The first Chapter is the Introduction. I start with a puzzle stemming from the fact that even though the Textbook View of moral theories conceives of the main traditions as both explanatorily and extensionally incompatible, many philosophers have recently argued that much more agreement is possible. I argue that this puzzle might be best explained by the fact that just as scientific theories can be underdetermined by the evidence, so can moral theories be underdetermined by their extension. This analogy to the philosophy of science has received little attention so far, and the book provides the first comprehensive analysis of it.I characterize the main idea in some more detail by distinguishing it from several others. The idea is neither that the moral is underdetermined by the non-moral, nor that moral theories leave our particular choices underdetermined, nor that theories are underdetermined because the evidence is somehow lacking. Finally, I give an outline of the structure of the book.

The Introduction reviews the widely shared understanding of Schopenhauer as an apolitical thinker. It then articulates the challenge to this view. Schopenhauer, this book argues, defined politics as the rational management of perpetual human strife. The Introduction lays out the two main steps for recovering the full scope of Schopenhauer’s political thought. First, his attitude to politics must be historically contextualized. Against the backdrop of his era and the political ideas of other thinkers, the individual profile and polemical significance of Schopenhauer’s conception of politics come into view more clearly. Second, his textually dispersed political ideas must be assembled into a recognizable whole. Many of Schopenhauer’s reflections on political skills, values, ideologies, and regimes can be found in sections that do not explicitly deal with politics, and his core conception of politics becomes visible through a series of contrasts between politics and religion, politics and morality, and politics and sociability.

This chapter sets the stage for the volume, describing an approach to Otto Neurath’s last years that weaves together biographical, historical, and philosophical strands. Neurath can also be examined from the angle of ‘exile studies’, enthusiastically adapting to British life and making contributions to philosophy, economics, and visual education that were ahead of his time. The themes of planning and education are introduced as narrative hooks to understand Neurath’s late work.

This chapter establishes the philosophical value of Republic 1 and challenges the widely held assumption that the later books, 2–10, represent Plato’s real views. It notes that some scholars, seeing Rep. 1 as lacking gravitas – in both style and content – think it was originally not even part of the Republic; others see it as introducing ideas to be developed later; a third group sees it as introduced only to be rebuffed. The case is made for reading the Republic forward – that is, reading what comes later in light of Rep. 1, rather than reading Rep. 1 in light of what comes later: Reading in this way makes it possible to doubt the sincerity of some of Socrates’ later proposals – in particular, the idea that justice is internal. An argument is made for taking seriously, philosophically, the dramatic elements of Rep. 1, including its humor. Finally, the views of Rep. 1’s three interlocutors are related to one another.

This chapter outlines the book’s motivations, its main argument, and competing positions to which the book’s arguments contrast.

The objective of this Critical Guide is to provide a series of in-depth studies on the Essays of David Hume, as well as an account of the state of scholarship. In Hume’s lifetime, the Essays acquired considerable éclat throughout Europe and North America; they influenced the writings of such diverse figures as James Madison and William Paley, and they have since become a staple of undergraduate and graduate curricula in history, politics, and philosophy. Yet the Essays have received comparatively modest attention in the scholarship of Hume’s life and thought. The early tradition of Hume’s intellectual biography, pioneered by J. Y. T. Greig and Ernest Campbell Mossner, subordinated the Essays to Hume’s Treatise and Enquiries as monuments of Hume’s contribution to the history of philosophy. This tendency diminished in the 1970s and 1980s, when Duncan Forbes, J. G. A. Pocock and Istvan Hont placed the Essays at the heart of their studies of Hume’s political thought and political economy. The significance of the Essays in James Harris’s Hume: An Intellectual Biography (2015) bears witness to the importance that the work has since acquired in general reconstructions of Hume’s intellectual commitments. However, there is no ‘critical guide’ to Hume’s Essays in any language, with recent studies having focused more restrictively on Hume’s political economy. This book is intended to address this absence by providing scholars and students with a wide-ranging and accessible overview of the Essays. The recent publication of the Clarendon Edition of Hume’s Essays (E (C)) is timed propitiously. The extraordinary editorial work of Professor Beauchamp and Professor Box has provided an unparalleled resource for the interpretation of the Essays, with a rich apparatus and a granular account of the complex history of the work’s publication. This Critical Guide has benefitted enormously from their labours.

A summary of the book’s argument, a rationale for why that argument is needed, and how it addresses a lacuna in the existing literature. The introduction also offers a brief overview of the material covered in each of the chapters.

Spinoza does not talk about “the Absolute” in the nominative sense that the German Idealists will use later, but he consistently uses the adjective (absoluta/e) and adverb throughout his works. For Spinoza, something is “absolute” in a metaphysical sense when it is considered without relation to anything else.

Serving as an introduction to the collection, this chapter underscores the significance of Hegel’s philosophy of nature within his comprehensive philosophical system and its relevance to contemporary philosophical engagement with empirical sciences. It explores the reception history of Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature, discussing several efforts to revitalize it over the last century and highlighting significant instances of its positive reception despite prevailing skepticism. Tracing the theoretical roots of Hegel’s philosophical interest in the natural world, from post-Kantian thought and the Romantic science movement, the chapter highlights Hegel’s engagement with figures such as Goethe and Schiller, which shaped his organicist views of nature. It examines Hegel’s evolving approach to nature, tracing the emergence of his own natural philosophy and its subsequent refinement in the Dissertatio, the Jena System Drafts, the Phenomenology, and the Encyclopaedia, all of which constitute the important stages of its development. Through successive revisions in the Encyclopaedia, Hegel incorporated advancements in scientific understanding, emphasizing the interplay between empirical observation and philosophical inquiry. In its final section, this chapter outlines the objectives and structure of the volume, emphasizing the revitalization of Hegel’s philosophy of nature beyond its historical context. It argues that Hegel’s approach provides insights into the intricate interplay between humanity and nature, recognizing its depth beyond mere physical needs. Therefore, reassessing his concepts from a modern perspective could generate new viewpoints on the relationship between nature and human culture.

