Best of
Philosophy

1945

The Use of Knowledge in Society


Friedrich A. Hayek - 1945
    

Phenomenology of Perception


Maurice Merleau-Ponty - 1945
    What makes this work so important is that it returned the body to the forefront of philosophy for the first time since Plato.

The Open Society and Its Enemies - Volume One: The Spell of Plato


Karl Popper - 1945
    He taught in Austria until 1937, when he emigrated to New Zealand in anticipation of the Nazi annexation of Austria the following year, and he settled in England in 1949. Before the annexation, Popper had written mainly about the philosophy of science, but from 1938 until the end of the Second World War he focused his energies on political philosophy, seeking to diagnose the intellectual origins of German and Soviet totalitarianism. The Open Society and Its Enemies was the result. In the book, Popper condemned Plato, Marx, and Hegel as "holists" and "historicists"--a holist, according to Popper, believes that individuals are formed entirely by their social groups; historicists believe that social groups evolve according to internal principles that it is the intellectual's task to uncover. Popper, by contrast, held that social affairs are unpredictable, and argued vehemently against social engineering. He also sought to shift the focus of political philosophy away from questions about who ought to rule toward questions about how to minimize the damage done by the powerful. The book was an immediate sensation, and--though it has long been criticized for its portrayals of Plato, Marx, and Hegel--it has remained a landmark on the left and right alike for its defense of freedom and the spirit of critical inquiry.

A History of Western Philosophy


Bertrand Russell - 1945
    In seventy-six chapters he traces philosophy from the rise of Greek civilization to the emergence of logical analysis in the twentieth century. Among the philosophers considered are: Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, the Atomists, Protagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Cynics, the Sceptics, the Epicureans, the Stoics, Plotinus, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, Benedict, Gregory the Great, John the Scot, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, William of Occam, Machiavelli, Erasmus, More, Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, the Utilitarians, Marx, Bergson, James, Dewey, and lastly the philosophers with whom Lord Russell himself is most closely associated -- Cantor, Frege, and Whitehead, co-author with Russell of the monumental Principia Mathematica.

On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth


Bertrand De Jouvenel - 1945
    This development Jouvenel traces all the way back to the days of royal absolutism, which established large administrative bureaucracies and thus laid the foundation of the modern omnipotent state.On Power is an important work that Professor Angelo M. Petroni of the Luigi Einaudi Center for Research in Torino, Italy, has said is "simply a book that no serious scholar of political science or political philosophy can afford to ignore."Bertrand de Jouvenel was born in Paris in 1903; he traveled widely, becoming an astute observer of British and American institutions. Later in life, he was an author and teacher, first publishing On Power in 1945. Jouvenel died in 1987. Among his other books, besides The Ethics of Redistribution, are Sovereignty: An Inquiry into the Political Good (1957) and The Pure Theory of Politics (1963).

The Practical Cogitator: The Thinker's Anthology


Charles Curtis - 1945
    

General Theory of Law and State


Hans Kelsen - 1945
    This classic work by the important Austrian jurist is the fullest exposition of his enormously influential pure theory of law, which includes a theory of the state. It also has an extensive appendix that discusses the pure theory in comparison with the law of nature, positivism, historical natural law, metaphysical dualism and scientific-critical philosophy. "The scope of the work is truly universal. It never loses itself in vague generalities or in unconnected fragments of thought. On the contrary, precision in the formulation of details and rigorous system are characteristic features of the exposition: only a mind fully concentrated upon that logical structure can possibly follow Kelsen's penetrating analysis. Such a mind will not shrink from the effort necessary for acquainting itself with...the pure theory of law in its more general aspects, and will then pass over to the theory of the state which ends up with a carefully worked out theory of international law." Julius Kraft, American Journal of International Law 40 (1946):496.

