For your reading pleasure this week:

The new May 2009 reviews from Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews are now available.   There’s quite a variety of philosophers and topics covered this month — Hegel, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, al-Kindi, Simplicius, Epictetus, the liar paradox, the will, aesthetics, and more.  Are any of these worth considering for the Robbins collection?

I came across this article, “The Case for Working With Your Hands,” by Matthew Crawford, several days ago, via Brian Leiter and a few friends posting it on Facebook.  It’s a very thoughtful and profound essay, on work, education, and where our culture places its priorities.

Next week, we’re back to our regular Friday posting schedule.  See you then!

Here are the January 2009 Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.  Though collection development is on hold for the time being at Robbins, are any of these worth considering for purchase at a later date?

Aesthetics

• Alexander Nehamas, Only a Promise of Happiness: The Place of Beauty in a World of Art, Reviewed by Martin Donougho, University of South Carolina-Columbia
• Noël Carroll, On Criticism, Reviewed by Alan H. Goldman, College of William & Mary
• Richard Eldridge, Literature, Life, and Modernity, Reviewed by Robert Pippin, University of Chicago
• Garry L. Hagberg (ed.), Art and Ethical Criticism, Reviewed by Richard Eldridge, Swarthmore College
• John Gibson, Wolfgang Huemer, Luca Pocci (eds.), A Sense of the World: Essays on Fiction, Narrative, and Knowledge, Reviewed by Allen Speight, Boston University

Philosophers

• Michael Frauchiger, Wilhelm K. Essler (eds.). Representation, Evidence, and Justification: Themes from Suppes, Reviewed by Kenny Easwaran, University of Southern California/Australian National University
• Robert Wicks, Schopenhauer, Reviewed by Robert Guay, Binghamton University
• Thomas Parker, Volition, Rhetoric, and Emotion in the Work of Pascal, Reviewed by Michael Moriarty, Queen Mary, University of London
• Andrew Janiak, Newton as Philosopher, Reviewed by Richard Arthur, McMaster University

Metaphysics

• Joanna Hodge, Derrida on Time, Reviewed by Linnell Secomb, University of Greenwich
• Jacqueline Mariña, Transformation of the Self in the Thought of Friedrich Schleiermacher, Reviewed by C. Jeffery Kinlaw, McMurry University
• Marc A. Hight, Idea and Ontology: An Essay in Early Modern Metaphysics of Ideas, Reviewed by Monte Cook, University of Oklahoma

Epistemology

• Daniel N. Robinson, Consciousness and Mental Life, Reviewed by Sam Coleman, University of Hertfordshire
• Sanford C. Goldberg, Anti-Individualism: Mind and Language, Knowledge and Justification, Reviewed by Jonathan E. Adler, Brooklyn College/CUNY Graduate Center
• Marc Djaballah, Kant, Foucault, and Forms of Experience, Reviewed by Johanna Oksala, University of Dundee

History of Philosophy

• Pauliina Remes, Neoplatonism, Reviewed by Peter Adamson, King’s College London
• Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Philosophical Legacies: Essays on the Thought of Kant, Hegel, and Their Contemporaries, Reviewed by James R. Walker, Union College

Moral & Political Philosophy

• Christopher O. Tollefsen, Biomedical Research and Beyond: Expanding the Ethics of Inquiry, Reviewed by John McMillan, University of Hull
• David Owen, Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality, Reviewed by Peter Poellner, University of Warwick
• Ronna Burger, Aristotle’s Dialogue with Socrates: On the Nicomachean Ethics, Reviewed by Steven Skultety, University of Mississippi
• Raymond Geuss, Philosophy and Real Politics, Reviewed by Thomas Hurka, University of Toronto
• Tamsin Shaw, Nietzsche’s Political Skepticism, Reviewed by Brian Leiter, University of Chicago
• Mark E. Button, Contract, Culture, and Citizenship: Transformative Liberalism from Hobbes to Rawls, Reviewed by Anna Stilz, Princeton University
• Stephen R. Brown, Moral Virtue and Nature: A Defense of Ethical Naturalism, Reviewed by Emer O’Hagan, University of Saskatchewan
• Philip Pettit, Made with Words: Hobbes on Language, Mind, and Politics, Reviewed by Alan Nelson and Matthew Priselac, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Philosophy of Law

• Larry Alexander, Emily Sherwin, Demystifying Legal Reasoning, Reviewed by Dan Priel, University of Warwick

Philosophy of Religion

• Adam C. English, The Possibility of Christian Philosophy: Maurice Blondel at the Intersection of Theology and Philosophy, Reviewed by Oliva Blanchette, Boston College

Philosophy of Science

• David Bostock, Space, Time, Matter, and Form: Essays on Aristotle’s Physics, Reviewed by Inna Kupreeva, University of Edinburgh

Here are the latest podcasts from Philosophy Bites.  These podcasts were recorded from mid-August 2008 to mid-October 2008:

• Aaron Ridley on Nietzsche on Art and Truth
• M. M. McCabe on Socratic Method
• Ray Monk on Philosophy and Biography
• Barry C. Smith on Neuroscience
• Adrian Moore on Kant’s Metaphysics
• Peter Cave on Paradoxes
• Christopher Janaway on Nietzsche on Morality
• Anthony Appiah on Experiments in Ethics
• Roger Crisp on Virtue

Just a reminder that I will be out tomorrow.  See you on Monday!

