Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays

By the time of his death in 2006, Sir Peter Strawson was regarded as one of the world's most distinguished philosophers. First published thirty years ago but long since unavailable, Freedom and Resentment collects some of Strawson's most important work and is an ideal introduction to his thinking on such topics as the philosophy of language, metaphysics, epistemology and aesthetics.

Beginning with the title essay Freedom and Resentment, this invaluable collection is testament to the astonishing range of Strawson's thought as he discusses free will, ethics and morality, logic, the mind-body problem and aesthetics. The book is perhaps best-known for its three interrelated chapters on perception and the imagination, subjects now at the very forefront of philosophical research.

This reissue includes a substantial new foreword by Paul Snowdon and a fascinating intellectual autobiography by Strawson.

P.F. Strawson was regarded as one of Oxford’s most distinguished scholars. He taught at the University College of North Wales and at Oxford University, where he remained until his retirement in 1987. Associated with the golden age of Oxford scholarship, Strawson came to prominence with the publication of On Referring (Mind, 1950), in which he famously critiqued Russell’s theory of language. He was knighted in 1977 and throughout his life engaged in rigorous philosophical debate with leading thinkers such as Quine, Dummett and Austin throughout his life. His publications include Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics (1959) and The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1966).