Bentham's best-known book stands as a classic of both philosophy and jurisprudence. The 1789 work articulates an important statement of the foundations of utilitarian philosophy — it also represents a pioneering study of crime and punishment. Bentham's reasoning remains central to contemporary debates in moral and political philosophy, economics, and legal theory.

This book, which presents Spinoza's main ideas in dictionary form, has as its subject the opposition between ethics and morality, and the link between ethical ...

In this extraordinary work Gilles Deleuze reflects on one of the figures of the past who has most influenced his own sweeping reconfiguration of the tasks of philosophy.

In the de Officiis we have, save for the latter Philippics, the great orator's last contribution to literature. The last, sad, troubled years of his busy life could not be given to his profession; and he turned his never-resting thoughts to the second love of his student days and made Greek philosophy a possibility for Roman readers. The senate had been abolished; the courts had been closed. His occupation was gone; but Cicero could not surrender himself to idleness. In those (...) days of distraction (46-43 b.c.) he produced for publication almost as much as in all his years of active life.The liberators had been able to remove the tyrant, but they could not restore the republic. Cicero's own life was in danger from the fury of mad Antony and he left Rome about the end of March, 44 b.c. He dared not even stop permanently in any one of his various country estates, but, wretched, wandered from one of his villas to another nearly all the summer and autumn through. He would not suffer himself to become a prey to his overwhelming sorrow at the death of the republic and the final crushing of the hopes that had risen with Caesar's downfall, but worked at the highest tension on his philosophical studies. (shrink)

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

In this paper I try to give an account of necessary and sufficient conditions of true freedom of action, of true or ultimate responsibility, even while acknowledging that such ultimate responsibility is impossible, because one of the conditions—being causa sui, or absolutely self-originating—is unfulfillable. I consider various forms of the ‘able-to-choose’ condition on freedom, and summarize the argument in part III of my book Freedom and Belief for the seemingly paradoxical claim that one of the conditions of truly free action (...) is believing that you are free. Much of the discussion is intended as a contribution to the phenomenology of agency and in particular the phenomenology of the experience of freedom. (shrink)

L’individualizzazione è il contrassegno distintivo dell’età moderna e comporta la trasformazione dell’identità umana da qualcosa di "dato" in un "compito". Con la modernità gli esseri umani non vengono più al mondo con delle identità definite, ma devono diventare ciò che sono. In effetti va distinta una "prima modernità" o "modernità classica" da una "seconda modernità" in cui gli individui hanno perso ogni speranza di poter risolvere collettivamente i problemi individuali. Ciò significa corrosione e progressiva disintegrazione delle cittadinanza e fa sorgere (...) il bisogno di una rinnovata capacità di decidere insiemeIndividualization is the trade mark of modernity. It consists in transforming human identity from a "given" into a "task". In modern times human beings are no more "born into" their identities, but they have to become what they are. As a matter of fact, we have to distinguish an "early or classic modernity" from a "second modernity", where individuals have lost any idea of a possible collective remedy to the individual’s problems. This means corrosion and slow disintegration of citizenship and it forces us to look for a renewed capacity for deciding together. (shrink)