Western philosophy from c 1800 Books

Book Synopsis''Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?''Philosophy is the attempt to answer such ultimate questions, not carelessly and dogmatically, as we might deal with them in ordinary life, but critically, after analysing how and why the questions arise and clarifying the assumptions and concepts on which they are based.This classic work, first published in 1912, has never been supplanted as an approachable introduction to the theory of philosophical enquiry. It gives Russell''s views on such subjects as the distinction between appearance and reality, the existence and nature of matter, idealism, knowledge by acquaintance and by description, induction, and the limits and value of philosophical knowledge.This edition includes an introduction by John Skorupski contextualizing Russell''s work, and a guide to further reading.Table of ContentsIntroduction ; Preface ; 1. Appearance and Reality ; 2. The Existence of Matter ; 3. The Nature of Matter ; 4. Idealism ; 5. Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description ; 6. On Induction ; 7. On Our Knowledge of General Principles ; 8. How A Priori Knowledge is Possible ; 9. The World of Universals ; 10. On Our Knowledge of Universals ; 11. On Intuitive Knowledge ; 12. Truth and Falsehood ; 13. Knowledge, Error, and Probable Opinion ; 14. The Limits of Philosophical Knowledge ; 15. The Value of Philosophy ; Bibliographical Note ; Appendix: Foreword to the German Edition ; Guide to Further Reading

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Book SynopsisIsaiah Berlin was one of the great public intellectuals of his time. A magnetic speaker and beacon of liberal philosophy, he gained first-hand experience of some of the pivotal events of the twentieth century and crossed paths with luminaries from Virginia Woolf to Sigmund Freud. Declining to write an autobiography, Berlin instead agreed to give extensive interviews to acclaimed writer Michael Ignatieff in the final decade of his life. The result is a magisterial biography that penetrates deeply into Berlin's life and thought while capturing his vivid style of conversation. Reissued in this updated edition, it traces Berlin's journey to become one of his era's most vigorous defenders of liberty and individuality in the face of tyranny and dogma.Trade Review'Reading Ignatieff's Isaiah Berlin, you feel you are understanding not only Isaiah Berlin, but the history... I do not see how there could be a more insightful, more erudite, biography of this remarkable man' - Doris Lessing'A work of literature and an eloquent portrait... Though Berlin will be the subject of many future studies, one cannot imagine anyone feeling the need to improve on this biography' - Observer'Enthralling... An affectionate and admiring, but none the less independently-minded portrait... A serious book, but also a vivid, lively and uplifting one' - Evening Standard'A rare gem of a book...It will add a new dimension to the afterlife of the philosopher' - Sunday Times

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Book SynopsisSarah Bakewell had a wandering childhood, growing up on the "hippie trail" through Asia and in Australia. She studied philosophy at the University of Essex, and worked for many years as a curator of early printed books at the Wellcome Library, London, before becoming a full-time writer. Her books include How to Live: a life of Montaigne, which won the Duff Cooper Prize and the US National Book Critics Circle Prize, and At the Existentialist Café, a New York Times Ten Best Books of 2016. She was also among the winners of the 2018 Windham-Campbell Literature Prize. She still has a tendency to wander, but is mostly to be found either in London or in Italy with her wife and their family of dogs and chickens.www.sarahbakewell.comTrade ReviewIt's not often that you miss your bus stop because you're so engrossed in reading a book about existentialism, but I did exactly that while immersed in Sarah Bakewell's At the Existentialist Café. The story of Sartre, Beauvoir, Camus, Heidegger et al is strange, fun and compelling reading. If it doesn't win awards, I will eat my proof copy -- Katy Guest * The Independent on Sunday *My book of the year is Sarah Bakewell’s At The Existentialist Café, a marvellously rich and evocative journey through one of the most powerful philosophical movements of the twentieth century… This graceful book speaks to our parochial and inward-looking age. -- Sudhir Hazareesingh * Times Literary Supplement, Book of the Year *A wonderfully readable combination of biography, philosophy, history, cultural analysis and personal reflection. -- John Walsh * Independent *At the Existentialist Café takes us back to…when philosophers and philosophy itself were sexy, glamorous, outrageous; when sensuality and erudition were entwined… [Bakewell] shows how fascinating were some of the existentialists’ ideas and how fascinating, often frightful, were their lives. Vivid, humorous anecdotes are interwoven with a lucid and unpatronising exposition of their complex philosophy… Tender, incisive and fair. -- Jane O’Grady * Daily Telegraph *Quirky, funny, clear and passionate…Few writers are as good as Bakewell at explaining complicated ideas in a way that makes them easy to understand. -- Craig Brown * Mail on Sunday *

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Book SynopsisWritten after Nietzsche had ended his friendship with Richard Wagner and had been forced to leave academic life through ill health, Human, All Too Human (1878) can be read as a monument to his personal crisis. It also marks the point when he matured as a philosopher, rejecting the German romanticism espoused by Wagner and Schopenhauer and instead returning to sources in the French Enlightenment. Here he sets out his unsettling views in a series of 638 stunning aphorisms - assessing subjects ranging from art to arrogance, boredom to passion, science to vanity and women to youth. This work also contains the seeds of concepts crucial to Nietzsche''s later philosophy, such as the will to power and the need to transcend conventional Christian morality. The result is one of the cornerstones of his life''s work.Table of ContentsOf first and last things; on the history of moral feelings; religious life; from the soul of artists and writers; signs of higher and lower culture; man in society; woman and child; a look at the state; man alone with himself.

