The essays in this volume gather together Gellner's thinking on the connection between philosophy and life and they approach the topic from a number of directions: philosophy of morals, history of ideas, a discussion of individuals including R. G. Collingwood, Noam Chomsky, Piaget and Eysenck and discussions on the setting of philosophy in the general culture of England and America.

Whether expressed in theological or secular terms, evil poses a problem about the world's intelligibility. It confronts philosophy with fundamental questions: Can there be meaning in a world where innocents suffer? Can belief in divine power or human progress survive a cataloging of evil? Is evil profound or banal? Neiman argues that these questions impelled modern philosophy. Traditional philosophers from Leibniz to Hegel sought to defend the Creator of a world containing evil. Inevitably, their efforts--combined with those of more literary figures like Pope, Voltaire, and the Marquis de Sade--eroded belief in God's benevolence, power, and relevance, until Nietzsche claimed He had been murdered. They also yielded the distinction between natural and moral evil that we now take for granted. Neiman turns to consider philosophy's response to the Holocaust as a final moral evil, concluding that two basic stances run through modern thought. One, from Rousseau to Arendt, insists that morality demands we make evil intelligible. The other, from Voltaire to Adorno, insists that morality demands that we don't.

This collection brings together new papers addressing the philosophical challenges that the concept of a Devil presents, bringing philosophical rigor to treatments of the Devil. Contributors approach the idea of the Devil from a variety of philosophical traditions, methodologies, and styles, providing a comprehensive philosophical overview that contemplates the existence, nature, and purpose of the Devil. While some papers take a classical approach to the Devil, drawing on biblical exegesis, other contributors approach the topic of the Devil from epistemological, metaphysical, phenomenological, and ethical perspectives. This volume will be relevant to researchers and scholars interested in philosophical conceptions of the Devil and related areas, such as philosophers of religion, theologians, and scholars working in philosophical theology and demonology.

Mephistopheles is the fourth and final volume of Jeffrey Burton Russell's critically acclaimed history of the concept of the Devil, continuing in this volume the story from the Reformation to the present.

Many distinct, controvertial issues are to be found within the labyrinthine twists and turns of the problem of evil. For philosophers of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centures, evil presented a challenge to the consistency and rationality of the world-picture disclosed by the new way of ideas. In dealing with this challenge, however, philosophers were also concerned with their positions in the theological debates about original sin, free will, and justification that were the legacy of the Protestant Reformation to European intellectual life. Emerging from a conference on the problem of evil in the early modern period held at the University of Toronto in 1999, the papers in this collection represent some of the best original work being done today on the theodicies of such early modern philosophers as Leibniz, Suarez, Spinoza, Malebranche, and Pierre Bayle.

In The Devil and Philosophy, 34 philosophers explore questions about one of the most recognizable and influential characters (villains?) of all time. From Roman Polanski's The Ninth Gate to J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion to Bram Stoker's Dracula to Darth Vader to Al Pacino's iconic performance in The Devil's Advocate, this book demonstrates that a little devil goes a long way. From humorous appearances, as in Kevin Smith's film Dogma and Chuck Palahniuk's novels Damned and its sequel Doomed, to more villanous appearances, such as Gabriel Byrne's cold outing as Satan in End of Days, The Devil in Philosophy proves that the Devil comes in many forms. Through the lenses of Jung, Kant, Kundera, Balkan, Plato, Bradwardine, Aristotle, Hume, Blackburn, Descartes, Lavey, Thoreau, and Aquinas, The Devil and Philosophy take a philosophical look at one of time's greatest characters. Are there any good arguments for the actual existence of the Devil? Does demonic evil thrive in Gotham City? Can humans really be accountable for all evil? Which truths about the Devil are actual facts? Is Milton correct, in that the Devil believes he is doing good?

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Introduction -- PART I Demons in Christianity -- 1 Augustine and Aquinas on the Demonic -- 2 The Demonic Body: Demonic Ontology and the Domicile of the Demons in Apuleius and Augustine -- 3 Christian Demonology: A New Philosophical Perspective -- 4 Women as "the Devil's Gateway": A Feminist Critique of Christian Demonology -- PART II Non-Christian Conceptions of Demons -- 5 Socrates's Demonic Sign (Daimonion Sēmeion) -- 6 The Ecological Demon: Silent Running and Interstellar -- 7 Demons of Seduction in Early Jewish Literature -- 8 The Jinn and the Shayātīn -- 9 Māra: Devā and Demon -- PART III Demons and Epistemological Issues -- 10 Justified Belief in the Existence of Demons Is Impossible -- 11 Esoteric Spirituality, Devils, and Demons: Introducing the Gnostic Vision of Modernity -- 12 Re-Enchantment and Contemporary Demonology -- PART IV Demons in Moral and Social Philosophy -- 13 Whedon's Demons: The Immorality of Moral Clarity and the Ethics of Moral Complexity -- 14 Modern Representations of Evil: Kant, Arendt, and the Devil in Goethe's Faust and Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita -- 15 The Politics of Possession: Reading King James's Daemonologie through the Lens of Mimetic Realism -- Notes on Contributors -- Bibliography -- Index