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David Owen explores Hume's account of reason and its role in human understanding, seen in the context of other notable accounts by philosophers of the early modern period. Many of the most famous problems that Hume discusses, and many of the positions that he advocates, are expressed in terms of ...

David Owen explores Hume's account of reason and its role in human understanding, seen in the context of other notable accounts by philosophers of the early modern period. Many of the most famous problems that Hume discusses, and many of the positions that he advocates, are expressed in terms of reason. It is central to his arguments about induction, belief, scepticism, the passions, and moral distinctions; to understand Hume's influential views on these matters, we must understand what his view of reason is. The book begins with chapters on the theories of reasoning put forward by Hume's notable predecessors Descartes and Locke. Owen shows that Hume followed them in rejecting a formal, deductive account of inference, in favour of a new naturalistic account. But he went farther, in what we now call the argument concerning induction, by showing that no account of reason as a separate faculty could explain our inferences to beliefs in the unobserved. Hume offers instead an associationist account of probable reasoning and a new theory of belief. The picture of reason as an independent faculty is replaced with an explanation of reasoning in terms of properties of the imagination. Hume's Reason offers a new interpretation of some of Hume's central ideas, and a treatment of reason which will be illuminating not just to historians of modern philosophy but to all philosophers who are concerned with the workings of human cognition.

The Age of Reason associated with the names of Descartes, Newton, Hobbes, and the French philosophers, actually began in the universities that first emerged in the late Middle Ages (1100 to 1600) when the first large scale institutionalization of reason in the history of civilization occurred. This ...

The Age of Reason associated with the names of Descartes, Newton, Hobbes, and the French philosophers, actually began in the universities that first emerged in the late Middle Ages (1100 to 1600) when the first large scale institutionalization of reason in the history of civilization occurred. This study shows how reason was used in the university subjects of logic, natural philosophy, and theology, and to a much lesser extent in medicine and law. The final chapter describes how the Middle Ages acquired an undeserved reputation as an age of superstition, barbarism, and unreason.

In this meditation on the different ways in which contemporary society construes the notion of political reason, Fred M. Prohock offers an alternative to the merit forms of reasoning prominent in liberal democracies. He argues that divisive issues such as abortion and physician-assisted suicide ...

In this meditation on the different ways in which contemporary society construes the notion of political reason, Fred M. Prohock offers an alternative to the merit forms of reasoning prominent in liberal democracies. He argues that divisive issues such as abortion and physician-assisted suicide resist rational closure: reasonable individuals often reach different and contradictory conclusions. The temptation is to abandon reason and depict governing as an exercise of pure power. What resources do we have, Frohock asks, to develop a version of public reason which can succed even in the deep pluralism anticipated in democratic practices?

Frohock makes a provocative argument: the effects of divisive beliefs can be mitigated with a version of public reason defined as mediated speech acts. These acts are dialogues on the model of a suided conversation in which collective terms dominate simple merit adjudication. This type of public reasoning requires a survey of considerations beyond the merits of the ease at hand. Frock's book combines theory and illustrative cases to present an unusually broad survey of public reasoning in which abstract arguments are developed in the context of highly charged contemporary issues.

In recent years Abdolkarim Soroush has emerged as one of the leading revisionist thinkers of the Muslim world. Translated into English for the first time, this book features a critical introduction by the editors and an original interview that reveals the intellectual biography of the author. It ...

In recent years Abdolkarim Soroush has emerged as one of the leading revisionist thinkers of the Muslim world. Translated into English for the first time, this book features a critical introduction by the editors and an original interview that reveals the intellectual biography of the author. It sets forth Soroush's views on such matters as the inevitability of change in religion, the necessity of freedom of belief, and the compatibility of Islam with democracy.