Trousson, Raymond / Vercruysse, Jeroom (dir.), Dictionnaire general de Voltaire. (Champion classiques, references et dictionnaires 18) 1272 p. 2020:10 (Champion, FR) <670-9>
ISBN 978-2-38096-016-7 paper ¥7,064.- (税込) EUR 38.00

Kocis, Robert A., Isaiah Berlin: A Kantian and Post-Idealist Thinker. (Political Philosophy Now) 264 pp. 2022:8 (U. Wales Pr., UK) <676-84>
ISBN 978-1-78683-895-7 hard ¥21,367.- (税込) GB￡ 75.00 *

Reacting against both the British Idealists and the logical positivists, Isaiah Berlin forged a new philosophy best described as post-Idealist. This philosophy was deeply informed by Kantian categories and methods, and conditioned by Vichian themes of historical and cultural variation. An advocate of pluralism without relativism, Berlin believed that it was possible to adopt and live by values, but he could not achieve moral certainty that our values are objectively preferable to all others. Like Collingwood and Oakeshott (and some neo-Kantians), Berlin believed that concepts matter and that they have a history; that human values are numerous and incommensurable; that rationalism in politics is dangerous; and that positivists' hopes for rigorous social sciences are unrealistic. Interestingly, Collingwood and Oakeshott, both also candidates for post-Idealism, shared Berlin's commitment to these themes. Ultimately, Berlin's 'Two Concepts of Liberty' is perhaps best perceived as a critique of Bradley's Ethical Studies.

Huber, Jakob, Kant's Grounded Cosmopolitanism: Original Common Possession and the Right to Visit. 192 pp. 2022:7 (Oxford U. Pr., UK) <676-68>
ISBN 978-0-19-284404-0 hard ¥23,646.- (税込) GB￡ 83.00 *

Two kinds of cosmopolitan vision are typically associated with Kant's practical philosophy: on the one hand, the ideal of a universal moral community of rational agents who constitute a 'kingdom of ends' qua shared humanity. On the other hand, the ideal of a distinctly political community of 'world citizens' who share membership in some kind of global polity. Kant's Grounded Cosmopolitanism introduces a novel account of Kant's global thinking, one that has hitherto been largely overlooked: a grounded cosmopolitanism concerned with spelling out the normative implications of the fact that a plurality of corporeal agents concurrently inhabit the earth's spherical surface. It is neither concerned with a community of shared humanity in the abstract, nor of shared citizenship, but with a 'disjunctive' community of earth dwellers, that is, embodied agents in direct physical confrontation with each other. Kant's grounded cosmopolitanism as laid out in the Doctrine of Right frames the question how individuals relate to one another globally by virtue of concurrent existence and derives from this a specific set of constraints on cross-border interactions.

Newell, Waller R., Tyranny and Revolution: Rousseau to Heidegger. 2022:6 (Cambridge U. Pr., UK) <676-60>
ISBN 978-1-108-42430-1 hard ¥8,543.- (税込) GB￡ 29.99 *

The Philosophy of Freedom from Rousseau to Heidegger launched a great protest against modern liberal individualism, inspired by the virtuous political community of the ancient Greeks. Hegel argued that the progress of history was gradually bringing about greater freedom and restoring our lost sense of community. But his successors Marx, Nietzsche and Heidegger rejected Hegel's version of the end of history with its legitimization of the bourgeois nation-state. They sought to replace it with ever more utopian, apocalyptic and illiberal visions of the future: Marx's Socialism, Nietzsche's Overman, and Heidegger's commitment to Nazism. This book combines an exceptionally clear and rich study of these thinkers with a deep dive into the extent to which their views fed the political catastrophes of revolution, tyranny and genocide, including the Jacobins, Bolsheviks, Nazis, Khmer Rouge, ISIS and populist nationalism, but argues that the Philosophy of Freedom remains indispensable for understanding today's world.