Malaysia-based online bookstore - 15 million titles - quick local delivery with tracking number
Socrates has been hiding in plain sight. We call him the father of Western philosophy, but what exactly are his philosophical views? He is famous for his humility, but readers often find him arrogant and condescending. We parrot his claim that the unexamined life is not worth living, yet take no steps to live examined ones. We know that he was tried, convicted, and executed for corrupting the youth, but freely assign Socratic dialogues to today's youths, to introduce them to philosophy. We've lost sight of what made him so dangerous. In Open Socrates, acclaimed philosopher Agnes Callard recovers the radical move at the center of Socrates' thought, and shows why it is still the way to a good life.
Callard draws our attention to Socrates' startling discovery that we don't know how to ask ourselves the most important questions--about how we should live, and how we might change. Before a person even has a chance to reflect, their bodily desires or the forces of social conformity have already answered on their behalf. To ask the most important questions, we need help. Callard argues that the true ambition of the famous Socratic method is to reveal what one human being can be to another. You can use another person in many ways--for survival, for pleasure, for comfort--but you are engaging them to the fullest when you call on them to help answer your questions and challenge your answers.
Callard shows that Socrates' method allows us to make progress in thinking about how to manage romantic love, how to confront one's own death, and how to approach politics. In the process, she gives us nothing less than a new ethics to live by.
From a bold new voice in nonfiction, an exhilarating account of the lives and works of influential 17th and 18th century feminist philosophers Mary Wollstonecraft and her predecessors who have been written out of history, and a searing look at the author's experience of patriarchy and sexism in academia
As a young woman growing up in small-town Iowa, Regan Penaluna daydreamed about the big questions: Who are we and what is this strange world we find ourselves in? In college she fell in love with philosophy and chose to pursue it as an academician, the first step, she believed, to becoming a self-determined person living a life of the mind. What Penaluna didn't realize was that the Western philosophical canon taught in American universities, as well as the culture surrounding it, would slowly grind her down through its misogyny, its harassment, its devaluation of women and their intellect. Where were the women philosophers?
One day, in an obscure monograph, Penaluna came across Damaris Cudworth Masham's name. The daughter of philosopher Ralph Cudworth and a contemporary of John Locke, Masham wrote about knowledge and God, and the condition of women. Masham's work led Penaluna to other remarkable women philosophers of the era: Mary Astell who moved to London at age twenty-one and made a living writing philosophy; Catharine Cockburn, a philosopher, novelist, and playwright; and the better-known Mary Wollstonecraft, who wrote extensively in defense of women's minds. Together, these women rekindled Penaluna's love of philosophy and awakened her feminist consciousness.
In How to Think Like a Woman, Regan Penaluna blends memoir, biography, and criticism to tell the stories of these four women, weaving throughout an alternative history of philosophy as well as her own search for love and truth. Funny, honest, and wickedly intelligent, this is a moving meditation on what philosophy could look like if women were treated equally.
During the 1990s British philosopher Nick Land's unique work, variously described as rabid nihilism, mad black deleuzianism, and cybergothic, developed perhaps the only rigorous and culturally-engaged escape route out of the malaise of continental philosophy --a route that was implacably blocked by the academy. However, Land's work has continued to exert an influence, both through the British speculative realist philosophers who studied with him, and through the many cultural producers--writers, artists, musicians, filmmakers--who have been invigorated by his uncompromising and abrasive philosophical vision.
Beginning with Land's early radical rereadings of Heidegger, Nietzsche, Kant and Bataille, the volume collects together the papers, talks and articles of the mid-90s--long the subject of rumour and vague legend (including some work which has never previously appeared in print)--in which Land developed his futuristic theory-fiction of cybercapitalism gone amok; and ends with his enigmatic later writings in which Ballardian fictions, poetics, cryptography, anthropology, grammatology and the occult are smeared into unrecognisable hybrids.
Fanged Noumena gives a dizzying perspective on the entire trajectory of this provocative and influential thinker's work, and has introduced his unique voice to a new generation of readers.
This book is a brief introduction to the theory of Ren Girard, written in a humorous, accessible style, and accompanied by cartoon illustrations by the author.
Ren Girard (1923-2015) was a French historian, literary critic, and philosopher of social science, whose work belongs to the tradition of anthropological philosophy.
His theories and work have influenced the fields of literary criticism, critical theory, anthropology, theology, psychology, mythology, sociology, economics, cultural studies, and philosophy.
