What is freedom? What is equality? And what is sovereignty? A foundational text of modern political philosophy, Rousseau's Social Contract has generated much debate and exerted extraordinary influence not only on political thought, but also modern political history, by way of the French Revolution and other political events, ideals, and practices. The Social Contract is regularly studied in undergraduate courses of philosophy, political thought, and modern intellectual history, as well as being the subject of graduate seminars in numerous disciplines. The book inspires an ongoing flow of scholarly articles and monographs. Few texts have offered more influential and important answers to research questions than Rousseau's Social Contract, and in this new Cambridge Companion, a multidisciplinary team of contributors provides new ways to navigate this masterpiece of political philosophy- and its animating questions.

The Classical Greek sophists – Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicus, Hippias, and Antiphon, among others – are some of the most important figures in the flourishing of linguistic, historical, and philosophical reflection at the time of Socrates. They are also some of the most controversial: what makes the sophists distinctive, and what they contributed to fifth-century intellectual culture, has been hotly debated since the time of Plato. They have often been derided as reactionaries, relativists or cynically superficial thinkers, or as mere opportunists, making money from wealthy democrats eager for public repute. This volume takes a fresh perspective on the sophists – who really counted as one; how distinctive they were; and what kind of sense later thinkers made of them. In three sections, contributors address the sophists' predecessors and historical and professional context; their major intellectual themes, including language, ethics, society, and religion; and their reception from the fourth century BCE to modernity.

This Companion provides a comprehensive guide to ancient logic. The first part charts its chronological development, focussing especially on the Greek tradition, and discusses its two main systems: Aristotle's logic of terms and the Stoic logic of propositions. The second part explores the key concepts at the heart of the ancient logical systems: truth, definition, terms, propositions, syllogisms, demonstrations, modality and fallacy. The systematic discussion of these concepts allows the reader to engage with some specific logical and exegetical issues and to appreciate their transformations across different philosophical traditions. The intersections between logic, mathematics and rhetoric are also explored. The third part of the volume discusses the reception and influence of ancient logic in the history of philosophy and its significance for philosophy in our own times. Comprehensive coverage, chapters by leading international scholars and a critical overview of the recent literature in the field will make this volume essential for students and scholars of ancient logic.

Montesquieu was among the most influential writers of the eighteenth century, and the study of his thought enriches and complicates our understanding of the Enlightenment. Following renewed interest in his writings over the last three decades, the Cambridge Companion to Montesquieu brings together the variety of disciplinary and interpretive approaches that have shaped the scholarship on his work and legacy. This Companion offers an integrated volume on Montesquieu as philosopher, novelist, historian, economic thinker, political scientist, and political theorist. It introduces readers to key themes and ongoing debates, reflects developments in the field, breaks fresh ground, indicates avenues for future research, and provides multiple perspectives on the relevance of Montesquieu's thought to contemporary problems in political theory.

This new Companion to Aquinas features entirely new chapters written by internationally recognized experts in the field. It shows the power of Aquinas's philosophical thought and transmits the worldview which he inherited, developed, altered, and argued for, while at the same time revealing to contemporary philosophers the strong connections which there are between Aquinas's interests and views and their own. Its five sections cover the life and works of Aquinas; his metaphysics, including his understanding of the ultimate foundations of reality; his metaethics and ethics, including his virtue ethics; his account of human nature; his theory of the afterlife; his epistemology and his theory of the intellectual virtues; his view of the nature of free will and the relation of grace to free will; and finally some key components of his philosophical theology, including the incarnation and atonement, Christology, and the nature of original sin.

The first edition of the Cambridge Companion to Plato (1992), edited by Richard Kraut, shaped scholarly research and guided new students for thirty years. This new edition introduces students to fresh approaches to Platonic dialogues while advancing the next generation of research. Of its seventeen chapters, nine are entirely new, written by a new generation of scholars. Six others have been thoroughly revised and updated by their original authors. The volume covers the full range of Plato's interests, including ethics, political philosophy, epistemology, metaphysics, aesthetics, religion, mathematics, and psychology. Plato's dialogues are approached as unified works and considered within their intellectual context, and the revised introduction suggests a way of reading the dialogues that attends to the differences between them while also tracing their interrelations. The result is a rich and wide-ranging volume which will be valuable for all students and scholars of Plato.

