This volume grew out of work on Berkeley which was presented in a dissertation several years ago. Though now much revised and greatly expanded. particularly in respect of the theory of concepts, a good part of the present text rests on this earlier foundation. I therefore gladly take this opportunity to express my appreciation to my teachers both at Indiana University and at McGill, and especially to Professor Newton Stallknecht who directed my dissertation. For permission to quote from th...

Dive deep into the realms of moral philosophy with the timeless classic, "The Critique of Practical Reason" by Immanuel Kant, now available as a convenient ebook. This seminal work, first published in 1788, continues to influence philosophical thought and ethical discourse to this day. In this compelling treatise, Kant explores the foundations of morality, the concept of free will, and the role of autonomy in crafting a meaningful life.Through his rigorous analysis and profound ins...

The Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals or Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (German: Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, 1785), Immanuel Kant's first contribution to moral philosophy, argues for an a priori basis for morality. Where the Critique of Pure Reason laid out Kant's metaphysical and epistemological ideas, this relatively short, primarily meta-ethical, work was intended to outline and define the concepts and arguments shaping his future work The Metaphysics of Moral...

This book is no less than a guide to the whole of Western philosophy -- the ideas that have undergirded our civilization for two-and-a-half thousand years. Anthony Kenny tells the story of philosophy from ancient Greece through the Middle Ages and the Enlightenment into the modern world. He introduces us to the great thinkers and their ideas, starting with Plato, Aristotle, and the other founders of Western thought. In the second part of the book he takes us through a thousand years of med...

"A passionate, humane intelligence addressing itself to the fundamental problem of how the mind operates." — NewsweekConsidered by many to be Hannah Arendt's greatest work, published as she neared the end of her life, The Life of the Mind investigates thought itself, as it exists in contemplative life. In a shift from her previous writings, most of which focus on the world outside the mind, this work was planned as three volumes that would explore ...

Roger Scruton is one of the most widely respected philosophers of our time, whose often provocative views never fail to simulate debate. In Modern Philosophy he turns his attention to the whole of the field, from the philosophy of logic to aesthetics, and in so doing provides us with an essential and comprehensive guide to modern thinking.

Benedict de Spinoza (1632-77) was at once the father of the Enlightenment and the last sad guardian of the medieval world. In his brilliant synthesis of geometrical method, religious sentiment, and secular science, he attempted to reconcile the conflicting moral and intellectual demands of his epoch, and to present a vision of humanity as simultaneously bound by necessity and eternally free. In this book Roger Scruton presents a clear and systematic analysis of Spinoza's thought,and shows ...

Born to be misunderstood, Spinoza was a man whose theology was banned for Godlessness. The very virtuosity of his reasoning left logicians unsettled, while even to professional thinkers in our own time, Spinoza has seemed too clever by half.And yet, as Roger Scruton shows in this strikingly readable introduction to the man and his though, Spinoza's concerns were both simple and sublime. Few philosophers, indeed, have shown such a straightforward, sustained and honest interest in un...

Prolegomenon (plural "prolegomena") refers to any critical introduction or essay at the start of a book.Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics is one of the shorter works by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. It was published in 1783, two years after the first edition of his Critique of Pure Reason.Prolegomena contains an overview and defense of the Critique's main conclusions, sometimes by arguments Kant had not used in the Critique. Kant characterizes his more accessible approach here ...

Philosophy may be said to contain the principles of the rational cognition that concepts afford us of things (not merely, as with logic, the principles of the form of thought in general irrespective of the objects), and, thus interpreted, the course, usually adopted, of dividing it into theoretical and practical is perfectly sound. But this makes imperative a specific distinction on the part of the concepts by which the principles of this rational cognition get their object assigned to the...

Who am I? What is justice? What does it mean to live a good life? Many of the fundamental questions of philosophy are questions that we begin to ask ourselves as young adults when we look at the world around us, at ourselves, and try to make sense of things.This engaging and accessible book invites the reader to explore the questions and arguments of philosophy through the work of one hundred of the greatest thinkers within the Western intellectual tradition. Covering philosophical...

No philosopher has held a higher opinion of art than Hegel, yet nor was any so profoundly pessimistic about its prospects - despite living in the German golden age of Goethe, Mozart and Schiller. For if the artists of classical Greece could find the perfect fusion of content and form, modernity faced complicating - and ultimately disabling - questions. Christianity, with its code of unworldliness, had compromised the immediacy of man's relationship with reality, and ironic detachment had a...