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PHILOSOPHY
- PHILOSOPHY: Aesthetics
- PHILOSOPHY: Eastern
- PHILOSOPHY: Epistemology
- PHILOSOPHY: Ethics & Moral Philosophy
- PHILOSOPHY: Free Will & Determinism
- PHILOSOPHY: General
- PHILOSOPHY: History & Surveys
- PHILOSOPHY: Logic
- PHILOSOPHY: Metaphysics
- PHILOSOPHY: Methodology
- PHILOSOPHY: Mind & Body
- PHILOSOPHY: Movements
- PHILOSOPHY: Political
- PHILOSOPHY: Religious
- PHILOSOPHY: Social
- Moral Dimensions
- Hardcover September 2009
- 'Yo!' and 'Lo!': The Pragmatic Topography of the Space of Reasons
- Hardcover January 2009
- Civilization and Enlightenment
- Hardcover January 2009
- Depth
- Hardcover January 2009
- The Engaged Intellect
- Hardcover January 2009
- Having the World in View
- Hardcover January 2009
- Commentaries on Plato, Volume 1, Phaedrus and Ion
- Hardcover November 2008
- The Naked Gaze
- Hardcover November 2008
- Providence Lost
- Hardcover November 2008
- Confessions of a Confirmed Extensionalist and Other Essays
- Hardcover November 2008
- Death and Character
- Hardcover November 2008
- Quine in Dialogue
- Hardcover November 2008
- Rescuing Justice and Equality
- Hardcover November 2008
- Reading Tao Yuanming
- Hardcover October 2008
- Seeing Red
- Beginning with the seemingly simple act of seeing red, this brilliantly unsettling essay builds toward an explanation of why consciousness makes compelling evolutionary sense. From sensations that probably began in bodily expression to the evolutionary advantages of a conscious self, Seeing Red tracks the "hard problem" of consciousness to its source and its solution, a solution in which the very hardness of the problem may make all the difference.
- Paperback October 2008
- The Affirmation of Life
- While most recent studies of Nietzsche's works have lost sight of the fundamental question of the meaning of a life characterized by inescapable suffering, Bernard Reginster's book The Affirmation of Life brings it sharply into focus. Reginster identifies overcoming nihilism as a central objective of Nietzsche's philosophical project, and shows how this concern systematically animates all of his main ideas.
- Paperback September 2008
- The Consolation of Philosophy
- Hardcover September 2008
- Expression and the Inner
- At least since Descartes, philosophers have been interested in the special knowledge or authority that we exhibit when we speak about our own thoughts, attitudes, and feelings. This book contends that even the best work in contemporary philosophy of mind fails to account for this sort of knowledge or authority because it does not pay the right sort of attention to the notion of expression. What's at stake is not only how to understand self-knowledge and first-person authority, but also what it is that distinguishes conscious from unconscious psychological states, what the mental life of a nonlinguistic animal has in common with our sort of mental life, and how to think about Wittgenstein's legacy to the philosophy of mind.
- Paperback September 2008
- Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy
- This last book by the late John Rawls offers readers an account of the liberal political tradition. Constantly revised and refined over three decades, Rawls's lectures on various historical figures reflect his developing and changing views on the history of liberalism and democracy. With its clear and careful analyses of the doctrine of the social contract, utilitarianism, and socialism, this volume has a critical place in the traditions it expounds.
- Paperback September 2008
- Loneliness as a Way of Life
- Hardcover September 2008
- Moral Literacy
- Distinguished moral philosopher Herman draws on Kant to address timeless issues in ethical theory as well as issues arising from current moral questions, such as affirmative action and the moral costs of reparative justice. Challenging various Kantian orthodoxies, Herman offers a view of moral competency as a complex achievement, governed by rational norms and dependent on supportive social conditions.
- Paperback September 2008
- Naturalism in Question
- Today the majority of philosophers in the English-speaking world adhere to the "naturalist" credos that philosophy is continuous with science, and that the natural sciences provide a complete account of all that exists--whether human or nonhuman. However, there is a growing skepticism about the adequacy of this complacent orthodoxy. This volume presents a group of leading thinkers who criticize scientific naturalism not in the name of some form of supernaturalism, but in order to defend a more inclusive or liberal naturalism.
- Paperback September 2008
- Reasonably Vicious
- Is unethical conduct necessarily irrational? Answering this question requires giving an account of practical reason, of practical good, and of the source or point of wrongdoing. By the time most contemporary philosophers have done the first two, they have lost sight of the third, chalking up bad action to rashness, weakness of will, or ignorance. In this book, Candace Vogler does all three, taking as her guides scholars who contemplated why some people perform evil deeds. In doing so, she sets out to at once engage and redirect contemporary debates about ethics, practical reason, and normativity
- Paperback September 2008
- Truth and Predication
- Anchored in classical philosophy, Truth and Predication nonetheless makes telling use of the work of a great number of modern philosophers from Tarski and Dewey to Quine and Rorty. Representing the very best of Western thought, it reopens the most difficult and pressing of ancient philosophical problems, and reveals them to be very much of our day.
