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Enjoyed by students, scholars, and anyone with an interest in philosophy, this internationally acclaimed series offers lively, clear introductions to major writers, thinkers, artists, topics, and periods. Each volume contains specially commissioned essays by a team of leading scholars, therefore offering a variety of viewpoints rather than a single voice.

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142 results in Cambridge Companions to Philosophy

Page 3 of 8

The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle's Politics
  • Edited by Marguerite Deslauriers, Pierre Destrée
  • Published online:
    18 December 2013
    Print publication:
    29 August 2013
  • One of the most influential works in the history of political theory, Aristotle's Politics is a treatise in practical philosophy, intended to inform legislators and to create the conditions for virtuous and self-sufficient lives for the citizens of a state. In this Companion, distinguished scholars offer new perspectives on the work and its themes. After an opening exploration of the relation between Aristotle's ethics and his politics, the central chapters follow the sequence of the eight books of the Politics, taking up questions such as the role of reason in legitimizing rule, the common good, justice, slavery, private property, citizenship, democracy and deliberation, unity, conflict, law and authority, and education. The closing chapters discuss the interaction between Aristotle's political thought and contemporary democratic theory. The volume will provide a valuable resource for those studying ancient philosophy, classics, and the history of political thought.

The Cambridge Companion to Pragmatism
  • Edited by Alan Malachowski
  • Published online:
    05 October 2013
    Print publication:
    07 November 2013
  • Pragmatism established a philosophical presence over a century ago through the work of Charles Peirce, William James and John Dewey, and has enjoyed an unprecedented revival in recent years owing to the pioneering efforts of Richard Rorty and Hilary Putnam. The essays in this volume explore the history and themes of classic pragmatism, discuss the revival of pragmatism and show how it engages with a range of areas of inquiry including politics, law, education, aesthetics, religion and feminism. Together they provide readers with an overview of the richness and vitality of pragmatist thinking and the influence that it continues to exert both in philosophy and other disciplines. The volume will be of interest to students and scholars of pragmatism, American philosophy and political theory.

The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger's Being and Time
  • Edited by Mark A. Wrathall
  • Published online:
    05 August 2013
    Print publication:
    31 July 2013
  • The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger's 'Being and Time' contains seventeen chapters by leading scholars of Heidegger. It is a useful reference work for beginning students, but also explores the central themes of Being and Time with a depth that will be of interest to scholars. The Companion begins with a section-by-section overview of Being and Time and a chapter reviewing the genesis of this seminal work. The final chapter situates Being and Time in the context of Heidegger's later work. The remaining chapters examine the core issues of Being and Time, including the question of being, the phenomenology of space, the nature of human being (our relation to others, the importance of moods, the nature of human understanding, language), Heidegger's views on idealism and realism and his position on skepticism and truth, Heidegger's account of authenticity (with a focus on his views on freedom, being toward death, and resoluteness) and the nature of temporality and human historicality.

The Cambridge Companion to Virtue Ethics
  • Edited by Daniel C. Russell
  • Published online:
    05 February 2013
    Print publication:
    14 February 2013
  • Virtue ethics has emerged from a rich history, in which both Aristotle and Aquinas have played an important role, to become one of the fastest-growing fields in contemporary ethics. In this volume of newly commissioned essays, leading moral philosophers offer a comprehensive overview of virtue ethics. They examine the theoretical structure of virtue ethics and its place in contemporary moral theory and other topics discussed include the history of virtue-based approaches to ethics, what makes these approaches distinctive, what they can say about specific practical issues and where we can expect them to go in the future. This Companion will be useful to students of virtue ethics and the history of ethics and to others who want to understand how virtue ethics is changing the face of contemporary moral philosophy.

The Cambridge Companion to Deleuze
  • Edited by Daniel W. Smith, Henry Somers-Hall
  • Published online:
    05 December 2012
    Print publication:
    27 September 2012
  • Gilles Deleuze (1925–95) was an influential and provocative twentieth-century thinker who developed and presented an alternative to the image of thought found in traditional philosophy. This volume offers an extensive survey of Deleuze's philosophy by some of his most influential interpreters. The essays give lucid accounts of the fundamental themes of his metaphysical work and its ethical and political implications. They clearly situate his thinking within the philosophical tradition, with detailed studies of his engagements with phenomenology, post-Kantianism and the sciences, and also his interventions in the arts. As well as offering new research on established areas of Deleuze scholarship, several essays address key themes that have not previously been given the attention they deserve in the English-speaking world.