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Book SynopsisOne of contemporary criticism's most indispensable works, Of Grammatology is made even more accessible and usable by this new release.Trade ReviewOne of contemporary criticism's most indispensable works, Of Grammatology is made even more accessible and usable by this new release. About EducationTable of ContentsIntroduction by Judith ButlerAcknowledgmentsTranslator's PrefaceForewordPart OneExergue1. The End of the Book and the Beginning of WritingThe ProgramThe Signifier and TruthThe Written Being / The Being Written2. Linguistics and GrammatologyThe Outside and the InsideThe Outside Is the InsideThe Hinge [La Brisure]3. Of Grammatology as a Positive ScienceAlgebraScience and the Name of ManThe Rebus and the Complicity of OriginsPart TwoIntroduction to the "Epoch of Rousseau"1. The Violence of the LetterThe Battle of Proper NamesWriting and Man's Exploitation by Man2. ". . . That Dangerous Supplement . . ."From/Of Blindness to the SupplementThe Chain of SupplementsThe Exorbitant. Question of Method3. Genesis and Structure of the Essay on the Origin of LanguagesI. The Place of the EssayWriting, Political Evil, and Linguistic EvilThe Present DebateThe Initial Debate and the Composition of the EssayII. ImitationThe Interval and the SupplemenThe Engraving and the Ambiguities of FormalismThe Turn of WritingIII. Articulation"That Movement of the Wand . . ."The Inscription of the OriginThe NeumeThat "Simple Movement of the Finger." Writing and the Prohibition of Incest4. From/Of the Supplement to the SourceThe Originary MetaphorThe History and System of ScriptsThe Alphabet and Absolute RepresentationThe Theorem and the TheaterThe Supplement of (at) the OriginAfterword, by Gayatri Chakravorty SpivakNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisA sparkling and up-to-date new cover for one of Fontana Press's strongest-selling titles.Jung was on a giant scalehe was a master physician of the soul in his insights, a profound sage in his conclusions. He is also one of Western Man's great liberators.' J. B. Priestly, Sunday TelegraphJung can sometimes rise to the heights of a Blake or a Nietzsche or a Kierkegaardlike any true prophet or artist, he extended the range of the human imaginationto be able to share Jungian emotions is surely an almost necessary capacity of the free mind.' Philip Toynbee, ObserverThis compact volume of extracts from the twenty volumes of Jung's published writings presents him clearly, in his own words and in precis.Jung's writing is the key to understanding 20th-century psychology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis. Most of the terms of reference now used (extrovert', collective unconscious', archetype') are Jungian.This is essential reading for both students of psychology and the general reader.Trade Review‘Storr presents a selection characterised by clarity of organisation and sympathetic understanding which will be of value both to the general reader and the more serious student.’ Journal of Analytical Psychology ‘Anthony Storr offers a commentary that is admirably clear and unfailingly level in tone.’ Liam Hudson, Sunday Times

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Book SynopsisThis epoch-making book cuts through confused thinking and forces us to re-examine many cherished ideas about knowledge, imagination, consciousness and the intellect. The result is a classic example of philosophy.

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Book SynopsisVery Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, InspiringPoststructuralism challenges traditional ways of thinking about human beings and our relation to the world. Language, meaning, and culture are all reappraised, and with them assumptions about what it''s possible for us to know. More interested in posing sharply focused questions than in reassuring with certainties, its theorists tend to clarify the options, while leaving them open to debate. At once sceptical towards inherited authority and positive about future possibilities, poststructuralism asks above all that we reflect on its findings.In this Very Short Introduction, Catherine Belsey traces the key arguments that have led poststructuralists to challenge traditional theories of language and culture. In this new edition, such well-known figures as Barthes, Foucault, and Derrida are joined by less famous theorists, and examples are drawn from both high art and popular culture. Shakespeare features alongside advertising and Christmas cards, as well as Lewis Carroll, Marcel Duchamp, Toni Morrison, and the tantalizing lithographs of M. C. Escher.ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.Trade ReviewA wonderfully clear account * Guardian *Table of ContentsPreface by Neil Badmington 1: Creatures of difference 2: Difference and culture 3: The differed subject 4: Difference or truth? 5: Difference in the world 6: Dissent References Further reading Glossary Index

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Book SynopsisThis is a superlative graphic guide described as 'warm, witty and wise' by Jonathan Ree to an enigmatic master of twentieth-century philosophy.

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Walter Benjamin is often considered the key modern philosopher and critic of modern art.Tracing his influence on modern aesthetics and cultural history, Introducing Walter Benjamin highlights his commitment to political transformation of the arts as a means to bring about social change.Benjamin witnessed first-hand many of the cataclysmic events of modern European history. He took a critical stance on the dominant ideologies of Marxism, Zionism and Technocracy, and his attempt to flee Nazi Europe ultimately led to his suicide in 1940.With its brilliant combination of words and images, this is an ideal introduction to one of the most elusive philosophers.

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Book SynopsisRené Girard (1923-) was Andrew B. Hammond Professor Emeritus of French Language, Literature, and Civilization at Stanford University, USA, from 1981 to his retirement in 1995. A historian, literary critic and philosopher, he is the author of over 30 books including Violence and the Sacred.Trade ReviewRene Girard's work is both a rationally articulated study and a prophetic vision of the hidden origins of culture and the nature of cultural processes. In its enormous, breathtaking scope it suggests the projects of those nineteenth century intellectual giants (Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud) who still cast long shadows today. By contrast, contemporary criticism seems paltry and faint-hearted. * Comparative Literature *[A] highly readable talent for analyzing and deconstructing myth... original and provocative. * Sunday Times *One of the most striking theories of human culture ever presented. * Christianity and Literature *Table of ContentsBOOK I: FUNDAMENTAL ANTHROPOLOGY Chapter 1: The Victimage Mechanism as the Basis of Religion Acquisitive Mimesis and Mimetic Rivalry; The Function of the Law: Prohibiting Imitation; The Function of Ritual: Imperative Mimesis; Sacrifice and the Victimage Mechanism; The Theory of Religion Chapter 2: The Development of Culture and Institutions Variants in Ritual; Sacred Kingship and Central Power; The Polyvalence of Ritual and the Specificity of Institutions; The Domestication of Animals and Ritual Hunting; Sexual Prohibitions and the Principle of Exchange; Death and Funeral Rites Chapter 3: The Process of Hominization Posing the Problem; Ethology and Ethnology; The Victimage Mechanism and Hominization; The Transcendental Signifier Chapter 4: Myth: The Invisibility of the Founding Murder The 'Radical Elimination'; 'Negative Connotation', 'Positive Connotation'; Physical Signs of the Surrogate Victim Chapter 5: Texts of Persecution Persecution Demystified: The Achievement of the Modern and Western World; The Double Semantic Sense of the Word 'Scapegoat'; The Historical Emergence of the Victimage Mechanism BOOK II: THE JUDAEO-CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURES Chapter 1: Things hidden since the Foundation of the World Similarities between the Biblical Myths and World Mythology; The Distinctiveness of the Biblical Myths; The Gospel Revelation of the Founding Murder Chapter 2: A Non-Sacrificial Reading of the Gospel Text Christ and Sacrifice; The Impossibility of the Sacrificial Reading; Apocalypse and Parable; Powers and Principalities; The Preaching of the Kingdom; Kingdom and Apocalypse; The Non-Sacrificial Death of Christ; The Divinity of Christ; The Virgin Birth Chapter 3: The Sacrificial Reading and Historical Christianity Implications of the Sacrificial Reading; The Epistle to the Hebrews; The Death of Christ and the End of the Sacred; Sacrifice of the Other and Sacrifice of the Self; The Judgement of Solomon; A New Sacrificial Reading: The Semiotic Analysis; The Sacrificial Reading and History; Science and Apocalypse Chapter 4: The Logos of Heraclitus and the Logos of John The Logos in Philosophy; The Two Types of Logos in Heidegger; Defining the Johannine Logos in Terms of the Victim; 'In the Beginning . . .'; Love and Knowledge BOOK III: INTERDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY Chapter 1: Mimetic Desire Acquisitive Mimesis and Mimetic Desire; Mimetic Desire and the Modern World; The Mimetic Crisis and the Dynamism of Desire; The Mimesis of Apprenticeship and the Mimesis ofRivalry; Gregory Bateson's 'Double Bind'; From ObjectRivalry to Metaphysical Desire Chapter 2: Desire without Object Doubles and Interdividuality; Symptoms of Alternation; The Disappearance of the Object and Psychotic Structure;Hypnosis and Possession Chapter 3: Mimesis and Sexuality What is known as 'Masochism'; Theatrical 'Sado-Masochism'; Homosexuality; Mimetic Latency and Rivalry; The End of Platonism in Psychology Chapter 4: Psychoanalytic Mythology Freud's Platonism and the Use of the Oedipal Archetype; How do you reproduce a Triangle?; Mimesis and Representation; The Double Genesis of Oedipus; Why Bisexuality?; Narcissism: Freud's Desire; The Metaphors of Desire Chapter 5: Beyond Scandal Proust's Conversion; Sacrifice and Psychotherapy; Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Structural Psychoanalysis; The DeathInstinct and Modern Culture; The Skandalon To Conclude Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisSimone Weil was one of the foremost thinkers of the twentieth century: a philosopher, theologian, critic, sociologist and political activist. This anthology spans the wide range of her thought, and includes an extract from her best-known work ''The Need for Roots'', exploring the ways in which modern society fails the human soul; her thoughts on the misuse of language by those in power; and the essay ''Human Personality'', a late, beautiful reflection on the rights and responsibilities of every individual. All are marked by the unique combination of literary eloquence and moral perspicacity that characterised Weil''s ideas and inspired a generation of thinkers and writers both in and outside her native France.

