One of the pioneers of modern sociology, Max Scheler (1874- 1928) ranks with Max Weber, Edmund Husserl, and Ernst Troeltsch as being among the most brilliant minds of his generation. Yet Scheler is now known chiefly for his philosophy of religion, despite his groundbreaking work in the sociology of knowledge, the sociology of emotions, and phenomenological sociology. This volume comprises some of Scheler's most interesting work—including an analysis of the role of sentiments in social interaction, a sociology of knowledge rooted in global social and cultural comparisons, and a cross-cultural theory of values—and identifies some of his important contributions to the discussion of issues at the forefront of the social sciences today. Editor Harold J. Bershady provides a richly detailed biographical portrait of Scheler, as well as an incisive analysis of how his work extends and integrates problems of theory and method addressed by Durkheim, Weber, and Parsons, among others. Harold J. Bershady, professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, is the author of Ideology and Social Knowledge and the editor of Social Class and Democratic Leadership . Heritage of Sociology series

The thesis of the present volume is critical and dual. (1) Present day philosophy of man and sciences of man suffer from the Greek mis taken polarization of everything human into nature and convention which is (allegedly) good and evil, which is (allegedly) truth and fal sity, which is (allegedly) rationality and irrationality, to wit, the polar ization of all fields of inquiry, the natural and social sciences, as well as ethics and all technology, whether natural or social, into the totally positive and the totally negative. (2) Almost all philosophy and sci ences of man share the erroneous work ethic which is the myth of man's evil nature - the myth of the beast in man, the doctrine of original sin. To mediate or to compromise between the first view of human nature as good with the second view of it as evil, sociologists have devised a modified utilitarianism with deferred gratification so called, and the theory of the evil of artificial competition (capitalist and socialist alike) and of keeping up with the Joneses. Now, the mediation is not necessary. For, the polarization makes for abstract errors which are simplistic views of rationality, such as reductionism and positivism of all sorts, as well as for concrete errors, such as the disposition to condemn repeatedly those human weaknesses which are inevitable, namely man's inability to be perfectly rational, avoid all error, etc. , thus setting man against himself as all too wicked.

Relativity: A Richer Truth is a book written by Philipp Frank that explores the fundamental principles of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. The book is a comprehensive guide that delves into the history and development of the theory, explaining the complex concepts and ideas in a clear and concise manner.The book is divided into two parts, with the first part focusing on the historical background of relativity and the second part delving into the mathematical and physical principles that underlie the theory. The author provides a detailed account of Einstein's life and work, tracing the evolution of his ideas and the scientific and philosophical debates that surrounded them.The second part of the book explores the mathematical and physical principles that form the foundation of relativity. The author explains the concepts of space-time, the equivalence principle, and the nature of gravity, among others, in a way that is accessible to readers with no prior knowledge of physics.In addition to providing a clear and comprehensive introduction to relativity, the book also highlights the broader implications of the theory for our understanding of the universe and our place within it. The author discusses the philosophical and cultural implications of relativity, exploring its impact on our concepts of time, space, and reality.Overall, Relativity: A Richer Truth is an engaging and informative book that offers readers a deeper understanding of one of the most important scientific theories of the modern era. It is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of science, physics, or the philosophical implications of relativity.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

2012 Reprint of 1962 Edition. Exact facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. If Mises has an unheralded masterpiece, "The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science" is it. There are two senses in which this book is indeed ultimate: it deals with the very core of economics as a science, and it is the last book that he wrote. For that reason, it is a real milestone in the history of his work. In this volume, Mises argued that economics is a science because human action is a natural order of life and that it is the actions of humans that determine markets and capital decisions. Since Mises believed these links could be proven scientifically, he concluded that economics, with its basis on that human action, is indeed a science in its own right and not an ideology or a metaphysical doctrine.

