Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2017 -

One challenge of researching the philosophy of pornography is that the writing of two of the most cited authors, Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, can seem overreaching in its moral outrage (MacKinnon) or too reliant on metaphor and emotion (Dworkin). In this collection, Mikkola (practical philosophy, Humboldt Univ. of Berlin) demonstrates how one can analyze the morality and social significance of pornography with rigor, clarity, and direct synthesis with analytic work in the philosophy of language. Several essays explicitly connect the theories on speech acts by J. L. Austin with the arguments that Dworkin and MacKinnon offer in order to produce either a model of pornography as a speech act or to criticize attempts to subsume their arguments under Austin's framework. This collection is an ideal resource for a course in the philosophy of pornography, and the prose is notably lucid and readily accessible to nonspecialists who have modest familiarity with these philosophical topics. Expect to see this volume appearing in the bibliographies of forthcoming books and articles on the philosophy of pornography.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

In the last couple of decades, scholarship extending the moral philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas to social and political issues has dramatically increased. Such work demonstrates that Levinas's account is neither mystical nor Utopian and instead offers resources for thinking about ethics and for living ethically in a shared world. How one should understand those resources has remained a matter of debate. With this book, Morgan (emer., philosophy and Jewish studies, Indiana Univ.) will likely settle many of those debates. Simply put, this is the best resource on Levinas and political philosophy now available in English. It is sophisticated and at the same time accessible, and though technical, it has wide application. Arguing that Levinas provides significant tools for understanding how political critique is possible in relation to others, Morgan clearly, and rightly, situates Levinas as providing a metaphysical defense of the stakes of ethical politics. This book is required reading not only for Levinas scholars but for all who are interested in political philosophy.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

Among the controversies animating contemporary scholarship on Friedrich Nietzsche is the vexing question of whether the German philosopher thought systematically, explicitly, and coherently about politics. In this compelling and accessible study, Drochon (Univ. of Cambridge, UK)--a historian of 19th- and 20th-century political thought--argues the affirmative case, contending that Nietzsche articulated a "great politics" centered on the unification of Continental Europe under the aegis of a cultivated, interbred class of superior individuals who would ultimately lead a geopolitical struggle against Great Britain and Russia for world supremacy. What makes the iconoclast's thinking in the political domain specifically methodical and cogent rather than haphazard and disjointed, Drochon argues, is that the corpus in fact possesses four essential elements specified by the esteemed moral philosopher Bernard Williams: (1) ethical and psychological dimensions; (2) an intelligible theory of modern society; (3) a demonstrated linkage between (1) and (2); and (4) a reasoned perspective on the exercise of power--in terms of essential characteristics, purposes, and limitations--within and across nation-states. One can find lots of books on Nietzsche, but this one stands out for its clarity and excellence.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

A prominent philosopher, Nehamas (Princeton) offers a marvelously insightful, deeply learned, and eminently readable volume on the nature of friendship. Nehamas's previous writings on art and aesthetics, virtue and authenticity, and how to live the good life--respectively, Only a Promise of Happiness (CH, Sep'07, 45-0075), Virtues of Authenticity (1999), and The Art of Living (CH, Mar'99, 36-3854)--not to mention other books on Socrates, Plato, Nietzsche, et al., have prepared him well to examine the complexities of what being a friend means. One of his arguments--among many throughout the book, all richly informed with examples from his knowledge of literature, art, philosophy, and psychology, and with his reflections on his own life--is that people are attracted to those they consider friends (especially close friends) not because of what they can do for one or any other selfish motive but simply because they are who they are. Which is to say, there are no essential characteristics of friends such that one could devise a list of qualities that would describe every friendship. Friends are friends because, by being friends with one another and no one else in their particular way, they create their own shared world of meaning. And morality (sometimes) be damned! This book is sure to become a classic.Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers.