On Nietzsche


Georges Bataille - 1945
    Although Bataille died in 1962, interest in his life and writings have never been as strong as they are today--Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, and Kristeva have all acknowledged their debt to him. In his book, On Nietzsche, as translated by Bruce Boone, Bataille comes as close as he would ever come to formulating his own unique system of philosophy. One could say that reading Nietzsche was something of a revelation to Bataille, and profoundly affected his life. In 1915, in a crisis of guilt after leaving his blind father in the hands of the Germans, Bataille converted to Catholicism. It was Nietzsche's work that lead him to abandon traditional religion for an idiosyncratic form of godless mysticism. In this volume, Bataille becomes, and goes beyond, Nietzsche, assuming Nietzsche's thought where he left off--with God's death. At the heart of this work is Bataille's exploration of how one can have a spiritual life outside religion. On Nietzsche is essentially a journal that brilliantly mixes observations with ruminations in fragments, aphorisms, poems, myths, quotations, and images against the background of World War II and the German occupation. Bataille has a unique way of moving breezily from abstraction to confession, and from theology to eroticism. He skillfully weaves together his own internal experience of anguish with the war and destruction raging outside with arguments against fascist interpretations of Nietzsche and praise for the philosopher as a prophet foretelling "the crude German fate." With an introduction, "Furiously Nietzschean," by Sylvere Lotringer, an Appendix in which Bataille defends himself against Sartre, and an Index, this volume reconfirms Michel Foucault's assertion that Bataille, "broke with traditional narrative to tell us what has never been told before."

The Idea of Nature


R.G. Collingwood - 1945
    The book is divided into four major sections: Introduction, Greek Cosmology, the Renaissance View of Nature, and the Modern View of Nature. Perhaps more than any of his other books, this one illustrates the breadth of Collingwood's learning and the many-sidedness of his philosophical gifts.

Isocrates (Volume III)


Isocrates - 1945
    From 403 to 393 he wrote speeches for Athenian law courts, and then became a teacher of composition for would-be orators. After setting up a school of rhetoric in Chios he returned to Athens and established there a free school of 'philosophia' involving a practical education of the whole mind, character, judgment, and mastery of language. This school had famous pupils from all over the Greek world, such as the historians Ephorus and Theopompus and orators Isaeus, Lycurgus, and Hypereides. Isocrates also wrote in gifted style essays on political questions, his main idea being a united Greece to conquer the Persian empire. Thus in his fine Panegyricus (written for the 100th Olympiad gathering in 380) he urged that the leadership should be granted to Athens, possibly in conjunction with Sparta. In the end he looked to Philip of Macedon, but died just as Philip's supremacy in Greece began.Twenty-one discourses by Isocrates survive; these include political essays, treatises on education and on ethics, and speeches for legal cases. Nine letters are also extant; they are concerned more with public than with private matters. The Loeb Classical Library edition of Isocrates is in three volumes. Volume I contains six discourses: To Demonicus, To Nicocles, Nicocles or The Cyprians, Panegyricus, To Philip, and Archidamus. Five are in Volume II: Areopagiticus, On the Peace, Panathenaicus, Against the Sophists, Antidosis. Volume III contains Evagoras, Helen, Busiris, Plataicus, Concerning the Team of Horses, Trapeziticus, Against Callimachus, Aegineticus, Against Lochites, and Against Euthynus, as well as the nine extant letters and a comprehensive index.

Marcus Aurelius and His Times (Transition from Paganism to Christianity)


Irwin Edman - 1945
    Includes Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, 2 chapters from Marius the Epicurean by Walter Pater, Hermotimus and Icaromenippus by Lucian, and Dialogue with Trypho and First Apology by Justin Martyr, with an Introduction by Irwin Edman.

Rousseau, Kant and Goethe


Ernst Cassirer - 1945
    These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The Riddle of the Early Academy


Harold F. Cherniss - 1945
    His books included works on Aristotle's criticism of Plato & pre-Platonic philosophy. He was born in St. Joseph, MO, & graduated from the University of California at Berkeley. He received his doctorate in Greek, Latin & Sanskrit at Berkeley in 1930. That year, he became an instructor in Greek at Cornell University. He later moved to Johns Hopkins & held a professorship at the University of California before joining the Institute in Princeton in 1948. Delivered 4/42 as lectures at Berkeley:Contents:Plato's lectures: a hypothesis for an enigmaSpeusippus, Xenocrates & the polemical method of AristotleThe Academy: orthodoxy, heresy or philosophical interpretation?

The Widening Gyre: Crisis and Mastery in Modern Literature


Joseph Frank - 1945