The Cambridge Companion to Oakeshott
  • Edited by Efraim Podoksik
  • Published online:
    28 September 2012
    Print publication:
    07 June 2012
  • Michael Oakeshott (1901–1990) was one of the leading British philosophers of the twentieth century. He has been influential particularly as a political philosopher, but his work reflects a range of philosophical interests that have more gradually come to be appreciated. In this volume a broad group of scholars offers a comprehensive overview of Oakeshott's philosophy, including his moral and political philosophy, his philosophy of history, science and aesthetics, and his views on the role of education. They analyse Oakeshott's ideas in different intellectual contexts and assess his overall contribution to twentieth-century thought. Accessible and rich with new scholarly material, this volume will be an excellent guide for students and scholars alike.

The Cambridge Companion to Foucault
  • Edited by Gary Gutting
  • Published online:
    28 May 2012
    Print publication:
    25 February 1994
  • Each volume of this series of companions to major philosophers contains specially commissioned essays by an international team of scholars, together with a substantial bibliography, and will serve as a reference work for students and non-specialists. One aim of the series is to dispel the intimidation such readers often feel when faced with the work of a difficult and challenging thinker. Michel Foucault, one of the most important of contemporary French thinkers, exerted a profound influence on philosophy, history, and social theory. Foucault attempted to reveal the historical contingency of ideas that present themselves as necessary truths. He carried out this project in a series of original and strikingly controversial studies on the origins of modern medical and social scientific disciplines. These studies have raised fundamental philosophical questions about the nature of knowledge and its relation to power structures that have become major topics of discussion throughout the humanities and social sciences.

The Cambridge Companion to Existentialism
  • Edited by Steven Crowell
  • Published online:
    28 March 2012
    Print publication:
    16 February 2012
  • Existentialism exerts a continuing fascination on students of philosophy and general readers. As a philosophical phenomenon, though, it is often poorly understood, as a form of radical subjectivism that turns its back on reason and argumentation and possesses all the liabilities of philosophical idealism but without any idealistic conceptual clarity. In this volume of original essays, the first to be devoted exclusively to existentialism in over forty years, a team of distinguished commentators discuss the ideas of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and Beauvoir and show how their focus on existence provides a compelling perspective on contemporary issues in moral psychology and philosophy of mind, language and history. A further sequence of chapters examines the influence of existential ideas beyond philosophy, in literature, religion, politics and psychiatry. The volume offers a rich and comprehensive assessment of the continuing vitality of existentialism as a philosophical movement and a cultural phenomenon.

The Cambridge Companion to Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia
  • Edited by Ralf M. Bader, John Meadowcroft
  • Published online:
    28 September 2011
    Print publication:
    01 September 2011
  • Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) is recognised as a classic of modern political philosophy. Along with John Rawls's A Theory of Justice (1971), it is widely credited with breathing new life into the discipline in the second half of the twentieth century. This Companion presents a balanced and comprehensive assessment of Nozick's contribution to political philosophy. In engaging and accessible chapters, the contributors analyse Nozick's ideas from a variety of perspectives and explore neglected areas of the work such as his discussion of anarchism and his theory of utopia. Their detailed and illuminating picture of Anarchy, State, and Utopia, its impact and its enduring influence will be invaluable to students and scholars in both political philosophy and political theory.

The Cambridge Companion to Socrates
  • Donald R. Morrison
  • Published online:
    28 March 2011
    Print publication:
    22 November 2010
  • The Cambridge Companion to Socrates is a collection of essays providing a comprehensive guide to Socrates, the most famous Greek philosopher. Because Socrates himself wrote nothing, our evidence comes from the writings of his friends (above all Plato), his enemies, and later writers. Socrates is thus a literary figure as well as a historical person. Both aspects of Socrates' legacy are covered in this volume. Socrates' character is full of paradox, and so are his philosophical views. These paradoxes have led to deep differences in scholars' interpretations of Socrates and his thought. Mirroring this wide range of thought about Socrates, this volume's contributors are unusually diverse in their background and perspective. The essays in this volume were authored by classical philologists, philosophers and historians from Germany, Francophone Canada, Britain and the United States, and they represent a range of interpretive and philosophical traditions.