This brief, insightful, posthumously published book draws on the Page-Barbour lectures Rorty (1931-2007) delivered at University of Virginia in 2004. The introduction (by one of Rorty's former students, Michael Berube) and the afterword (by Rorty's widow, Mary V. Rorty) are both worthwhile perspectives on Rorty in life, public and private. The three chapters, based on the lectures, are Rorty at his best. There is nothing startling, as Berube notes, to anyone familiar with Rorty's philosophy. The value of the volume lies in the eloquent and seductive (re)description of Western philosophy--its past, its present, and its future. Much of what Rorty said in these lectures he said before and said after. For example, the need to get rid of the appearance-reality distinction as philosophers from Plato to Kant to Russell have championed remains a key theme. But there are variations in Rorty's position--he explicitly notes some of them and passes over others in silence--that should not only interest the scholar but also be taken as further evidence of Rorty's romantic and pragmatist position. Written in Rorty's characteristically plainspoken style, this book has something to offer the scholar, the critic, and the novice.Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty.

With this book, Britt (religion and culture, Virginia Tech Univ.) makes an important contribution to the ever-expanding critical literature on European philosopher Walter Benjamin (1892-1940). Britt offers the first sustained reading of Benjamin's intellectual engagement with religion as it appears in his extensive writings on art, modernity, and culture. Britt sees Benjamin's vision as postsecular, that is, as an alternative to religious expression through a rejection of secularism and religious revivalisms. Britt's goal is to illuminate how questions of identity, conflict/violence, and agency can be rethought by a careful focus on Benjamin's engagements with cultural and literary phenomena--for example, the Baroque, the biblical, and the literature of madness. With regard to the last, the author pays particular attention to the famous case of Daniel Paul Schreber (1842-1911), a German judge who suffered from what was to become known as paranoid schizophrenia and wrote of his experience in his influential Memoirs of My Nervous Illness (Denkwurdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken, 1903). This book is invaluable for scholars of 20th-century European thought, literature, and religion.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

Stark (management and political science, Univ. of Toronto), also author of The Limits of Medicine (CH, Jul'06, 43-6566), provides a profound and at times moving philosophical meditation on the meaning of mortality in the shaping of human life. In the first chapter Stark identifies philosopher Epicurus's two consolations for life: "as long as we are here, death cannot be" and "once death comes, we are no longer here to be harmed by it." Living those statements well is difficult, because it either forces one to accomplish everything early in life, so that when death comes there will be nothing left to do, or requires one not to think about death and not prepare for it since it "cannot be." Stark goes on to show that prospects for immortality are not really as appealing as they are made out to be. He explores the difficulty of maintaining an identity over time that would not lead to boredom, and how much change one can undergo, and how many times, before one is simply a different person. This is engaged philosophy at its best, designed to help the reader think about, and live, a better life.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.

This book makes a variety of modest yet important claims about the human capacity to reason: reason is central to ethics and practical activity but cannot be divorced from passions; it is limited in its powers, yet vital to life; it operates when it is holistic and pragmatic, rather than narrow and blinded to everything outside the scope of a particular argument; it must humble the claims of authority, tradition, and religion without completely replacing or overpowering any of these. Furthermore, good reasoning--like good science--works with a combination of logic and informed judgment, but it is not to be exclusively identified with either one of these alone. Philosophically informed but essentially popular in its presentation, this book lacks compelling arguments for scholars in the field of reasoning, but it provides an extremely readable introduction to many issues related to reasoning.Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates; general readers.

In this substantial volume, Schultz (humanities, Univ. of Chicago) examines the lives and philosophies of the four founders of the utilitarian principle of morality--William Godwin (1756-1836), Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), John Stuart Mill (1806-73), and Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900)--which espouses that the moral good consists of the greatest happiness of the greatest number of sentient creatures. Schultz borrows heavily from existing biographical and autobiographical material on his subjects and weaves this information into their philosophical ideas to present a more holistic and sympathetic account of their sometimes controversial and misunderstood moral viewpoint. Although the book deals much more with biographical matters than with philosophy, the end in view is always a clearer understanding of utilitarianism. Schultz illustrates that these four men lived extraordinarily interesting lives and fostered views on topics such as gender equality, environmental ethics, animal rights, and social justice far advanced in their time. Including an excellent index and notes, this is a fascinating, extremely well-written volume.Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.

