It chronicles every stage of Foucault’s personal and professional odyssey, from his early interest in dreams to his final preoccupation with sexuality and the nature of personal identity.

    Christopher Hitchens continues to make the case for a splendidly godless universe in this first-ever gathering of the influential voices--past and present--that have shaped his side of the current (and raging) God/no-god debate. With Hitchens as your erudite and witty guide, you'll be led through a wealth of philosophy, literature, and scientific inquiry, including generous portions of the words of Lucretius, Benedict de Spinoza, Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Mark Twain, George Eliot, Bertrand Russell, Emma Goldman, H. L. Mencken, Albert Einstein, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and many others well-known and lesser known. And they're all set in context and commented upon as only Christopher Hitchens political and literary journalist extraordinaire can.” (Los Angeles Times) Atheist? Believer? Uncertain? No matter: The Portable Atheist will speak to you and engage you every step of the way.

    In this book, Peter Dear offers an accessible introduction to the origins of modern science for both students and general readers.Beginning with what was worth knowing in 1500, Dear takes the reader through natural philosophy, humanism, mathematics, and experimentalism until he can describe what was worth knowing by the eighteenth century. Along the way, he discusses the key ideas, individuals, and social changes that constituted the Scientific Revolution.For all of its economy and broad appeal, Revolutionizing the Sciences never sacrifices sophistication of treatment. Dear questions triumphal ideas of scientific progress, unravels the connections between scientific knowledge and power over nature, and distinguishes between the scientific renaissance that characterized the sixteenth century and the more fundamental revolution that occurred in the seventeenth.This is an ideal textbook on the Scientific Revolution for courses on the history of science or the history of early modern Europe. The text is chronologically arranged and fully covers both the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, standing alone as an up-to-date, complete general introduction to the origins of modern science in Europe.Revolutionizing the Sciences is the best available choice for teaching or learning about the developments that came to be called the Scientific Revolution.

    But his most daring writing took place in the shadows. Thrown into prison for his atheism in 1749, Diderot decided to reserve his best books for posterity--for us, in fact. In the astonishing cache of unpublished writings left behind after his death, Diderot challenged virtually all of his century's accepted truths, from the sanctity of monarchy, to the racial justification of the slave trade, to the norms of human sexuality. One of Diderot's most attentive readers during his lifetime was Catherine the Great, who not only supported him financially, but invited him to St. Petersburg to talk about the possibility of democratizing the Russian empire.In this thematically organized biography, Andrew S. Curran vividly describes Diderot's tormented relationship with Rousseau, his curious correspondence with Voltaire, his passionate affairs, and his often iconoclastic stands on art, theater, morality, politics, and religion. But what this book brings out most brilliantly is how the writer's personal turmoil was an essential part of his genius and his ability to flout taboos, dogma, and convention.

    The author’s final work, presented in a one-volume edition, is a rich, challenging analysis of man’s mental activity, considered in terms of thinking, willing, and judging.

    Its success "might have established communal property, a far wider democracy in political and legal institutions, might have disestablished the state church and rejected the protestant ethic." In The World Turned Upside Down, Christopher Hill studies the beliefs of such radical groups as the Diggers, the Ranters, the Levellers and others, and the social and emotional impulses that gave rise to them. The relations between rich and poor classes, the part played by wandering 'masterless men,' the outbursts of sexual freedom and deliberate blasphemy, the great imaginative creations of Milton and Bunyan - these and many other elements build up into a marvellously detailed and coherent portrait of this strange, sudden effusion of revolutionary beliefs. It is a portrait not of the bourgeois revolution that actually took place, but of the impulse towards a far more fundamental overturning of society."Incorporates some of Dr. Hill's most profound statements yet about the 17th-century revolution as a whole." -- The Economist

    Now these four splendid books have been combined into one magnificent volume, providing a continuous sweeping account of the great thought of the Western world. Here readers will find not only an authoritative guide to the history of philosophy, but also a compelling introduction to every major area of philosophical inquiry. Kenny tells the story of philosophy chronologically, his lively narrative bringing the great philosophers to life and filling in the historical and intellectual background to their work. Kenny also looks closely at each of the main areas of philosophical exploration: knowledge and understanding; science; metaphysics; mind and soul; the nature and content of morality; political philosophy; and God. A New History of Western Philosophy is a stimulating chronicle of the intellectual development of Western civilization, allowing readers to trace the birth and growth of philosophy from antiquity to the present day.

    The outlook of that earlier world, MacIntyre claims, was definitively articulated in the Ninth Edition of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, which conceived of moral enquiry as both providing insight into and continuing the rational progress of mankind into ever greater enlightenment. MacIntyre compares that conception of moral enquiry to two rival conceptions also formulated in the late nineteenth century: that of Nietzsche's Zur Genealogie der Moral and that expressed in the encyclical letter of Pope Leo XIII Aeterni Patris. The lectures focus on Aquinas's integration of Augustinian and Aristotelian modes of enquiry, the inability of the encyclopaedists' standpoint to withstand Thomistic or genealogical criticism, and the problems confronting the contemporary post-Nietzschean genealogist. MacIntyre concludes by considering the implications for education in universities and colleges. Alasdair MacIntyre is research professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of numerous books, including After Virtue, A Short History of Ethics, and Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, all published by the University of Notre Dame Press.

