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Critical Concepts in Philosophy

Critical Concepts in Philosophy is a well-established series in Routledge’s Major Works publishing programme.

Designed to meet research, reference, and teaching needs across the humanities and social sciences, Routledge Major Works gather together the best and most influential work on particular concepts, subjects, and individuals. Each Routledge Major Work is edited by a leading scholar in the field to create a ‘mini library’—generally a set of four or five volumes. The sets consist of a careful selection of previously published articles from a variety of journals, excerpts or chapters from previously published books, and materials from other sources which together provide users with historical purchase on the concept, subject, or individual in question, as well as a thorough overview of current issues.

New and Published Books

1-10 of 16 results in Critical Concepts in Philosophy

  1. The Philosophy of Race

    Edited by Paul Taylor

    Series: Critical Concepts in Philosophy

    Since at least the early 1990s, philosophical race theory has emerged as a dynamic and fertile area of serious scholarly inquiry, and this new four-volume Major Work from Routledge meets the need for a comprehensive collection to facilitate ready access to the most influential and important...

    Published December 13th 2011 by Routledge

  2. Philosophy and Gender

    Edited by Cressida Heyes

    Series: Critical Concepts in Philosophy

    How are ‘philosophy’ and ‘gender’ implicated? Throughout history, philosophers—mostly men, though with more women among their number than is sometimes supposed—have often sought to specify and justify the proper roles of women and men, and to explore the political consequences of sexual difference....

    Published November 29th 2011 by Routledge

  3. Philosophy of Mind

    Edited by Sean Crawford

    Series: Critical Concepts in Philosophy

    Philosophy of Mind is concerned with fundamental issues about the relation between mind and body and mind and world, and with the nature of the diverse variety of mental phenomena, such as thought, self-knowledge, consciousness, perception, sensation, and emotion. Philosophers of mind explore some...

    Published September 22nd 2010 by Routledge

  4. Philosophy of Religion

    Edited by William J. Wainwright

    Series: Critical Concepts in Philosophy

    The past forty years or so have witnessed a renaissance in the philosophy of religion. New tools (modal logic, probability theory, and so on) and new historical research have prompted many thinkers to take a fresh look at old topics (God’s existence, the problem of evil, faith and reason, and the...

    Published August 4th 2009 by Routledge

  5. Philosophy of Language

    Edited by A. P. Martinich

    Series: Critical Concepts in Philosophy

    What do ‘meaning’ and ‘truth’ mean? And how are they situated in the concrete practices of linguistic communication? What is the relationship between words and the world? How—with words—can people do such varied things as marry, inaugurate a president, and declare a country’s independence? How is...

    Published November 13th 2008 by Routledge

  6. The Philosophy of Time

    Edited by L Nathan Oaklander

    Series: Critical Concepts in Philosophy

    What is the nature of temporal passage—the movement of events or moments of time from the future through the present into the past? Is the future and the past as real as the present, or is the present—or perhaps the present and the past—all that exists? What role, if any, does language play in...

    Published June 25th 2008 by Routledge

  7. Metaethics

    Edited by Russ Shafer-Landau

    Series: Critical Concepts in Philosophy

    Metaethics is the branch of knowledge that considers the foundational issues of morality, and deals especially with the nature of ethical statements. Philosophers doing metaethics ask vital and fundamental questions such as these: • is morality merely conventional, or are there objective standards...

    Published March 18th 2008 by Routledge

  8. Metaphysics

    Edited by Michael Rea

    Series: Critical Concepts in Philosophy

    Metaphysics, at least roughly speaking, is the systematic investigation of fundamental presuppositions underlying commonsense and scientific views of the world. Most of us believe that we have bodies and minds, that we are free, that some things in the world are composed of other things and that...

    Published January 31st 2008 by Routledge

  9. German Idealism

    Edited by Klaus Brinkmann

    Series: Critical Concepts in Philosophy

    German Idealism represents one of the most intense and ambitious periods in the history of philosophy. It was the time when the possibility of an alternative to both empiricism and rationalism was explored, and the era when comprehensive system building took place. Discussing this highly visible...

    Published July 4th 2007 by Routledge

  10. Philosophy of Law

    Edited by Brian Bix

    Series: Critical Concepts in Philosophy

    Edited by a leading scholar in the field, Philosophy of Law is a new title in the Routledge Major Works series Critical Concepts in Philosophy. It is a four-volume collection of canonical and cutting-edge research and covers a significant range of topics in the field. The first two volumes of the...

    Published June 28th 2006 by Routledge

Forthcoming Books

  1. Epistemology
    Edited by Ram Neta
    To Be Published October 11th 2012
  2. The Philosophy of Psychology
    Edited by Jose Luis Bermudez, Brandon Towl
    To Be Published November 5th 2012
  3. Existentialism
    Edited by Tanja Staehler
    To Be Published December 14th 2012
  4. Ethics of War and Conflict
    Edited by Asa Kasher
    To Be Published December 31st 2012

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