Ostensibly a discussion about love, the debate in the Phaedrus also encompasses the art of rhetoric and how it should be practised. This new edition contains an introductory essay outlining the argument of the dialogue as a whole and Plato's arguments about rhetoric and eros in particular. The Introduction also considers Plato's style and offers an account of the reception of the dialogue from its composition to the twentieth century. A new Greek text of the dialogue is accompanied by a (...) select textual apparatus. The greater part of the book consists of a Commentary, which elucidates the text and makes clear how Plato achieves his philosophical and literary objectives. Primarily intended for advanced undergraduates and graduate students of ancient Greek literature and philosophy, it will also benefit scholars who want an up-to-date account of how to understand the text, argument, style and background of the work. (shrink)

In this book Daniel Wegner offers a novel understanding of the relation of consciousness, the will, and our intentional and voluntary actions. Wegner claims that our experience and common sense view according to which we can influence our behavior roughly the way we experience that we do it is an illusion.

Leo Strauss argued that the most visible fact about Machiavelli's doctrine is also the most useful one: Machiavelli seems to be a teacher of wickedness. Strauss sought to incorporate this idea in his interpretation without permitting it to overwhelm or exhaust his exegesis of The Prince and the Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy . "We are in sympathy," he writes, "with the simple opinion about Machiavelli [namely, the wickedness of his teaching], not only because it is wholesome, (...) but above all because a failure to take that opinion seriously prevents one from doing justice to what is truly admirable in Machiavelli: the intrepidity of his thought, the grandeur of his vision, and the graceful subtlety of his speech." This critique of the founder of modern political philosophy by this prominent twentieth-century scholar is an essential text for students of both authors. (shrink)

" In Being No One, Metzinger, a German philosopher, draws strongly on neuroscientific research to present a representationalist and functional analysis of...

This article responds to Stanley J. Grenz's Templeton Lecture, “Why Do Theologians Need to Be Scientists?” published in the June 2000 issue of Zygon (Grenz 2000). In the first part I outline my reasons for finding the kind of theological reflections in which Grenz engages worthy of attention by noting my disagreement with the view that a sufficient response to theological issues can be formulated on the basis of an examination of our biological nature. I assert, in that connection, the (...) autonomy of reason as a way of investigating and understanding the world. In the second part I respond directly to Grenz by explaining my disagreement with the postmodern critique of science upon which he relies and his adherence to Christian eschatology as an answer to the conundrums into which, he posits, we are drawn as a result of that critique. I note that I agree with Grenz, however, that the activity of valuing is necessarily a forward‐looking Godlike endeavor that is not derivable from science. In the third part I suggest that we must be open to the investigation of the possible existence of an objective realm of value and that, in any case, rejection of the postmodern critique of science in many cases pro‐vides a sound basis for the disciplined resolution of factual questions that frequently lie at the base of disagreements about values. (shrink)

In the 1950s a conservative intellectual movement emerged in the United States complete with a sense of continuity with past conservatives and with a heightened fear of the unprecedented danger posed by the hegemony of liberals and liberal ideals. Two European emigres, both refugees from Hitler's Europe, became the philosophers for this movement. Eric Voegelin and Leo Strauss brought to the American right the concerns and fears of continental philosophers. As a result they helped place the issues of Anglo-American conservatives (...) in a wider context--the so-called "crisis of the West." ;In this dissertation I examine the reaction and the response of Voegelin and Strauss to the philosophical problems of "modernity." More particularly I ask what issues, attitudes, beliefs, and objectives constituted "modernity" for these two thinkers and on what grounds did they consider these threatening to order in a "liberal" America. Moreover, in this dissertation I chart their response to what they considered the failure of the modern project. Finally, I examine their work in the context of a larger debate in America about the problems of "liberalism." ;By "modernity" Strauss and Voegelin meant the process by which human designs became unconnected from a normative order. All non-human paradigms of order became suspect, thereby elevating humans to the status of creators. Consequently, the traditional pursuit of philosophy--understood as the quest for universal and timeless truths--lost influence in a universe increasingly understood as unhinged from a normative order. Strauss and Voegelin, in their very different ways, considered the reawakening of the philosophical quest as the best hope for western civilization. The search for transhuman standards has the benefit of casting into doubt the dreams of ideologues who claim apodictic knowledge even as it works against those who emphasize the human freedom to create whatever order people desire. For Strauss and Voegelin, philosophy was central to long-term social and political order. (shrink)