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Between Kant and Hegel
Lectures on German Idealism
Dieter Henrich
Harvard University Press, 2008

Electrifying when first delivered in 1973, legendary in the years since, Dieter Henrich's lectures on German Idealism were the first contact a major German philosopher had made with an American audience since the onset of World War II. They remain one of the most eloquent explanations and interpretations of classical German philosophy and of the way it relates to the concerns of contemporary philosophy. Thanks to the editorial work of David Pacini, the lectures appear here with annotations linking them to editions of the masterworks of German philosophy as they are now available.

Henrich describes the movement that led from Kant to Hegel, beginning with an interpretation of the structure and tensions of Kant's system. He locates the Kantian movement and revival of Spinoza, as sketched by F. H. Jacobi, in the intellectual conditions of the time and in the philosophical motivations of modern thought. Providing extensive analysis of the various versions of Fichte's Science of Knowledge, Henrich brings into view a constellation of problems that illuminate the accomplishments of the founders of Romanticism, Novalis and Friedrich Schlegel, and of the poet Hölderlin's original philosophy. He concludes with an interpretation of the basic design of Hegel's system.

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Defining Biology
Lectures from the 1890s
Jane Maienschein
Harvard University Press, 1986

The 1890s was an exciting time in American biology, a time of great intellectual debate and turmoil. Much of this activity centered on the now-famous Evening Lectures delivered at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory on Cape Cod, where leading biologists gathered to research the leading issues of the day. There was no better way to learn about what was being discussed and debated at the cutting edge of biology than through the Evening Lectures. The lectures of outstanding scientists such as C. 0. Whitman, E. B. Wilson, E. G. Conklin, J. Loeb, and T. H. Morgan redefined our thinking about biology.

These Evening Lectures stimulated major biological revolutions: the conversion of embryology to an independent discipline; the beginnings of ethology; the rise of genetics and especially cytogenetics; and the application of chemistry and physics to cell function-the birth of what is now called cell biology. Some of the central problems that scientists still puzzle over were first proposed at Woods Hole.

Not only are these lectures important scientific accomplishments, they also provide an invaluable record of the beginnings of a truly American school of biology. Printed in a limited edition, they have remained inaccessible to many people interested in knowing more about the meteoric rise of American biology. Jane Maienschein has selected key lectures, written an introductory essay, and provided brief explanations of the significance and impact of each lecture. Ernst Mayr, distinguished biologist and historian, has added a Foreword about the intellectual importance of the lectures to the formation of American biology; and Paul Gross, present Director of the Marine Biological Laboratory, has contributed an Epilogue that conveys the excitement and later significance of the 1890s.

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Inflation, Exchange Rates, and the World Economy
Lectures on International Monetary Economics
W. Max Corden
University of Chicago Press, 1986
The previous editions of this work were praised as lucid and insightful introductions to a complicated subject. This third edition incorporates major additions to update the survey while retaining its clarity. Selected from the second edition are essential chapters on developments in balance-of-payments theories, inflation and exchange rates, the international adjustment to the oil price rise, and monetary integration in Europe. In three new chapters, Corden considers the international transmission of economic disturbances, the international macrosystem, and macroeconomic policy coordination.
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An Innocent Abroad
Lectures in China
J. Hillis Miller
Northwestern University Press, 2015

Since 1988, J. Hillis Miller has traveled to China to lecture on literary theory, especially the role of globalization in literary theory. Over time, he has assisted in the development of distinctively Chinese forms of literary theory, Comparative Literature, and World Literature. The fifteen lectures gathered in An Innocent Abroad span both time and geographic location, reflecting his work at universities across China for more than twenty-five years. More important, they reflect the evolution of Miller’s thinking and of the lectures’ contexts in China as these have markedly changed over the years, especially on either side of Tiananmen Square and in light of China’s economic growth and technological change. A foreword by the leading theorist Fredric Jameson provides additional context.

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Lectures on Buildings
Updated and Revised
Mark Ronan
University of Chicago Press, 2009

In mathematics, “buildings” are geometric structures that represent groups of Lie type over an arbitrary field. This concept is critical to physicists and mathematicians working in discrete mathematics, simple groups, and algebraic group theory, to name just a few areas.