- Paperback September 2008
- The Veil of Isis
- Nearly twenty-five hundred years ago the Greek thinker Heraclitus supposedly uttered the cryptic words "Phusis kruptesthai philei." How the aphorism, usually translated as "Nature loves to hide," has haunted Western culture ever since is the subject of this engaging study by Pierre Hadot. Taking the allegorical figure of the veiled goddess Isis as a guide, and drawing on the work of both the ancients and later thinkers such as Goethe, Rilke, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger Hadot traces successive interpretations of Heraclitus' words.
- Paperback September 2008
- When Is Discrimination Wrong?
- Hellman develops a much-needed general theory of discrimination. She demonstrates that many familiar ideas about when discrimination is wrong—when it is motivated by prejudice, grounded in stereotypes, or simply departs from merit-based decision-making—won’t adequately explain our widely shared intuitions. When Is Discrimination Wrong? explores what it means to treat people as equals and thus takes up a central problem of democracy.
- Hardcover June 2008
- Life and Action
- Any sound practical philosophy must be clear on practical concepts—concepts, in particular, of life, action, and practice. This clarity is Thompson’s aim in his ambitious work. In Thompson’s view, failure to comprehend the structures of thought and judgment expressed in these concepts has disfigured modern moral philosophy, rendering it incapable of addressing the larger questions that should be its focus.
- Hardcover June 2008
- Weaving Truth
- "What if truth were a woman?" asked Nietzsche. In ancient Greek thought, truth in language has a special relation to the female by virtue of her pre-eminent art-form--the one Freud believed was even invented by women--weaving. The essays in this book explore the implications of this nexus: language, the female, weaving, and the construction of truth.
- Paperback June 2008
- Benjamin's -abilities
- In this book, Weber, a leading theorist on literature and media, reveals a new and productive aspect of Benjamin’s thought by focusing the critical suffix “-ability” that Benjamin so tellingly deploys in his work. The result is an illuminating perspective on Benjamin’s thought by way of his language—and one of the most penetrating and comprehensive accounts of Benjamin’s work ever written.
- Hardcover May 2008
- Does Ethics Have a Chance in a World of Consumers?
- Bauman urges us to think in new ways about a newly flexible, newly challenging modern world. In an era of routine travel, where most people circulate widely, the inherited beliefs that aid our thinking about the world have become an obstacle. He challenges members of the “knowledge class” to overcome their estrangement from the rest of society.
- Hardcover May 2008
- The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media
- Benjamin’s famous “Work of Art” essay sets out his boldest thoughts—on media and on culture in general. This book contains the second, and most daring, of the four versions of the “Work of Art” essay—the one that addresses the utopian developments of the modern media. The collection tracks Benjamin’s observations on the media as they are revealed in essays on the production and reception of art; on film, radio, and photography; and on the modern transformations of literature and painting.
- Paperback May 2008
- Theodor W. Adorno
- This book gives us our first clear look at how the man and his moment met to create “critical theory.” An intimate picture of the quintessential twentieth-century transatlantic intellectual, the book is also a window on the cultural ferment of Adorno’s day—and its ongoing importance in our own.
- Hardcover April 2008
- The Struggle against Dogmatism
- The Struggle against Dogmatism elucidates Wittgenstein’s view that there are no theses, doctrines, or theories in philosophy. This book makes Wittgenstein’s philosophical approach comprehensible by presenting it as a response to specific problems relating to the practice of philosophy, in particular the problem of dogmatism.
- Hardcover April 2008
- Persons and Things
- In Persons and Things, Johnson begins with the most elementary thing we know: deconstruction calls attention to gaps and reveals that their claims upon us are fraudulent. Johnson revolutionizes the method by showing that the inanimate thing exposed as a delusion is central to fantasy life, that fantasy life, however deluded, should be taken seriously, and that although a work of art “is formed around something missing,” this “void is its vanishing point, not its essence. The new aesthetics should restore fluidities between persons and things. In pursuing it, Johnson calls upon Ovid, Keats, Poe, Plath, and others who have inhabited this in-between space.
- Hardcover April 2008
- Quintessence
- Quintessence for the first time collects Quine's classic essays in one volume, offering a much-needed introduction to his general philosophy. The selections take up analyticity and reductionism; the indeterminacy of translation of theoretical sentences and the inscrutability of reference; ontology; naturalized epistemology; philosophy of mind; and extensionalism. Representative of Quine at his best, these readings are fundamental not only to an appreciation of the philosopher and his work, but also to an understanding of the philosophical tradition that he so materially advanced.
