Jonathan Wolff looks at the works of Plato, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Mill, Marx, and Rawls (among others), examining how the debates between philosophers have developed, and searching for possible answers to these provocative questions. His final chapter looks at more recent issues, particularly feminist political theory.

    The contributors include A.J. Ayer, Bernard Williams, Martha Nussbaum, Peter Singer, and John Searle, so that the book is not only an introduction to the philosophers of the past, but gives an insight into the view and personalities of some of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century.

    They cover some of the most pervasive themes of his thought and were written at a time when he had just published his most important—and difficult—book, Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence. Both courses pursue issues related to the question at the heart of Levinas's thought: ethical relation. The Foreword and Afterword place the lectures in the context of his work as a whole, rounding out this unique picture of Levinas the thinker and the teacher.The lectures are essential to a full understanding of Levinas for three reasons. First, he seeks to explain his thought to an audience of students, with a clarity and an intensity altogether different from his written work. Second, the themes of God, death, and time are not only crucial for Levinas, but they lead him to confront their treatment by the main philosphers of the great continental tradition. Thus his discussions of accounts of death by Heidegger, Hegel, and Bloch place Levinas's thought in a broader context. Third, the basic concepts Levinas employs are those of Otherwise than Being rather than the earlier Totality and Infinity: patience, obsession, substitution, witness, traumatism. There is a growing recognition that the ultimate standing of Levinas as a philosopher may well depend on his assessment of those terms. These lectures offer an excellent introduction to them that shows how they contribute to a wide range of traditional philosophical issues.

    Jones and Fogelin weave key passages from classic philosophy works into their comments and criticisms, giving A HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY the combined advantages of a source book and textbook. The text concentrates on major figures in each historical period, combining exposition with direct quotations from the philosophers themselves. The text places philosophers in appropriate cultural context and shows how their theories reflect the concerns of their times.

    This deeper content - the metahistorical element - indicates what an appropriate historical explanation might be.In pursuing his thesis, White provides a book that will be of interest to philosophers as well as historians. He explicates the styles of such historians as Michelet, Ranke, Tocueville, and Borchardt and of such philosophers of history as Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and Croce.

    Drawing inspiration from six of the finest minds in history - Socrates, Epicurus, Seneca, Montaigne, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche - he addresses lack of money, the pain of love, inadequacy, anxiety and conformity. De Botton's book led one critic to call philosophy 'the new rock and roll'.

    Jules imagines a dream school, which includes 12 of the greatest and most colourful thinkers the world has ever known. Each of these ancient philosophers teaches a technique we can use to transform our selves and live better lives. These practical techniques are illustrated by the extraordinary stories of real people who are using them today - from marines to magicians, from astronauts to anarchists and from CBT psychologists to soldiers. Jules also explores how ancient philosophy is inspiring modern communities - Socratic cafes, Stoic armies, Platonic sects, Sceptic summer camps - and even whole nations in their quest for the good life.

    But since the long-popular classic Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy, first published in 1945, there has been no comprehensive and entertaining, single-volume history of this great intellectual journey.With his characteristic clarity and elegance A. C. Grayling takes the reader from the world-views and moralities before the age of the Buddha, Confucius and Socrates, through Christianity's dominance of the European mind to the Renaissance and Enlightenment, and on to Mill, Nietzsche, Sartre, and philosophy today. And, since the story of philosophy is incomplete without mention of the great philosophical traditions of India, China and the Persian-Arabic world, he gives a comparative survey of them too.Intelligible for students and eye-opening for philosophy readers, he covers epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, logic, the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of language, political philosophy and the history of debates in these areas of enquiry, through the ideas of the celebrated philosophers as well as less well-known influential thinkers. He also asks what we have learnt from this body of thought, and what progress is still to be made.The first authoritative and accessible single-volume history of philosophy for decades, remarkable for its range and clarity, this is a landmark work.

    One of the most important books on the social sciences since the Second World War, it is a searing insight into the ideas of this great thinker.

    Laslett's standard edition of Two Treatises. First published in 1960, and based on an analysis of the whole body of Locke's publications, writings, and papers. The Introduction and text have been revised to incorporate references to recent scholarship since the second edition and the bibliography has been updated.

    Its doctrines appealed to people from all strata of ancient society-from the slave Epictetus to the emperor Marcus Aurelius. This book provides a lucid, comprehensive introduction to this great philosophical school. It gives an overview of the history of the school, covers its philosophy as a system, and explores the three main branches of Stoic theory. John Sellars includes historical information on the life and works of the ancient Stoic philosophers and summaries, analyses, and appraisals of their principal doctrines in logic, physics, and ethics. He also includes a fascinating account of the Stoic legacy from later antiquity to the present. The volume includes a glossary and chronology, which, together with its accessible yet authoritative approach, makes it the ideal choice for students, scholars, and general readers interested in what Stoicism has meant, both philosophically and historically, for western civilization.

    There is no more proper instrument of analysis of our contemporary myths than this book—one of the most significant works in French theory, and one that has transformed the way readers and philosophers view the world around them.Our age is a triumph of codification. We own devices that bring the world to the command of our fingertips. We have access to boundless information and prodigious quantities of stuff. We decide to like or not, to believe or not, to buy or not. We pick and choose. We think we are free. Yet all around us, in pop culture, politics, mainstream media, and advertising, there are codes and symbols that govern our choices. They are the fabrications of consumer society. They express myths of success, well-being, and happiness. As Barthes sees it, these myths must be carefully deciphered, and debunked.What Barthes discerned in mass media, the fashion of plastic, and the politics of postcolonial France applies with equal force to today's social networks, the iPhone, and the images of 9/11. This new edition of Mythologies, complete and beautifully rendered by the Pulitzer Prize–winning poet, critic, and translator Richard Howard, is a consecration of Barthes's classic—a lesson in clairvoyance that is more relevant now than ever.

    Written at a time when most of Europe supported the French Revolution, Edmund Burke’s prescient and, at the time, controversial denunciation of its mob rule predicted the Terror, began the modern conservative tradition and still serves as a warning to those who seek to reshape societies through violence.

    Seraphim) undertook to write a monumental chronicle of the abandonment of Truth in the modern age. Of the hundreds of pages of material he compiled for this work, only the present essay has come down to us in completed form. Here Fr. Seraphim reveals the core of all modern thought and life—the belief that all truth is relative—and shows how this belief has been translated into action in our century. Today, four decades after he wrote it, this essay is more timely than ever. It clearly explains why contemporary ideas, values, and attitudes—the “spirit of the age”—are shifting so rapidly in the direction of moral anarchy, as the philosophy of Nihilism enters more deeply into the fiber of society. Nietszche was right when he predicted that the 20th century would usher in “the triumph of Nihilism.”“Atheism, true ‘existential’ atheism burning with hatred of a seemingly unjust or unmerciful God, is a spiritual state; it is a real attempt to grapple with the true God.… Nietzsche, in calling himself Antichrist, proved thereby his intense hunger for Christ.”This new second edition contains a superb essay entitled “The Philosophy of the Absurd,” written by Fr. Seraphim at the same time that he was working on “Nihilism.”

    to A.D. 1600. The lectures begin by asking just what "Western civilization" actually is, or what it has been thought to be. Throughout the lectures, there are reflections on where Western civilization finds its primary locus at any given moment - beginning in the ancient Near East and moving to Greece, then to Rome; exploring the shape and impact of large ancient empires, including the Persian, Alexander the Great's, and Rome's; then moving on to Western Europe, and witnessing Europe's gradual physical and cultural expansion, into finally the globalization of Western civilization with the Portuguese and Spanish voyages of exploration and discovery.