Understanding Jonathan Swift’s medical and literary lifeThe Dean Disordered bridges biography and literary criticism to examine the chronic afflictions suffered by the great Irish satirist Jonathan Swift, investigating not only how these ailments affected his day-to-day social life and ambitions but also how he represented them in his correspondence and imaginative writings. By historicizing Swift’s medical issues, Paul William Child returns the creator of...

We are all born curious.Long before we learned to color inside the lines, we asked questions, imagined possibilities, built things that didn't exist, and saw the world through fresh eyes. Creativity wasn't something we practiced. It was simply how we experienced the world. Somewhere along the way, many of us stopped.Responsibilities replaced wonder. Certainty became more valuable than questions. We learned to search for the right answer instead of discoveri...

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) is considered by most philosophers - even those who do not share his views - to be the most influential philosopher of the 20th century. His contributions to the philosophy of language, mind, meaning and psychology - as well as to logic, mathematics and epistemology - permanently altered the philosophical landscape, and his Tractatus Logico Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations continue to be studied in philosophy departments aroun...

This book is a collection of essays and a short story written to honor Christopher Fox of Notre Dame, arguably the most influential figure in Irish Studies for the past quarter century. The essays address topics in which Professor Fox has made his own enduring scholarly contributions, and subjects to which he has made enduring contributions through his academic leadership, from the development of library collections and important fellowships at his university to the institution of a global...

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) was an extraordinarily original philospher, whose influence on twentieth-century thinking goes well beyond philosophy itself. In this book, which aims to make Wittgenstein's thought accessible to the general non-specialist reader, A. C. Grayling explains the nature and impact of Wittgenstein's views. He describes both his early and later philosophy, the differences and connections between them, and gives a fresh assessment of Wittgenstein's continuing influe...

Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is arguably the single most important work in western philosophy. The book introduces and assesses:* Kant's life and background of the Critique of Pure Reason* the ideas and text of the Critique of Pure Reason* the continuing relevance of Kant's work to contemporary philosophy.Ideal for anyone coming to Kant's thought for the first time. This guide will be vital reading for all students of Kant in philo...

First published in 1976, the Dictionary of Philosophy has established itself as the best available text of its kind, explaining often unfamiliar, complicated and diverse terminology. Thoroughly revised and expanded, this fourth edition provides authoritative and rigorous definitions of a broad range of philosophical concepts.Concentrating on the Western philosophical tradition, The Routledge Dictionary of Philosophy offers an illuminating and informed introduction...

The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger's 'Being and Time' contains seventeen chapters by leading scholars of Heidegger. It is a useful reference work for beginning students, but also explores the central themes of Being and Time with a depth that will be of interest to scholars. The Companion begins with a section-by-section overview of Being and Time and a chapter reviewing the genesis of this seminal work. The final chapter situates Being and Time in the context of Heidegger's later work. ...

Those aspects of language use that are crucial to an understanding of language as a system, and especially to an understanding of meaning, are the acknowledged concern of linguistic pragmatics. This textbook provides a lucid and integrative analysis of the central topics in pragmatics - deixis, implicature, presupposition, speech acts, and conversational structure. A central concern of the book is the relation between pragmatics and semantics, and Dr Levinson shows clearly how a pragmatic ...

First published in 1982, this reissue contains a critical exposition of the views of Frege, Dedekind and Peano on the foundations of arithmetic. The last quarter of the 19th century witnessed a remarkable growth of interest in the foundations of arithmetic. This work analyses both the reasons for this growth of interest within both mathematics and philosophy and the ways in which this study of the foundations of arithmetic led to new insights in philosophy and striking advances in logic.

Published in 1953, Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations had a deeply unsettling effect upon our most basic philosophical ideas concerning thought, sensation and language. Its claim that philosophical questions of meaning necessitate a close analysis of the way we use language continues to influence Anglo-American philosophy today. However, its compressed and dialogic prose is not always easy to follow. This collection of essays deepens but also challenges our understanding of the wo...

This book is concerned with the history of metaphysics since Descartes. Taking as its definition of metaphysics 'the most general attempt to make sense of things', it charts the evolution of this enterprise through various competing conceptions of its possibility, scope, and limits. The book is divided into three parts, dealing respectively with the early modern period, the late modern period in the analytic tradition, and the late modern period in non-analytic traditions. In its unusually...