In History of Animals Aristotle analyzes "differences"--in parts, activities, modes of life, and character--across the animal kingdom, in preparation for establishing their causes, which are the concern of his other zoological works. Over 500 species of animals are considered: shellfish, insects, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals--including human beings.

In Books I-IV Aristotle gives a comparative survey of internal and external body parts, including tissues and fluids, and of sense faculties and voice.

Stephen Halliwell makes newly accessible one of the most influential and widely cited works in the history of literary theory and criticism. Aristotle's Poetics contains his treatment of Greek tragedy: its history, nature, and conventions, with details on poetic diction. This is the only edition of this central work in which readers can find, side by side, a reliable Greek text, a translation that is both accurate and readable, and notes that explain allusions and key ideas. Halliwell's Introduction traces the work's debt to earlier theorists (especially Plato), its distinctive argument, and the reasons behind its enduring relevance.

Also included in the volume are two central post-Aristotelian treatises on literary style: On the Sublime, a discussion of distinguished style (with illustrative passages) probably written in the 1st century CE; and On Style, a valuable guide to the Greek theory of styles that dates perhaps as early as the 2nd century BCE. For this new version of Volume XXIII of the Loeb Classical Library® Aristotle edition, Fyfe's translation of On the Sublime has been retained but judiciously revised by Donald Russell. Doreen C. Innes' fresh reading of On Style is based on the earlier translation by Roberts. The new Introductions and notes by Russell and Innes reflect today's scholarship.

John Rawls never published anything about his own religious beliefs, but after his death two texts were discovered which shed extraordinary light on the subject. A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith is Rawls’s undergraduate senior thesis, submitted in December 1942, just before he entered the army. The present volume includes these two texts, together with an Introduction by Joshua Cohen and Thomas Nagel, which discusses their relation to Rawls’s published work, and an essay by Robert Merrihew Adams, which places the thesis in its theological context.

Paradise haunts the Biblical West. At once the place of origin and exile, utopia and final destination, it has shaped our poetic and religious imagination and informed literary and theological accounts of man’s relation with his creator, with language and history. In Earthly Paradise, Milad Doueihi contemplates key moments in the philosophical reception and uses of Paradise, marked by the rise of critical and historical methods in the Early Modern period. Is Paradise the source of human error or an utopian vision of humanity itself?

In The Ethos of a Late-Modern Citizen, Stephen K. White contends that Western democracies face novel challenges demanding our reexamination of the role of citizens. White argues that the intense focus in the past three decades on finding general principles of justice for diversity-rich societies needs to be complemented by an exploration of what sort of ethos would be needed to adequately sustain any such principles. Accessible, pithy, and erudite, The Ethos of a Late-Modern Citizen will appeal to a wide audience.

Immanuel Kant’s claim that the categorical imperative of morality is based in practical reason has long been a source of puzzlement and doubt, even for sympathetic interpreters. In The Form of Practical Knowledge, Stephen Engstrom provides an illuminating new interpretation of the categorical imperative, arguing that we have exaggerated and misconceived Kant’s break with tradition. By developing an account of practical knowledge that situates Kant’s ethics within his broader epistemology, Engstrom’s work deepens and reshapes our understanding of Kantian ethics.

One of the leading humanists of Quattrocento Italy, Lorenzo Valla (1406–1457) has been praised as a brilliant debunker of medieval scholastic philosophy. In this book Lodi Nauta seeks a more balanced assessment, presenting us with the first comprehensive analysis of the humanist’s attempt at radical reform of Aristotelian scholasticism.

In the first decade of the twentieth century, William James and Josiah Royce, both professors of philosophy at Harvard, towered over American philosophy and exerted wide influence on European thought. This volume offers a unique view of the state of the discussion on James and Royce across several disciplines. It is noteworthy both for the presence of most leading scholars in the field and for its attention to the European influence of these thinkers and the revival of interest in America and Europe.

Autonomy for Kant is not just a synonym for the capacity to choose, whether simple or deliberative. It is what the word literally implies: the imposition of a law on one’s own authority and out of one’s own rational resources. In Kant and the Limits of Autonomy, Shell explores the limits of Kantian autonomy—both the force of its claims and the complications to which they give rise. This book is both a rigorous, philosophically and historically informed study of Kantian autonomy and an extended meditation on the foundation and limits of modern liberalism.

In Looking Away, Rei Terada revisits debates about appearance and reality in order to make a startling claim: that the purpose of such debates is to police feelings of dissatisfaction with the given world. Terada proposes that the connection between dissatisfaction and ephemeral phenomenality reveals a hitherto-unknown alternative to aesthetics that expresses our right to desire something other than experience “as is,” even those parts of it that really cannot be otherwise.

As Hegel famously noted, referring to the Roman goddess Minerva, her owl brought back wisdom only at dusk, when it was too late to shine light on actual politics. Jeffrey Abramson provides a lively and accessible guide for readers discovering the tradition of political thought that dates back to Socrates and Plato, with contemporary examples that illustrate the enduring nature of political dilemmas.