Girard's fundamental ideas were that desire is imitative in origin ('mimetic'); that mimetic desire causes rivalry and violence, leading to scapegoating; that the scapegoat mechanism is the origin of sacrifice and ritual, and thus the foundation of human culture; that religion developed from ritual; and that the Judeo-Christian Bible denounces the scapegoat mechanism.
If you'd like to understand the basics of the theory of Ren Girard without delving into a serious academic text, then this book was written for you. It also has knights in armour, Batman, Greek tragedy, and hats.
This handsome five-volume box set brings together the classic works of Friedrich Nietzsche, presented with striking contemporary cover designs.
One of the most prominent thinkers of the 19th century, Nietzsche was a cultural critic and philosopher whose theories on truth, morality, nihilism and the meaning of existence have had enormous influence on Western philosophy. This box set contains his most prominent works, including: - Human, All Too Human
The finest introduction to the greatest philosopher of the 20th century (New York Times Book Review), including the complete text of the Tractatus, The Blue and Brown Books, and On Certainty
Major Works is the first single-volume English anthology of Ludwig Wittgenstein's important philosophical writings. Featuring the complete texts of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, The Blue and Brown Books: Studies for 'Philosophical Investigations, ' and On Certainty, this new collection selects from the early, middle, and later career of this revolutionary thinker, widely recognized as one of the most profound minds of all time. Wittgenstein contributed several groundbreaking ideas to philosophy, primarily in the foundations of logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of mind.
The greatest philosopher of the 20th] century . . . Wittgenstein had an impact of extraordinary proportions. -- Colin McGinn, The New Republic
From an eminent scholar, a spirited introduction to one of the great polymaths in the history of Europe.
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) is best known in the English-speaking world for his contributions to mathematics and physics, with both a triangle and a law in fluid mechanics named after him. Meanwhile, the classic film My Night at Maud's popularized Pascal's wager, an invitation to faith that has inspired generations of theologians. Despite the immensity of his reputation, few read him outside French schools. In A Summer with Pascal, celebrated literary critic Antoine Compagnon opens our minds to a figure somehow both towering and ignored. Compagnon provides a bird's-eye view of Pascal's life and significance, making this volume an ideal introduction. Still, scholars and neophytes alike will profit greatly from his masterful readings of the Pensées--a cornerstone of Western philosophy--and the Provincial Letters, in which Pascal advanced wry theological critiques of his contemporaries. The concise, taut chapters build upon one another, easing into writings often thought to be forbidding and dour. With Compagnon as our guide, these works are not just accessible but enchanting. A Summer with Pascal brings the early modern thinker to life in the present. In an age of profound existential doubt and assaults on truth and reason, in which religion and science are so often crudely opposed, Pascal's sophisticated commitment to both challenges us to meet the world with true intellectual vigor.
Seeing Through the World introduces the reader to the work of German-Swiss philosopher, poet, and intellectual mystic Jean Gebser (1905-1973). Writing in the midcentury during a period of intense cultural transformation and crisis in Europe, Gebser intuited a series of mutational leaps in the history of human consciousness, the latest of which emerging was the integral structure, marked by the presence of time-freedom. Gebser's insights on the phenomenology of human consciousness has brought profound intellectual depth and spiritual transmission to the field of integral philosophy and consciousness studies, influencing the works of American historians such as William Irwin Thompson and the philosopher Ken Wilber. Further syncretic corroboration links Gebser's integral age to those of the Indian revolutionary and yogi Sri Aurobindo's integral yoga and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's evolutionary mysticism.
Arguably, Gebser's structures of consciousness are as significant an ontological insight as C. G. Jung's reality of the psyche. Yet, until now, very little secondary literature has been available in the English-speaking world. Jeremy Johnson, the current president of the International Jean Gebser Society who has spent the last decade as an integral scholar and researcher, produces this introductory volume on the life and writings of Jean Gebser. Part companion piece to Gebser's magnum opus, The Ever-Present Origin, part inspired treatise on an integral futurism, Jeremy guides the reader through the structures of consciousness and incepts integral scholarship as a divination that scries the age of ecological collapse and the ontological recodings of the Anthropocene.
It is the first volume in the NuraLogicals series, produced in partnership with Nura Learning.
