#philosopherotm

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This September the OUP Philosophy team honours John Duns Scotus (b. c. 1265/1266–d. 1308) as its Philosopher of the Month. Scotus was one of the most significant Christian philosophers and theologians of the medieval period. Scotus made important and influential contributions in metaphysics, ethics, and natural theology. Little was known of his life but he was born in Scotland, became a Franciscan monk, spent his learning and professional life at Oxford and Paris, and died in Cologne.  Although Aristotle’s ideas were prevalent during the turn of the 13th century, he belonged to Franciscan tradition which, as opposed to Aristotle, emphasised the power of faith and will. He was also much influenced by Arabic philosophers, especially Avicenna, with their emphasis on Being as the metaphysical object.

Scotus’s approach to philosophy was characterised by rigorous philosophical analysis, meticulous exposition of arguments and its use of technical concepts. Because of his nuanced and technical reasoning, he was referred to as the “subtle doctor.” His univocal concept of being – the idea that words describing the nature of God mean the same thing as they apply to creatures and people – is also arguably his most famous position in this respect. He argued that we can apply certain predicates univocally to God and creatures with exactly the same meaning.  

For more on this philosopher, explore our collection for blog posts, articles, and reading suggestions, Follow us on @OUPPhilosophy on Twitter.

John Duns Scotus: Selected Writings on Ethics edited by Thomas Williams

Duns Scotus by Richard Cross

Medieval Philosophy: A history of philosophy without any gaps, Volume 4  by Peter Adamson

The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Philosophy by John Marenbon

Medieval Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction by John Marenbon

Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 by Robert Pasnau

Emotions in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy by Simo Knuuttila

Some Later Medieval Theories of the Eucharist: Thomas Aquinas, Gilles of Rome, Duns Scotus, and William Ockham by Marilyn McCord Adams

'John Duns Scotus on the Passions of the Will'  in Emotion and Cognitive Life in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy, by Martin Pickavé and Lisa Shapiro from The Oxford Scholarship Online        

'Emotions in Medieval Thought' in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Emotion, edited by Peter Goldie from Oxford Handbooks Online

‘Universals (Avicenna and Abelard)’ in Medieval Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction  by John Marenbon from Very Short Introductions

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5 Facts about Albert Camus

The Nobel Prize winner, Albert Camus (1913-1960) is one of the best-known French philosophers of the twentieth century and also a widely-read novelist, whose works are frequently referenced in contemporary culture and politics. His literary and philosophical works explore the themes associated with existentialism, alienation, and the conditions of absurdity in the human condition. 

Here are 5 interesting facts about Camus you might not know:

1. Camus was born in Algeria to a French father (killed in the First World War) and Spanish mother. Despite his poor background, Camus excelled at school, won a scholarship to a prestigious lycée in Algeria, and went on to study for a philosophy degree at the University of Algiers.

2. In 1940 after moving to Paris, he worked as a journalist and became involved in the French Resistance. He was the editor-in-chief for its clandestine newspaper, Combat, during the German occupation of France.

3. Camus played regular football at a high level for his university team and wrote that the sport gave him important ethical lessons: "What I know most surely in the long run about morality and obligations, I owe to football" (France Football, 1957). He, however, contracted tuberculosis as a teenager, which prevented him from becoming a professional footballer.

4. Camus achieved recognition with his debut novel, The Stranger (1942 ), and his philosophical essay, "The Myth of Sisyphus" (1942). He became associated with Jean-Paul Sartre and the existentialist movement. 

5. His 1942 masterpiece, L'Étranger (The Stranger) opens with a famous sentence, "Aujourd'hui, maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas." ("Mother died today. Or perhaps it was yesterday, I don’t know."). It explores the alienation of an individual who refuses to conform to social norms.

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

Image provided by Wikimedia Commons

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To celebrate #PrideMonth, the OUP Philosophy team honours Michel Foucault (1926-84) as its Philosopher of the Month. Foucault was one of the most influential French philosophers and historians of ideas, best known for his theories on discourses and the relation of power and knowledge. His seminal works, such as History of Madness (1961), Discipline and Punish (1975), and History of Sexuality (1976–84), examine the emergence of the powerful, state institutions (penal, scientific, and medical), and their mechanisms of control. They chart western attitudes towards the insane, criminals, and sexual deviants and consider the ways in which societies have penalized those who are outside the norms.

In History of Sexuality, Foucault famously put forward the view that the homosexual category did not exist until the 19th century. Although same sex relations have been practiced throughout history, people who practised homosexuality were not classified as homosexuals and did not think of themselves in terms of sexuality. He argued that, in fact, there was a proliferation of new medical, juridical, and psychological discourses concerning sex and obsessive discussions about sex, and these led to the construction of sexual identities, designed to regulate rather than suppress sexuality.

An early victim of AIDS, Foucault died in Paris on June 25, 1984 at the age of 57. His theories have had an enormous impact across a range of disciplines from philosophy, literary criticism, anthropology, sociology, gender studies, and queer theory.

Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography by David M. Halperin

Foucault: A Very Short Introduction by Gary Cutting

Thinking the Impossible: French Philosophy Since 1960 by Gary Gutting

The Will to Punish by Didier Fassin and Edited by Christopher Kutz

Poststructuralism: A Very Short Introduction by Catherine Belsey

Sexual Dissidence by Jonathan Dollimore

Self-Transformations: Foucault, Ethics, and Normalized Bodies by Cressida J. Heyes

The Biopolitics of Gender by Jemima Repo

The Oxford Handbook of Process Philosophy and Organization Studies edited by Jenny Helin, Tor Hernes, Daniel Hjorth, and Robin Holt

Classical Culture and Modern Masculinity by Daniel Orrells

Sexuality: A Very Short Introduction by Veronique Mottier

‘The Turn to Ethics: Derrida, Levinas, and Foucault’ by Gary Cutting in Thinking the Impossible: French Philosophy Since 1960 from The Oxford Scholarship Online

“Michel Foucault (1926–1984)” by Richard Weiskopf and Hugh Willmott in The Oxford Handbook of Process Philosophy and Organization Studies from Oxford Handbooks Online

“Modern Sex” in Foucault: A Very Short Introduction from Very Short Introductions

“Difference and Desire” in Postructuralism: A Very Short Introduction from Very Short Introductions

For more on this philosopher,explore our collection for blog posts, articles and reading suggestions. Follow us @OUPPhilosophy on Twitter.

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5 Facts about Friedrich Schiller

German poet and playwright, Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) was a profound philosopher who wrote highly influential works on aesthetics and played a role in the development of German idealism and Romanticism. Schiller insisted upon the importance of arts in human’s life and saw an aesthetic education as the key to the realisation of morality and a free and just society whereby a human can realise his full potential. His achievement in literature also covers an astonishing range of forms

Here are 5 interesting facts about Schiller, you might not know:

1. Born in Marback in Germany, Schiller attended the military academy of Karl Eugen, Duke of Württemberg and emerged as an army doctor in 1780. He however rebelled against his training by writing and reading “Sturm and Drang”. His first play The Robbers (1781), the story about a nobleman turned robber, caused a sensation on its first performance. Forbidden by Karl Eugen to pursue his literary ambitions, Schiller had to flee in 1782 to Manheim in Palatinate and became a resident playwright at the Manheim National Theatre from 1783-1784.

2. He is sometimes referred to as the German Shakespeare for his immense influence on German literature and theater. His other famous works include the trilogy Wallenstein, and four major dramas, Maria Stuart, The Maid of Orleans, The Bride of Messina and Wilhelm Tell.

3. Immanuel Kant was a major influence on Schiller who developed Kant’s ethics and aesthetics towards post-Kantian idealism. On the basis of Kant's Critique of Judgement (1790), Schiller argued that beauty is ‘freedom in phenomenal appearance’. On the Aesthetic Education of Humanity in a Series of Letters(Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen, 1795) is his most influential and best-known work.

4. He became Professor of History at Jena in 17889, and wrote several historical works during his lifetime.

5. He was a close friend with Goethe (1749-1832) and collaborated with him on a literary journal Die Horen (1795-7) to raise the standard of art and literature. Both are considered seminal and notable figures of the Weimar Classicism, a movement in literature and theatre associated with the culture of the Weimarcourt at the turn of the eighteenth century.  

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

Image provided by Wikimedia Commons

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Can ‘good’ be defined’?

G.E. Moore (1873-1958) was a British philosopher (seen center here), who alongside Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein in the early twentieth century at Cambridge University, was a key protagonist in the formation of the analytic tradition during the twentieth century. 

This extract from OUP's Analytic Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction explores Moore's concern with the attempt to define "good'"— a key theme of Moore's major work, Principa Ethica.

The central question of Principia Ethica is ‘What is good?’, and Moore’s main claim is that ‘good’ is indefinable, or, as it might also be put, that goodness is unanalysable and hence has to be regarded as a simple quality. His main argument for this is the ‘open question argument’, as it has come to be called. Consider a possible definition of ‘good’, say, as ‘that which we desire to desire’, which Moore himself takes as one of the more plausible. It seems, though, that we can quite genuinely ask ‘Is that which we desire to desire good?’ 

Read the rest of this chapter:

Do You Know What I Mean?

Image provided by Wikimedia Commons 

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5 Facts about Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault (1926–84) was an influential and controversial post-structuralist philosopher of the twentieth century and social historian, whose work influenced a multitude of disciplines from philosophy, history. gender studies to social sciences.

Here are 5 interesting facts about Foucault, you might not know:

1. Born into a prominent provincial family, Foucault was a son of a successful and authoritarian doctor. Though emotionally troubled, he was an academically brilliant student at the prestigious École Normale Supérieure.

2. Foucault began his teaching career at various European universities in the 1950s before being appointed a professor of the history of systems of thought at the prestigious Collège de France in 1970. He also lectured at major universities abroad (Japan, Brazil, California, among other countries).

