In his Second Paralogism of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant described what he called the "Achilles of all dialectical inferences in the pure doctrine of the soul". This argument, which he took to be powerful yet fatally flawed, purports to establish the simplicity of the human mind, or soul, on the basis of the unity of consciousness. It is the aim of this volume to treat the major figures who have advanced the Achilles argument, or who have held views bearing on it.

Corey W. Dyck presents a new account of Kant's criticism of the rational investigation of the soul in the 'Critique of Pure Reason', in light of its 18th-century German context. He reinterprets the aims and results of the Paralogisms, and illuminates Kant's discussion of the soul's substantiality, simplicity, personality, and existence.

This text presents a survey and evaluation of Kant's theory of mind. It focuses on Kant's discussion of the Paralogisms in the Critique of Pure Reason, and examines how the themes raised there are treated in the rest of Kant's writings.

Using a series of case-studies from across European philosophical traditions, this book traces the influence of Neoplatonism over the centuries.

Drawing on the fields of psychology, literature, and philosophy, Loneliness in Philosophy, Psychology, and Literature argues that loneliness has been the universal concern of mankind since the Greek myths and dramas, the dialogues of Plato, and the treatises of Aristotle. Author Ben Lazare Mijuskovic, whose insights are culled from both his theoretical studies and his practical experiences, contends that loneliness has constituted a universal theme of Western thought from the Hellenic age into the contemporary period. In Loneliness in Philosophy, Psychology, and Literature, he shows how man has always felt alone and that the meaning of man is loneliness. Presenting both a discussion and a philosophical inquiry into the nature of loneliness, Mijuskovic cites examples from more than one hundred writers on loneliness, including Erich Fromm, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, Clark Moustakas, Rollo May, and James Howard in psychology; Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Thomas Wolfe and William Golding in literature; and Descartes, Kant, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Sartre in philosophy. Insightful and comprehensive, Loneliness in Philosophy, Psychology, and Literature demonstrates that loneliness is the basic nature of humans and is an unavoidable condition that all must face. European Review, 21:2 (May, 2013), 309-311. Ben Mijuskovic, Loneliness in Philosophy, Psychology, and Literature (Bloomington, IN: iUniverse. 2012). Ben Lazare Mijuskovic offers in his book a very different approach to loneliness. According to him, far from being an occasional or temporary phenomenon, loneliness—or better the fear of loneliness—is the strongest motivational drive in human beings. He argues that “following the replenishment of air, water, nourishment, and sleep, the most insistent and immediate necessity is man desire to escape his loneliness,” to avoid the feeling of existential, human isolation” (p xxx). The Leibnizian image of the monad—as a self-enclosed “windowless” being—gives an acute portrait of this oppressive prison. To support this thesis, Mijuskovic uses an interdisciplinary approach--philosophy, psychology, and literature—through which the “picture of man as continually fighting to escape the quasi-solipsistic prison of his frightening solitude” reverberates. Besides insisting on the primacy of our human concern to struggle with the spectre of loneliness, Mijuskovic has sought to account for the reasons why this is the case. The core of his argumentation relies on a theory of consciousness. In Western thought three dominant models can be distinguished: (a) the self-consciousness or reflexive model; (b) the empirical or behavioral model; and (c) the intentional or phenomenological model. According to the last two models, it is difficult, if not inconceivable, to understand how loneliness is even possible. Only the theory that attributes a reflexive nature to the powers of the mind can adequately explain loneliness. The very constitution of our consciousness determines our confinement. “When a human being successfully ‘reflects’ on his self, reflexively captures his own intrinsically unique situation, he grasps (self-consciously) the nothingness of his existence as a ‘transcendental condition’—universal, necessary (a priori—structuring his entire being-in-the-world. This originary level of recognition is the ground-source for his sensory-cognitive awareness of loneliness” (p. 13). Silvana Mandolesi

Since the ages of the Old Testament, the Homeric myths, the tragedies of Sophocles and the ensuing theological speculations of the Christian millennium, the theme of loneliness has dominated and haunted the Western world. In this wide-ranging book, philosopher Ben Lazare Mijuskovic returns us to our rich philosophical past on the nature of consciousness, lived experience, and the pining for a meaningful existence that contemporary social science has displaced in its tendency toward material reduction. Engaging key metaphysical discussions on causality, space, time, subjectivity, the mind body problem, personal identity, freedom, religion, and transcendence in ancient, scholastic, modern, and contemporary philosophy, he highlights the phenomenology of loneliness that lies at the very core of being human. In challenging psychoanalytic and neuroscientific paradigms, Mijuskovic argues that isolative existence and self-consciousness is not so much of a problem of unconscious conflict or the need for psychopharmacology as it is the loss of a sense of personal intimacy. The issue of the criteria of "personal identity" in relation to loneliness has long engaged and consumed the interest of theologians, ethicists, philosophers, novelists and psychologists. This book will be of great interest to academics and students of the humanities, and all those with an interest in the philosophy of loneliness.