophers on the topic of metaphysical idealism. The various essays explain, attack, or defend a variety of idealistic theories, including not only Berkeleyan and Kantian idealisms but also those developed in traditions less familiar to analytic philosophers, including Buddhism and Hassidic Judaism. Although a number of the articles draw on historical sources, all will be of interest to philosophers working in contemporary metaphysics. This volume aims to spark a revival of serious philosophical interest in metaphysical idealism.

Form and Reason

Form and Reason
Author: Edward Halper
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 1993-08-03
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780791415825

This book uses the study of philosophical texts to raise and explore metaphysical issues. On one level, each essay addresses a scholarly issue in a classical text, often a text of Aristotle’s. On a deeper level, the issues Halper considers are metaphysical. However, unlike thinkers who have brought linguistic analysis and contemporary metaphysical notions to these texts, Halper approaches them to find their formulations of issues and their strategies of pursuit. Halper is not concerned with the defense of metaphysical commitments but with finding and exploring paths of metaphysical inquiry. The essays in this volume are exploratory and exegetical rather than decisive. Their contribution to metaphysics lies in the issues they raise, the methods they explore, and their conception of metaphysics as a discipline rooted in philosophical problems.

Ways a World Might Be

Ways a World Might Be
Author: Robert Stalnaker
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2003-08-07
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0199251487

Robert Stalnaker draws together in this volume the extent of his work in metaphysics. The central theme is the role of possible worlds in articulating our various metaphysical commitments. The essays presented reflect on the nature of metaphysics, with two of the essays featured being published for the first time.

An Essay on Metaphysics

An Essay on Metaphysics
Author: Robin George Collingwood
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 550
Release: 2001-05-24
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780199241415

"With 'The nature of metaphysical study'; 'Function of metaphysics in civilizsation'; 'Notes for an Essay on logic.'"

What Spacetime Explains

What Spacetime Explains
Author: Graham Nerlich
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 299
Release: 1994-08-04
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0521452619

Eleven of Graham Nerlich's essays are here brought together dealing with ontology and methodology in relativity; variable curvature and general relativity; and time and causation.

The Metaphysics and Ethics of Death

The Metaphysics and Ethics of Death
Author: James Stacey Taylor
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2013-11
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199751137

The Metaphysics and Ethics of Death brings together original essays that both address the fundamental questions of the metaphysics of death and explore the relationship between those questions and some of the areas of applied ethics in which they play a central role.