3. He was associated with the structuralist and post-structuralist movements. He was classified by the popular press as a member of the structuralist Gang of Four, along with Claude Lévi-Strauss, Jacques Lacan, and Roland Barthes.

4. The book that would establish his fame was Les mots et les choses (1966, trs. as The Order of Things). It was an academic bestseller.

5. Foucault was politically active during his lifetime. He was a founder of the Groupe d’information sur les prisons and often protested on behalf of marginalized groups against oppressions. His most important works, L’histoire de la folie à l’âge classique (1972, trs. as History of Madness, 2006), Surveiller et punir (1975, trs. as Discipline and Punish, 1977), and Histoire de la sexualité(1976–84, trs. as History of Sexuality, 1979–88) examine western attitudes towards madness, punishment, and sexuality.

For more on this philosopher,explore our collection for blog posts, articles and reading suggestions. Follow us @OUPPhilosophy on Twitter.

Image Credit: Michel Foucault portrait (1926-1984), French philosopher, by Nemomain. CC-BY-SA-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

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This October, the OUP Philosophy team honours William Godwin (1756–1836) as their Philosopher of the Month. Godwin was a moral and political philosopher and an author of political novels, such as Things as they were or Caleb Williams which engages with the ideas of liberty, justice and rebellion against tyranny.  He was the husband of Mary Wollstonecraft, the famous feminist philosopher, and was the father of Mary Shelly, the author of Frankenstein.  He was also friends with Coleridge, Lamb and Hazlitt and a mentor of Wordsworth and Shelly.

Godwin was the chief exponent of British radicalism, in the tradition of the French Revolution.  In Enquiry concerning Political Justice (1793), now considered a classic work of philosophical anarchism, Godwin argues that all government should be abolished since by its very nature they oppress and infringe personal liberty as well as corrupting governors and people at the top of the hierarchy. The book was very influential in its time and had an impact on later generation thinkers such as Marx and Thoreau.

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

‘An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice’,  by William Godwin

‘Caleb Williams’, by William Godwin, Edited by Pamela Clemit

Oxford World's Classics

‘The Oxford Handbook of British Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century’, Edited by James A. Harris

‘Of Liberty and Necessity: The Free Will Debate in Eighteenth-Century British Philosophy’, by James A. Harris

‘The Social and Political Philosophy of Mary Wollstonecraft’, by Sandrine Bergès and Alan Coffee

‘Unbounded Attachment: Sentiment and Politics in the Age of the French Revolution’, by Harriet Guest

‘The Oxford Handbook of Political Philosophy,’ by Edited by David Estlund

‘Thomas Paine: Britain, America, and France in the Age of Enlightenment and Revolution’, by J.C.D.Clark

‘Revolution and the Republic: A History of Political Thought in France since the Eighteenth Century’, by Jeremy Jennings

‘The Adventures of William Godwin’ in The Happiness Philosophers: The Lives and Works of the Great Utilitarians, by Bart Schultz

‘Philosophical Fictions and ‘Jacobin’ Novels in the 1790s’, by Deidre Shauna Lynch, from The Oxford Handbook of the  Eighteenth-Century Novel’

‘Looking At Rights’ in Human Rights: A Very Short Introduction by Andrew Clapham from  Very Short Introductions

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5 Facts about William Godwin:

This October, the OUP Philosophy team honours William Godwin (1756–1836) as their Philosopher of the Month. Godwin was a famous moral and political philosopher and was the central figure in the radical political and literary circles of London. His best-known work,  An Enquiry concerning Political Justice (1793) is now considered a founding text of philosophical anarchism. In it, he argues that all government should be abolished since they oppress and infringe personal liberty and that society can only progress if states encourage people to decide and think for themselves on the best course of action.

Here are 5 interesting facts about William Godwin, you might not know:

Godwin was born in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire and was educated to become a dissenting minister, following in the footsteps of his father. He was sent to a dissenting seminary to study under Samuel Newton, in Norwich who was a strict hyper-Calvinist.

An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice was published after the execution of Louis XVI in the aftermath of the French Revolution. The work was an immediate success and established Godwin as the proponent of philosophical enquiry, rationalism and public benevolence. It brought him wide public acclaim and new literary connections as well as inspiring followers such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey and Hazlitt etc.

He was the husband of Mary Wollstonecraft, the famous feminist philosopher and the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Their daughter was Mary Shelley, the author of the gothic novel, Frankenstein.

Godwin was also a successful novelist. His best-known novel is Things as They Are; or The Adventures of Caleb Williams (1794). It is a tale about tyranny, the corruption of aristocracy and injustice meted out to an innocent individual.

The philosopher also set up a children's publisher and a bookstore, the 'Juvenile Library'. For twenty years he found it hard to make the business work, and was always in financial difficulties, although it produced a number of very important literary works for children such as Charles and Mary Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare.

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

Featured image: William Godwin by James Northcote, 1802, Oil on Canvas. National Portrait Gallery. Public Domain