Books in the Stanford Series in Philosophy series

First published in 1975, this collection includes many of the best critical responses to John Rawls' A Theory of Justice, and the editor has elected to reissue the book without making any substitutions. As he argues in his new preface, the variety of issues raise in the original papers has been a major part of the book's appeal. He also acknowledges that no modest revision of this book could pretend to respond adequately to the considerable elaboration and evolution of Rawls' theory in the last fifteen years.Political philosophy has been one of the most exciting areas of philosophical activity in the years since A Theory of Justice, and much of that activity has been a response to Rawls' work. In his preface, the editor suggests how some of the insights and criticisms contained in the collection have had a bearing on developments in Rawls' theory and in political philosophy more generally, and that fresh reading of each of them reveals additional important points that have not yet received adequate attention.The contributors are: Benjamin Barber, Norman Daniels, Gerald Dworkin, Ronald Dworkin, Joel Feinberg, Milton Fisk, R.M. Hare, H.L.A. Hart, David Lyons, Frank Michelman, Richard Miller, Thomas Nagel, T.M. Scanlon, and A.K. Sen.

Aristotle argues that virtuous conduct is the governing factor in living well. Combining philological precision with philosophical analysis, this book reconstructs Aristotle's defense of these claims and examines his position in response to the prevailing hopes and anxieties of his age.

Philosophical anthropology is the study of the conditions of human existence and the issues that confront everyday life. This text surveys, from a contemplative, philosophical point of view, a wide variety of human-interest issues, including happiness, luck, ageing and the meaning of life.

Artificial persons, as conceived by Hobbes, speak and act in the name of others. In modern institutions examples include: politicians, brokers, bureaucrats, and military personnel. This text focuses on the moral issue of how we can locate responsibility for the actions of artificial persons.

The essays in this book challenge Frege's pivotal distinction between sense and reference, and his attendant philosophical views about language and thought.

This collection of seventeen essays deals with the metaphysical, as opposed to the moral, issues pertaining to death. For example, the authors investigate (among other things) the issue of what makes death a bad thing for an individual, if indeed death is a bad thing.

This collection of seventeen essays deals with the metaphysical, as opposed to the moral, issues pertaining to death. For example, the authors investigate (among other things) the issue of what makes death a bad thing for an individual, if indeed death is a bad thing.

In this provocative and timely reading of Emile Durkheim the author isolates the merits and liabilities of both liberal and communitarian theories and demonstrates that we need not be in the position of having to choose between them.