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Book SynopsisFeatures a revised and expanded translators' introduction and an updated translation, as well as the English versions of author's draft of a portion of the text and of his later critique of his own lectures.Trade Review"The translators have improved upon their excellent, earlier translation: nuances have been made clearer and the style brought closer to Heidegger's own style. Eminently readable, this translation should stand the test of time."—Dennis J. Schmidt, Pennsylvania State University"This revised edition of the translation of Heidegger’s 1935 lectures, with its inclusion of helpful new materials, superbly augments the excellent translation provided in the first edition. The result is a richly rewarding volume, to be recommended to every student of Heidegger’s works, whether a novice or a long-time reader."—Daniel Dahlstrom, Boston University"The quality of the translation is outstanding, and the introduction and glossary are eminently clear and helpful."—Bret W. Davis, author of Heidegger and the Will: On the Way to Gelassenheit"There is no questioning the exceedingly high quality of Polt and Fried’s translation as well as their reliably judicious choice of words. Students and scholars alike profit immensely, too, from the explanations that they give of specific translations."—Daniel Dahlstrom, Boston University"Fried and Polt have produced a first-rate edition of this pivotal and important text. Their new translation is rigorous and abides by the best standards of Heidegger scholarship. It also has a new fluency that brings this difficult text into reach of English language readers."—Dennis J. Schmidt, Penn State University

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Book SynopsisâI have come to think that one of the main causes of trouble in the world is dogmatic and fanatical belief in some doctrine for which there is no adequate evidence.â â Bertrand Russell, Portraits from MemoryPortraits from Memory is one of Bertrand Russellâs most self-reflective and engaging books. Whilst not intended as an autobiography, it is a vivid recollection of some of his celebrated contemporaries, such as George Bernard Shaw, Sidney and Beatrice Webb and D. H. Lawrence. Russell provides some arresting and sometimes amusing insights into writers with whom he corresponded. He was fascinated by Joseph Conrad, with whom he formed a strong emotional bond, writing that his Heart of Darkness was not just a story but an expression of Conradâs âphilosophy of lifeâ. There are also some typically pithy Russellian observations; H. G. Wells âderived his importance from quantity rather than qualityâ, whilst after a brief and fraught friendship Russell thought D. H. Lawrence âhad no real wish to make the world better, but only to indulge in eloquent soliloquy about how bad it wasâ.This engaging book also includes some of Russellâs customary razor-sharp essays on a rich array of subjects, from his ardent pacifism, liberal politics and morality to the ethics of education, the skills of good writing and how he came to philosophy as a young man. These include âA Plea for Clear Thinkingâ, âA Philosophy for Our Timeâ and âHow I Writeâ.Portraits from Memory is Russell at his best and will enthrall those new to Russell as well as those already well-acquainted with his work. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new foreword by the Russell scholar Nicholas Griffin, editor of The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell.Table of ContentsForeword to the Routledge Classics Edition Nicholas Griffin 1. Adaptation: An Autobiographical Epitome 2. Six Autobiographical Talks 3. How to Grow Old 4. Reflections on my Eightieth Birthday 5. Portraits from Memory 6. Lord John Russell 7. John Stuart Mill 8. Mind and Matter 9. The Cult of "Common Usage" 10. Knowledge and Wisdom 11. A Philosophy for Our Time 12. A Plea for Clear Thinking 13. History as an Art 14. How I Write 15. The Road to Happiness 16. Symptoms of Orwell's 1984 17. Why I am Not a Communist 18. Man's Peril 19. Steps Towards Peace. Index

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Book SynopsisIn the 1960s a radical concept emerged from the great French thinker Jacques Derrida. Read the book that changed the way we think; read Writing and Difference, the classic introduction.Trade Review'Perhaps the world's most famous philosopher.' -New York Times

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Book SynopsisIntolerance and bigotry lie at the heart of all human suffering. So claims Bertrand Russell at the outset of In Praise of Idleness, a collection of essays in which he espouses the virtues of cool reflection and free enquiry; a voice of calm in a world of maddening unreason. From a devastating critique of the ancestry of fascism to a vehement defence of 'useless' knowledge, with consideration given to everything from insect pests to the human soul, this is a tour de force that only Bertrand Russell could perform.Trade Review'A book full of rich, stimulative thought, with plenty of scope for disagreement.' - The Guardian'Invariably intelligent, stimulating and lucid.' - The Listener'There is not ... a page which does not provoke argument or thought.' - The Sunday Times'A book full of rich, stimulative thought, with plenty of scope for disagreement.' - The Guardian'Invariably intelligent, stimulating and lucid.' - The Listener'There is not ... a page which does not provoke argument or thought.' - The Sunday TimesTable of Contents1. In Praise of Idleness 2. 'Useless' Knowledge 3. Architecture and Social Questions 4. The Modern Midas 5. The Ancestry of Fascism 6. Scylla and Charybdis, or Communism and Fascism 7. The Case for Socialism 8. Western Civilisation 9. On Youthful Cynicism 10. Modern Homogeneity 11. Men versus Insects 12. Education and Discipline 13. Stoicism and Mental Health 14. On Comets 15. What is the Soul?