The Cambridge Companion to Dewey
  • Molly Cochran
  • Published online:
    28 September 2010
    Print publication:
    22 July 2010
  • John Dewey (1859–1952) was a major figure of the American cultural and intellectual landscape in the first half of the twentieth century. While not the originator of American pragmatism, he was instrumental to its articulation as a philosophy and the spread of its influence beyond philosophy to other disciplines. His prolific writings encompass metaphysics, philosophy of mind, cognitive science, psychology, moral philosophy, the philosophies of religion, art, and education, and democratic political and international theory. The contributors to this Companion examine the wide range of Dewey's thought and provide a critical evaluation of his philosophy and its lasting influence, both elsewhere in philosophy and on other disciplines.

The Cambridge Companion to Frege
  • Edited by Tom Ricketts, Michael Potter
  • Published online:
    28 September 2010
    Print publication:
    02 September 2010
  • Gottlob Frege (1848–1925) was unquestionably one of the most important philosophers of all time. He trained as a mathematician, and his work in philosophy started as an attempt to provide an explanation of the truths of arithmetic, but in the course of this attempt he not only founded modern logic but also had to address fundamental questions in the philosophy of language and philosophical logic. Frege is generally seen (along with Russell and Wittgenstein) as one of the fathers of the analytic method, which dominated philosophy in English-speaking countries for most of the twentieth century. His work is studied today not just for its historical importance but also because many of his ideas are still seen as relevant to current debates in the philosophies of logic, language, mathematics and the mind. The Cambridge Companion to Frege provides a route into this lively area of research.

The Cambridge Companion to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
  • Edited by Paul Guyer
  • Published online:
    28 July 2010
    Print publication:
    14 June 2010
  • Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, first published in 1781, is one of the landmarks of Western philosophy, a radical departure from everything that went before and an inescapable influence on all philosophy since its publication. This Companion is the first collective commentary on this work in English. The seventeen chapters have been written by an international team of scholars, including some of the best-known figures in the field as well as emerging younger talents. The first two chapters situate Kant's project against the background of continental rationalism and British empiricism, the dominant schools of early modern philosophy. Eleven chapters then expound and assess all the main arguments of the Critique. Finally, four chapters recount the enormous influence of the Critique on subsequent philosophical movements, including German Idealism and Neo-Kantianism, twentieth-century continental philosophy, and twentieth-century Anglo-American analytic philosophy. The book concludes with an extensive bibliography.

The Cambridge Companion to Piaget
  • Edited by Ulrich Müller, Jeremy I. M. Carpendale, Leslie Smith
  • Published online:
    28 March 2010
    Print publication:
    24 August 2009
  • Jean Piaget (1896–1980) was listed among the 100 most important persons in the twentieth century by Time magazine, and his work - with its distinctive account of human development - has had a tremendous influence on a range of disciplines from philosophy to education, and notably in developmental psychology. The Cambridge Companion to Piaget provides a comprehensive introduction to different aspects of Piaget's work in a manner that does not eschew engagement with the complexities of subjects or debates yet is accessible to upper-level undergraduate students. Each chapter is a specially commissioned essay written by an expert on the subject matter. Thus, the book will also be of interest to academic psychologists, educational psychologists, and philosophers.

The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism
  • Edited by Richard Bett
  • Published online:
    28 March 2010
    Print publication:
    28 January 2010
  • This volume offers a comprehensive survey of the main periods, schools, and individual proponents of scepticism in the ancient Greek and Roman world. The contributors examine the major developments chronologically and historically, ranging from the early antecedents of scepticism to the Pyrrhonist tradition. They address the central philosophical and interpretive problems surrounding the sceptics' ideas on subjects including belief, action, and ethics. Finally, they explore the effects which these forms of scepticism had beyond the ancient period, and the ways in which ancient scepticism differs from scepticism as it has been understood since Descartes. The volume will serve as an accessible and wide-ranging introduction to the subject for non-specialists, while also offering considerable depth and detail for more advanced readers.

