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Philosophical Writings of Peirce


Charles Sanders Peirce - 1955
    It should prove a real boon to the student of Peirce." — The Modern SchoolmanCharles S. Peirce was a thinker of great originality and power. Although unpublished in his lifetime, he was recognized as an equal by such men as William James and John Dewey and, since his death in 1914, has come to the forefront of American philosophy. This volume, prepared by the Johnsonian Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, formerly chairman of Columbia's philosophy department, is a carefully balanced exposition of Peirce's complete philosophical system as set forth in his own writings.The 28 chapters, in which appropriate sections of Peirce's work are interwoven into a brilliant selection that reveals his essential ideas, cover epistemology, phenomenology, cosmology, and scientific method, with especially interesting material on logic as the theory of signs, pure chance vs, pure law in the universe, symbolic logic, common sense, pragmatism (of which he was the founder), and ethics.Justus Buchler is author of Charles Peirce's Empiricism (1939), Philosophy: An Introduction (with J. H. Randall, Jr., 1942), and more recently, a series of books which form an ongoing philosophic structure: Toward a General Theory of Human Judgement (1951), Nature and Judgment (1855), and The Concept of Method (1961). It has been said of these volumes, "A fresh and vital system of ideas has been introduced into the world of contemporary philosophy." (Journal of Philosophy)."It is a very signal advantage to have this collection of Peirce's most important work within the covers of a single substantial volume. We should all be very grateful to Mr. Buchler." — John Laird, Philosophy

The Problems of Philosophy


Bertrand Russell - 1912
    A lively and still one of the best introductions to philosophy, this book pays off both a closer reading for students and specialists, and a casual reading for the general public.

Difference and Repetition


Gilles Deleuze - 1968
    Successfully defended in 1969 as Deleuze's main thesis toward his Doctorat d'Etat at the Sorbonne, the work has been central in initiating the shift in French thought away from Hegel and Marx, towards Nietzsche and Freud. The text follows the development of two central concepts, those of pure difference and complex repetition. It shows how the two concepts are related - difference implying divergence and decentering, and repetition implying displacement and disguising. In its explication the work moves deftly between Hegel, Kierkegaard, Freud, Althusser, and Nietzsche to establish a fundamental critique of Western metaphysics. Difference and Repetition has become essential to the work of literary critics and philosophers alike, and this translation his been long awaited.

Beyond Good and Evil


Friedrich Nietzsche - 1886
    Hollingdale with an introduction by Michael Tanner in Penguin Classics.Beyond Good and Evil confirmed Nietzsche's position as the towering European philosopher of his age. The work dramatically rejects the tradition of Western thought with its notions of truth and God, good and evil. Nietzsche demonstrates that the Christian world is steeped in a false piety and infected with a 'slave morality'. With wit and energy, he turns from this critique to a philosophy that celebrates the present and demands that the individual imposes their own 'will to power' upon the world.This edition includes a commentary on the text by the translator and Michael Tanner's introduction, which explains some of the more abstract passages in Beyond Good and Evil.Frederich Nietzsche (1844-1900) became the chair of classical philology at Basel University at the age of 24 until his bad health forced him to retire in 1879. He divorced himself from society until his final collapse in 1899 when he became insane. A powerfully original thinker, Nietzsche's influence on subsequent writers, such as George Bernard Shaw, D.H. Lawrence, Thomas Mann and Jean-Paul Sartre, was considerable.If you enjoyed Beyond Good and Evil you might like Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, also available in Penguin Classics."One of the greatest books of a very great thinker." —Michael Tanner

On Certainty


Ludwig Wittgenstein - 1969
    E. Moore's defense of common sense, this much discussed volume collects Wittgenstein's reflections on knowledge and certainty, on what it is to know a proposition for sure.

The World as Will and Representation, Vol. 1


Arthur Schopenhauer - 1818
    It is without question Schopenhauer's greatest work. Conceived and published before the philosopher was 30 and expanded 25 years later, it is the summation of a lifetime of thought.For 70 years, the only unabridged English translation of this work was the Haldane-Kemp collaboration. In 1958, a new translation by E. F. J. Payne appeared that decisively supplanted the older one. Payne's translation is superior because it corrects nearly 1,000 errors and omissions in the Haldane-Kemp translation, and it is based on the definitive 1937 German edition of Schopenhauer's work prepared by Dr. Arthur Hübscher. Payne's edition is the first to translate into English the text's many quotations in half a dozen languages. It is thus the most useful edition for the student or teacher.

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding


John Locke - 1690
    

Critique of Pure Reason


Immanuel Kant - 1781
    It presents a profound and challenging investigation into the nature of human reason, its knowledge and its illusions. Reason, Kant argues, is the seat of certain concepts that precede experience and make it possible, but we are not therefore entitled to draw conclusions about the natural world from these concepts. The Critique brings together the two opposing schools of philosophy: rationalism, which grounds all our knowledge in reason, and empiricism, which traces all our knowledge to experience. Kant's transcendental idealism indicates a third way that goes far beyond these alternatives.

Truth and Method


Hans-Georg Gadamer - 1960
    An astonishing synthesis of literary criticism, philosophy, theology, the theory of law and classical scholarship, it is undoubtedly one of the most important texts in twentieth century philosophy. Looking behind the self-consciousness of science, he discusses the tense relationship between truth and methodology. In examining the different experiences of truth, he aims to "present the hermeneutic phenomenon in its fullest extent."

Matter and Memory


Henri Bergson - 1896
    Henry Bergson (1859-1941) was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1927. His works include Time & Free Will, An Introduction to Metaphysics, Creative Evolution & The Creative Mind.

A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge


George Berkeley - 1710
    "A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge" is one of Berkeley's best known works and in it Berkeley expounds upon this idea of subjective idealism, which in other words is the idea that all of reality, as far as humans are concerned, is simply a construct of the way our brains perceive and according to Berkeley no other sense of reality matters beyond that which we perceive.

Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology


Alfred North Whitehead - 1929
    It is also an exploration of some of the preeminent thinkers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such as Descartes, Newton, Locke, and Kant.The ultimate edition of Whitehead’s magnum opus, Process and Reality is a standard reference for scholars of all backgrounds.

Democracy and Education


John Dewey - 1916
    Dewey's ideas were seldom adopted in America's public schools, although a number of his prescriptions have been continually advocated by those who have had to teach in them.

Utilitarianism


John Stuart Mill - 1861
    The speech is significant both because its topic remains timely and because its arguments illustrate the applicability of the principle of utility to questions of large-scale social policy.

Ethics


Baruch Spinoza - 1677
    Following a logical step-by-step format, it defines in turn the nature of God, the mind, the emotions, human bondage to the emotions, and the power of understanding - moving from a consideration of the eternal, to speculate upon humanity's place in the natural order, the nature of freedom and the path to attainable happiness. A powerful work of elegant simplicity, the Ethics is a brilliantly insightful consideration of the possibility of redemption through intense thought and philosophical reflection. The Ethics is presented in the standard translation of the work by Edwin Curley. This edition also includes an introduction by Stuart Hampshire, outlining Spinoza's philosophy and placing it in context.