            Almost twenty years after its original publication, Mark Ronan’s Lectures on Buildings remains one of the best introductory texts on the subject. A thorough, concise introduction to mathematical buildings, it contains problem sets and an excellent bibliography that will prove invaluable to students new to the field. Lectures on Buildings will find a grateful audience among those doing research or teaching courses on Lie-type groups, on finite groups, or on discrete groups.

            “Ronan’s account of the classification of affine buildings [is] both interesting and stimulating, and his book is highly recommended to those who already have some knowledge and enthusiasm for the theory of buildings.”—Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society

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Lectures on Contemporary Syntactic Theories
An Introduction to Government-Binding Theory, Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar, and Lexical-Function Grammar
Peter Sells
CSLI, 1985
Sells provides an introduction to the most important aspects of three major contemporary syntactic theories. A strong linguiustic background is not presupposed, and a brief introductory chapter is included for the nonlinguist. PETER SELLS is a postdoctoral research affliate at CSLI. 1/1/1985 ISBN (Paperback): 0937073148 ISBN (Cloth): 093707313X Subject: Linguistics; Grammar--Syntax; Government-Binding Theory
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Lectures on Deixis
Charles Fillmore
CSLI, 1997
This volume presents the author's view of the scope of linguistic description, insofar as the field of linguistics touches on questions of the meanings of sentences. Fillmore takes the subject matter of linguistics, in its grammatical, semantic and pragmatic sub-divisions, to include the full catalogue of knowledge which the speakers of a language can be said to possess about the structure of the sentences in their language, and their knowledge about the appropriate use of these sentences. In the author's view, the special explanatory task of linguistics is to discover the principles which underlie such knowledge. Fillmore chooses to study the range of information which the speakers of a language possess about the sentences in their language by thoroughly examining one simple English sentence.
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Lectures on Economic Growth
Robert E. Lucas Jr.
Harvard University Press, 2004

In this book the Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Lucas collects his writings on economic growth, from his seminal On the Mechanics of Economic Development to his previously unpublished 1997 Kuznets Lectures.

The chapters progress from a general theory of how growth could be sustained and why growth rates might differ in different countries, to a model of exceptional growth in certain countries in the twentieth century, to an account of the take-off of growth in the Industrial Revolution, and finally to a prediction about patterns of growth in this new century. The framework in all the chapters is a model with accumulation of both physical and human capital, with emphasis on the external benefits of human capital through diffusion of new knowledge or on-the-job learning, often stimulated by trade. The Kuznets Lectures consider the interaction of human capital growth and the demographic transition in the early stages of industrialization. In the final chapter, Lucas uses a diffusion model to illustrate the possibility that the vast intersociety income inequality created in the course of the Industrial Revolution may have already reached its peak, and that income differences will decline in this century.

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Lectures on Ethics, 1900 - 1901
John Dewey
Donald F. Koch
Southern Illinois University Press, 1991

In Lectures on Ethics, 1900–1901,Donald F. Koch supplies the only extant complete transcription of the annual three-course sequence on ethics John Dewey gave at the University of Chicago.

In his introduction Koch argues that these lectures offer the best systematic, overall introduction to Dewey’s approach to moral philosophy and are the only account showing the unity of his views in nearly all phases of ethical inquiry. These lectures are the only work by Dewey to set forth a complete theory of moral language. They offer a clear illustration of the central methodological questions in the development of a pragmatic instrumentalist ethic and the actual working out of the instrumentalist approach as distinct from simply presenting it as a conclusion.

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Lectures on Exceptional Lie Groups
J. F. Adams
University of Chicago Press, 1996
J. Frank Adams was internationally known and respected as one of the great algebraic topologists. Adams had long been fascinated with exceptional Lie groups, about which he published several papers, and he gave a series of lectures on the topic. The author's detailed lecture notes have enabled volume editors Zafer Mahmud and Mamoru Mimura to preserve the substance and character of Adams's work.

Because Lie groups form a staple of most mathematics graduate students' diets, this work on exceptional Lie groups should appeal to many of them, as well as to researchers of algebraic geometry and topology.

