Books in the Oxford Philosophical Monographs series

Everyone seems to think it obvious that equality of opportunity is at least part of what constitutes a fair society. At the same time, they are so vague about what equality of opportunity actually amounts to that it can begin to look like an empty term. This work suggests that the way we think about equality and opportunity should be changed.

Presents a comprehensive study of Plato's and Aristotle's conceptions of non-rational desire. This book shows this as something that humans share with animals, and which aims primarily at the pleasures of food, drink, and sex. It also explores the cognitive resources that both philosophers make available for the explanation of such desires.

This book casts new light on the debate about moral responsibility and determinism. The author explores the relationship between deprivation and desert, argues that the traditional view of the debate should be abandoned, and suggests acceptance of a new compatibilist approach which will meet the needs of justice more fully than the usual proposals.

A monograph devoted exclusively to Kant's theory of the sublime, a subject currently witnessing a revival amongst European philosphers in relation to debates about the nature of postmodernism.

Kant claimed that transcendental idealism yields a form of realism at the empirical level. The author offers a presentation and rehabilitation of this empirical realism, that places his realist credentials at the centre of the account of representation offered in "The Critique of Pure Reason".

Freedom is the value that Hegel most admired and the central organizing concept of his social philosophy. Alan Patten presents an interpretation of Hegel's idea of freedom, and offers answers to a number of central questions about his ethical and political thought.

Sarah Gibbons here departs from previous scholarship on Kant by demonstrating the centrality of imagination to Kant's philosophy as a whole. She shows that imagination performs a vital function in `bridging gaps' between the different elements of cognition and experience. Thus, the role imagination plays in Kant's works expresses his fundamental insight into the complexity of human cognition.

Examines the interplay of the two main schools of thought, Platonism and Aristotelianism, from the first century BC to the third century AD. This book argues that the Platonists turned to Aristotle only in order to elucidate Plato's doctrines and to reconstruct Plato's philosophy.