    National Book Award in category Philosophy and Religion, has been translated into 11 languages, and was named one of the "100 most influential books since the war" (1945–1995) by the U.K. Times Literary Supplement.

    First published in 1938, The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes used the Enlightenment philosopher’s enduring symbol of the protective Leviathan to address the nature of modern statehood. A work that predicted the demise of the Third Reich and that still holds relevance in today’s security-obsessed society, this volume will be essential reading for students and scholars of political science. “Carl Schmitt is surely the most controversial German political and legal philosopher of this century. . . . We deal with Schmitt, against all odds, because history stubbornly persists in proving many of his tenets right.”—Perspectives on Political Science “[A] significant contribution. . . . The relation between Hobbes and Schmitt is one of the most important questions surrounding Schmitt: it includes a distinct, though occasionally vacillating, personal identification as well as an association of ideas.”—Telos

    But his penetrating work of political philosophy - now fully revised and with a new introduction for this edition - opened up questions about the nature of statecraft and society that influenced governments across the world.

    He argues that the only feasible explanations of scientific successes are historical explanations, and that anarchism must now replace rationalism in the theory of knowledge.

    Ranging from Plato's Republic to Edward O. Wilson's On Human Nature, and drawing on philosophy, psychology, sociology, politics, biology, and theology, this admirably lucid volume compresses into a small space the essence of such thinkers as Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Jean-Paul Sartre, B.F. Skinner, and Konrad Lorenz. Stevenson juxtaposes the ideas of these and other thinkers in a way that helps us to understand how humanity has struggled to comprehend its nature. We see how Freud's theory of subconscious motivation is directly attacked by Sartre's claim that there are no subconscious acts at all. And how Skinner's theories, which assert the primacy of learned behavior, are undercut by Lorenz's studies of animals, which suggest that complex behavior can occur prior to learning. To bring these comparisons into sharper relief, Stevenson examines each theorist on four points—his speculation on the nature of the universe, his assessment of the nature of man, how he views the ills of the world, and what he would do to change it. This structure enables Stevenson to compare Plato's theory of the philosopher-king with Skinner's idea of utopia in Walden Two and pose the same questions to both: Who decides what is best for everyone else? And how can the misuse of power be prevented? Along the way, we are treated to fascinating analyses of some of the most pivotal and controversial books ever written, including Marx's Das Capital, Sartre's Being and Nothingness, Plato's Republic, and Konrad Lorenz's On Agression. The revised edition of Seven Theories of Human Nature is more relevant than ever. For the new volume, Stevenson has added an extended discussion of sociobiology, and cites recent books for further reading on such topics as Creationism, nuclear holocaust, and feminism. Brought completely up to date, this classic introduction will fascinate anyone curious about who we are, what motivates us, and how we can understand and improve the world.

    A Nobel Peace Prize recipient beatified by the Catholic Church in 2003, Mother Teresa of Calcutta was celebrated by heads of state and adored by millions for her work on behalf of the poor. In his measured critique, Hitchens asks only that Mother Teresa's reputation be judged by her actions-not the other way around.With characteristic elan and rhetorical dexterity, Hitchens eviscerates the fawning cult of Teresa, recasting the Albanian missionary as a spurious, despotic, and megalomaniacal operative of the wealthy who long opposed measures to end poverty, and fraternized, for financial gain, with tyrants and white-collar criminals throughout the world.

    The horror of the First World War is still fresh for the protagonists of Time of the Magicians, each of whom finds himself at a crucial juncture. Benjamin, whose life is characterized by false starts and unfinished projects, is trying to flee his overbearing father and floundering in his academic career, living hand to mouth as a critic. Wittgenstein, by contrast, has dramatically decided to divest himself of the monumental fortune he stands to inherit, as a scion of one of the wealthiest industrial families in Europe, in search of absolute spiritual clarity. Meanwhile, Heidegger, having managed to avoid combat in war by serving instead as a meteorologist, is carefully cultivating his career, aligning himself with the great Edmund Husserl and renouncing his prior Catholic associations. Finally, Cassirer is working furiously on the margins of academia, applying himself intensely to his writing and the possibility of a career at Hamburg University. The stage is set for a great intellectual drama, which will unfold across the next decade. The lives and ideas of this extraordinary philosophical quartet will converge as they become world historical figures. But as the Second World War looms on the horizon, their fates will be very different.Wolfram Eilenberger stylishly traces the paths of these remarkable and turbulent lives, which feature not only philosophy but some of the most important economists, politicians, journalists, and artists of the century, including John Maynard Keynes, Hannah Arendt, and Bertrand Russell. In doing so, he tells a gripping story about some of history's most ambitious and passionate thinkers, and illuminates with rare clarity and economy their brilliant ideas, which all too often have been regarded as enigmatic or opaque.