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Book SynopsisPresents a translation of the complete text of Jacques Derrida's ten-hour address to the 1997 Cerisy conference entitled "The Autobiographical Animal," the third of four such colloquia on his work. This book was assembled posthumously on the basis of two published sections, one written and recorded session, and one informal recorded session.

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Book SynopsisKnowledge is power. Time is money. Justice is blind.Western civilisation is a powerful brand, and full of accepted wisdoms like these that we rarely question. Taking cues from Greek philosophy and honed in the Enlightenment, certain notions about humanity and society grew into the tenets many of us still live by today.But if we take a closer look at these ideas, it seems they are not all they are cracked up to be. In fact, some of them are outright lies - and we can start to ask who really benefits from them. What is the value of a scientific worldview that conjured up ''race''? Are the Western concepts of ''saving'' and ''wasting'' time really the best ways to live? Who are our laws actually designed to serve? And the real question: is the West as civilised as it likes to think it is? In an age of division and entrenched inequality, Uncivilised is a timely, provocative and entertaining counter to the ideas and assumptions that have shaped the WTrade ReviewA witty and accessible survey of the shortcomings of western civilisation as many people imagine it -- Angela Saini, author of SUPERIORA vital piece of work in our challenging times that reminds us of the rich history and influences outside the West. Das writes with passion and humour to open our eyes to the history that has shaped our world -- Roma AgrawalA stunning debut. Subhadra Das shows how a word - civilisation - became a lie. She traces how that lie was repeated and transformed in universities and museums, and how it came to be embedded in the idea of 'western' culture itself. Clearly and passionately, Uncivilised shows us how to begin to dispel such enduring untruths - with seriousness and humour in equal measure -- Dan Hicks, author of THE BRUTISH MUSEUMSWith cutting wit and incisive insight, Uncivilised makes minced meat out of the leviathan known as 'Western civilization'. Imagine a brilliant curator-comedian guiding you on an irreverent tour through a grand museum - exposing its attics, sewers, and closets full of real and metaphoric skeletons. Subhadra guides us out of hallowed, hypocritical halls of the 'Ten Lies That Made the West', and shares with us the histories, knowledges, and ingenuity of those peoples and cultures dismissed as 'uncivilised' -- Xine YaoThere is a quiet, righteous rage that steams off the pages of this book. I can't help but wish it was a book I'd read many decades ago -- Alom ShahaEverything you never knew you needed to know, told with wit and charm. Das unveils the hidden history that shapes every so-called 'fact' of civilisation with a wry sense of humour and an expert's knowledge. -- Brenna HassettDas traces the lies coiled serpent-like around the foundations of Western 'civilisation' with wit and elan, in a paradigm-shifting yet highly accessible tome. If there's one book you read this year, let it be this -- Lindsey FitzharrisSubhadra Das expertly takes us on journey, weaving wit and vulnerability within years of research. Uncivilised balances brilliant storytelling with academia, resulting in an unflinching debut that's hard to put down -- Yomi SodeUsing a fast-paced mixture of memoir, historical analysis and zingers, Das asks how well the Western world has lived up to the ideals it has set for itself, from impartial justice to the scientific method -- Professor Erin Thompson, author of SMASHING STATUESUncivilised will make the intelligent reader question everything they thought they knew, in the best possible way. Clever, funny and shrewd - everyone who cares about ideas needs to read this book -- Caroline Crampton, author of THE WAY TO THE SEA

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Book Synopsis“A clarion call for seeing the world as a whole,” this philosophical bestseller takes readers through history, from the Big Bang through the 21st century—now featuring an afterword with the writer-director of the Matrix franchise (San Francisco Chronicle) Join one of the greatest contemporary philosophers on a breathtaking tour of time and the Cosmos—from the Big Bang right up to the eve of the twenty-first century. This accessible and entertaining summary of Ken Wilber’s great ideas has been expanding minds now for two decades, providing a unified field theory of the universe. Along the way, Wilber talks on a host of issues related to that universe, from gender roles, to multiculturalism, environmentalism, and even the meaning of the Internet.   This special anniversary edition contains an afterword, a dialogue between the author and Lana Wachowski—the award-winning writer-director of the Matrix film trilogy—in which we’re offered an intimate glimpse into the evolution of Ken’s thinking and where he stands today. A Brief History of Everything may well be the best introduction to the thought of this man who has been called the “Einstein of Consciousness” (John White).

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Book Synopsis'Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.' Immanuel KantIsaiah Berlin was one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century - an activist of the intellect who marshalled vast erudition and eloquence in defence of the endangered values of individual liberty and moral and political plurality. In The Crooked Timber of Humanity he exposes the links between the ideas of the past and the social and political cataclysms of our own time: between the Platonic belief in absolute truth and the lure of authoritarianism; between the eighteenth-century reactionary ideologue Joseph de Maistre and twentieth-century Fascism; between the romanticism of Schiller and Byron and the militant - and sometimes genocidal - nationalism that convulses the modern world. This new edition features a revised text, a new foreword in which award-winning novelist John Banville discusses Berlin's life and ideas, particularly his defence of pluralism, and a substantial new appendix that provides rich context, including letters and previously uncollected writings by Berlin, notably his virtuoso review of Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy.Trade ReviewBerlin restored the history of ideas to its true place as a key to unlock the past and explain the present. It was a notable achievement. This book sustains it. -- Raymond Carr * Spectator *To read Isaiah Berlin is above all to listen to a voice, effervescent, quizzical, often self-mocking, but always full of gaiety and amusement. -- John Dunn * Times Literary Supplement *To read Berlin is to sit at an unlit window and see the landscape of European thought illuminated by a spectacular display of fireworks. -- Ian McIntyre * Independent *A history of ideas that possesses all the drama of a novel, all the immediacy of headline news. -- Michiko Kakutani * New York Times *

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Book SynopsisWhat might a 'theory of everything' look like? Is science an ideology? Who were Adorno, Horkheimer or the Frankfurt School? The decades since the 1960s have seen an explosion in the production of critical theories. Deconstructionists, poststructuralists, postmodernists, second-wave feminists, new historicists, cultural materialists, postcolonialists, black critics and queer theorists, among a host of others, all vie for our attention. Stuart Sim and Borin Van Loon's incisive graphic guide provides a route through the tangled jungle of competing ideas and provides an essential historical context, situating these theories within tradition of critical analysis going back to the rise of Marxism. They present the essential methods and objectives of each theoretical school in an incisive and accessible manner, and pay special attention to recurrent themes and concerns that have preoccupied a century of critical theoretical activity.

