In 346 BC. the Athenians negotiated a peace treaty with King Philip II of Macedon, but afterwards one of the Athenian ambassadors, Demosthenes, accused another, Aiskhines, of accepting a bribe from Philip to contrive that the terms of the treaty should be favourable to him. The case came to trial three years later, and On the False Embassy is the speech which Demosthenes prepared for the prosecution. It is one of the most famous pieces of ancient oratory, and (...) it is also one of the principal sources of information about the politics of its period. This volume is on the same lines as Professor MacDowell's previous edition of Demosthenes' speech Against Meidias. It includes an introduction concentrating especially on the historical circumstances, a revised Greek text based on fresh study of the manuscripts, an English translation on pages facing the text, and the first detailed commentary on the speech for over a hundred years. (shrink)

For Calvin, the understanding of God's accommodation to the limits and needs of the human condition was a central feature of the interpretation of Scripture and of the entire range of his theological work.

This passage has been very frequently discussed, but the deductions drawn from it have been so various and the exact meaning of the Greek has often been left so vague that it seemed to merit one more attempt at analysis.

Many animals, including dogs, produce vocal signals in which their mouths open and close producing In contrast, the vocal signals of species other than humans are tied to emotional states. The Broca's-Wernicke's area model of the brain bases of language is wrong.

This paper applies speech-act theory to craft a new response to Pyrrhonian skepticism and diagnose its appeal. Carefully distinguishing between different levels of language-use and noting their interrelations can help us identify a subtle mistake in a key Pyrrhonian argument.

There is a theory about inner speech which holds that it is ‘dialogic’. This paper reviews this theory, evaluates the arguments which support it, and presents an argument against it.

The assumption that the future is open makes well known problems for traditional semantics. According to a commonly held intuition, today's occurrence of the sentence 'There will be a sea battle tomorrow', while truth-valueless today, will have a determinate truth-value by tomorrow night. Yet given traditional semantics, sentences that are truth-valueless now cannot later 'become' true. Relativistic semantics has been claimed to do a better job of accommodating intuitions about future contingents than non-relativistic semantics does. However, intuitions about future (...) contingents cannot by themselves give good reasons for shifting to a new paradigm, for despite the initial appearances, standard non-relativistic semantics (plus an account of truth-value gaps) can accommodate both intuitions about future contingents. (shrink)

This book presents an accessible and carefully argued challenge to conventional approaches to thinking about free speech. Anthony Leaker provides a richer, more nuanced understanding of what free speech is and how it operates, explaining how free speech arguments are situated within a broader liberal humanist ideology.

How important is free speech? Should it be defended at any cost? Or should we set limits on what can and cannot be said? This Very Short Introduction offers a lively and thought-provoking guide to these questions, exploring both the traditional philosophical arguments as well as the practical issues and controversies facing society today.

In this post, Teresa Marques discusses her recent article in Journal of Applied Philosophy on whether hate is an essential component of hate speech. [blog post].