This is the most comprehensive book ever published on philosophical methodology. A team of thirty-eight of the world's leading philosophers present original essays on various aspects of how philosophy should be and is done. The first part is devoted to broad traditions and approaches to philosophical methodology (including logical empiricism, phenomenology, and ordinary language philosophy). The entries in the second part address topics in philosophical methodology, such as intuitions, conceptual analysis, and transcendental arguments. The third part of the book is devoted to essays about the interconnections between philosophy and neighbouring fields, including those of mathematics, psychology, literature and film, and neuroscience.

This volume brings together a number of authors that see themselves as contribu tors to, or critical commentators on, a new field that has recently emerged within the sociology of knowledge. This new field is 'the Sociology of Philosophical Knowledge' (SPK). Studying philosophers and their knowledge from broadly sociological or political perspectives is not, of course, a recent phenomenon. Marxist writers have used such perspectives throughout the twentieth century, and, since the sixties, feminist authors have also occasionally engaged in sociological analysis of philosophers' texts. What distinguishes SPK from these sociologies is that SPK is not engaged in a political struggle; indeed, SPK remains, in general, neutral with respect to the truth or falsity of the doctrines it studies. In doing so, SPK follows the 'strong programme' in the sociology of scientific knowledge. In 'Wittgenstein as a Conservative Thinker', David Bloor draws on the work of the sociologist Karl Mannheim in order to situate Wittgenstein's philosophy. Mannheim distinguished between two important styles of thought in the nine teenth century. The first, the 'natural law' ideology was associated with ideas of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. It emphasized individualism, progress, and universal reason. The second style of thought was 'conservatism'.

The present book aims at clarifying various aspects of Indian philosophy by applying concepts used in text science towards their analysis. Text science attempts to establish universal rules which apply to all forms of human expression. If we regard all human expression, 'including behaviour', as communication, it contains a meaning-system whether it has the form of language or not. The human expression may be classified as language, figure, body action, and so forth; we consider all these forms of expression to be texts, for which there must apply universal rules. The aim of text science is to explain how these rules function throughout various types of texts and thus provide a better understanding of human behaviour. Here the direction of analysis is from context to text. It is also possible to move from the text. It is also possible to move from text to context. We can arrive at a new context from texts such as commentaries, which context cannot be discovered through reading only one of those texts. Such a context will certainly help us coherently interpret other texts related to the texts. The concept of context and these two directions of analysis may not be necessarily new tools to scholars of Indian studies, who often adopt this method unconsciously. However, we aim to use this method consciously here. It is an underlying principle of this book that in order to understand texts, written in Sanskrit or other languages, we need to turn our attention towards factors outside of them, such as information provided by other areas of study, which factors we call context.

In 1961, at the age of nineteen, Jorge J. E. Gracia escaped from the island of Cuba by passing himself off as a Catholic seminarian. He arrived in the United States with just a few spare belongings and his mother's diamond ring secured in a hole in one of his shoes. With a Diamond in My Shoe tells the story of Gracia's quest for identity—from his early years in Cuba and as a refugee in Miami to his formative role in institutionalizing the field of Latin American philosophy in the US academy. Committed to integrating into Anglo America without forgetting his roots, Gracia reflects on his struggles and successes as an immigrant and academic, bringing a philosopher's eye to bear on his personal and professional development as a leading Latinx scholar.

The Gongsun Longzi is often considered the only extant work of the Classical Chinese “School of Names”, an early intellectual tradition (trad. dated to the 4th cent. B.C.) mainly concerned with logic and the philosophy of language. The Gongsun Longzi is a heterogeneous collection of five chapters that include short treatises and largely fictive dialogues between an anonymous persuader and his opponent, which typically revolve around a paradoxical claim. Its value as a testimony to Early Chinese philosophy, however, is somewhat controversial due to the intricate textual history of the text and our limited knowledge about its intellectual backgrounds. This volume gathers contributions by leading specialists in the fields of Classical Chinese philosophy, philology, logic, and linguistics. Besides an overview of the scholarly literature on the topic and a detailed account of the reception of the text throughout time, it presents fresh insights into philological and philosophical problems raised by the Gongsun Longzi and other closely-related texts equally attributed to the “School of Names”.

This volume provides the key to a deepened discourse on philosophy in Africa. Available literature and academic practice in African philosophy since the 1960s have largely featured discourses in the areas of origin, general meaning and nature of the discipline, with little attention given to specialized areas. By contrast, this book examines a noticeable shifting focus from such general concerns to more specific subject-matter, in such areas as epistemology, moral philosophy, metaphysics, aesthetics, and social and political philosophy in the light of the African experience. The volume includes specific discourses from expert contributors on the nature, history and scope of African ethics and metaphysics, while also discussing particular themes in African epistemology, philosophy of education, existentialism and political philosophy. Researchers seeking for new perspective on African philosophy will find this work thought-provoking, instructive and informative.

This book presents a new translation of the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius de Loyola, of his Spiritual Diary, of his Autobiography, and some of his letters. These translations are introduced by a hermeneutical commentary laying out the theory and practices of the decision-making power of imagining. Ignatius proposed in his Spiritual Exercises a form of decision-oriented mysticism, and through their use, gathered around him a group of associates who became the firs members of the Jesuit Order. Under the control of later, doctrinally oriented theologians, the practical, decision-oriented mystical character of the original Exercises was gradually replaced by a more theoretical and devotional character. Antonio T. de Nicolas recovers in his translations and through his critical apparatus, the original decision-oriented thrust of Ignatius.

An innovative perspective on the relationship between philosophy and the Bible. The early modern philosophers’ interpretations of the Scriptures allow deciphering the breeding ground of the freedom of philosophizing, the theological-political debate, and the new conception of nature.

Announcements for the following year included in some vols.

This book, written by well-known students of Étienne Gilson and especially dedicated to Armand A. Maurer, helps inaugurate a long-overdue special series in philosophy honoring Gilson’s legendary scholarship. It presents wide-ranging expositions of Thomist realism in the tradition of Gilsonian humanism covering themes related to philosophy in general, historical method, aesthetics, metaphysics, epistemology, and politics.