Book picks similar to
An Introduction to Metaphysics by Henri Bergson
philosophy
non-fiction
french
metaphysics
Fragments
Heraclitus
His great book, On Nature, the world's first coherent philosophical treatise and touchstone for Plato, Aristotle, and Marcus Aurelius, has long been lost to history-but its surviving fragments have for thousands of years tantalized our greatest thinkers, from Montaigne to Nietzsche, Heidegger to Jung. Now, acclaimed poet Brooks Haxton presents a powerful free-verse translation of all 130 surviving fragments of the teachings of Heraclitus, with the ancient Greek originals beautifully reproduced en face.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
How to Do Things with Words
J.L. Austin - 1955
Austin was one of the leading philosophers of the twentieth century. The William James Lectures presented Austin's conclusions in the field to which he directed his main efforts on a wide variety of philosophical problems. These talks became the classic How to Do Things with Words.For this second edition, the editors have returned to Austin's original lecture notes, amending the printed text where it seemed necessary. Students will find the new text clearer, and, at the same time, more faithful to the actual lectures. An appendix contains literal transcriptions of a number of marginal notes made by Austin but not included in the text. Comparison of the text with these annotations provides new dimensions to the study of Austin's work.
Gravity and Grace
Simone Weil - 1947
In it Gustave Thibon, the farmer to whom she had entrusted her notebooks before her untimely death, compiled in one remarkable volume a compendium of her writings that have become a source of spiritual guidance and wisdom for countless individuals. On the fiftieth anniversary of the first English edition - by Routledge & Kegan Paul in 1952 - this Routledge Classics edition offers English readers the complete text of this landmark work for the first time ever, by incorporating a specially commissioned translation of the controversial chapter on Israel. Also previously untranslated is Gustave Thibon's postscript of 1990, which reminds us how privileged we are to be able to read a work which offers each reader such 'light for the spirit and nourishment for the soul'. This is a book that no one with a serious interest in the spiritual life can afford to be without.
The Psychoanalysis of Fire
Gaston Bachelard - 1938
But, within the French context, he is almost as important as they are because he has a pseudo-religious force, without taking a stand on religion. To define him as briefly as possible – he is a philosopher, with a professional training in the sciences, who devoted most of the second phase of his career to promoting that aspect of human nature which often seems most inimical to science: the poetic imagination ..." – J.G. Weightman, The New York Times Review of Books
Science and Hypothesis
Henri Poincaré - 1902
Explaining how such basic concepts as number and magnitude, space and force were developed, the great French mathematician refutes the skeptical position that modern scientific method and its results are wholly factitious. The places of rigorous logic and intuitive leaps are both established by an analysis of contrasting methods of idea-creation in individuals and in modern scientific traditions. The nature of hypothesis and the role of probability are investigated with all of Poincaré's usual fertility of insight.Partial contents: On the nature of mathematical reasoning. Magnitude and experiment. Space: non-Euclidean geometrics, space and geometry, experiment and geometry. Force: classical mechanics, relative and absolute motion, energy and thermodynamics. Nature: hypotheses in physics, the theories of modern physics, the calculus of probabilities, optics and electricity, electro-dynamics."Poincaré's was the last man to take practically all mathematics, both pure and applied as his province. Few mathematicians have had the breadth of philosophic vision that Poincaré's had, and none is his superior in the gift of clear exposition." — Men of Mathematics, Eric Temple Bell, Professor of Mathematics, University of Cambridge
The Enneads
Plotinus
The Enneads bring together Neoplatonism--mystic passion and ideas from Greek philosophy--together with striking variants of the Trinity and other central Christian doctrines, to produce a highly original synthesis.
Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses
Louis Althusser - 1970
The text has influenced thinkers such as Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Žižek.The piece is, in fact, an extract from a much longer book, On the Reproduction of Capitalism, until now unavailable in English. Its publication makes possible a reappraisal of seminal Althusserian texts already available in English, their place in Althusser’s oeuvre and the relevance of his ideas for contemporary theory. On the Reproduction of Capitalism develops Althusser’s conception of historical materialism, outlining the conditions of reproduction in capitalist society and the revolutionary struggle for its overthrow.Written in the afterglow of May 1968, the text addresses a question that continues to haunt us today: in a society that proclaims its attachment to the ideals of liberty and equality, why do we witness the ever-renewed reproduction of relations of domination? Both a conceptually innovative text and a key theoretical tool for activists, On the Reproduction of Capitalism is an essential addition to the corpus of the twentieth-century Left.
Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling - 1809
The text is an embarrassment of riches both wildly adventurous and somberly prescient. Martin Heidegger claimed that it was "one of the deepest works of German and thus also of Western philosophy" and that it utterly undermined Hegel's monumental Science of Logic before the latter had even appeared in print. Schelling carefully investigates the problem of evil by building on Kant's notion of radical evil, while also developing an astonishingly original conception of freedom and personality that exerted an enormous (if subterranean) influence on the later course of European philosophy from Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard through Heidegger to important contemporary theorists like Slavoj Žižek.
The Parasite
Michel Serres - 1980
Among Serres’s arguments is that by being pests, minor groups can become major players in public dialogue—creating diversity and complexity vital to human life and thought.Michel Serres is professor in history of science at the Sorbonne, professor of Romance languages at Stanford University, and author of several books, including Genesis.Lawrence R. Schehr is professor of French at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.Cary Wolfe is Bruce and Elizabeth Dunlevie Professor of English at Rice University. His books include Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal (Minnesota, 2003).
Practical Ethics
Peter Singer - 1979
For this second edition the author has revised all the existing chapters, added two new ones, and updated the bibliography. He has also added an appendix describing some of the deep misunderstanding of and consequent violent reaction to the book in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland where the book has tested the limits of freedom of speech. The focus of the book is the application of ethics to difficult and controversial social questions.
Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes
Thomas Cathcart - 2006
Its Philosophy 101 for everyone who knows not to take all this heavy stuff too seriously. Some of the Big Ideas are Existentialism (what do Hegel and Bette Midler have in common?), Philosophy of Language (how to express what its like being stranded on a desert island with Halle Berry), Feminist Philosophy (why, in the end, a man is always a man), and much more. Finally it all makes sense!
Discourses and Selected Writings
Epictetus
Discourses and Selected Writings is a transcribed collection of informal lectures given by the philosopher around AD 108. A gateway into the life and mind of a great intellectual, it is also an important example of the usage of Koine or ?common? Greek, an ancestor to Standard Modern Greek.
The Sublime Object of Ideology
Slavoj Žižek - 1989
From the sinking of the Titanic to Hitchcock’s Rear Window, from the operas of Wagner to science fiction, from Alien to the Jewish joke, Zizek’s acute analyses explore the ideological fantasies of wholeness and exclusion that make up human society.Linking key psychoanalytical and philosophical concepts to social phenomena such as totalitarianism and racism, the book explores the political significance of these fantasies of control.
A Philosophy of Walking
Frédéric Gros - 2009
On his travels he ponders Thoreau's eager seclusion in Walden Woods; the reason Rimbaud walked in a fury, while Nerval rambled to cure his melancholy. He shows us how Rousseau walked in order to think, while Nietzsche wandered the mountainside to write. In contrast, Kant marched through his hometown every day, exactly at the same hour, to escape the compulsion of thought. Brilliant and erudite, A Philosophy of Walking is an entertaining and insightful manifesto for putting one foot in front of the other.
Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence
David Benatar - 2006
(2) It is always wrong to have children. (3) It is wrong not to abort fetuses at the earlier stages of gestation. (4) It would be better if, as a result of there being no new people, humanity became extinct. These views may sound unbelievable--but anyone who reads Benatar will be obliged to take them seriously.