The title of the book is taken from Hegel and refers to the idea that philosophy cannot be prescriptive because it understands only in hindsight. The same holds true for conceptions of human rights. Based on his many years of experience in the field, the author shares his thoughts about human rights and the role it plays in society. In these thought-provoking essays, the author examines the dialectic relationship between rule of law and law and order; between state and individual; judicial power of logic vs executive logic of power. These dynamic contradictions are never resolved. On the contrary, they are the motor of development and inspire judicial reasoning and the balancing of justice vis--vis power and arbitrariness.

This study presents a substantial revision to received ideas about the relationship between biblical and ancient Greek conceptions of human nature.

This volume studies Sir Richard Jebb, Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge until his death in 1905, and the public competition ("praelections") in which five scholars - James Adam, Walter Headlam, Henry Jackson, William Ridgeway and Arthur Verrall - competed to become his successor. Eight essays are followed by Wilamowitz's entertaining review of the five candidates' orations, with a new translation by E. J. Kenney.

One of the UK's foremost moral philosophers, Mary Midgley recounts her remarkable story in this elegiac and moving account of friendships found and lost, bitter philosophical battles and of a profound love of teaching. In spite of her many books and public profile, little is known about Mary's life. Part of a famous generation of women philosophers that includes Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Warnock and Iris Murdoch, Midgley tells us in vivid and humorous fashion how they cut a swathe through the arid landscape of 1950s British Philosophy, writing and arguing about the grand themes of character, beauty and the meaning of rudeness. As the mother of three children, her journey during the 1950s and 1960s was one of a woman fighting to combine a professional career with raising a family. In startling contrast to many of the academic stars of her generation, we learn that Midgley nearly became a novelist and started writing philosophy only when in her fifties, suggesting that Minerva’s owl really does fly at dusk. Charting the highs and lows of philosophy and academia in Britain, this publication sheds light on Mary’s close friends, her moral philosophy and her meetings with major philosophers, including Wittgenstein and Isaiah Berlin.

Essays and other short works on Hegel, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Burke, Stepelevich, Schopenhauer, Plotinus, Mary Walker, Edgar Bauer, mental imagery, the principle of sufficient reason, special collections librarianship, psychiatry, time, contract bridge, etc.

Since the 1970s I have pursued three separate but overlapping and sometimes simultaneous careers: (1) philosopher / writer / teacher / historian of the long nineteenth century, 1789-1914; (2) editor / translator / photographer / publisher / biographer / encyclopedist; (3) cataloging librarian / rare books and special collections librarian / historian of medicine. Somehow these three vocations have garnered me some acclaim, even an entry in Who's Who in America. Each of them has resulted in some published or presented works. Because these works have been scattered in a wide variety of venues, some of which have gone out of print or have otherwise become generally unavailable - and of course with the oral presentations being gone as soon as they are given - I have thought it wise to select, epitomize, and bring them together in one place - here. Thus, what follows in these volumes is what I consider to be the most important of my shorter works.

This book offers the first genuinely systematic treatment of Hegel's eschatology in the literature. It is an investigation into Hegel's project to demonstrate the ultimate unity of thought and being (consciousness and reality, self and world). The author traces the project through Hegel's epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of history. The grand synthesis creates a basic tension, an ambivalence, that reaches its most acute formulation in Hegel's eschatological language of a final completion or fulfillment of history. This conflicts with his dialectic and Heracletian metaphysics of becoming. Berthold-Bond concludes that a substantially new approach to Hegel's eschatology is needed.

A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year 2023 A New York Times 'Critics' Pick' Book of 2023 'A real achievement' New Statesman 'Beautifully portrays - and exemplifies - the combined wit and profundity, exuberance and rigour, of Oxford analytic philosophy' TLS A Country Life Best Book of 2023 What are the limits of language? How to bring philosophy closer to everyday life? What makes a good human being? These were among the questions that philosophers wrestled with in mid-twentieth-century Britain, a period shadowed by war and the rise of fascism. In response to these events, thinkers such as Gilbert Ryle, J. L. Austin, Elizabeth Anscombe and Iris Murdoch aspired to a new level of watchfulness and self-awareness about language. Being vigilant about their words was their way to keep philosophy true to everyday experience. A Terribly Serious Adventure traces the friendships and the rivalries, the shared preoccupations and the passionate disagreements of Oxford's most brilliant thinkers. Nikhil Krishnan brings his knowledge and understanding of philosophy to bear on the lives and intellectual achievements of a large and lively cast of characters. Together, they stood for a compelling moral vision of philosophy that is still with us today.

Essays and other short works on Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, socialism, Stirner, Feuerbach, Karl Schmidt, art, religion, popular music, suicide, games, humor, and general culture.