A brief note: Monday is a holiday (Labor Day) and I won’t be posting.  Also, I will be out next Wednesday, 3 September, and won’t be posting then, either.

While browsing through Bookforum.com yesterday, I came across the Web site for Philosopher’s Annual. The aim of this site is as follows: “The papers on this website represent our effort to showcase ten of the best philosophy articles published in the past year.” There is a wide range of topics covered by the papers chosen for the annual, as can be seen from the offerings for 2007, though the majority of this year’s selections focus on epistemology and philosophy of mind:

• “Reflection and Disagreement,” Adam Elga, from Nous 41 (2007), 478-502
• “Why Nothing Mental is Just in the Head,” Justin Fisher, from Nous 41 (2007), 318-334
• “Socrates’ Profession of Ignorance,” Michael N. Forster, from Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 3 (2007), 1-36
• “When is a Brain Like a Planet?,” Clark Glymour, from Philosophy of Science 74 (2007), 330-347
• “But Mom, Crop Tops are Cute! Social Knowledge, Social Structure and Ideology Critique,” Sally Haslanger, from Philosophical Issues 17, The Metaphysics of Epistemology, pp. 70-91
• “Innocent Statements and their Metaphysically Loaded Counterparts,” Thomas Hofweber, from Philosophers’ Imprint 7 (2007), 1-33
• “Honest Illusion: Valuing for Nietzsche’s Free Spirits,” Nadeem Hussain from B. Leiter & N. Sinhababu, eds., Nietzsche and Morality, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007, 157-191
• “Moral Responsibility and Determinism: The Cognitive Science of Folk Intuitions,” Shaun Nichols & Joshua Knobe, from Nous 41 (2007), 663-668
• “Covenants and Reputations,” Peter Vanderschraaf, from Synthese 157 (2007), 167-195
• “Epistemic Modals,” Seth Yalcin, from Mind 16 (2007), 983-1026

You will be able to link directly to the full text of all of the articles, with the exception of Haslanger’s and Vanderschraaf’s articles, for which you will need to go through HOLLIS to access, and Hussain’s article, for which permission to include an online version has not been granted yet by the publisher.

The Tables of Contents for all previous volumes are available via the link in the upper right hand corner of the home page — “Past Volumes,” which has the same URL as the home page — and full-text of many articles for more recent years is as well, though I’m finding that not all of the links work at the present time.

I will add a link to the Philosopher’s Annual in the blogroll, and also on the Links page of the Philosophy Department’s Web site.

Have a great long holiday weekend, folks!

Just arrived in Robbins last Friday: the latest issues of Inquiry and Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.  Here are the Tables of Contents for the respective journals:

Inquiry 51(3) June 2008

• “Wittgenstein, Ethics and Basic Moral Certainty,” Nigel Pleasants
• “Fichte’s Fictions Revisited,” Benjamin D. Crowe
• “Personal Identity as a Task,” Sophia Vasalou
• “The Myth of the Metaphysical Circle: An Analysis of the Contemporary Crisis of the Critique of Metaphysics,” Herbert De Vriese

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 77(1) July 2008

Articles

• “The Virtue of Practical Rationality,” Sigrún Svavarsdóttir
• “Internalist Foundationalism and the Problem of the Epistemic Regress,” José L. Zalabardo
• “A Functionalist Theory of Properties,” Ann Whittle
• “Is Locke’s Theory of Knowledge Inconsistent?,” Samuel C. Rickless
• “Why Be an Anti-Individualist?,” Laura Schroeter

Discussions

• “A Hard-line Reply to Pereboom’s Four-Case Manipulation Argument,” Michael McKenna
• “A Hard-line Reply to the Multiple-Case Manipulation Argument,” Derk Pereboom

• “Comments on Woodward, Making Things Happen,” Michael Strevens
• “Response to Strevens,” Jim Woodward

Book Symposium
The Evolution of Morality

• “Preçis of The Evolution of Morality,” Richard Joyce
• “Acquired Moral Truths,” Jesse Prinz
• “Some Questions About The Evolution of Morality,” Stephen Stich
• “Evolution and the Possibility of Moral Realism,” Peter Carruthers, Scott M. James
• “Replies,” Richard Joyce

Review Essay

• “Review Essay on Sami Pihlström’s Solipsism: History, Critique, and Relevance,” Richard Schantz

Critical Notices

• Epistemic Luck, reviewed by Jonathan Kvanvig
• The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche On Overcoming Nihilism, reviewed by Robert Pippin
• Against Coherence: Truth, Probability, and Justification, reviewed by Tomoji Shogenji

Last week, while browsing through Bookforum.com, I found two articles that may interest you.  The first is an article from Eurozine on Nietzsche and the “death of God.”  The second is from First Principles, on how philosophers play with fire — or is it the fire that plays with philosophers?

