Spheres of Reason comprises nine original essays on the philosophy of normativity, written by a combination of internationally renowned and up-and-coming philosophers working at the forefront of the topic. On one broad construal the normative sphere concerns norms, requirements, oughts, reasons, reasoning, rationality, justification, value. These notions play a central role in both everyday thought and philosophical enquiry; but there remains considerable disagreement about how to understand normativity — its nature, metaphysical and epistemological bases — and how different aspects of normative thought connect to one another. As well as exploring traditional and ongoing issues central to our understanding of normativity — especially those concerning reasons, reasoning and rationality — the volume's essays develop new approaches to and perspectives in the field. Notably, they make a timely and distinctive contribution to normativity as it features across each of the practical, epistemic and affective regions of thought, including the important issue of how normativity as it applies to action, belief and feeling may (or may not) be connected. In doing so, the essays engage topics within the philosophy of mind and action, epistemology, normative ethics and metaethics. With an editor's introduction providing a comprehensive and accessible background to the subject, Spheres of Reason is essential reading to anyone interested in the nature of normativity and the bearing it has on human thought.

The distinguished political philosopher and author of the widely acclaimed Just and Unjust Wars analyzes how society distributes not just wealth and power but other social “goods” like honor, education, work, free time—even love.

Current events happening around the world, especially the ’humanitarian interventions’ by NATO and the West within the context of the so-called Arab Spring, make the understanding of the role of spheres of influence in international politics absolutely critical. Hast explores the practical implications and applications of this theory, challenging the concept by using historical examples such as suzerainty and colonialism, as well as the emergence of a hierarchical international order. This study further connects the English School tradition, post-war international order, the Cold War and images of Russia with the concept of the sphere of influence to initiate debate and provide a fresh outlook on a concept which has little recent attention.

An alternate magic system for the Pathfinder Roll Playing Game

The public sphere provides a domain of social life in which public opinion is expressed by means of rational discourse and debate. Habermas linked its historical development to the coffee houses and journals in England, Parisian salons and German reading clubs. He described it as a bourgeois public sphere, where private people come together and where they turn from a politically disempowered bourgeoisie into an effective political agent - the public intellectual. With communication networks being diversified and expanded over time, the worldwide web has put pressure on traditional public spheres. These new informal and horizontal networks shaped by the internet create new contexts in which an anonymous and dispersed public may gather in political e-communities to reflect critically on societal issues. These de-centered modes of communication and influence-seeking change the role of the (traditional) public intellectual and - at first sight - seem to make their contributions less influential. What processes, therefore, influence changes within public spheres and how can intellectuals assert authority within them? Should we speak of different types of intellectuals, according to the different modes of public intellectual engagement? This ground-breaking volume gives a multi-disciplinary account of the way in which public intellectuals have constructed their role and position in the public sphere in the past, and how they try to voice public concerns and achieve authority again within those fragmented public spheres today.

Hegel and Schopenhauer were to become the last great system-builders in philosophy. The last philosophers who dealt with understanding everything as an entirety. Since then, all we have seen is fragmentation. Sociology, linguistics, psychology, and other aspects of the theory of knowledge. Each individually presented as separate from each other with coherent frameworks that are difficult to identify. As such many of the developments in these fields owe their origins to the theoretical systems of Schopenhauer and Hegel. They have since segregated and grown outside of the scope of what once was. The frameworks and concepts have become re-imagined and rephrased according to internal coherence and lost their position in the grand scheme of things. In this book, the epistemological theories of Schopenhauer and Hegel engages in a dialogue with Leibniz’s ontology to build a coherent causal framework for understanding the taxonomies of knowledge creation. The intent is to open a discussion on how taxonomies of knowledge shapes knowledge creation. To understand how knowledge can be perceived as a being with agency in its own right.