Wittgenstein's later writings generate a great deal of controversy and debate, as do the implications of his ideas for such topics as consciousness, knowledge, language and the arts. Oswald Hanfling addresses a widespeard tendency to ascribe to Wittgenstein views that go beyond those he actually held. Separate chapters deal with important topics such as the private language argument, rule-following, the problem of other minds, and the ascription of scepticism to Wittgenstein. Describing Wittgenstein as a 'humanist' thinker, he contrasts his views on language, art humanity and philosophy itself with those of scientifically minded philosophers. He argues that 'the human form of life' calls for a kind of understanding that cfannot be achieved by the methods of emirical science; that consiousness, for example, cannot properly be regarded as a property of the bran; and that the resulting 'problem of consoiusness is an illusion. Wittgenstein and the Human Form of Life is essential reading for anyone interested in Wittgenstein's approach to what it means to be human. It will be invaluable to all Wittgenstein scholars, and all who are interested in the philosophy of mind, language and aesthetics.

Abraham Abulafia, the founder of the ecstatic Kabbalah, exposed a mysticism that includes a deep interest in language as a universe in itself, to be studied as the philosophers study nature, in order to attain higher knowledge than natural science and speculative philosophy. The status of Hebrew as the natural, intellectual, and primordial language is discussed against the background of the medieval speculations regarding this topic.Abulafia proposed an elaborate hermeneutical system, unique in the whole Kabbalistic literature, for both its systematic exposition and the eccentric exegetical devices it describes. Various versions of this sevenfold system occur in several manuscripts that are collected and analyzed here in detail for the first time.Torah was regarded by Abulafia as the most important text, reflecting the constitution of the intellectual world and being identical with the Active intellect and even to God Himself. On the other hand, Torah was interpreted in Abulafia’s Kabbalah as an allegory to the psychological processes of the mystic, an approach different from the regular Kabbalistic interpretation of this text as a symbolic corpus reflecting the divine intrasefirotic life.

2014 Reprint of Original 1960 Edition. Exact facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. "Epistemological Problems" is a milestone in Ludwig von Mises' groundbreaking development of praxeology. This important work contains foundational thoughts on his theory of human action, or "logic of action," which forms the "distinctive methodology of the Austrian School... Mises was not only the major architect and elaborator of this methodology, but also the economist who most fully and successfully applied it to the construction of economic theory" (Rothbard). Mises headed the Austrian School, which "celebrates freedom and the individual, rather than determinism and the collective... and explicitly rejects the idea that the natural sciences provide the proper model for economic analysis" (Shenoy et al., Towards a Theoretical Framework, 19, 19n). In establishing the school's epistemological foundations, Mises first began working on the subject in a series of articles published in the 1920s. He "collected and published them in his seminal philosophical and methodological work, "Grundprobleme der Nationalökonimie" in 1933," which was not translated into English until this edition. Here Mises presents "economics from the point of view of the philosophy of science, and the actual economic analysis of value and inconvertible capital." The first chapter of the book, "The Task and Scope of the Science of Human Action," evolved as the core of the system "Mises had been working on for years... He argued that economic laws were true a priori, on a par with the laws of logic and mathematics... [This] remained one of his most controversial tenets," in that it frames economic theory as addressing "acts of the real world, such as the one that human beings make choices. But the facts of this sort cannot be observed... Economics is not an empirical science in this sense, but it is a science nevertheless." To Mises "the epistemology of economics was not just an idle pastime for ivory tower intellectuals. It was of direct practical relevance." "Epistemological Problems" remains fundamental in establishing the "significance of economic calculation for the architecture of economic science." It is his most powerful and comprehensive elaboration of the span of economic science, arguing that errors of socialism, institutional racism, nationalism and other aspects of human society can be seen as a revolt against the distinctive rationality of economic logic and science. A work that "has lost nothing of its importance... Epistemological Problems contains a considerable amount of discussion that cannot be found in any other of his writings... in particular his critical discussion of the works of those thinkers to whom he felt the greatest intellectual affinity and intellectual debt: Carl Menger, Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk and Max Weber" (Hülsmann, Introduction, 2002 edition, 670-671, 948, xxix, lv).

Contemplation is a working method for expanding the mind and deepening one's understanding of Existence. The kabbalistic diagrams called the Tree of Life and Jacob's Ladder set out a metaphysical framework for examining a wide range of themes in this book. As well as considering macrocosmic aspects of the universe, we focus on the crucial role of Self-development in the evolution of humanity in terms of religion, psychology, astrology and schools of the soul. Kabbalistic Contemplations contains short chapters together with a diagram or an image to illustrate each topic. As such, these are designed to be used as a basis for further contemplation in both individual and group work.