Plotinus stands at a crossroads in ancient philosophy, between the more than 600 years of philosophy that came before him and the new Platonic tradition. He was the first and perhaps the greatest systematizer of Plato's thought, and all later students of Plato in the following centuries approached Plato through him. This Companion from a new generation of ancient philosophy scholars reflects the current state of research on Plotinus, with chapters on topics including mathematics, fate and determinism, happiness, the theory of forms, categories of reality, matter and evil, and Plotinus' legacy. The volume offers an accessible overview of the thought of one of the pivotal figures in the history of philosophy, and reveals his importance as a thinker whose impact goes far beyond his importance as an interpreter of Plato.

Cicero is one of the most important and influential thinkers within the history of Western philosophy. For the last thirty years, his reputation as a philosopher has once again been on the rise after close to a century of very low esteem. This Companion introduces readers to 'Cicero the philosopher' and to his philosophical writings. It provides a handy port-of-call for those interested in Cicero's original contributions to a wide variety of topics such as epistemology, the emotions, determinism and responsibility, cosmopolitanism, republicanism, philosophical translation, dialogue, aging, friendship, and more. The international, interdisciplinary team of scholars represented in this volume highlights the historical significance and contemporary relevance of Cicero's writings, and suggests pathways for future scholarship on Cicero's philosophy as we move through the twenty-first century.

Benedict (Baruch) de Spinoza (1632–1677) was one of the most systematic, inspiring, and influential philosophers of the early modern period. From a pantheistic starting point that identified God with Nature as all of reality, he sought to demonstrate an ethics of reason, virtue, and freedom while unifying religion with science and mind with body. His contributions to metaphysics, epistemology, psychology, ethics, politics, and the analysis of religion remain vital to the present day. Yet his writings initially appear forbidding to contemporary readers, and his ideas have often been misunderstood. This second edition of The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza includes new chapters on Spinoza's life and his metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of religion, and biblical scholarship, as well as extensive updates to the previous chapters and bibliography. A thorough, reliable, and accessible guide to this extraordinary philosopher, it will be invaluable to anyone who wants to understand what Spinoza has to teach.

Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002) is widely recognized as the leading exponent of philosophical hermeneutics. The essays in this volume examine Gadamer's biography, the core of hermeneutical theory, and the significance of his work for ethics, aesthetics, the social sciences, and theology. There is full consideration of Gadamer's appropriation of Hegel, Heidegger and the Greeks, as well as his relation to modernity, critical theory and poststructuralism. This revised edition includes several new chapters on aspects of Gadamer's work, as well as updated chapters from the first edition and the most comprehensive bibliography of works by and about Gadamer available in the English language.

The theory and practice of civil disobedience has once again taken on import, given recent events. Considering widespread dissatisfaction with normal political mechanisms, even in well-established liberal democracies, civil disobedience remains hugely important, as a growing number of individuals and groups pursue political action. 'Digital disobedients', Black Lives Matter protestors, Extinction Rebellion climate change activists, Hong Kong activists resisting the PRC's authoritarian clampdown…all have practiced civil disobedience. In this Companion, an interdisciplinary group of scholars reconsiders civil disobedience from many perspectives. Whether or not civil disobedience works, and what is at stake when protestors describe their acts as civil disobedience, is systematically examined, as are the legacies and impact of Henry Thoreau, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King.

Aristotle's voluminous writings on animals have often been marginalised in the history of philosophy. Providing the first full-length comprehensive account of Aristotle's biology, its background, content and influence, this Companion situates his study of living nature within his broader philosophy and theology and differentiates it from other medical and philosophical theories. An overview of empiricism in Aristotle's Historia Animalium is followed by an account of the general methodology recommended in the Parts of Animals. An account of the importance of Aristotle's teleological perspective and the fundamental metaphysics of biological entities provides a basis for understanding living capacities, such as nutrition, reproduction, perception and self-motion, in his philosophy. The importance of Aristotle's zoology to both his ethics and political philosophy is highlighted. The volume explores in detail the changing interpretations and influences of Aristotle's biological works from antiquity to modern philosophy of science. It is essential for both students and scholars.

This Companion provides a systematic introductory overview of Richard Rorty's philosophy. With chapters from an interdisciplinary group of leading scholars, the volume addresses virtually every aspect of Rorty's thought, from his philosophical views on truth and representation and his youthful obsession with wild orchids to his ruminations on the contemporary American Left and his prescient warning about the election of Donald Trump. Other topics covered include his various assessments of classical American pragmatism, feminism, liberalism, religion, literature, and philosophy itself. Sympathetic in some cases, in others sharply critical, the essays will provide readers with a deep and illuminating portrait of Rorty's exciting brand of neopragmatism.