What do you think?

Yesterday, we received the latest issues of the journal, Philosophical Topics. (Please note that these issues are not currently available in electronic format. When they do become available, you will be able to access them here, in the database, POIESIS, with your Harvard ID and PIN.)

Here are the table of contents:

Philosophical Topics 33 (2), Fall 2005: Nietzsche

• Nietzsche on Language: Before and After Wittgenstein, Maria Alvarez and Aaron Ridley
• Perspectivism as Ephexis in Interpretation, Jessica N. Berry
• Nietzsche, the Greeks, and Happiness (with Special Reference to Aristotle and Epicurus), Richard Bett
• Our Virtues, Robert Guay
• Nietzschean Equality, Randall Havas
• Nietzsche’s Theory of the Will, Brian Leiter
• On Failing to be Agents: Freedom, Servitude, and the Concept of “the Weak” in Nietzsche’s Practical Philosophy, David Owen
• Nietzsche on Pleasure and Power, Bernard, Reginster
• Nietzsche and the Perspectival, Richard Schacht
• Philosophy and the Politics of Cultural Revolution, Tracy B. Strong

Philosophical Topics 34 (1&2), Spring & Fall 2006: Analytic Kantianism

• Kantian Lessons about Mind, Meaning, and Rationality, Robert Brandom
• Meaning and Aesthetics Judgment in Kant, Eli Friedlander
• Carnap and Quine: Twentieth-Century Echoes of Kant and Hume, Michael Friedman
• Kant and the Problem of Experience, Hannah Ginsborg
• Kant on Beauty and the Normative Force of Feeling, Arata Hamawaki
• Spontaneity and Receptivity in Kant’s Theory of Knowledge, Andrea Kern
• Logicist Responses to Kant: (Early) Frege and (Early) Russell, Michael Kremer
• Kant’s Spontaneity Thesis, Thomas Land
• Prolegomena to a Proper Treatment of Mathematics in the Critique of Pure Reason, Thomas Lockhart.
• Self-Consciousness and Consciousness of One’s Own Body: Variations on a Kantian Theme, Béatrice Longuenesse
• Sensory Consciousness in Kant and Sellars, John McDowell
• The Bounds of Sense, A.W. Moore
• Logical Form as a Relation to the Object, Sebastian Rödl
• Kant on the Nature of Logical Laws, Clinton Tolley

What is the meaning of life? Here is a question that is commonly associated with philosophy and philosophical speculation.

A variety of answers have been given to this question — traditional answers like compassion, love, service, worship of God, a life according to right reason and/or nature, or establishing political and economic freedom will be familiar to many.

(There are also not-so-serious answers, such as “42,” in Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, or the silliness of Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life.)

And yet, questions about the meaning of life have fallen out of favor with much of philosophy since the latter half of the twentieth century. Sartre, for example, claimed that there is no meaning other than that created by isolated individuals — humans are condemned to be free and construct their own meaning, without God or metaphysics to support them. Also, given the strong anti- and post-metaphysical stance taken by both analytic and Continental philosophy during this time, there is little wonder as to why the question of the meaning of life makes many uncomfortable. Many might indeed agree with Shakespeare:

She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Macbeth, V, 5, 22-33

Nonetheless, in spite of all of what I’ve listed above, these questions about the meaning of life stubbornly persist. Michael Casey, in “The ultimate conversation stopper: does life have meaning?” looks at why the question bothers so many people. Casey also investigates the claim that life is meaningless — especially in the work of Nietzsche, Freud, and Rorty — showing that while helpful in certain ways, it is problematic and questionable, for a number of reasons.

A hat-tip to Bookforum.com for this article.

If you ask, good reader, why I chose to write on this topic today, it is because I believe that philosophy can and should address questions about the meaning of life. I believe that philosophy should recover what John Haldane and others have called the “sapiential dimension” of philosophy. This does not mean that philosophers should be moralizers, or self-help gurus, or things of that sort. But it does mean that these perennial questions of meaning that every person must face in life fall well within the subject area of philosophical discourse and discussion, and philosophers should not shy away from these questions, or from trying to answer them.

From Eurozine*, six philosophers — Peter Bergmann (University of Florida, Gainesville), Teodor Münz (Philosophical Institute of the Slovak Academy of Science), Frantisek Novosád (Bratislava International School of Liberal Arts), Paul Patton (University of New South Wales), the late Richard Rorty, Jan Sokol (Charles University, Prague), and Leslie Paul Thiele (University of Florida, Gainesville) — give us their views on Nietzsche.

From First Things, Russell Reno (Creighton University) offers a novel and unconventional reading of Nietzsche’s arguments in On the Genealogy of Morals. After reading Reno’s article, I’m tempted to go back myself and reread the Genealogy, to see if his interpretation holds up.

And, in case your energy is waning after reading these articles, you might want to partake of a “Will to Power Bar” or two.

A hat-tip to Bookforum.com for these articles.

*I trust that my readers are mature enough to deal with the graphic that serves as Eurozine’s masthead, but, in case not, caveat lector.