A collection of essays by the celebrated philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe. This collection includes papers on human nature and practical philosophy, together with the classic 'Modern Moral Philosophy'

In 2005 St Andrews Studies published a volume of essays by Anscombe entitled Human Life, Action and Ethics, followed in 2008 by a second with the title Faith in a Hard Ground. Both books were highly praised. This third volume brings essays on the thought of historical philosophers in which Anscombe engages directly with their ideas and arguments. Many are published here for the first time and the collection provides further testimony to Anscombe's insight and intellectual imagination.

Wittgenstein was a faithful and passionate reader of Plato's Dialogues as confirmed by writings and witnesses. Here well-known scholars of Wittgenstein and Plato illuminate the relationship between the two philosophers both philologically and philosophically, and provide new interpretation keys of two of the leading figures of Western thought.

Looks at the ideas of the Austrian philosopher who argued that it cannot be certain that a rhinoceros is not in any given room.

How can I know something? How can I convince someone of the rightness of my position? How does reality function? What is artistic creativity? What is the role of the state? It is well known that people from various cultures give dissimilar answers to such philosophical questions. After three decades in the cross-cultural study of ideas and values, Thomas Kasulis found that culture influences not only the answers to these questions, but often how one arrives at the answers. In generalizing cultural difference, Kasulis identifies two kinds of orientation: intimacy and integrity. Both determine how we think about relations among people and among things, and each is reasonable, effective, and consistent. Yet the two are so incompatible in their basic assumptions that they cannot successfully engage each other. Cultural difference extends beyond nations. Cultural identities crystallize in relation to religion, occupation, race, gender, class. Rather than attempt to transcend cultural difference, Kasulis urges a deeper awareness of its roots by moving beyond mere cultural relativism toward a cultural bi-orientationality that will allow us to adapt ourselves to different cultural contexts as the situation demands. Wonderfully clear and unburdened by jargon, Intimacy or Integrity is accessible to readers from a variety of perspectives and backgrounds. By analyzing the synergy between thought and culture, it increases our understanding of cultural difference and guides us in developing strategies for dealing with orientations different from our own.

Thought's Footing is an enquiry into the relationship between the ways things are and the way we think and talk about them. It is also a study of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations: Charles Travis develops his account of certain key themes into a unified view of the work as a whole. His methodological starting-point is to see Wittgenstein's work as a response to Frege's. The central question is: how does thought get its footing? How can the thought that things are a certain way be connected to things being that way? Wittgenstein departs from Frege in holding that there are indefinitely many ways of filling out (giving content to) the notion of truth.. The truth of a thought or utterance is connected with the consequences of thinking or saying it. That is the point of Wittgenstein's introduction of the notion of a language game. The second key theme is this: a representation of things as being a certain way cannot take the right form for truth-bearing without a background of agreement in judgements: its form must belong to thinkers of a given kind. The third key theme is that the proprietary perceptions of a given sort of thinker as to what would be a case of judging when there is a particular way for things to be is not subject to criticism from outside it. Along the way Travis gives his own distinctive take on such topics as the problem of singular thought, the notion of a proposition, rule-following, sense and nonsense, the possibility of private language, and the representational content of experience. The result is an original and stimulating demonstration of the continuing value of Wittgenstein's work for central debates in philosophy today.

Table of Contents " Preface " Introductory " The Wittgensteinian Paradox " The Solution and the 'Private Language' Argument " Postscript Wittgenstein and Other Minds " Index.

The decline of religion and ever increasing influence of science pose acute ethical issues for us all. Can we reject the literal truth of the Gospels yet still retain a Christian morality? Can we defend any 'moral values' against the constant encroachments of technology? Indeed, are we in danger of losing most of the qualities which make us truly human? Here, drawing on a novelist's insight into art, literature and abnormal psychology, Iris Murdoch conducts an ongoing debate with major writers, thinkers and theologians—from Augustine to Wittgenstein, Shakespeare to Sartre, Plato to Derrida—to provide fresh and compelling answers to these crucial questions.

This book examines in detail Ludwig Wittgenstein’s ideas on thought, thinking, will and intention, as those ideas developed over his lifetime. It also puts his ideas into context by a comparison both with preceding thinkers and with subsequent ones. The first chapter gives an account of the historical and philosophical background, discussing such thinkers as Plato, Descartes, Berkeley, Frege and Russell. The final chapter looks at the legacy of, and reactions to, Wittgenstein. These two chapters frame the central three chapters, devoted to Wittgenstein’s ideas on thought and will. Chapter 2 discusses the sense in which both thought and will represent, or are about, reality; Chapter 3 considers Wittgenstein’s critique of the picture of an "inner process", and the role that behaviour and context play in his views on thought and will; while Chapter 4 centres on the question "What sort of thing is it that thinks or wills?", in particular examining Wittgenstein’s ideas concerning the first person ("I") and concerning statements like "I am thinking" or "I intend to do X".

One of the first things to strike the reader of Wittgenstein's writings is the unique power of his style. One immediately notices the intriguing and arrangement of the paragraphs in Philosophical Investi composition gations, or the stark assertiveness of the sentences in the Tractatus Logico Philosophicus. A sense of the singular style being employed is unavoidable, even before the reader understands anything of what is happening philos ophically. Perhaps precisely for this reason it is too often assumed that coming to understand either work has little or nothing to do with re sponding to its form. The unusual style is a mere curiousity decorating the vehicle of Wittgenstein's ideas. Form is assigned a purely incidental import, there is a coincidence of this or that rhetorical flair with the yet to be determined content of the thoughts. The remarkableness of the style is perhaps registered in a tidy obiter dictum standing beside the more arduous task of discovering the substance of the ideas being presented. our interest, or at Wittgenstein's peculiar way of writing ably captures least our attention, but it bears only minor philosophical import. Though not unprecedented as a form of philosophical composition, it does not conform to the currently acceptable conventions; hence Wittgenstein's style is often thought to stand in the way of understanding his meaning. Such assumptions can be harmless for certain types of writing; however it does not appear as though Wittgenstein's is one of these.