The essays in this volume examine the nature of virtue and its role in moral theory.

An exploration of philosophical and religious ideas about humor in modern philosophy and their secular implications. By exploring the works of both Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, and Søren Kierkegaard, Lydia B. Amir finds a rich tapestry of ideas about the comic, the tragic, humor, and related concepts such as irony, ridicule, and wit. Amir focuses chiefly on these two thinkers, but she also includes Johann Georg Hamann, an influence of Kierkegaard’s who was himself influenced by Shaftesbury. All three thinkers were devout Christians but were intensely critical of the organized Christianity of their milieux, and humor played an important role in their responses. The author examines the epistemological, ethical, and religious roles of humor in their philosophies and proposes a secular philosophy of humor in which humor helps attain the philosophic ideals of self-knowledge, truth, rationality, virtue, and wisdom, as well as the more ambitious goals of liberation, joy, and wisdom.

This is the first volume of essays on Berkeley's Three Dialogues, a classic of early modern philosophy. Leading experts cover all the central issues in the text: the rejection of material substance, the nature of perception and reality, the limits of human knowledge, and the perceived threats of skepticism, atheism, and immorality.

The Apollo Academy, a musical club founded in 1731 by Maurice Greene and his friend Michael Christian Festing, was the performance location of various oratorios, odes and masques produced by composers in Greene's circle of friends, colleagues and pupils. Many of the works performed both in and outside the academy meetings are based on subjects such as Jephtha, Deborah and the choice of Hercules which were well known in eighteenth-century England and also attracted the attention of Handel. This long-overdue study explores these works in terms of their intellectual contexts (political, religious, social and cultural), comparing them to Handel's compositions on the same or similar subjects. Additionally, detailed source information and musical analysis of the works is included as well as a discussion of the competition between Handel and his English contemporaries in order to provide a fuller picture of the diverse musical and cultural life in London during the first half of the eighteenth century.