Many poststructuralist and postmodernist practices can be traced to Deleuze's 1962 resurrection of Nietzsche against Hegel. Hardt shows how Deleuze's early analysis of Bergson's critique of ontology and determination led him to a conception of a positive movement of differentiation and becoming, which in turn led him to the field of forces, sense, value, and the thematic of power and affirmation in Nietzsche. The theory of power in Nietzsche provided the link for Deleuze to an ethics of active expression in Spinoza: Deleuze's discovery and analysis of Spinoza's cultivation of joy and practice at the center of ontology finally resulted in a complete break from the Hegelian paradigm that had reigned over continental philosophy and history. Michael Hardt is the translator of Antonio Negri's "The Savage Anomaly: the Power of Spinoza's Metaphysics and Politics" (Minnesota, 1990), Giorgio Agamben's "The Coming Community" (Minnesota, 1993), and co-author (with Antonio Negri) of "Labor of Dionysus" (Minnesota).

    "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.

    Ryle's linguistic analysis remaps the conceptual geography of mind, not so much solving traditional philosophical problems as dissolving them into the mere consequences of misguided language. His plain language and esstentially simple purpose place him in the traditioin of Locke, Berkeley, Mill, and Russell.

    In addition, the wide range of Leibniz's work--letters, published papers, and fragments on a variety of philosophical, religious, mathematical, and scientific questions over a fifty-year period--heightens the challenge of preparing an edition of his writings in English translation from the French and Latin.

    Contrary to popular Western notions of community, Nancy shows that it is neither a project of fusion nor production. Rather, he argues, community can be defined through the political nature of its resistance against immanent power.

    It offers a fascinating analysis of the works of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Hobbes, Gilbert, Boyle and Newton.

    Maudlin explains special relativity using a geometrical approach, emphasizing intrinsic space-time structure rather than coordinate systems or reference frames. He gives readers enough detail about special relativity to solve concrete physical problems while presenting general relativity in a more qualitative way, with an informative discussion of the geometrization of gravity, the bending of light, and black holes. Additional topics include the Twins Paradox, the physical aspects of the Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction, the constancy of the speed of light, time travel, the direction of time, and more.Introduces nonphysicists to the philosophical foundations of space-time theoryProvides a broad historical overview, from Aristotle to EinsteinExplains special relativity geometrically, emphasizing the intrinsic structure of space-timeCovers the Twins Paradox, Galilean relativity, time travel, and moreRequires only basic algebra and no formal knowledge of physicsTim Maudlin is professor of philosophy at New York University. His books include The Metaphysics within Physics and Quantum Non-Locality and Relativity.

    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.

    Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

    It aims to reach students who have already done an introductory philosophy course.Topics covered include perception and reflection as grounds of knowledge, and the nature, structure, and varieties of knowledge. The character and scope of knowledge in the crucial realms of ethics, science and religion are also considered.Unique features of Epistemology: * Provides a comprehensive survey of basic concepts and major theories* Gives an up-to-date account of important developments in the field* Contains many lucid examples to support ideas* Cites key literature in an annotated bibliography.

    In this rich and wide-ranging book, Terry Pinkard interweaves the story of "Germany"--changing during this period from a loose collection of principalities into a newly-emerged nation with a distinctive culture--with an examination of the currents and complexities of its developing philosophical thought. He examines the dominant influence of Kant, with his revolutionary emphasis on "self-determination," and traces this influence through the development of romanticism and idealism to the critiques of post-Kantian thinkers such as Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard. His book will interest a range of readers in the history of philosophy, cultural history and the history of ideas. Terry Pinkard is professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University and is the author of the acclaimed Hegel: A Biography (Cambridge, 2000). He is honorary Professor of the Philosophy Faculty of TUbingen University, Germany and serves on the advisory board for the Zeitschrift fUr Philosophique Forschung.

    Now Blackburn offers a tour de force exploration of what he calls the most exciting and engaging issue in the whole of philosophy--the age-old war over truth.The front lines of this war are well defined. On one side are those who believe in plain, unvarnished facts, rock-solid truths that can be found through reason and objectivity--that science leads to truth, for instance. Their opponents mock this idea. They see the dark forces of language, culture, power, gender, class, ideology and desire--all subverting our perceptions of the world, and clouding our judgement with false notions of absolute truth. Beginning with an early skirmish in the war--when Socrates confronted the sophists in ancient Athens--Blackburn offers a penetrating look at the longstanding battle these two groups have waged, examining the philosophical battles fought by Plato, Protagoras, William James, David Hume, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Richard Rorty, and many others, with a particularly fascinating look at Nietzsche. Among the questions Blackburn considers are: is science mere opinion, can historians understand another historical period, and indeed can one culture ever truly understand another.Blackburn concludes that both sides have merit, and that neither has exclusive ownership of truth. What is important is that, whichever side we embrace, we should know where we stand and what is to be said for our opponents.

    This work was deemed to be so radically nihilistic, or so radically idealistic, that publishers shied away from it for decades. This new English translation brings to life the heartfelt text of the precocious Italian-Jewish writer, poet, and painter, who, refusing to compromise with life, remained loyal to his ideal of a perfect world. Keenly aware of the inevitable catastrophe that the values of his time held in store for humanity, Carlo Michelstaedter, with Persuasion and Rhetoric, also provides a pithy - albeit idiosyncratic - synthesis of the major currents of philosophical thought that held sway at the beginning of the 20th century. Its searing honesty and mordant critique have not lost any immediacy, almost a century after the work was completed as a university thesis. The reader is challenged to re-examine the dull norms, conventions, and patterns of thought all too readily adopted as humanity willingly, pathetically courts its own demise. And yet, amidst this gloomy vision, Michelstaedter forces the reader to re-appraise the here-and-now, to summon the courage to live a life worthy of being lived.

    How do we reconcile these two standpoints--intellectually, morally, and practically? To what extent are they irreconcilable and to what extent can they be integrated? Thomas Nagel's ambitious and lively book tackles this fundamental issue, arguing that our divided nature is the root of a whole range of philosophical problems, touching, as it does, every aspect of human life. He deals with its manifestations in such fields of philosophy as: the mind-body problem, personal identity, knowledge and skepticism, thought and reality, free will, ethics, the relation between moral and other values, the meaning of life, and death. Excessive objectification has been a malady of recent analytic philosophy, claims Nagel, it has led to implausible forms of reductionism in the philosophy of mind and elsewhere. The solution is not to inhibit the objectifying impulse, but to insist that it learn to live alongside the internal perspectives that cannot be either discarded or objectified. Reconciliation between the two standpoints, in the end, is not always possible.

    Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern. We have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, as Harry Frankfurt writes, "we have no theory."Frankfurt, one of the world's most influential moral philosophers, attempts to build such a theory here. With his characteristic combination of philosophical acuity, psychological insight, and wry humor, Frankfurt proceeds by exploring how bullshit and the related concept of humbug are distinct from lying. He argues that bullshitters misrepresent themselves to their audience not as liars do, that is, by deliberately making false claims about what is true. In fact, bullshit need not be untrue at all.Rather, bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing their end of the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant. Frankfurt concludes that although bullshit can take many innocent forms, excessive indulgence in it can eventually undermine the practitioner's capacity to tell the truth in a way that lying does not. Liars at least acknowledge that it matters what is true. By virtue of this, Frankfurt writes, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.