Product Description This is the first full-length study of the Symposium to be published in English, and one of the first English works on Plato to take its bearings by the dramatic form of the Platonic dialogue, a thesis that was regarded as heterodox at the time but which today is widely accepted by scholars of the most diverse standpoint. Rosen was also one of the first to study in detail the philosophical significance of the phenomenon of concrete human sexuality, as it is presented by Plato in the diverse characters of the main speakers in the dialogue. His analysis of the theoretical significance of pederasty in the dialogue was highly controversial at the time, but is today accepted as central to Plato's dramatic phenomenology of human existence. Rosen discusses a variety of topics that had previously been neglected in the secondary literature, including the problem of the hybristic nature of the philosopher, the poetical dimension of Plato's conception of philosophy, and the theoretical implication of the difference between Platonic writing and Socratic conversation. Review "Recent years have seen a small but steady flow of major studies in the Platonic dialogues, marked by a marriage of scholarly thoroughness with genuine humanistic warmth. This volume is one such. . . . A wealth of linguistic and cultural lore pertaining to ancient Greece. . . . This book must be in every college library." -- Choice "Rosen treats the Symposium very much from the literary point of view. He has . . . perceptive observations to make on the dramatic elements in Plato's style, on his use of irony, and on his characterizations." -- Times Literary Supplement "Rosen's book is strikingly different from most English writing on Plato. The volume is beautifully produced, and contains an extensive and useful bibliography." -- H. J. Easterling, Classical Review "This exciting book . . . contains much to reflect upon. The author possesses a good knowledge of ancient texts but does not hesitate to provide very instructive references to modern philosophy. . . . One may say of this book what the author says of the Platonic dialogue as compared to a poem or a set of axioms: no description is equivalent to its content or it implications." -- Rmi Brague, Revue Philosophique de Louvain "[H]ighly intelligent and . . . stimulating book." -- Trevor J. Saunders, Journal of Hellenic Studies

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1889 Edition.

'the oldest biography of Spinoza', La Vie de Mr. Spinosa, which in the manuscript copies is often followed by L'Esprit de M. Spinosa. Margaret Jacob, in her Radical Enlightenment, contended that the Traite was written by a radical group of Freemasons in The Hague in the early eighteenth century. Silvia Berti has offered evidence it was written by Jan Vroesen. Various discussions in the early eighteenth century consider many possi ble authors from the Renaissance onwards to whom the work might be attributed. The Trois imposteurs has attracted quite a bit of recent attention as one of the most significant irreligious clandestine writings available in the Enlightenment, which is most important for understanding the develop ment of religious scepticism, radical deism, and even atheism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Scholars for the last couple of decades have been trying to assess when the work was actually written or compiled and by whom. In view of the widespread distribution of manu scripts of the work all over Europe, they have also been seeking to find out who was influenced by the work, and what it represented for its time. Hitherto unknown manuscripts are being turned up in public and private libraries all over Europe and the United States.

Every work on Jewish thought and law since the twelfth century bears the imprint of Maimonides. A. N. Whitehead's famous dictum that the entire European philosophical tradition 'consists of a series of footnotes to Plato' could equally characterize Maimonides' place in the Jewish tradition. The critical studies in this volume explore how Orthodox rabbis of different orientations--Shlomo Aviner, Naftali Zvi Yehudah Berlin (Netziv), Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, Joseph Kafih, Abraham Isaac Kook, Aaron Kotler, Joseph Soloveitchik, and Elhanan Wasserman--have read and provided footnotes to Maimonides in the long twentieth century. How well did they really understand Maimonides? And where do their arguments fit in the mainstream debates about him and his works? Each of the seven core chapters examines a particular approach. Some rabbis have tried to liberate themselves from the influence of his ideas. Others have sought to build on those ideas or expand them in ways which Maimonides himself did not pursue, and which he may well not have agreed with. Still others advance patently non-Maimonidean positions, while attributing them to none other than Maimonides. Above all, the essays published here demonstrate that his legacy remains vibrantly alive today.