- Paperback April 2008
- Radical Hope
- Shortly before he died, Plenty Coups, the last great Chief of the Crow Nation, said, "When the buffalo went away the hearts of my people fell to the ground and they could not lift them up again. After this nothing happened." In Jonathan Lear's view, Plenty Coups' story raises a profound ethical question that transcends his time and challenges us all: how should one face the possibility that one's culture might collapse? Radical Hope is a deeply moving, philosophical inquiry into a peculiar vulnerability that goes to the heart of the human condition.
- Paperback April 2008
- German Idealism
- Paperback March 2008
- Lost Soul
- Since the mid-1980s, Taiwan and mainland China have witnessed a sustained resurgence of academic and intellectual interest in ruxue—“Confucianism”—variously conceived as a form of culture, an ideology, a system of learning, and a tradition of normative values. This study aims to show how ruxue has been conceived in order to assess the achievements of this enterprise.
- Hardcover March 2008
- Thinking How to Live
- Gibbard considers how our actions, and our realities, emerge from the thousands of questions and decisions we form for ourselves. The result is a book that investigates the very nature of the questions we ask ourselves when we ask how we should live, and that clarifies the concept of "ought" by understanding the patterns of normative concepts involved in beliefs and decisions. An original and elegant work of metaethics, this book brings a new clarity and rigor to the discussion of these tangled issues, and will significantly alter the long-standing debate over "objectivity" and "factuality" in ethics.
- Paperback March 2008
- Maimonides after 800 Years
- Moses Maimonides was the most significant Jewish thinker, jurist, and doctor of the Middle Ages, and author of a monumental code of Jewish law, and the most influential and controversial work of Jewish philosophy. The essays in this volume were written to mark the 800th anniversary of Maimonides' death in 1204. Written by the leading scholars in the field, they cover all aspects of Maimonides' work and influence.
- Hardcover February 2008
- Experiments in Ethics
- Appiah explores how the new empirical moral psychology relates to the age-old project of philosophical ethics. In this study, he urges that the relation between empirical research and morality, now so often antagonistic, should be seen in terms of dialogue, not contest. And he shows how experimental philosophy, far from being something new, is actually as old as philosophy itself.
- Hardcover January 2008
- Arguing the Just War in Islam
- Jihad, with its many terrifying associations, is a term widely used today, though its meaning is poorly grasped. Kelsay's timely and important work focuses on jihad of the sword in Islamic thought, history, and culture. Making use of original sources, Kelsay delves into the tradition of shari'a--Islamic jurisprudence and reasoning--and shows how it defines jihad as the Islamic analogue of the Western "just" war.
- Hardcover November 2007
- Love's Confusions
- Ranging from Plato to writers as diverse as Shakespeare, Proust, Forster, Beckett, Huxley, Lawrence, and Larkin, Reeve brings the vast resources of Western literature and philosophy to bear on the question of love. Looking at love in light of the classical world and Christianity, and in its complex relationship with pornography, violence, sadomasochism, fantasy, sentimentality, and jealousy, Reeve invites us to think more broadly about love, and to find the confusions that inevitably result to be creative rather than disturbing.
- Paperback October 2007
- The Death of Socrates
- Socrates's death in 399 BCE has figured largely in our world ever since, shaping how we think about heroism and celebrity, religion and family life, state control and individual freedom, the distance of intellectual life from daily activity--many of the key coordinates of Western culture. In this book, Wilson analyzes the enormous and enduring power the trial and death of Socrates has exerted over the Western imagination.
- Hardcover October 2007
- The Course of Recognition
- Recognition, though it figures profoundly in our understanding of objects and persons, identity and ideas, has never before been the subject of a single, sustained philosophical inquiry. This work, by one of contemporary philosophy's most distinguished voices, pursues recognition through its various philosophical guises and meanings and, through the "course of recognition," seeks to develop nothing less than a proper hermeneutics of mutual recognition.
- Paperback September 2007
- A Secular Age
- The place of religion in society has changed profoundly in the last few centuries, particularly in the West. In what will be a defining book for our time, Taylor takes up the question of what these changes mean, and what, precisely, happens when a society becomes one in which faith is only one human possibility among others.
- Hardcover September 2007
- We Who Are Dark
- We Who Are Dark provides the first extended philosophical defense of black political solidarity. Tommie Shelby argues that we can reject a biological idea of race and agree with many criticisms of identity politics yet still view black political solidarity as a needed emancipatory tool. In developing his defense of black solidarity, he draws on the history of black political thought, focusing on the canonical figures of Martin R. Delany and W. E. B. Du Bois.
- Paperback September 2007
- Re-Engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings
- Analytic philosophers once pantomimed physics, trying to understand the world by breaking it down. Thinkers from the Darwinian sciences now pose alternatives to this simplistic reductionism. In a tour of essays spanning thirty years, Wimsatt argues that scientists seek to atomize phenomena only when necessary to understand how entities, events, and processes articulate at different levels. This book offers a philosophy for error-prone humans trying to understand messy systems in the real world.
- Hardcover June 2007
See also: All Books in PHILOSOPHY.