The publication of this biography of the young Nietzsche is a significant event in Nietzsche scholarship. It is clear that Blue (independent scholar) has read absolutely all of the extant biographical sources published both in German and in English, and he has made a special study of the autobiographical essays Nietzsche wrote at various points in his youth. The result is a careful, well-written study that is probably as complete an account of Nietzsche's early years as readers are ever likely to get. According to Blue, this is a "traditional" biography; this means the spotlight is always on Nietzsche. The book is especially strong on Nietzsche's personal ambition and determination to make an impact on the world. Blue covers the years from Nietzsche's birth in 1844 to his first academic appointment (at the University of Basel) in 1869, when he entered the professional world of scholarship (subsequent volumes are promised). Readers will be fascinated by Nietzsche's religious upbringing, his family relations and friendships, and his intellectual life in high school and university.Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general readers.

In this fascinating book, Fedyk (Mount Allison Univ.) attempts to provide a link between philosophical ethics and contemporary research in moral psychology through a causal theory of ethics, a significant interdisciplinary endeavor. The key to the project lies in Fedyk's ingenious use of Mayr's lemma, first applied to work in evolutionary biology, which warns theorists against collapsing ultimate explanations with proximate causes. Ultimate explanations are used in evolutionary theory to explain the benefit to a whole species of certain adaptations to the environment, for example, giraffe's long necks. Proximal explanations are multiple, involving specific physiological, neurological, biochemical, computational, and cognitive mechanisms, any number of which may work together to realize the ultimate explanation. Applied to moral psychology and moral philosophy, the lemma shows that philosophical theories of ethics are compatible with any number of proximal mechanisms in social sciences: beliefs, attitudes, local norms, history, and so on. The point is that it is a mistake to draw inferences from one level of explanation to the other. The best philosophical approach to ethics would be one that works through the distributed ethical experience of interdisciplinary networks of scholars. This is an important and insightful discussion of the link between moral philosophy and moral psychology.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

The most comprehensive treatment on this subject to date, Thomas Aquinas on War and Peace fills a significant lacuna in research on Thomas and the just war tradition. Philosopher Gregory Reichberg (Peace Research Institute Oslo) is singular among scholars of just war doctrine for the breadth of his learning and the precision of his analysis. His coedited volumes on the ethics of war are standards in the literature, and his research is exemplary. Here he combines both new and previously published research to cover much of Thomas's just war doctrine, its later interpretations, and its ongoing impact. Indeed, virtually all accounts of just war have some kind of dependence on Thomas. Though not exhaustive in its treatment of Thomas or the just war tradition, this volume will be a valuable resource for those interested in him, the history of just war philosophy, or Catholicism. With no comparable volume in English, this book leads one to wonder how we have gone so long without such a work.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

Shaw (philosophy, San Jose State) argues that utilitarianism provides the best theoretical basis for understanding the morality of war. He believes this is true even if utilitarianism is not, contrary to what he believes, the best moral theory. Shaw begins with persuasive arguments against realism and relativism, then provides an overview of utilitarianism and a very interesting discussion of classical utilitarian perspectives on the morality of war. The remainder of the book covers the distinctions and norms often used to understand the morality of war, for example, the distinctions between combatants and noncombatants and between the justice of a war and the justice of acts within war. Shaw accepts much of just war theory, though he argues that it is best understood as a set of pragmatic guidelines rather than a set of fundamental moral norms, and that the most plausible and coherent moral foundation for these guidelines is a form of indirect-act utilitarianism. The volume is clear, carefully argued, and thorough in its discussion of the literature on the morality of war.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above.

In this book, Maddy (logic and philosophy of science, Univ. of California, Irvine) attempts to solve the problem of Cartesian skepticism; in the process, she also examines various accounts of the goals and aims of philosophy and of how philosophy should be practiced. Maddy suggests that what counts as a philosophical problem and as an acceptable response to that problem is a function of one's answer to these questions about the nature of philosophy. Her approach draws on the work of philosophers such as G. E. Moore, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and J. L. Austin, and she advances an ordinary language and contextualist solution to the problem of skepticism. Part of the book is devoted to exposition of Descartes's views, and part responds to contemporary interpretations of what Descartes was up to. This book is an excellent introduction to Cartesian skepticism and its contemporary defenders, e.g., Barry Stroud, who argue that Descartes's arguments cannot be dismissed lightly. Assuming only a passing acquaintance with philosophy and skepticism, this is one of those rare books in philosophy that has something to offer almost everyone (perhaps other than those who specialize in epistemology).Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.