#oupphilosophy

[oupacademic]

This September OUP Philosophy honours Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860)as the Philosopher of the Month. Schopenhauer was largely ignored by the academic philosophical community during his lifetime but gained recognition and fame posthumously. He arrived at his philosophical position very early on and his philosophy can be seen as a synthesis of Plato and Kant whom he greatly admired, along  with the Upanishads and Buddhist literatures.

Schopenhauer only wrote one seminal work of philosophy, The World as Will and Representation,  which he published in 1818. The work was intended as a continuation of Kant’s ‘transcendental idealism’: ‘My philosophy is founded on that of Kant, and therefore presupposes a thorough knowledge of it.' Kant argued that the world is not the ‘thing-in-itself’ but rather a complex of mere appearances. Schopenhauer, however, tells us that the world must be viewed at a deeper level, as will.

What determine and govern our actions is will  - a range of emotions and desires which result in actions. The world as Will in reality, according to Schopenhauer, is pure willing or a blind force/craving in the sense that it is undirected, futile, illogical and unmotivated.  For this reason, Schopenhauer was known for being the philosopher of pessimism.  The world as Will is thus objectified as driven by the desire to survive at the expense of others. The human condition is characterized by universal conflict, envy, competition, opposition and above all suffering. 

‘Reconstructing Schopenhauer's Ethics: Hope, Compassion, and Animal Welfare’,  by Sandra Shapshay

‘The Riddle of the World: A Reconsideration of Schopenhauer's Philosophy’, Edited by Barbara Hannan

‘The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics’, by Arthur Schopenhauer, Oxford World's Classics Edited by David Cartwright, Edward E. Erdmann, and Christopher Janaway

‘Schopenhauer: A Very Short Introduction’ by Christopher Janaway from  Very Short Introductions

‘German Philosophers: Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche’ by Roger Scruton, Peter Singer, Christopher Janaway, and Michael Tanner

‘Weltschmerz: Pessimism in German Philosophy, 1860-1900’ by Frederick C. Beiser

‘Compassionate Moral Realism’, by Colin Marshall

‘Kantian Ethics: Value, Agency, and Obligation’, by Robert Stern

‘Self-Knowledge: A History’, Edited by Ursula Renz

‘The Oxford Handbook of Nietzsche’, Edited by Ken Gemes and John Richardson

‘Schopenhauer’s Pessimism’ by Frederick C. Beiser from The Oxford Scholarship Online

‘Selflessness: The Struggle with Schopenhauer’ by Christopher Janaway from The Oxford Scholarship Online

‘Schopenhauer on Love', by Fiona Ellis from  The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Love

‘The World as will and representation’ in Schopenhauer: A Very Short Introduction’ by Christopher Janaway from  Very Short Introductions

‘Beyond Selflessness: Reading Nietzsche's Genealogy’, by Christopher Janaway

For more on our Philosopher of the Month, follow @OUPPhilosophy and the hashtag #philosopherotm on Twitter.

[oupacademic]

This August, the OUP Philosophy team honours Saint Thomas Aquinas (1224/5-1274) as their Philosopher of the Month.

Thomas Aquinas was an Italian philosopher, theologian, and Dominican friar and was regarded by many as the greatest figure of scholasticism. Despite this, he and his work have received centuries of neglect by thinkers outside of the Catholic Church. Aquinas' writings are now increasingly studied by members of the wider philosophical community however, and his insights have been put to work in present-day philosophical debates.

Below we’ve compiled a reading list highlighting our favourite works on Saint Thomas Aquinas. Enjoy!

‘Turning to Aquinas on Virtue’ by Candace Vogler from Oxford Handbooks Online.

‘The Influence of Aquinas’ by Christopher Upham from Oxford Handbooks Online.

‘Aquinas, Philosophy, and Theology’ by Brian Davies from Oxford Scholarship Online.

‘Aquinas and Empiricism: From Aquinas to Brentano and Beyond’ by Anthony J. Lisska from Oxford Scholarship Online.

‘What is an angel?’ from Angels: A VSI by David Albert Jones. from Very Short Introductions.

‘Life and Times’ from Thomas Aquinas: A VSI by Fergus Kerr. from Very Short Introductions.

“How Many Angels Can Dance on the Point of a Needle? Transcendental Theology Meets Modal Metaphysics” by John Hawthorne and Gabriel Uzquiano from the journal Mind.

How Do We Know God?: (A Radio Conversation between Karl Barth and Thomas Aquinas) by Richard Dickinson from the Journal of the American Academy of Religion.

Thomas Aquinas on God and Evil by Brian Davies.

Aquinas on Friendship by Daniel Schwartz.

Aristotle in Aquinas's Theology edited by Gilles Emery, O.P. and Matthew Levering.

For more on our Philosopher of the Month, follow @OUPPhilosophy and the hashtag #philosopherotm on Twitter.

[oupacademic]

Though Marx was writing his critique on economics and social issues in the nineteenth century, the originality of his ideas continued to influence later thinkers and inspire a proliferation of new theories amongst critics in the field of literature, culture and philosophy.

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of Karl Marx’s birth, we have highlighted 4 influential Marxist philosophers that everyone should know.

George Lukacs (1885 – 1971) was a Hungarian Marxist Philosopher, considered to be the founder of Western Marxism. He is best known for his book, History and Class Consciousness (1923), which attempts a philosophical justification of the Bolshevik enterprise. Lukacz saw in Marxism the way to overcome the duality of subject and object inherent in Western thought; the experience of the working class can become both the subject and object of history, in order to achieve harmony and totality.

David Harvey (1935 – present) is one of the world’s foremost Marxist intellectuals in the past half century, as well as one of the most cited author in the humanities and social sciences. Beginning in the early 1970s with his trenchant and still-relevant book Social Justice (1973) and the City and The Limits to Capital (1982) looked at capitalism and space and the way in which capitalism annihilated space to further its growth. With The Condition of Postmodernity (1989), very much in a classical Marxist vein, Harvey argued that postmodernism is essentially the broad cultural expression of a transformation in the dominant form of organization of capitalism—no longer state regulated, but highly flexible and mobile. Through this day, Harvey has written numerous books and dozens of influential essays and articles on topics across issues in politics, culture, economics, and social justice.

Louis Althusser (1928-1990) Born in Algeria, Louis was a prominent French Marxist philosopher, a professor at the École normale supérieure, and the leading intellectual in the French Communist Party. His 1965 work of Marxist philosophy, For Marx; Reading Capital, co-authored with Jacques Rancier reconstructed Western Marxism for the modern times and helped shaped the development of Marxist theory by arguing that Marx’s revolutionary ideas should be divested of idealism, Hegellism, and historicism. It remained an important work of French Marxist structuralism.

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) was a German-Jewish Marxist literary critic, essayist, and philosopher associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory and is the author of Illuminations, The Arcades Project, and The Origin of German Tragic Drama. He is best known for his arguments about the nature of artistic creation in the modern age and production, and his analysis of cultured bourgeois street life in the large city.

Image credits: (1) Lukács, Hungarian People's Commissar for Food in the Hungarian revolutionary government, 1919 by Cecile Tormay. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons; (2) David Harvey speaking on Subversive Festival 2013 in Zagreb by Robert Crc. FAL via Wikimedia Commons; (3) Louis Althusser sketch by Arturo Espinosa. CC-BY-2.0 via Wikimedia Commons; (4)Walter Benjamin in 1928 by Akademie der Künste, Berlin. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.