Western Philosophy. Группа авторов
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Further details of the plan of the book may be found in the ‘Guidance for Readers and Format of the Volume’ (pp. xxviii–xxx, below).
I am very grateful to the publishers and individual authors and translators named in the footnotes at the start of each extract for permission to reproduce the materials indicated. Further details are given in the Acknowledgements (pp. xxi–xxvii, below). (In a number of cases, the translations from the original Greek, Latin, French and German texts are my own.) As noted above, for the purposes of the present volume it has been necessary to abridge some of the extracts, and in the interests of clarity or consistency I have sometimes modified the original spelling and punctuation, and made occasional minor changes in phrasing. Further details may be found in the footnotes accompanying each extract. Finally, I should like to acknowledge here the wealth of helpful advice I have received from friends and colleagues in the course of preparing this volume. I am especially grateful to John Ackrill, John Andrews, Doug Buchanan, Edmund Burke, Harley Cahen, Enrique Chávez-Arvizo, Max de Gaynesford, Hanjo Glock, John Haldane, Brad Hooker, Andrew Mason, Richard Norman, David Oderberg, Derek Parfit, Harry Parkinson, John Preston, Michael Proudfoot, Steve Smith, Sandy Stewart, Jim Stone, Mark Tebbit and Rosemary Wright. I am greatly indebted to Enrique Chávez-Arvizo for checking the ‘Notes on the Philosophers’, and for preparing the index.
Preface to the Second Edition
The original edition of 1996 contained ten Parts of ten extracts each. All the material that appeared in the first edition has been retained in full, but the volume has been substantially enlarged for this second edition.
In the first place, each of the existing Parts now contains two additional extracts, bringing the total number of extracts per Part to twelve instead of ten. The decision to use more modern material for these further extracts was relatively easy, not just because many philosophers and students find a special excitement in more recent developments, but also because philosophy is a living and constantly evolving subject, and it is important for those studying the Western philosophical tradition to be aware that it continues to develop. The roots and trunk of the old plant are immensely valuable in themselves, but also because they put forth fresh shoots. That said, the selection of the new, more recent, materials was far from easy, since unlike the great classics of the past, they have yet to prove their enduring worth; what is more, today’s philosophers are notoriously at odds about the relative importance of the proliferating current trends in the subject. I cannot hope to please everyone, but I have tried to select pieces that, firstly, will give some sense of where each of the respective branches of the subject is going, and, secondly, will stand some comparison with their august predecessors – either because since publication they have already achieved something of the status of instant classics, or else because they are at least worthy representatives of distinctive strands of philosophical inquiry that seem likely to endure.
As well as augmenting the existing Parts of the volume, I have also included two completely new Parts, each of twelve items, which (as noted above in the main Preface) brings the total number of extracts in the book as a whole to 144, in place of the original hundred. Dividing the spoils equally between ‘theoretical’ and ‘practical’ philosophy (to use a classification commonly employed in Philosophy departments in continental Europe), I have devoted these two new sections of the book to Philosophy of Language, and to the Meaning of Life respectively. The former is a subject that forms a vitally important part of the Western philosophical tradition, and one that many readers of the first edition expressed a strong interest in seeing included in any revised volume; the latter relates to one of philosophy’s oldest and most weighty preoccupations, eclipsed under the restrictive conception of philosophical inquiry that became fashionable around the middle of the twentieth century, but now happily reinstated.
I am most grateful to those many philosophical colleagues from around the world who were kind enough to let me know that they found the first edition of the book useful, and I am heavily indebted to a large number of friends and colleagues for invaluable suggestions about the composition of this new edition, and/or for comments on the new material. Particular thanks are due to Michaela Baker, Jonathan Dancy, Max de Gaynesford, Brian Feltham, Philip Goff, Brad Hooker, John Hyman, Ward Jones, Seán MacGiollarnath, David Oderberg, John Preston, Severin Schroeder, Philip Stratton-Lake, Daniel Whiting and Andrew Williams. Emma Borg was kind enough to cast an expert eye over the draft of Part III, and made many valuable suggestions for improvement, and Joseph Jedwab kindly did the same for Part VI, and Andrew Williams for Part X. I have a special debt to Javier Kalhat, whose judicious advice was an enormous help to me, and who also provided unstinting assistance in hunting down the relevant materials and making suggestions for abridgement. Bryan Weaver provided much appreciated help with the additions to Part IX. Finally, I should like to express my thanks to Nick Bellorini, the Commissioning Editor at Blackwell Publishers, for encouraging me to produce this second edition, and to all the members of the editorial and production team for their hard work and efficiency.
JC
Reading, England
April 2007
Preface to the Third Edition
Philosophy is not an easy subject, and the appearance of a third edition of this anthology has provided the opportunity to increase the amount of help and advice included for the benefit of students and other readers. In response to many requests, I have added, at the start of the volume, an introductory essay which offers advice on how to set about reading a philosophical text and how to write about it. There are no quick and easy formulas in philosophy, but I hope at least some of those using this anthology as a course text will find this essay helpful. In addition, the opportunity has been taken to revise and substantially augment the suggested further readings and sample questions accompanying the texts. Instead of a brief list of readings at the end of each part of the volume, each of the 144 individual extracts is now followed by several specimen questions designed to focus on some of the key philosophical problems raised by the excerpt, together with a list of readings related to the specific text in question. A particular point has been made of including references to online resources which give the student quick access to helpful critical and exegetical guidance.1
Probably no two philosophers will agree on the ideal selection of texts for an anthology of this kind, and a survey the publishers conducted of current users of the second edition produced a wide variety of suggestions for alternative texts that might be included. Though I was wary of making any wholesale changes, I have as a result introduced a small number of changes to the texts chosen for this third edition, in order to fill some gaps; but reluctance to make what was already a fairly bulky volume more unwieldy decided me to make substitutions rather than additions, and I have retained the basic framework adopted for the second edition (twelve parts each of twelve sections). The overall character of the anthology has been preserved, with preference nearly always given to texts that have stood the test of time, as opposed to more recent offerings that may be attracting current interest, but whose long-term place in the canon of Western philosophy cannot yet be said to be secure.
I am grateful to several members of the team at Wiley for encouraging me to undertake the revisions for this third edition, and to many friends and colleagues who have been kind enough to offer advice, including Paul Lodge, David McPherson, Mark Tebbit and Ramón Tello. Particular gratitude is owed to Dr Julia Weckend for her invaluable work in updating and augmenting the specimen questions and reading suggestions at the end of each extract.
JC
West Berkshire, England
January 2020
1 1 In referencing an online resource the full url is provided, clicking on which will enable those using the ebook version of this volume to link directly to the item in question. Those using the print version of this volume can access such resources by typing the url provided into a browser;