The central work by one of the century's most influential thinkers, it altered the course of western philosophy. Its revolutionary approach challenged all previous assumptions about the individual's relationship with the world. Known as 'the Bible of existentialism', its impact on culture & literature was immediate & was felt worldwide, from the absurdist drama of Samuel Beckett to the soul-searching cries of the Beat poets.Being & Nothingness is one of those rare books whose influence has affected the mindset of subsequent generations. Seventy years after its 1st publication, its message remains as potent as ever--challenging readers to confront the fundamental dilemmas of human freedom, choice, responsibility & action.

    A major collection of writings from one of the most important twentieth century French authors, "The Blanchot Reader" includes six works of fiction ("Death Sentence, The Madness of the Day, When the Time Comes, Vicious Circles, Thomas the Obscure", and "The One Who Was Standing Apart from Me") and extended selections of critical and philosophical essays from his major book, "The Gaze of Orpheus".

    These culminated in What is Art?, published in 1898. Although Tolstoy perceived the question of art to be a religious one, he considered & rejected the idea that art reveals & reinvents through beauty. The works of Dante, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Beethoven, Baudelaire & even his own novels are condemned in the course of Tolstoy's impassioned & iconoclastic redefinition of art as a force for good, for the improvement of humankind.

    Lewellyn Powys called it "the greatest work of prose of the greatest period of English prose-writing," while the celebrated surgeon William Osler declared it the greatest of medical treatises. And Dr. Johnson, Boswell reports, said it was the only book that he rose early in the morning to read with pleasure. In this surprisingly compact and elegant new edition, Burton's spectacular verbal labyrinth is sure to delight, instruct, and divert today's readers as much as it has those of the past four centuries.

    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.

    One of the most important philosophical works of our time, a work that has had tremendous influence on philosophy, literature, and psychology, and has literally changed the intellectual map of the modern world.

    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.

    This selection of his writings on religion, ethics, politics, women and many other themes is taken from Schopenhauer's last work, Parerga and Paralipomena, which he published in 1851. He depicts humanity as locked in a struggle beyond good and evil, each individual absolutely free within a Godless world in which art, morality and self-awareness are our only salvation. This innovative and pessimistic view proved powerfully influential upon philosophy and art, affecting the work of Nietzsche and Wittgenstein among others.

    Cioran writes incisively about Western civilizations, the writer, the novel, mystics, apostles, and philosophers."A sort of final philosopher of the Western world. His statements have the compression of poetry and the audacity of cosmic clowning."—Washington Post"An intellectual bombshell that blasts away at all kinds of cant, sham and conventionality. . . . [Cioran's] language is so erotic, his handling of words so seductive, that the act of reading becomes an encounter in the erogenous zone."—Jonah Raskin, L.A. Weekly

    Basing his ideas on common sense, Eco shares a vast wealth of literary and historical knowledge, touching on issues that affect us every day. At once philosophical and amusing, Kant and the Platypus is a tour of the world of our senses, told by a master of knowing what is real and what is not.

    This volume provides basic writings of Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Rilke, Kafka, Ortega, Jaspers, Heidegger, Sartre, and Camus, including some not previously translated, along with an invaluable introductory essay by Walter Kaufmann.

    They deal with such broad topics as the relationship between popular and genuine culture, strategies for cultural reform, the task of philosophy, the nature of education, and the relationship among art, science and life. This new edition presents R. J. Hollingdale's translation of the essays and a new introduction by Daniel Breazeale, who places them in their historical context and discusses their significance for Nietzsche's philosophy.

    In contrast to traditional readings that see in Kafka's work a case of Oedipalized neurosis or a flight into transcendence, guilt, and subjectivity, Deleuze and Guattari make a case for Kafka as a man of joy, a promoter of radical politics who resisted at every turn submission to frozen hierarchies.

    Written expressly for "anyone who believes there are big questions out there, but does not know how to approach them," Think provides a sound framework for exploring the most basic themes of philosophy, and for understanding how major philosophers have tackled the questions that have pressed themselves most forcefully on human consciousness.

    Plaut and Anderson reveal that Marx's "Peuchet on Suicide" is not a straightforward translation, but is an edited version in which Marx adds passages of his own, altering the emphasis of the text from a moral and psychological focus to a profoundly social one. Thus, the essay very strongly reflects Marx's own position on this controversial subject. Sociologist Kevin Anderson provides an extensive introduction situating the essay in the context of Marx's work, especially that on gender; Plaut's essay focuses on the psychological aspects of the work, in particular contrasting Marx's thoughts on suicide with those of Freud and Durkheim.