Contribute to the Library

We accept submissions from instructors and graduate students in philosophy and related fields.

Our Process

1

Proposal

Email us your proposal, detailing which primary text you would like to cover and why that text is a good fit for the Library.

2

Text Availability

We will then confirm that your target primary text is available, with no other pieces currently in progress.

3

Editorial Review

Upon submission, your piece will first undergo editorial review to ensure that it meets the formatting guidelines laid out in our Submission Guide (see below).

4

Peer Review

Finally, your submission will be evaluated by other academics for accuracy, depth, and teaching utility.

Submissions Guide

Click the PDF below to view and download the Philosophy Teaching LIbrary Submissions guide on your tablet or mobile device.

Key Concept

Occasionalism — a theory claiming that God is the only true cause of changes in the world. For example, when you high-five me, you’re not really the cause of the stinging sensation I experience. God is the cause. Your high five is just the occasion on which God causes it.     

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Interactionism — a theory claiming that things in the world can truly cause changes in each other. For example, when you high-five me, you truly cause me to experience a stinging sensation in my hand.

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Substance Dualism — a theory claiming that the mind (or soul) and body are two distinct and very different things.

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Body — what it sounds like! The body is the physical part or aspect of a thing and has characteristics like shape, size, etc.

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Soul — that part or aspect of a thing involving mental aspects of their existence, e.g., thoughts, feelings, decisions, etc. The “soul”, in this sense, is more or less just the mind.

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Causal Interaction — When one thing acts (i.e., itself does something) and in so acting makes another thing change. For example, when you high-five me, you cause me to experience a stinging sensation in my hand.

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God as God – The phrase “God as God” is basically a synonym for “God the subject.” In other words, it refers to God precisely in God’s status as an incomprehensible divine Other.

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Incarnation – The Christian doctrine of the incarnation is the notion that the word of God became fully human in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. It is closely associated with the doctrine of the trinity, which asserts that God the Father, God the Son (Jesus as the word made flesh), and God the Holy Spirit are one God.

Key Concept

Religious Fanaticism – In Feuerbach’s use of the term, a religious fanatic is someone who is unwaveringly faithful to God as an utterly mysterious superhuman being. They subordinate other things—especially the love of other humans—to submission before this divine other.

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God the Subject – When Feuerbach refers to God as a subject, he is referring to the commonplace religious belief that God is a being who has various attributes, like a loving nature.

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Faith Separates Man From God – Faith separates God from man in this sense: it treats God as a mysterious other, a being radically distinct from us.

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 Faith – Belief in and fidelity to a transcendent divine subject like God.

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Orthodoxy – Orthodoxy refers to “right belief,” and it is concern with identifying heresies and ensuring that people believe and practice correctly.

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Indirect Form of Self-Knowledge – Feuerbach’s view is that religious belief is a naive way of relating to our human nature and its perfections. It is naive or childlike because it treats these as external realities that belong to God. He believes a mature and contemplative person realizes these don’t belong to God, but rather to our species, abstractly conceived.

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Above the Individual Man – The human perfections are “above the individual” insofar as no particular individual ever perfectly realizes them. They are abstractions.

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Divine Trinity – Feuerbach is having fun here. He is using the theological phrasing of the Trinity to talk about human perfections. In calling reason, love, and freedom of the will “divine,” he means they are absolutely good; they are activities whose goodness is intrinsic to their practice or exercise. This isn’t a novel philosophical view. For example, Immanuel Kant argued that autonomy or a good will is the only thing which is unconditionally good.

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Perfections – The end to which a faculty or power is ordered. For example, omniscience would be the perfection of the intellect. Traditionally, God is said to possess all perfections.

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Love – When Feuerbach writes about love, he is referring to unconditional concern for others and the desire for fellowship with them. He is here asserting that love, understood in this sense, is the perfect activity of the affective faculty. In other words, our feelings and passions are fully actualized and engaged in an intrinsically valuable activity when we genuinely love others.

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Infinite – The infinite is whatever can be understood as unbounded or unlimited. Human nature in the abstract is unbounded and unlimited. It is only bounded or limited in its concrete form as it is realized by particular material individuals.

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Higher Consciousness – The sort of consciousness that mature human beings possess, but which other animals do not. It is “higher” than animal consciousness because it involves thinking abstractly about the form or essence of things.

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Science – Feuerbach uses the term science in its classical sense, meaning systematically organized knowledge. Any body of knowledge founded on an understanding of first principles and the essences of things is a science in this sense.

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Popular Sovereignty – The view that a government’s authority to rule comes from the people, making a ruler subject to the will of their citizens.

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The Divine Right of Kings – The theory that kings are chosen by God and thus that political revolt is a rebellion against the will of God.

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Synthesis – The prefix ‘syn-’ means “together,” so a synthesis “brings together” or combines elements of both a thesis and its antithesis.

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Antithesis– An antithesis is the contradiction of a thesis. For example, internationalism could be understood as the antithesis of nationalism.

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Thesis – In Hegelian terms, a thesis can be understood as a position or theory. Examples include any of the “-isms” that we discuss in science, history, and philosophy, such as Darwinism, capitalism, nationalism, etc.

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Progressor’s Temptation – a unique temptation for those making progress in which pride impedes their further progress and leads to backsliding.

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Progressors – those who are not yet expert Stoic practitioners, but who are also aware of the fact that they must change their lives in that direction. They are working on making progress.

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Intellectualism – the philosophical view that our motivations and emotions are all judgments. The reason why you do something, your motivation, is because you believe it’s the right thing to do. The reason why you feel good or bad about something, an emotion, is because you believe that something good or bad happened to you.

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Duties – acts of service, obedience, and respect that we owe to each other. The duties we owe to each other depend on what kind of relationship we have.

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Askeses – exercises of Stoic thought and practice that make the lessons and habits of Stoic philosophy second-nature for Stoic practitioners.

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Externals – things that are not under our control but that are all-too-easily confused with things that should be important to us, like wealth, status, and pleasure. Too many people believe externals like these are necessary for the good life, and the Stoic path is to focus not on these things but rather what is up to us. 

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The Fundamental Division – the division between things that are under our direct control and those that are not. The important lesson is to care only about the things we can control.

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The Greatest Happiness Principle – A principle which says that actions are right insofar as they promote happiness and wrong insofar as they promote unhappiness

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Higher and Lower Pleasures – Types of pleasures that differ in terms of their quality. Things like food and drugs create lower pleasures. Things like intellectual pursuits and doing the right thing create higher forms of pleasure.

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The Doctrine of Swine – An objection that utilitarianism entails that if people would be happy rolling in mud, that’s what would be morally best for them to do, so we should reject the theory.

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Utilitarianism – A normative theory of which actions are right or wrong. Utilitarianism says the right action is that which maximises utility.

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Jeremy Bentham – Considered by some as the father of utilitarianism, Bentham was a moral philosopher and one of John Stuart Mill’s teachers

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Epicurus – an ancient Greek philosopher and one of the first to advocate that the ultimate good is experiencing pleasure and avoiding pain.

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Utility – The thing that is ultimately valuable in itself. For Mill, this is happiness, which he then understands as pleasure and the absence of pain.

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Contract Theory – a modern political theory identifying consent as the sole justification for government. Contract theory is associated with Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), John Locke (1632-1704), Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), and more recently, John Rawls (1921-2002)