Books by Brian Lightbody

In Romans 7:14-25, Paul declares, ""For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want, is what I do"" (KJV). St. Paul's statement is a universal truth for all human beings; humans--whether Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, or atheists--are prone to committing free actions that are not ""good."" Furthermore, and irrespective of how we might construe the notion of ""good"" (whether as acting in accordance with some religious or spiritual precept or simply doing what is in one's best interest), we often knowingly and freely choose actions that may, or in fact do, harm us. There is a name given to such actions. We call them ""weak-willed."" ""Weakness of will,"" or akrasia, has perplexed philosophers, theologians, and laypersons alike for centuries. This book reveals why the idea has caused so much bafflement and consternation for so many. The main thrust of the work, however, is to illuminate and inspire: Lightbody seeks to demonstrate, concretely, how and why we are weak-willed. By extracting an ""alchemical touchstone"" from Plato's middle period philosophy, Lightbody, in addition, reveals how we may transmute harmful appetites into life-edifying passions.

';The world viewed from the inside, the world defined and determined according to its ';intelligible character'it would be ';will to power' and nothing else.' Cryptic passages like this one from section 36 of Beyond Good and Evil have been the source of much intrigue, speculation, and puzzlement in the Nietzschean secondary literature. This passage in particular along with many others, have sparked a slew of questions in recent decades such as: ';What is the will to power? ';Is will to power a metaphysical principle?' ';Is it an empirical assertion?' ';Or, is will to power merely a hypothesis that Nietzsche himself rejected?' Although asked ad nausea in the literature, the multitude of answers given to the above questions never seem to satisfy. In this book, Brian Lightbody shed light on Nietzsche's most famous ';esoteric' teaching by explaining what the will to power is and what it denotes. He then demonstrates how will to power may be naturalized in an attempt to show that the doctrine is epistemically and empirically defensible. Finally, he uses will to power as a philological key of sorts to unlock Nietzsche's philosophy as a whole by showing that his ontology, epistemology, and ethics are only properly understood once a coherent naturalized rendering of will to power is produced.

Examines of the philosophical investigatory practice known as genealogy. This book examines the principal ontological and epistemological problems with Nietzsche and Foucault's respective uses of the genealogical method.

Philosophical genealogy is a distinct method of historical and philosophical inquiry that was developed by the nineteenth-century philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, and subsequently adopted and extended by the twentieth-century philosopher, Michel Foucault. This book explores the three axes of the genealogical method: power, truth and the ethical.

Philosophers often use the term ';naturalism' in order to describe their work. It is commonplace to see a metaphysical, epistemological and/or ethical position self-described and described by others as one that is ';naturalized.' But what, if anything, does the term naturalized add--or subtract---to the position being articulated? I demonstrate in The Problem of Naturalism: Analytic and Continental Perspectives, that the term naturalism connotes such a broad meaning that it is difficult to demarcate naturalism from philosophy itself. Still, many philosophers have tried to provide non-trivial and non-vacuous definitions of the term. My book, by and large, argues that such attempts are unsuccessful. Instead, I argue that naturalism is an attitude and neither a methodology nor a substantive position. I then articulate the guidelines the naturalist needs to follow, as well as the virtues he or she needs to practice, in order for the term naturalism to do any meaningful work. Much of the book explains and then critiques the various attempts to define naturalism in the Anglo-American secondary literature. Some of the criticisms I raise seem to emanate from the internal logic of the naturalistic position being expressed. However, others have emerged from gleaning the work of such Continental thinkers as: Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger and Foucault. I use these thinkers in order to expose the unjustified implicit and sometimes explicit assumptions that many naturalistic philosophers presume to hold when they attempt to render a clear, distinct and robust naturalist position.