Metaphysics category: 2011 books

The Quality of Life: Aristotle Revised presents a philosophical theory about the constituents of human well-being. The principal idea is that what Aristotle calls 'external goods' - wealth, reputation, power - have at most an indirect bearing on the quality of our lives. Starting with Aristotle's...

The Unity of Oneness and Plurality in Plato's Theaetetus offers a reading of the Theaetetus that shows how the characters’ failure to give an acceptable account (i.e a logos) of knowledge is really a success; the failure being a necessary result of the dialogue’s implicit proof that there can...

In its examination of two of Plato's key works, Soul, World, and Idea: An Interpretation of Plato's Republic and Phaedo reveals the key role that images and our capacity for image-making play in the relationship among soul, world, and Idea. This bookbegins and ends with a reading of the Republic....

In My Ever After is not a mass media style 'general readership' book on immortality; rather, it is an argument against a current school —- neurophilosophy's virtual equation of consciousness and the world. Without exposing the equation's weaknesses, the question of immortality, Geis argues, is moot....

Anaximander, the sixth-century BCE philosopher of Miletus, is often credited as being the instigator of both science and philosophy. The first recorded philosopher to posit the idea of the boundless cosmos, he was also the first to attempt to explain the origins of the world and humankind in rational...

Does God exist? What are the various arguments that seek to prove the existence of God? Can atheists refute these arguments? The Existence of God: A Philosophical Introduction assesses classical and contemporary arguments concerning the existence of God: the ontological argument, introducing...

Our conception of logical space is the set of distinctions we use to navigate the world. In The Construction of Logical Space Agustín Rayo defends the idea that one's conception of logical space is shaped by one's acceptance or rejection of 'just is'-statements: statements like 'to be composed of...

Mumford outlines a major new theory of natural laws. His book begins with the question of whether there are any genuinely law-like phenomena in nature. The discussion addresses questions currently being debated by metaphysicians such as whether the laws of nature are necessary or contingent and whether a property can be identified independently of its causal role.

In this book, Ilhan Inan questions the classical definition of curiosity as a desire to know. Working in an area where epistemology and philosophy of language overlap, Inan forges a link between our ability to become aware of our ignorance and our linguistic aptitude to construct terms referring to...

Necessary Existence breaks ground on one of the deepest questions anyone ever asks: why is there anything? The classic answer is in terms of a necessary foundation. Yet, why think that is the correct answer? Pruss and Rasmussen present an original defense of the hypothesis that there is a concrete...

Conheça esta obra-prima de Nietzsche, publicada pela primeira vez em língua portuguesa na Coleção Conexões, que tem por principal atributo o alerta contra o caráter perigoso da ciência resultando no trabalhador impessoal destituído de autonomia e numa crescente barbarização da cultura. Uma...

Grace and Freedom represents Lonergan's entry into subject matter that would occupy him throughout his lifetime. At the same time it is a manifestation of the thinking that has made him one of the world's foremost Thomist scholars. The volume is in two parts. Part One is a new edition of "Grace...

The ancient topic of universals was central to scholastic philosophy, which raised the question of whether universals exist as Platonic forms, as instantiated Aristotelian forms, as concepts abstracted from singular things, or as words that have universal signification. It might be thought that this...

Scholars from all the continents have written articles to celebrate the seventieth birthday of Jan Srzednicki, a thinker still at the height of his powers. Srzednicki's scientific work alternates between problems of Austrian and German philosophy and questions of political philosophy. The papers published...