J. Frank Adams was Lowndean professor of astronomy and geometry at the University of Cambridge. The University of Chicago Press published his Lectures on Lie Groups and has reprinted his Stable Homotopy and Generalized Homology.

Chicago Lectures in Mathematics Series
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Lectures on Imagination
Paul Ricoeur
University of Chicago Press, 2024
Ricoeur’s theory of productive imagination in previously unpublished lectures.

The eminent philosopher Paul Ricoeur was devoted to the imagination. These previously unpublished lectures offer Ricoeur’s most significant and sustained reflections on creativity as he builds a new theory of imagination through close examination, moving from Aristotle, Pascal, Spinoza, Hume, and Kant to Ryle, Price, Wittgenstein, Husserl, and Sartre. These thinkers, he contends, underestimate humanity’s creative capacity. While the Western tradition generally views imagination as derived from the reproductive example of the image, Ricoeur develops a theory about the mind’s power to produce new realities. Modeled most clearly in fiction, this productive imagination, Ricoeur argues, is available across conceptual domains. His theory provocatively suggests that we are not constrained by existing political, social, and scientific structures. Rather, our imaginations have the power to break through our conceptual horizons and remake the world.
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Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy
Hannah Arendt
University of Chicago Press, 1982
Hannah Arendt's last philosophical work was an intended three-part project entitled The Life of the Mind. Unfortunately, Arendt lived to complete only the first two parts, Thinking and Willing. Of the third, Judging, only the title page, with epigraphs from Cato and Goethe, was found after her death. As the titles suggest, Arendt conceived of her work as roughly parallel to the three Critiques of Immanuel Kant. In fact, while she began work on The Life of the Mind, Arendt lectured on "Kant's Political Philosophy," using the Critique of Judgment as her main text. The present volume brings Arendt's notes for these lectures together with other of her texts on the topic of judging and provides important clues to the likely direction of Arendt's thinking in this area.
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Lectures on Lie Groups
J. F. Adams
University of Chicago Press, 1983
"[Lectures in Lie Groups] fulfills its aim admirably and should be a useful reference for any mathematician who would like to learn the basic results for compact Lie groups. . . . The book is a well written basic text [and Adams] has done a service to the mathematical community."—Irving Kaplansky
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Lectures on Linear Logic
A. S. Troelstra
CSLI, 1992
Linear logic is an example of a "resource-sensitive" logic, keeping track of the number of times data of given types are used. Formulas in linear logic represent either the data themselves or data types, whereas in ordinary logic a formula is a proposition. If ordinary logic is a logic of truth, linear logic is a logic of actions. Linear logic and its implications are explored in depth in this volume. Particular attention has been given to the various formalisms for linear logic, embeddings of classical and intuitionistic logic into linear logic, the connection with certain types of categories, the "formulas-as-types" paradigm for linear logic and associated computational interpretations, and Girard's proof nets for classical linear logic as an analogue of natural deduction. It is also shown that linear logic is undecidable. A final section, contributed by D. Roorda, presents a proof of strong normalization for cut elimination in linear logic. Linear logic is of interest to logicians and computer scientists, and shows links with many other topics, such as coherence theorems in category theory, the theory of Petri nets, and abstract computing machines without garbage collection
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Lectures on Quantum Field Theory
Jirí Horejší
Karolinum Press, 2024
Twenty years of lectures on the quantum world by an esteemed physicist. 

This book covers the material of the two-semester quantum field theory course that Jirí Horejší has taught at Charles University and Czech Technical University in Prague for over two decades. In the individual chapters, one may find the discussion of selected topics in relativistic quantum mechanics and relativistic quantum field theory; the dominant theme is quantum electrodynamics. The technique of Feynman diagrams is described in detail, along with methods of regularization and renormalization, including some basic applications. 