The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza's Ethics
  • Edited by Olli Koistinen
  • Published online:
    28 March 2010
    Print publication:
    31 August 2009
  • Since its publication in 1677, Spinoza's Ethics has fascinated philosophers, novelists, and scientists alike. It is undoubtedly one of the most exciting and contested works of Western philosophy. Written in an austere, geometrical fashion, the work teaches us how we should live, ending with an ethics in which the only thing good in itself is understanding. Spinoza argues that only that which hinders us from understanding is bad and shows that those endowed with a human mind should devote themselves, as much as they can, to a contemplative life. This Companion volume provides a detailed, accessible exposition of the Ethics. Written by an internationally known team of scholars, it is the first anthology to treat the whole of the Ethics and is written in an accessible style.

The Cambridge Companion to Leo Strauss
  • Edited by Steven B. Smith
  • Published online:
    28 November 2009
    Print publication:
    11 May 2009
  • Leo Strauss was a central figure in the twentieth century renaissance of political philosophy. The essays of The Cambridge Companion to Leo Strauss provide a comprehensive and non-partisan survey of the major themes and problems that constituted Strauss's work. These include his revival of the great 'quarrel between the ancients and the moderns,' his examination of tension between Jerusalem and Athens, and most controversially his recovery of the tradition of esoteric writing. The volume also examines Strauss's complex relation to a range of contemporary political movements and thinkers, including Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, and Gershom Scholem, as well as the creation of a distinctive school of 'Straussian' political philosophy.

The Cambridge Companion to Philo
  • Edited by Adam Kamesar
  • Published online:
    28 November 2009
    Print publication:
    20 April 2009
  • The works of Philo of Alexandria, a slightly older contemporary of Jesus and Paul, constitute an essential source for the study of Judaism and the rise of Christianity. They are also of extreme importance for understanding the Greek philosophy of the time and help to explain the onset of new forms of spirituality that would dominate the following centuries. This handbook presents an account of Philo's achievements. It contains a profile of his life and times, a systematic overview of his many writings, and survey chapters of the key features of his thought, as seen from the perspectives of Judaism and Greek philosophy. The volume concludes with a section devoted to Philo's influence and significance. Composed by an international team of experts, The Cambridge Companion to Philo gives readers a sense of the state of scholarship and provides depth of vision in key areas of Philonic studies.

The Cambridge Companion to Epicureanism
  • Edited by James Warren
  • Published online:
    28 September 2009
    Print publication:
    02 July 2009
  • This Companion presents both an introduction to the history of the ancient philosophical school of Epicureanism and also a critical account of the major areas of its philosophical interest. Chapters span the school's history from the early Hellenistic Garden to the Roman Empire and its later reception in the Early Modern period, introducing the reader to the Epicureans' contributions in physics, metaphysics, epistemology, psychology, ethics and politics. The international team of contributors includes scholars who have produced innovative and original research in various areas of Epicurean thought and they have produced essays which are accessible and of interest to philosophers, classicists, and anyone concerned with the diversity and preoccupations of Epicurean philosophy and the state of academic research in this field. The volume emphasises the interrelation of the different areas of the Epicureans' philosophical interests while also drawing attention to points of interpretative difficulty and controversy.

The Cambridge Companion to Hegel and Nineteenth-Century Philosophy
  • Edited by Frederick C. Beiser
  • Published online:
    28 July 2009
    Print publication:
    17 November 2008
  • The Cambridge Companion to Hegel and Nineteenth-Century Philosophy examines Hegel within his broader historical and philosophical contexts. Covering all major aspects of Hegel's philosophy, the volume provides an introduction to his logic, epistemology, philosophy of mind, social and political philosophy, philosophy of nature and aesthetics. It includes essays by an internationally recognised team of Hegel scholars. The volume begins with Terry Pinkard's article on Hegel's life, a conspectus of his biography on Hegel. It also explores some topics much neglected in Hegel scholarship: such as Hegel's hermeneutics and relationship to mysticism. Aimed at students and scholars of Hegel, this volume will be essential reading for anyone interested in nineteenth-century philosophy. The bibliography includes the most important English-language literature on Hegel written in the last fifteen years.

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