Few words in both everyday parlance and theoretical discourse have been as rhapsodically defended or as fervently resisted as "experience." Yet, to date, there have been no comprehensive studies of how the concept of experience has evolved over time and why so many thinkers in so many different traditions have been compelled to understand it. Songs of Experience is a remarkable history of Western ideas about the nature of human experience written by one of our best-known intellectual historians. With its sweeping historical reach and lucid comparative analysis―qualities that have made Martin Jay's previous books so distinctive and so successful―Songs of Experience explores Western discourse from the sixteenth century to the present, asking why the concept of experience has been such a magnet for controversy. Resisting any single overarching narrative, Jay discovers themes and patterns that transcend individuals and particular schools of thought and illuminate the entire spectrum of intellectual history. As he explores the manifold contexts for understanding experience―epistemological, religious, aesthetic, political, and historical―Jay engages an exceptionally broad range of European and American traditions and thinkers from the American pragmatists and British Marxist humanists to the Frankfurt School and the French poststructuralists, and he delves into the thought of individual philosophers as well, including Montaigne, Bacon, Locke, Hume and Kant, Oakeshott, Collingwood, and Ankersmit. Provocative, engaging, erudite, this key work will be an essential source for anyone who joins the ongoing debate about the material, linguistic, cultural, and theoretical meaning of "experience" in modern cultures.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Modernity has expandedupon the Psalmist’s admonition to put one’s trust not in princes. Power can assume, to borrow Gabriel Marcel’s phrase, an “infinity of masks”; yet these masks only obscure the vacuity of ideology and its inability to save man from himself. Problematic Man pursues both diagnosis and prognosis of the existential condition of modern man. Between the “death of God” which Nietzsche proclaimed and the atmosphere of anxiety, insecurity, and meaninglessness in which man now draws his daily breath stands an indisputable connection. To parse this connection, and thus bring forth something approaching a solution to “problematic man,” Marcel brings into conversation an array of philosophers and philosophies, ranging from Aristotle to Augustine, from Pascal and Kierkegaard to Heidegger and Sartre. Elegant in style and subtle in judgment, Marcel contrasts modernity’s inheritance of unprecedented scientific and technological progress with its spoils of unhappiness and unease and concludes emphatically that a re-integration of the Gospel is the fundamental solution to Problematic Man.

"Religion in Five Minutes provides an accessible and lively introduction to the questions about religious beliefs, behaviours, and institutions that interest many of us, whether or not we personally identify with a religion. The second edition of Religion in Five Minutes includes all of the entries from the first but enlarges that volume -now with 100 answers to common questions, focusing much of the new material on issues of relevance to religion in Europe. Because each chapter can be read in about five minutes, the book is an ideal supplementary resource for classes but also an engaging read for those curious about the world around them"--

The History of Linguistics , to be published in five volumes, aims to provide the reader with an authoritative and comprehensive account of the attitudes to language prevailing in different civilizations and in different periods by examining the very varied development of linguistic thought in the specific social, cultural and religious contexts involved. Issues discussed include the place of language in education, variation and prestige, and approaches to lexical and grammatical description. The authors of the individual chapters are specialists who have analysed the primary sources and produced original syntheses by exploring the linguistic interests and assumptions of particular cultures in their own terms, without seeking to reinterpret them as contributions towards the development of contemporary western conceptions of linguistic science. In Volume IV: Nineteenth Century Linguistics , Anna Morpurgo Davies shows how linguistics came into its own as an independent discipline separated from philosophical and literary studies and enjoyed a unique intellectual and institutional success tied to the research ethos of the new universities, until it became a model for other humanistic subjects which aimed at 'scientific status'. The linguistics of the nineteenth century abandons earlier theoretical discussions in favour of a more empirical and historical approach using new methods to compare languages and to investigate their history. The great achievement of this period is the demonstration that languages such as Sanskrit , Latin and English are related and derive from a parent language which is not attested but can be reconstructed. This book discusses in detail the theories developed and the individual findings obtained. In contrast with earlier historiographical trends it denies that the new approach originated entirely from German Romanticism, and highlights a form of continuity with the eighteenth century, while stressing that a deliberate break took place round the 1830s. By the end of the century the results of comparative and historical linguistics had been generally accepted, but it soon became clear that a historical approach could not by itself solve all questions that it raised. At this point the new interest in description and theory which characterizes the twentieth century began to gain prominence.