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Book SynopsisA groundbreaking study of the development of form in eighteenth-century aestheticsTrade ReviewShortlisted for the Oscar Kenshur Book Prize, sponsored by the Indiana Center for Eighteenth-Century StudiesFinalist for the Susanne K. Langer Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Symbolic Form, sponsored by the Media Ecology Association“Original and important, and of very complete scholarship, this book covers many discussions of eighteenth-century aesthetics with a highly unusual stress on craft and practice as they relate to aesthetics.”—John Bender, Stanford University“In this brilliant study of Hogarth and Kant, Zitin shows that they developed a notion of form as the expression of the perceptual activity of abstraction on the part of both artist and spectator that is applicable to literary as well as visual art.”—Paul Guyer, author of A History of Modern Aesthetics“This dazzling history of aesthetic theory pursues the consequences of Hogarth’s practical formalism for literary study with spellbinding patience and impeccable logic in beautiful prose.”—Marcie Frank, author of The Novel Stage: Narrative Form from the Restoration to Jane Austen“Zitin offers an ambitious and persuasive account of what she calls ‘practical formalism.’ Equally insightful about a range of eighteenth-century accounts of beauty and contemporary theoretical debates, Zitin’s is a stunningly accomplished book.”—Frances Ferguson, University of Chicago

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Book SynopsisGilles Deleuze (1925-1995) was one of the key figures in poststructuralism, and one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. His major works include, with Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus and Anti-Oedipus, also published in the Bloomsbury Revelations series.Trade ReviewThe Logic of Sense should be read as the boldest and most insolent of metaphysical treatises-on the simple condition that instead of denouncing metaphysics as the ne­glect of being, we force it to speak of extrabeing. * Michel Foucault *Table of ContentsPreface: From Lewis Carroll to the Stoics First Series of Paradoxes of Pure Becoming Second Series of Paradoxes of Surface Effects Third Series of the Proposition Fourth Series of Dualities Fifth Series of Sense Sixth Series on Serialization Seventh Series of Esoteric Words Eighth Series of Structure Ninth Series of the Problematic Tenth Series of the Ideal Game Eleventh Series of Nonsense Twelfth Series of the Paradox Thirteenth Series of the Schizophrenic and the Little Girl Fourteenth Series of Double Causality Fifteenth Series of Singularities Sixteenth Series of the Static Ontological Genesis Seventeenth Series of the Static Logical Genesis Eighteenth Series of the Three Images of Philosophers Nineteenth Series of Humor Twentieth Series on the Moral Problem in Stoic Philosophy Twenty-First Series of the Event Twenty-Second Series—Porcelain and Volcano Twenty-Third Series of the Aion Twenty-Fourth Series of the Communication of Events Twenty-Fifth Series of Univocity Twenty-Sixth Series of Language Twenty-Seventh Series of Orality Twenty-Eighth Series of Sexuality Twenty-Ninth Series—Good Intentions Are Inevitably Punished Thirtieth Series of the Phantasm Thirty-First Series of Thought Thirty-Second Series on the Different Kinds of Series Thirty-Third Series of Alice’s Adventures Thirty-Fourth Series of Primary Order and Secondary Organization Appendixes I. The Simulacrum and Ancient Philosophy 1. Plato and the Simulacrum 2. Lucretius and the Simulacrum II. Phantasm and Modern Literature 3. Klossowski or Bodies-Language 4. Michel Tournier and the World Without Others 5. Zola and the Crack-Up Index

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Book SynopsisA Thousand Plateaus is the second part of Deleuze and Guattari's landmark philosophical project, Capitalism and Schizophrenia - a project that still sets the terms of contemporary philosophical debate. Written over a seven year period, A Thousand Plateaus provides a compelling analysis of social phenomena and offers fresh alternatives for thinking about philosophy and culture. Its radical perspective provides a toolbox for ‘nomadic thought' and has had a galvanizing influence on today's anti-capitalist movement.Table of ContentsTranslator's Foreword: Pleasures of Philosophy Notes on the Translation and Acknowledgements Author's Note 1. Introduction: Rhizome 2. 1914: One or Several Wolves? 3. 10,000 BC: The Geology of Morals (Who Does the Earth Think It Is?) 4. November 20th, 1923: Postulates of Linguistics 5. 587BC-AD70: On Several Regimes of Signs 6. November 28th, 1947: How Do You Make Yourself a Body Without Organs? 7. Year Zero: Faciality 8. 1874: Three Novellas, or "What Happened?" 9. 1933: Micropolitics and Segmentarity 10. 1730: Becoming Intense, Becoming-Animal, Becoming Imperceptible... 11. 1837: Of the Refrain 12. 1227: Treatise on Nomadology - The War Machine 13. 7000BC: Apparatus of Capture 14. 1440: The Smooth and the Striated 15. Conclusion: Concrete Rules and Abstract Machines Notes Bibliography List of Illustrations Index

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Book Synopsis"The Spirit of Utopia", written mostly in 1915-16, published in its first version just after the First World War, republished five years later, 1923, in this version is presented for the first time in English translation.Trade Review“When this book was first published, it had a profound effect on major thinkers and artists in Weimar Germany. A poetical philosophical treatise with unusual insights into culture and political commentary, Bloch’s book laid the groundwork for thinkers like Adorno and Benjamin.” —Jack Zipes, University of MinnesotaTable of ContentsObjective (1918,1923) Part I. The Self-Encounter: 1. The production of the ornament 2. The philosophy of music 3. The shape of the inconstruable question Part II. Karl Marx, Death, and the Apocalypse: Afterword Translator's notes Index of names.