I begin by considering the connection between Collingwood’s Essay on Metaphysics and A. J. Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic. Knox and Donagan believe that “between 1936 and 1938 Collingwood radically changed his mind about the relation of philosophy to history.” Donagan contends that this break stemmed from Collingwood’s having “come to endorse Ayer’s view that the propositions of traditional metaphysics are unverifiable.” Recently, Vanheeswijck and Beaney have claimed that Collingwood in effect endorsed Ayer’s verificationism. There is a considerable gulf between their claims and my own view of what Collingwood thought about logical positivism. In my view, Collingwood denied logical positivism flat-out. My chapter lays out and assesses the main points Vanheeswijck and Beaney use to support their view. I develop a viable alternative, one that takes account of Collingwood’s treatment of absolute presuppositions (in particular, on the vexed question of whether they can be determined to be true or false) and at the same time avoids the conclusion that Collingwood had, mistakenly, bought into logical positivism in his discussion of absolute presuppositions.

This introduction gives context for a detailed study of accidental causation. Accidental causation sits at the intersection of two strands of Aristotle’s thought: causation and accidentality. Accidental causation itself is not, however, well-understood. The introduction concludes with an overview of the rest of the volume.

This introductory chapter seeks to answer the question of what Heidegger means by “death” (Tod) in Being and Time – and begin to justify that answer. I take up this weighty topic with some trepidation (if not quite fear and trembling) in part because to say that the meaning of “death” in Being and Time is controversial is to strain the limits of understatement. In addition to the emotionally freighted nature of the topic itself (to which we will return), I think four main factors contribute to and perpetuate this controversy: (1) Heidegger’s confusing terminology; (2) the centrality of the issue to the text as a whole; (3) the demanding nature of what is required to adjudicate the matter; and (4) the radically polarized scholarly literature on the subject. One of my main goals here is to suggest a way to move beyond the controversy that currently divides the field, so let me begin by saying a bit about its four main contributing factors.

The words ‘nature’ and ‘environment’ have different senses and referents. The idea of the environment is keyed to what surrounds us, and we can speak of natural and built environments as well as others. This book is concerned with ethical questions about the environment. Many of these concern problems that occur at different scales and cause harms of various types. Environmental problems can be viewed from technological, economic, religious, and aesthetic perspectives, among others. No single perspective provides the sole correct or exhaustive way of viewing environmental problems. There is an ethical dimension to most environmental problems and that is the focus of this book.

This chapter provides an introduction to and an overview of the themes and content of the monograph.

The award-winning children’s film Shrek came out at just the right time (in 2001) to be a favourite with our children when they were small, for family viewing (in fact, for multi-repeat family viewing). Shrek is a fairy-tale animation about a sad, lonely, angry, alienated ogre in a world that rejects him for being scary, ugly, and different. With Donkey’s help, Shrek has just rescued the beautiful Princess Fiona from a dragon. Since this is a fairy-tale, Shrek has of course fallen in love with Fiona, but since he is an ogre and she is (apparently) a princess, he is sure his love is in vain. He has always kept up a tough and cynical exterior, but now he has stormed off from Princess Fiona because he has overheard her saying ‘Who could love a hideous, ugly beast?’ – and mistakenly assumed that she meant him.

This chapter considers the relationship between the historical Gorgias of Leontini and Plato’s portrayal of him and his ideas in the Gorgias. By drawing on fragments and testimonia of the historical figure, it shows that Plato’s understanding of Gorgias and his views informs both his characterization of the orator himself in the Gorgias, as well as that dialogue’s philosophical content and aims. In particular, three of the central themes of the Gorgias – ones that the character himself introduces – are prominent in Gorgias’ own works and in the doxographical reception of him: (1) the conception of speech as a form of power or dunamis; (2) the relation between power and wish or boulēsis and their joint role in human action; and (3) the contrast between – and contrasting relationships speech itself has with – belief on the one hand and knowledge on the other. Whether the historical Gorgias was ever personally committed to the relevant ideas in question or not, the chapter argues that he at least gave voice to them in his works, and that Plato, at least, evidently took them seriously as expressions of Gorgianic theory and practice.

The chapter begins by probing skeptical criticism, with key contributors like Stegenga (2018) questioning our unwavering trust in contemporary medicine. Next, it delves into the criticism of overmedicalization (see Moynihan and Cassels 2005; Conrad 2007; Le Fanu 2012; Parens 2013), viewed as an inappropriate use of medical resources for sociopolitical issues. The chapter also investigates the criticism of objectification related to the quality of care, drawing from thinkers like Cassell (2004), Haque and Waytz (2012), and Topol (2019). Rounding out the chapter, utilizing insights from Popper (2000) and Haslanger (2018), it identifies these criticisms as both social and internal to the practice of medicine. It concludes that medicine is falling short of its own standards, thereby posing fundamental questions about its nature and purpose to be explored in the succeeding chapters.

A logic of entailment is one in which it represents its own derivability relation as a connective. This allows it to express nested claims about what is derivable from what. It can say, for example, that if B is derivable from A and if C is derivable from B, then C is derivable from A. Mathematicians and logicians think this way when making proof plans. This chapter sets out the problem of constructing proof plans and looks at the other uses to which logics of entailment have been put. One key use, especially in the context of this book, is as a theory of the closure of scientific theories.