Daniel C. Dennett, preeminent philosopher and cognitive scientist, has spent his career considering the thorniest, most fundamental mysteries of the mind. Do we have free will? What is consciousness and how did it come about? What distinguishes human minds from the minds of animals? Dennett's answers have profoundly shaped our age of philosophical thought. In I've Been Thinking, he reflects on his amazing career and lifelong scientific fascinations.
Dennett's relentless curiosity has taken him from a childhood in Beirut and the classrooms of Harvard, Oxford, and Tufts, to Cognitive Cruises on sailboats and the fields and orchards of Maine, and to laboratories and think tanks around the world. Along the way, I've Been Thinking provides a master class in the dominant themes of twentieth-century philosophy and cognitive science--including language, evolution, logic, religion, and AI--and reveals both the mistakes and breakthroughs that shaped Dennett's theories.
Key to this journey are Dennett's interlocutors--Douglas Hofstadter, Marvin Minsky, Willard Van Orman Quine, Gilbert Ryle, Richard Rorty, Thomas Nagel, John Searle, Gerald Edelman, Stephen Jay Gould, Jerry Fodor, Rodney Brooks, and more--whose ideas, even when he disagreed with them, helped to form his convictions about the mind and consciousness. Studded with photographs and told with characteristic warmth, I've Been Thinking also instills the value of life beyond the university, one enriched by sculpture, music, farming, and deep connection to family.
Dennett compels us to consider: What do I really think? And what if I'm wrong? This memoir by one of the greatest minds of our time will speak to anyone who seeks to balance a life of the mind with adventure and creativity.
Discover timeless wisdom in Enchiridion by Epictetus. This concise manual offers profound insights into Stoic philosophy, guiding readers towards inner
peace and resilience amidst life's challenges. Epitetus' teachings on virtue, acceptance and personal agency provide a roadmap to navigate the complexities of existence with clarity and tranquility.
A compelling collection of the life-changing writings of William James
William James--psychologist, philosopher, and spiritual seeker--is one of those rare writers who can speak directly and powerfully to anyone about life's meaning and worth, and whose ideas change not only how people think but how they live. The thinker who helped found the philosophy of pragmatism and inspire Alcoholics Anonymous, James famously asked, is life worth living? Bringing together many of his best and most popular essays, talks, and other writings, this anthology presents James's answer to that and other existential questions, in his own unique manner--caring, humorous, eloquent, incisive, humble, and forever on the trail of the ever not quite. Here we meet a James perfectly attuned to the concerns of today--one who argues for human freedom, articulates a healthy-minded psychology, urges us to explore the stream of consciousness, presents a new definition of truth based on its practical consequences, and never forecloses the possibility of mystical transcendence. Introduced by John Kaag and Jonathan van Belle, these compelling and accessible selections reveal why James is one of the great guides to the business of living.
Where are the women philosophers? The answer is right here.
The history of philosophy has not done women justice: you've probably heard the names Plato, Kant, Nietzsche and Locke - but what about Hypatia, Arendt, Oluwole and Young?
The Philosopher Queens is a long-awaited book about the lives and works of women in philosophy by women in philosophy. This collection brings to centre stage twenty prominent women whose ideas have had a profound - but for the most part uncredited - impact on the world.
You'll learn about Ban Zhao, the first woman historian in ancient Chinese history; Angela Davis, perhaps the most iconic symbol of the American Black Power Movement; Azizah Y. al-Hibri, known for examining the intersection of Islamic law and gender equality; and many more.
For anyone who has wondered where the women philosophers are, or anyone curious about the history of ideas - it's time to meet the philosopher queens.
Intriguing unpublished manuscripts by Leo Strauss, which explore the intricate relationship between religion, philosophy, and politics, accompanied by fourteen interpretative essays.
Addressing the central theme of his work-the complex relationship between religion, philosophy, and politics-the twelve newly available transcripts included in Leo Strauss on Religion offer unprecedented insights into Leo Strauss's thoughts on previously unexplored subjects. Essential for both avid readers and newcomers, this collection unveils sharper formulations and frank discussions, providing a rare peek into the ambiguous aspects of Strauss's renowned reticence in formulating his ultimate thoughts. Accompanied by fourteen interpretative essays from distinguished scholars, this volume serves as a comprehensive guide to Strauss's intellectual odyssey. Offering fresh perspectives, these essays navigate the understudied aspects of Strauss's reflections on religion, putting his thought in a new perspective thereby enriching the scholarly debate around the controversial yet influential legacy of Leo Strauss.