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Book SynopsisThe three essays collected in this book offer a succinct introduction to Agamben's recent work through an investigation of Foucault's notion of apparatus, a meditation on the intimate link of philosophy to friendship, and a reflection on the singular relation with one's own time that we call contemporariness.Trade Review"What is remarkable about Agamben's claim is the range of cultural practices that it incorporates . . . A rigorous engagement with these experiential elements, grounded in rigorous historical, technical, and theoretical methods."—Seb Franklin, Popular Culture

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Book SynopsisThroughout his long career, Gadamer wrote and taught widely on the philosophy of the ancient world. In this volume, moving from the Pre-Socratics to Plato, Gadamer explores the legacy that ancient thought left for such philosophical giants as Kant, Schleiermacher and Hegel.Ancient Sources, Modern Appropriations also includes a substantial critical introduction in which the Editors reconstruct Gadamer''s views on how the study of the history of philosophy contributes to the task of doing philosophy by keeping a tradition alive and moving it into the future. This final volume of the The Selected Writings of Hans-Georg Gadamer also includes a thorough bibliography of Gadamer''s available writings in English and key secondary studies of his philosophical hermeneutics.Available in English for the first time, Ancient Sources, Modern Appropriations is comprised of the most important of Gadamer''s previously untranslated writings on ancient philosophy.Table of ContentsPart I: Introduction: History of Philosophy as Appropriation of a Tradition Pol Vandevelde and Arun Iyer Part II: Ancient Philosophy A. The Pre-Socratics 1. Parmenides or the Innerworldly Aspect of Being (Parmenides oder das Diesseits des Seins, 1988, Vol 7:1) 2. On the Divine in Early Greek Thinking (Uber das Gottliche im fruhen Denken der Griechen, 1970, Vol 6:9) B. Plato 3. Plato's Utopian Thinking: A Lecture for Philologists (Platos Denken in Utopien: Ein Vortrag vor Philologen, 1983, Vol 7:9) 4. Mathematics and Dialectic in Plato (Mathematik und Dialektik bei Plato, 1982, Vol 7:10) 5. Dialectic is not Sophistic Thinking: What Theaetetus Learns in The Sophist (Dialektik ist nicht Sophistik: Theatet lernt das im Sophistes, 1990, Vol 7:13) Part III: Modern Philosophy 6. Oetinger as a Philosopher (Oetinger als Philosoph, 1964, Vol 4:20) 7. Kant and the Question of God (Kant und die Gottesfrage, 1941, Vol 4:23) 8. Herder and the Historical World (Herder und die geschichtliche Welt, 1967, Vol 4:21) 9. Schleiermacher as a Platonist (Schleiermacher als Platoniker, 1969, Vol 4:25) 10. Hegel and Heraclitus (Hegel und Heraklit, 1990, Vol 7:2) 11. Hegel and the Historical Spirit (Hegel und der geschichtliche Geist, 1939, Vol 4:26) 12. Hegel and Heidelberg Romanticism (Hegel und die Heidelberger Romantik, 1961, Vol 4:27) Part IV: Bibliography A. Gadamer's Works in English 1. Books 2. Essays and Articles B. Selected Secondary Sources Index

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Book Synopsis

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Book SynopsisBertrand Russell (1872-1970) is one of the most famous and important philosophers of the twentieth century. In this account of his life and work A.C. Grayling introduces both his technical contributions to logic and philosophy, and his wide-ranging views on education, politics, war, and sexual morality. Russell is credited with being one of the prime movers of Analytic Philosophy, and with having played a part in the revolution in social attitudes witnessed throughout the twentieth-century world. This introduction gives a clear survey of Russell''s achievements across their whole range.ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.Table of Contents1. Life and Work ; 2. Logic and Philosophy ; 3. Philosophy, Mind and Science ; 4. Politics and society ; 5. Russell's influence

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Book SynopsisThe Explanation of Behaviour was the first book written by the renowned philosopher Charles Taylor. A vitally important work of philosophical anthropology, it is a devastating criticism of the theory of behaviourism, a powerful explanatory approach in psychology and philosophy when Taylor's book was first published. However, Taylor has far more to offer than a simple critique of behaviourism. He argues that in order to properly understand human beings, we must grasp that they are embodied, minded creatures with purposes, plans and goals, something entirely lacking in reductionist, scientific explanations of human behaviour.Taylorâs book is also prescient in according a central place to non-human animals, which like human beings are subject to needs, desires and emotions. However, because human beings have the unique ability to interpret and reflect on their own actions and purposes and declare them to others, Taylor argues that human experience differs to that of othTrade Review"A vehemently interesting book. The philosophical part displays the most remarkable grasp of the contemporary philosophical situation and its historical roots... There is also a satisfactory absence of the tones and attitudes of any particular philosophical school." - Elizabeth Anscombe, The New Statesman "A most valuable and systematic account of a major problem in the explanation of behaviour. His arguments are both powerful and of the greatest possible general interest." - Times Literary Supplement "A vehemently interesting book. The philosophical part displays the most remarkable grasp of the contemporary philosophical situation and its historical roots... There is also a satisfactory absence of the tones and attitudes of any particular philosophical school." - Elizabeth Anscombe, The New Statesman "A most valuable and systematic account of a major problem in the explanation of behaviour. His arguments are both powerful and of the greatest possible general interest." - Times Literary Supplement Table of ContentsForeword to the Routledge Classics Edition Alva Noë Preface to the Routledge Classics Edition Charles Taylor Part 1: Explanation by Purpose 1. Purpose and Teleology 2. Action and Desire 3. Intentionality 4. The Data Language 5. The Problem of Verification Part 2: Theory and Fact 6. The Determinants of Learning 7. What Is Learned? 8. Spatial Orientation 9. The Direction of Behaviour 10. The Ends of Behaviour 11. Conclusion Index

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Book SynopsisBertrand Russell’s recipe for good living - this is popular philosophy, or even self-help, as it should be written.Trade Review'He writes what he calls common sense, but is in fact uncommon wisdom.' - The Observer'Commended strongly in these days of false values and confused thinking.' - The Listener'As a guide to cheerfulness, Russell could not be bettered.' - News Chronicle'He writes what he calls common sense, but is in fact uncommon wisdom.' - The ObserverTable of ContentsPART I CAUSES OF UNHAPPINESS 1 What Makes People Unhappy 2 Byronic Unhappiness 3 Competition 4 Boredom and Excitement 5 Fatigue 6 Envy 7 The Sense of Sin 8 Persecution Mania 9 Fear of Public Opinion PART II CAUSES OF HAPPINESS 10 Is Happiness Still Possible? 11 Zest 12 Affection 13 The Family 14 Work 15 Impersonal Interests 16 Effort and Resignation 17 The Happy Man