The selection of topics presented in the book is intended to provide the reader with the technical skills necessary for the subsequent study of theoretical particle physics. In keeping with the author’s typical lecture style, the text contains many detailed explicit calculations to a degree not entirely typical in other available sources. With primary appeal for university students specializing in theoretical physics or nuclear and particle physics, it may also be useful for any scientifically minded reader seriously interested in the foundations of modern physics.
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Lectures on Revivals of Religion
Charles Grandison Finney
Harvard University Press

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Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres
Hugh Blair. Edited by Linda Ferreira-Buckley and S. Michael Halloran
Southern Illinois University Press, 2005

This new edition of Hugh Blair’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, edited by Linda Ferreira-Buckley and S. Michael Halloran, answers the need for a complete, reliable text. The book seeks to generate a renewed interest in Blair by provoking new inquiries into the tradition of belletristic rhetoric and by serving as both aid and incentive to others who may join in the project of improving understanding of this landmark rhetorical scholarship.

This editioncontains forty-seven lectures and remains faithful to the text of the 1785 London edition. The editors contextualize Hugh Blair’s motivations and thinking by providing in their introduction an extended account of Blair’s life and era. The bibliography of works by and about Blair is an invaluable aid, surpassing previous research on Blair.

Although the extent of its influence cannot be measured fully, Blair’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres was undoubtedly a primary vehicle for introducing many eighteenth- and nineteenth-century scholars to classical rhetoric and French belletristic rhetoric—its success due in part to the ease with which the lectures combine neoclassical and Enlightenment thought, accommodating emerging social concerns. Ferreira-Buckley and Halloran’s extensive treatment revives the tradition of belletristic rhetoric, improving the understanding of Blair’s place in the study of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century discourse, while finding him relevant in the twenty-first century.

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Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy
John Rawls
Harvard University Press, 2000

The premier political philosopher of his day, John Rawls, in three decades of teaching at Harvard, has had a profound influence on the way philosophical ethics is approached and understood today. This book brings together the lectures that inspired a generation of students--and a regeneration of moral philosophy. It invites readers to learn from the most noted exemplars of modern moral philosophy with the inspired guidance of one of contemporary philosophy's most noteworthy practitioners and teachers.

Central to Rawls's approach is the idea that respectful attention to the great texts of our tradition can lead to a fruitful exchange of ideas across the centuries. In this spirit, his book engages thinkers such as Leibniz, Hume, Kant, and Hegel as they struggle in brilliant and instructive ways to define the role of a moral conception in human life. The lectures delineate four basic types of moral reasoning: perfectionism, utilitarianism, intuitionism, and--the ultimate focus of Rawls's course--Kantian constructivism. Comprising a superb course on the history of moral philosophy, they also afford unique insight into how John Rawls has transformed our view of this history.

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Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy
John Rawls
Harvard University Press

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Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy
John Rawls
Harvard University Press, 2007

This last book by the late John Rawls, derived from written lectures and notes for his long-running course on modern political philosophy, offers readers an account of the liberal political tradition from a scholar viewed by many as the greatest contemporary exponent of the philosophy behind that tradition.

Rawls's goal in the lectures was, he wrote, "to identify the more central features of liberalism as expressing a political conception of justice when liberalism is viewed from within the tradition of democratic constitutionalism." He does this by looking at several strands that make up the liberal and democratic constitutional traditions, and at the historical figures who best represent these strands--among them the contractarians Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau; the utilitarians Hume, Sidgwick, and J. S. Mill; and Marx regarded as a critic of liberalism. Rawls's lectures on Bishop Joseph Butler also are included in an appendix. Constantly revised and refined over three decades, Rawls's lectures on these figures reflect his developing and changing views on the history of liberalism and democracy--as well as how he saw his own work in relation to those traditions.

With its clear and careful analyses of the doctrine of the social contract, utilitarianism, and socialism--and of their most influential proponents--this volume has a critical place in the traditions it expounds. Marked by Rawls's characteristic patience and curiosity, and scrupulously edited by his student and teaching assistant, Samuel Freeman, these lectures are a fitting final addition to his oeuvre, and to the history of political philosophy as well.

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Nature, Addresses, and Lectures
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Harvard University Press, 1971

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A Woman Speaks
The Lectures, Seminars, and Interviews of Anaïs Nin
Evelyn J. Hinz
Ohio University Press, 1975

In this book Anaïs Nin speaks with warmth and urgency on those themes which have always been closest to her: relationships, creativity, the struggle for wholeness, the unveiling of woman, the artist as magician, women reconstructing the world, moving from the dream outward, and experiencing our lives to the fullest possible extent.

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