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MOVING TO FRONT FROM DECEMBER 21, 2013: THIS DESERVES MORE RESPONSES!
Signed comments only: full name and valid e-mail address. You can name more than one, but say a couple of words about each book or article you mention, why you liked it, why it's significant, what it's contribution is to a particular literature. I'll add my own at some point, but first I'd like readers to weigh in.
I haven't finished it yet, and probably won't before the end of the year, but a strong contender is Marko Malink's, _Aristotle's Modal Syllogistic_. I received a copy to review a few weeks ago, and not only is it pleasantly-written, the content is riveting and while we haven't gotten to the gritty details, I'm already disposed to think that he's got his hands on a good solution.
Exploitation and Economic Justice in the Liberal Capitalist State, by Mark R. Reiff (OUP). Throws new light on questions of social justice and rigorously argues for taking the just price doctrine seriously, even in today’s (financial) markets. A book with potentially far-reaching practical implications.
Samuel Scheffler's Death and the Afterlife, together with R. Jay Wallace's The View From Here: On Affirmation, Attachment, and the Limits of Regret: both innovatively probe fundamental attitudes (towards the future and the past, respectively) that give some structure and point to valuation, and indeed life. They contain analyses that are everywhere tinged with existential seriousness.
More Than Just War: Narratives of the Just War and Military Life, by Charles Jones (Routledge).
In short: this highly original book does to the "Just War" tradition what Nietzsche's "On The Genealogy of Morals" did to moral theory. Jones calls into question the dominant "Just War" tradition in the ethics of war, such as the approach put forward by Michael Walzer in his classic "Just and Unjust Wars."
Jones exposes this approach as: assuming the vantage point of the state over the individual, assuming a stereotypical definition of war, as rule-oriented (ignoring character), depending more upon revival than cumulative coherence for its claims to being a "tradition," and as more wed to its historically religious contexts than secular authors today admit.
An alternative tradition of military ethics, whose truths about actual military experience have been expressed most frequently in film and literature, emerges from Jones' analysis.
I was going to suggest Samuel Sheffler's Death and the Afterlife, but now I will just second John Rapko's nomination. Sheffler's exploratory and eloquent considerations of our reactions to the possibility of human life ending some time soon after our own death reminded me of all the virtues of good philosophy. And the back-and-forth with commentators such as Harry Frankfurt and Susan Wolf is an illuminating bonus.
I third the nomination of Scheffler's DEATH AND THE AFTERLIFE. I'll add Gerald Cohen's LECTURES ON THE HISTORY OF MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. It's at once educational and inspiring to watch a philosopher of Cohen's depth, learning and dialectic skill engage so wide a range of historical materials. It is more than a little daunting to watch him do it with such apparent ease.
I would suggest "Deaths in Venice" by Philip Kitcher. I'm by no means an expert in either Thomas Mann or 19th century German philosophy, but Mr. Kitcher has a very engaging and persuasive writing style (probably because it appears this book was adapted from a series of lectures). His insights into "Death in Venice" go far beyond any literary criticisms of that novella that I've previously read, and I think he does an effective job of reconciling Mann's "philosophy" with Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. I also liked his insights into how literary works can stand as philosophical texts in their own right. Before reading Mr. Kitcher's book, I was of the mind that "Death in Venice" was merely a literary embodiment of the Dionysian and Apollonian from "Birth of Tragedy." Kitcher does a nice job of going beyond that relatively simple reading. But as I said, I'm not an expert in any of this. So I'd be very interested in what Nietzsche/Mann/Schopenhauer scholars think of Kitcher's book.
For me it was "Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West" by John Ralston Saul. A reprint that appears contemporary given the state of politics in America. Challenges the way we view reason, expertise, and the working of government and society. Not finished yet so the fix remains unknown.
The English translation of Enrique Dussel's Ethic of Liberation is one of the most important philosophical contributions foe the English speaking world of 2013.
Dussel illustrates impressively the privilege that the Western epistemic/ethical system has created for itself, how it negated and still represses alternatives, and why the particular claim of Western philosophy to be the (only) system that can express a universal ethical system wherein all possible ethical systems are rendered (de)constructable is so problematic. Moreover, Dussel creates the avenue for an alternative discourse around a unique idea of liberation, which for him is both a political and philosophical gesture. I am currently teaching an intensive reading seminar on this book with a small group of students in Germany.