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Book SynopsisContent and Consciousness is an original and ground-breaking attempt to elucidate a problem integral to the history of Western philosophical thought: the relationship of the mind and body. In this formative work, Dennett sought to develop a theory of the human mind and consciousness based on new and challenging advances in the field that came to be known as cognitive science. This important and illuminating work is widely-regarded as the book from which all of Dennett's future ideas developed. It is his first explosive rebuttal of Cartesian dualism and one of the founding texts of philosophy of mind.Trade Review‘It presents a compelling and sometimes profound conception of the subject; it is ambitious without being grandiose; it employs scientific information effectively and ingeniously; its style, moreover, is enviable clear witty, clear, fluent and relaxed. One rarely encounters a difficult work of technical philosophy that is such a pleasure to read.’ - Thomas Nagel, Journal of Philosophy‘Content and Consciousness is an extraordinarily interesting and original book, and one which will raise the level of current discussion in the philosophy of mind.’ - Richard Rorty, Philosophical Studies'I have certainly been greatly stimulated by reading the book, and I recommend it to all others who have an interest in the problems of mind and body and of physicalism and its alternatives.' - J.C.C. Smart, Mind'One rarely encounters a difficult work of technical philosophy that is such a pleasure to read.’ – Thomas Nagel, Journal of PhilosophyTable of ContentsPreface to the Routledge Classics Edition Preface to the Second Edition Preface to the First Edition Part 1: The Language of the Mind I. The Ontological Problem of the Mind 1. The Mind and Science 2. Existence and Identity II. Intentionality 3. The Problem of Intentionality 4. Two Blind Alleys 5. The Way Out III. Evolution of the Brain 6. The Intelligent Use of Information 7. The Evolution of Appropriate Structures 8. Goal-directed Behaviour IV. The Ascription of Content 9. Function and Content 10. Language and Content 11. Personal and Sub-Personal Levels and Explanation: Pain Part 2: Consciousness V. Introspective Certainty 12. The Certainty of Certain Utterances 13. A Perceiving Machine VI. Awareness and Consciousness 14. The Ordinary Words 15. Awareness and Control 16. Consciousness VII. Mental Imagery 17. The Name of Images and the Introspective Trap 18. Colours VIII Thinking and Reasoning 19. People and Processes 20. Reasons and Causes IX. Actions and Intentions 21. Intentional Actions 22. Willing 23. The Importance of Intentional Actions X. Language and Understanding 24. Knowing and Understanding 25. Language and Information 26. Conclusions Index

