This book is intended as a first introduction to the subject. It addresses questions of truth and meaning, questions which provide a basis for much of what is discussed elsewhere in philosophy. This book should be of interest to students of philosophy.

Plato and Myth: Studies on the Use and Status of Platonic Myths

This volume seeks to show how the philosophy of Plato relates to the literary form of his discourse. Myth is one aspect of this relation whose importance for the study of Plato is only now beginning to be recognized. Reflection on this topic is essential not only for understanding Plato s conception of philosophy and its methods, but also for understanding more broadly the relation between philosophy and literature. The twenty chapters of this volume, contributed by scholars of diverse backgrounds and approaches, elucidate the various uses and statuses of Platonic myths in the first place by reflecting on myth per se and in the second place by focusing on a specific myth in Platonic corpus.

This international collection of essays from the 2014 Hegel Society of America Meeting addresses three major stances in the decades-long controversy on the topic: Hegel as a full-blooded pre-critical metaphysician; Hegel as a thinker without metaphysics; and Hegel as a neo-Aristotelian metaphysician par excellence. This work successfully overcomes the stalemates between 'analytic' and 'continental', 'anti-metaphysical' and 'metaphysical' Hegel.

Focusing on medieval French prose romance and drawing on aspects of postcolonial theory, Huot examines the role of giants in constructions of race, class, gender, and human subjectivity. She selects for study the well-known prose Lancelot and the prose Tristan, as well as the lesser known Perceforest, Le Conte du papegau, Guiron le Courtois, and Des Grantz Geants. By asking to what extent views of giants in Arthurian romance respond to questions that concern twenty-first-century readers, Huot demonstrates the usefulness of current theoretical concepts and the issues they raise for rethinking medieval literature from a modern perspective.

The idea of a final end of human conduct the highest good lies at the centre of important parts of Kant s philosophy, such as his moral theory, his philosophy of religion, his views on the historical progress of the human species, and his conception of rationality. This collection of new essays attempts to re-evaluate the doctrine of the highest good and to determine its relevance for contemporary philosophy.