No love for Tim Williamon's 'Modal Logic as Metaphysics'? I don't have an opinion on its quality, since it's not my area and I haven't read it, but it seems like a big new work from a major figure.
David goes out of his way to note the absence of Williamson's book, even though he's never read it and the thread is only nine comments long, on the grounds that the book is "a big new work from a major figure". It seems to me that attitudes like this have an ossifying effect on our field.
Thom Brooks' Punishment is at once a great introduction to the topic of criminal justice punishment and a major contribution with his "unified theory" emphasizing restorative justice. Manuel Vargas' Building Better Beings is a major reset to the free will problem, culminating a decade of work on his revisionism with a view that combines empirical competence on X-PHI matters with practical recommendations on re-conceiving responsibility. IMHO both are two sides of one revisionist coin of how we might in the future move toward a more just and sustainable society in terms of responsibility and criminal justice.
No contest for me: Dave Chalmers' "Panpsychism and Panprotopsychism." It's already authoritative, and it may be the best thing ever written on either theory.
The Art of Procrastination: A Guide to Effective Dawdling, Lollygagging and Postponing (by John Perry)
This does not qualify as a 2013 book (having appeared in 2012 Summer) but it is a fun book with lots of practical wisdom. I loved it. It is small but it is not slow(going). Should make a great present for family and friends who hold a low (or let's say not-too-high) opinion about the merits of philosophy.
I'd recommend Jonathan Webber's 'Character, Attitude and Disposition' in the European Journal of Philosophy. A great response to the character debate.
I enjoyed reading Michael Weisberg's _Simulation and Similarity_ (OUP), an engaging and wide-ranging study of scientific modelling.
Several people mentioned Scheffler's Tanner Lectures, which I've not yet read. But other good death-related work this year includes:
Emily Austin "Epicurus and the Politics of Fearing Death," Apeiron 45:109-29.
Stephan Blatti, "Death’s Distinctive Harm," American Philosophical Quarterly 49:317–30.
Steve Luper, "Adaptation," in The Metaphysics and Ethics of Death, ed. James Stacey Taylor (Oxford University Press).
Eric Olson, "The Epicurean View of Death," Journal of Ethics 17:65-78.
"Neo-Davidsonian Metaphysics" by Samuel Wheeler. It's an ambitious re-boot of the Davidsonian program, including a compelling (and in my view, convincing) account of medium-sized objects and properties that squares Kripkean essentialist intuitions with commitments implicit in Davidson; without abandoning Davidson's core ideas about truth and predication.
Fabian Freyenhagen's 'Adorno's Practical Philosophy – Living Less Wrongly' is a great example of crisp and engaging scholarship in ethics. Those who have been involved in recent studies of Adorno know that extracting a cohesive ethical strand from his work has become a favorite hobby of both long-time followers and those new to his thought. Freyenhagen's book is a great example of how such projects should be carried out. I especially enjoyed his articulation of Adorno's unique criticism of Kant's discussion of the Fact of Reason, where morality's need for discursive grounding is called into question.
Gabe Greenberg's "Beyond Resemblance" (The Philosophical Review) is an exceptional work in philosophy of depiction.
Though it lies outside my area, I also found Han van Wietmarschen's "Peer Disagreement, Evidence, and Well-Groundedness" (also in The Philosophical Review) to be truly outstanding.
I should also mention Catharine Abell's, "Art: What it Is and Why it Matters" (Philosophy and Phenomenological Research), as it's easily one of the best articles in Philosophy of Art I've read in the last five years. Even though I think her view is ultimately wrong, wrong, wrong, she does what I had thought well nigh impossible…offer a prima facie philosophically compelling Institutional theory of art. [Technically her article was published in Nov. 2012; however, I didn't read it until 2013 and so say "close enough"].
I strongly recommend Adam Pautz's paper "The Real Trouble for Phenomenal Externalism: New Empirical Evidence for a Brain-Based Theory of Consciousness". After reading it, I gave up phenomenal externalism which I hold before.
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