C. C. W. Taylor presents a clear and faithful new translation of one of the most famous and influential texts in the history of Western thought, accompanied by an analytical and critical commentary focusing on philosophical issues. In Books II to IV of the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle gives his account of virtue of character, which is central to his ethical theory as a whole and a key topic in much modern ethical writing.

Please note, this is the original Greek text.

Outlining the major ideas and achievements of the great French thinker Reneescartes, this is an introductory guide to a man whose ground-breakingheories have been rocking the status quo for over three centuries.;From hisirth into the brave new scientific world of Copernicus and Galileo to hisemise and the unusual fate of his body, this book first presents a soundntroduction to the context of Descartes's life and thought. Harry M. Brackenhen draws on the words of Descartes himself to introduce the philosopher'sontroversial theories (...) on the dualism of mind and body and the supremacy ofhe rational ideal, before providing a sharp analysis of the continuing rolef Rene Descartes in our own philosophical and moral landscape. (shrink)

Searle’s tool for understanding culture, law and society is the opposition between brute reality and institutional reality, or in other words between: observer-independent features of the world, such as force, mass and gravitational attraction, and observer-relative features of the world, such as money, property, marriage and government. The question posed here is: under which of these two headings do moral concepts fall? This is an important question because there are moral facts – for example pertaining to guilt and responsibility – (...) which hover uncomfortably close to the boundary between the observer-relative and the observer-independent. By means of a thought experiment involving an imagined Chinese society in which guilt is determined by the random throwing of sticks, I seek to show that moral concepts threaten the foundations of Searle’s philosophy of social reality. (shrink)

Stephen Gaukroger traces the development of Descartes's thought in the social, religious, and intellectual context of seventeenth‐century Europe. Gaukroger describes Descartes's upbringing and his education at the Jesuit La Flèche collège, and shows the role these played in the development of his ground‐breaking work in philosophy and science. The book details the effects of his relationships with others on his work, both through collaboration and through conflict. It discusses the history of the composition of his major works and details their (...) structure and content. It documents the correspondence, which played a major part in the development of his thinking, both before and after publication. The book concludes, as it begins, with his correspondence with Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia on the subject of the passions. (shrink)

From the Foreward by Mortimer J. Adler Of all the question or issues concerning human freedom, none is more fundamental in itself and in its consequences than the problem of free choice; and none has been the subject of more persistent and, at the same time, apparently irresolvable controversyThis bookis the perfect antidote for the errors, the misunderstandings or worse, the ignorances that beset the modern discussion of free choice. Even the reader who comes to this book with little or (...) no knowledge of the philosophical literature on the subjects that it treats cannot fail to appreciate its remarkable clarity, its felicitous combination of detailed concreteness with abstract precision, its exploration of common experience and its elucidation of common sense, and, above all, the intelligibility, reasonableness, and fairness of its exposition of free choice. (shrink)

A group of essays prepared for publication by Maritain in the year before his death. The first series of articles consists of 10 philosophical essays, while second is made up of mainly theological articles. A meditation closes the volume.

Discusses various works of Descartes's and their reception, including objections to them and his response to those objections. Météors deals with meteorology, which includes a corpuscular model of light, an account of refraction, and vision, and its links with optical instruments; the Dioptrique is a practical treatise on the construction of these optical instruments; and Géométrie compares arithmetic with geometry and extends Descartes's treatment of the Pappus problem and the classification of curves. The organization of material in the Discours appears (...) arbitrary unless interpreted autobiographically. The Meditationes contains a fuller treatment of scepticism, in comparison with Pyrrhonism, and hyperbolic doubt, a defence of mechanism, discussions of the cogito and the transcendence of God, the classification of ideas, a new version of the doctrine of clarity and distinctness, and the nature of the thinking self, the identification of the self with the mind and mind/body dualism. (shrink)