Common-sense philosophy is important because it maintains that we can know many things about the world, about ourselves, about morality, and even about things of a metaphysical nature. The tenets of common-sense philosophy, while in some sense obvious and unsurprising, give rise to powerful arguments that can shed light on fundamental philosophical issues, including the perennial problem of scepticism and the emerging challenge of scientism. This Companion offers an exploration of common-sense philosophy in its many forms, tracing its development as a concept and considering the roles it has been assigned to play throughout the history of philosophy. Containing fifteen newly commissioned chapters from leading experts in the history of philosophy, epistemology, the philosophy of science, moral philosophy and metaphysics, the volume will be an essential guide for students and scholars hoping to gain a greater understanding of the value and enduring appeal of common-sense philosophy.

The eighty-five Federalist essays written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison as 'Publius' to support the ratification of the Constitution in 1787–88 are regarded as the preeminent American contribution to Western political theory. Recently, there have been major developments in scholarship on the Revolutionary and Founding era as well as increased public interest in constitutional matters that make this a propitious moment to reflect on the contributions and complexity of The Federalist. This volume of specially commissioned essays covers the broad scope of 'Publius' work, including historical, political, philosophical, juridical, and moral dimensions. In so doing, they bring the design and arguments of the text into focus for twenty-first century scholars, students, and citizens and show how these diverse treatments of The Federalist are associated with an array of substantive political and constitutional perspectives in our own time.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the key themes in Greek and Roman science, medicine, mathematics and technology. A distinguished team of specialists engage with topics including the role of observation and experiment, Presocratic natural philosophy, ancient creationism, and the special style of ancient Greek mathematical texts, while several chapters confront key questions in the philosophy of science such as the relationship between evidence and explanation. The volume will spark renewed discussion about the character of 'ancient' versus 'modern' science, and will broaden readers' understanding of the rich traditions of ancient Greco-Roman natural philosophy, science, medicine and mathematics.

Natural law ethics centres on the idea that ethical norms derive from human nature. The field has seen a remarkable revival since the millennium, with new work in Aristotelian metaphysics complementing innovative applied work in bioethics, economics and political theory. Starting with three chapters on the history of natural law ethics, this volume moves on to various twentieth-century theoretical innovations in the tradition, and then to natural law as embedded in the three Abrahamic faiths. It closes with sections on applied natural law ethics and the challenges and prospects for natural law ethics in the twenty-first century. Uniquely interdisciplinary and written without technical jargon, the book will be of great interest to students and researchers in philosophy, theology, political theory and economics. They will find this the go-to resource for cutting-edge thinking in natural law ethics.

The second edition of this Companion presents a philosophical perspective on an eighteenth-century phenomenon that has had a profound influence on Western culture. A distinguished team of contributors examines the writings of David Hume, Adam Smith, Thomas Reid, Adam Ferguson and other Scottish thinkers. Their subjects range across philosophy, natural theology, economics, anthropology, natural science, and law and the arts, and in addition, they relate the Scottish Enlightenment to its historical context and assess its impact and legacy. The result is a comprehensive and accessible volume that illuminates the richness, the intellectual variety and the underlying unity of this important movement. This volume contains five entirely new chapters on morality, the human mind, aesthetics, sentimentalism and political economy, and eleven other chapters have been significantly revised and updated. The book will be of interest to a wide range of readers in philosophy, theology, literature and the history of ideas.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) remains one of the most challenging, influential and controversial figures in the history of philosophy. The New Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche provides a comprehensive and up-to-date guide to his most difficult ideas, including the will to power and the affirmation of life, as well as his treatment of truth, science, art and history. An accessible introduction sets out the nineteenth-century background of Nietzsche's life and work. Individual chapters are devoted to significant texts such as The Birth of Tragedy, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morality. Other chapters explore major influences such as Wagner and Schopenhauer, as well as examining Nietzsche's reception and investigating his enduring and often divisive legacy. The volume will be valuable for readers seeking to enhance their understanding of Nietzsche's philosophy and of his role in the development of Western thought.

Hermeneutics, the study of interpretation, is an essential and valuable branch of philosophy. Hermeneutics is also a central component of the methodology of the social sciences and the humanities, for example historiography, anthropology, art history, and literary criticism. In a sequence of accessible chapters, contributors across the human sciences explain the leading concepts and ideas of hermeneutics, the historical development of the field, the importance of hermeneutics in philosophy today, and the ways in which it can address contemporary concerns including intercultural relations, relations between subcultures within a single society, and relations across race and gender. Clearly structured and written in non-technical language, this Companion will be an important contribution to a growing field of study.