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Book SynopsisWalter Benjamin was perhaps the twentieth century's most elusive intellectual. His writings defy categorization, and his improvised existence has proven irresistible to mythologizers. In a major new biography, Howard Eiland and Michael Jennings present a comprehensive portrait of the man and his times, as well as extensive commentary on his work.Trade Review[An] outstanding and monumental biography of Walter Benjamin… In the thoroughness of their account and the acuity and delicacy of their philosophical analyses, Howard Eiland and Michael Jennings have provided an indispensable sighting of Benjamin’s achievement. -- Anthony Phelan * Times Literary Supplement *[This] is a careful synthesis of all the available sources for Benjamin’s life—letters, diaries, reminiscences of friends—with all of his major writings, to produce the comprehensive account that has been sorely lacking until now… Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life makes clear how intimately Benjamin’s biography was shaped by the history of Europe during his lifetime. -- Adam Kirsch * New York Review of Books *In their superb new biography, Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings have given us a portrait of this elusive but paradigmatic thinker that deserves to be ranked among the few truly indispensable intellectual biographies of the modern era. I am tempted to call it a masterpiece. Nearly seven hundred pages in length, this is not only a study of Benjamin’s life, it is also a guide to the bewildering mix of themes and preoccupations that populated this most prolific and unfamiliar of minds… To write the biography of an intellectual is difficult business, since so much of what passes for an event is taking place only in the mind or on the page—but those are the events that really matter. Eiland and Jennings move with deliberation through Benjamin’s major works, expounding and explaining with uncommon lucidity even when the text in question is one of notorious difficulty. The result is not a mere chronicle of a life but also a reliable map into Benjamin’s intellectual labyrinth. -- Peter E. Gordon * New Republic *The most comprehensive biography we are ever likely to have of Benjamin… Both authors have spent close to a lifetime on the subject. The devotion and care evident in their account are clearly based on sympathy and admiration. Their exposition of Benjamin’s thought is exemplary, their sleuthing about his personal life breathtaking. Definitive is an archaic and much abused term that Benjamin would have abhorred; suffice it to say that it is unlikely that anyone will ever be able to tell us more about this German-Jewish thinker or present that knowledge with greater stylistic aplomb. -- Modris Eksteins * Wall Street Journal *[Eiland and Jennings] argue compellingly that as a critic [Benjamin] not only reshaped our understanding of many important writers, but he recognized the potentials and hazards of technological media that revolutionized culture during his lifetime… An impressive work of exegesis… Indispensable. -- Stuart Jeffries * The Guardian *Serious and imposing, it seeks to gather up and bind the threads of Benjamin’s career, unite the unpublished and the half-finished essays and book projects, weaving together a comprehensive biography both of the man and his thought. A great strength of Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life is how it lays out Benjamin’s major works as part of an evolution of thought, providing not only invaluable context to each piece, but tracing each work’s central claims in a lucid and approachable manner. One need not be a PhD to approach this book, and it will intrigue anyone with a passing interest in the intellectual history of the 20th century. With key essays and books given substantive contextualization and explanation, Eiland and Jennings make Benjamin’s work accessible and networked into a larger set of themes and concerns… As omnipresent as [Benjamin’s] tragic fate is throughout the book, Eiland and Jennings also provide a host of surprising (and even delightful) details of Benjamin’s life, which round out the melancholic caricature of him in favor of a complex, conflicted individual. -- Colin Dickey * Los Angeles Review of Books *Impressive… [Eiland and Jennings] portray their subject as a kind of ragpicker in the neglected alleyways of a culture in transition—a specialist in the marginal and mundane, the fragmentary and forgotten… They succeed in offering not only the most comprehensive biography to date, but a tour de force introduction to an incomparably incandescent mind. -- Benjamin Balint * Books & Ideas *Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings have rightly sought and successfully produced the thread that gives a biography of Benjamin the kind of weight and significance his influence deserves… Their curiosity in searching out an expanded wealth of details now available about Benjamin, both personal and intellectual, historical and anecdotal, has produced an account that enlivens the already well-known turning points in Benjamin’s development… This biography far surpasses not just any preceding biographical history of Benjamin but in its searching out of what remains consistent in Benjamin it has found the thread that allows a narrative of life and work to unfold in a way that does not subordinate one to the other… This achievement will remain not only a standard and resource-full account of Benjamin but in its comprehensiveness as well as its acute accounts of Benjamin’s thought across the whole range of that thinking, it will continue to provide the foundation for the fuller understanding of his place and contribution to the critical, cultural, political and historical present we have inherited from the twentieth century. -- David Ferris * Critical Inquiry *Walter Benjamin deserves to be more celebrated, and Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life, by Howard Eiland and Michael Jennings, is a step in the right direction. It is an efficient introduction to his work and legacy while also offering a detailed account of Benjamin the man, his strengths and weaknesses and the world he lived in. It is also a deeply poignant story of his struggle to survive in a hostile Europe and his tragic suicide at the age of 48. -- Cyril Kavanaugh * The Guardian *Presented here in what looks like a definitive version, Benjamin’s life emerges as a tragedy of incompleteness. -- John Gray * Literary Review *[Benjamin] produced some of the most memorable and generative critical writing of the last century. There is no end in sight of the need to grapple with that writing and its legacies. This magisterial biography by Eiland and Jennings sets that writing in its place and time with profane illuminations on almost every one of its many pages. Benjamin had scorn for people who produced needlessly ‘fat’ books, but I think this fairly huge one hits the sweet spot of detail. Most biographical treatments to date tend to be half the length or less and content themselves with the highlights and the fairly well known, however well articulated. If one wants more, this ‘critical’ biography is the place to look. -- Ian Balfour * Los Angeles Review of Books *Despite its numerous predecessors, this biography is the first of its kind to succeed in uniting most of the previously published biographical material in one book, including translations of documents which were until now only available in German. With the still-growing interest in Benjamin’s thought, one can expect this book to become the standard English-language biography on Benjamin. In A Critical Life, the contours of Benjamin’s day-to-day life become graspable for the first time. It is fascinating to read about his whereabouts and travels, the people and places that formed the stages for his life and thought… This biography is also an intellectual biography, which puts the reader herself in a position to navigate the labyrinth-like edifice of Benjamin’s thought. For this alone, this biography proves to be a landmark achievement in the history of Benjamin scholarship. -- Sami Khatib * New Inquiry *Through this fair-minded and meticulously detailed biography we can, perhaps for the first time in the extensive literature on Benjamin, see clearly the way that the arc of his life and work, culminating in the overdose of morphine taken in the Hotel de Francia in Port Bou, is an expression of, and also an epic meditation on, the political and aesthetic conditions that provided the context of his coming into maturity as both a thinker and a man. -- Gregory Day * Sydney Morning Herald *[Eiland and Jennings] have produced this massive and gripping account of Benjamin’s life and troubles, testimonial both to their own efforts in bringing his elusive writings into view, and to the circumstances in which Benjamin arrived at such scope, depth and brilliance… This is Benjamin warts and all, but in place of an impressionistic biographical sketch of a life, marked by false starts and a final mischance, what emerges is an astonishing panorama of a life and of theorizing, of research and of publishing, on the crest of that wave of disaster that was the destruction of European Jewry and of German intellectual life. -- Joanna Hodge * Times Higher Education *I’ve been waiting for a book like this since first coming across Benjamin’s mesmerizing essays as a student. Like others who have fallen under his spell, I’ve had to make do with bits and pieces of biographical information over the years, not all of them reliable. Jennings and Eiland have spent almost two decades re-editing and retranslating all of Benjamin’s works and have also managed to create a map through the maze of his restless, exilic life. -- Eric Bulson * Times Literary Supplement *[Benjamin was] one of the most versatile men of letters the 20th century had known… [This is] an epic, 700-page-plus saga of his peripatetic life and his whirlwind of productivity. -- Eric Banks * Bookforum *In this ambitious biography, Benjamin scholars (and editors) Eiland and Jennings chart the protean, prolific—albeit short—life of the German-Jewish critic and philosopher with masterly aplomb. As a literary critic, a dodger of both World Wars, flâneur, and eventual victim of Hitler’s reign, Benjamin (1892–1940) lived with a funny gait, ‘an impenetrable façade’ of courtesy, and severe depression; fearing capture and deportation to Germany, he committed suicide in a Spanish hotel. Born to an affluent Berlin family, Benjamin advocated for the radical youth culture movement and education reform in Germany before he pursued a tenured professor of philosophy post in academia, which he never achieved. With intense wanderlust, Benjamin turned to an itinerant existence as he penned thousands of essays, reviews, and books. Shaping avant-garde realism and arguably inventing pop culture, he wrote that he hoped to be ‘the foremost critic of German literature.’ Leaving Germany for good in 1933, Benjamin spent his last dark decade in exile, where most of his writings contributed to his never completed masterpiece The Arcades Project—‘his cultural history of the emergence of urban commodity capitalism in mid-nineteenth-century France.’ The authors, in impressive and accessible fashion, reveal Benjamin as an eyewitness to Europe’s changing modernity. * Publishers Weekly (starred review) *Here, for the first time, is a thorough, reliable, non-tendentious, and fully developed account of Benjamin’s life and the sources of his work. Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life is by far the best biography of Benjamin that has yet appeared. A remarkable scholarly achievement, it will prove of enduring value and will doubtless become the standard reference work for those who become intrigued by the complicated contours of Benjamin’s life. -- Peter Fenves, Northwestern UniversityWalter Benjamin himself often grappled with the vexed and constantly shifting relations between self and work, life (bios) and writing (graphein). Whatever faint yet abiding hyphen may connect the two, that same line also forever holds them apart. The new biography by Howard Eiland and Michael Jennings, two Benjamin scholars of the first rank, offers a sober, meticulous, and often moving image of Benjamin’s brief life in the shadow of catastrophe. Brilliantly interweaving the conceptual threads of Benjamin’s enigmatic work with his no less enigmatic existence, this impeccably informed and eminently readable account of Benjamin’s life sets a new standard for his biographers and critics in any language. Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life is destined to stand the test of time. -- Gerhard Richter, Brown University

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Book SynopsisGerman scientist and man of letters Georg Christoph Lichtenberg was an 18th-century polymath: an experimental physicist, an astronomer, a mathematician, a practicing critic both of art and literature. He is most celebrated, however, for the casual notes and aphorisms that he collected in what he called his Waste Books. With unflagging intelligence and encyclopedic curiosity, Lichtenberg wittily deflates the pretensions of learning and society, examines a range of philosophical questions, and tracks his own thoughts down hidden pathways to disconcerting and sometimes hilarious conclusions.Lichtenberg''s Waste Books have been greatly admired by writers as very different as Tolstoy, Einstein, and Andre Breton, while Nietzsche and Wittgenstein acknowledged them as a significant inspiration for their own radical work in philosophy. The record of a brilliant and subtle mind in action, The Waste Books are above all a powerful testament to the necessity, and pleasure, of unfettered thought.

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The question of what Wittgenstein meant by ''forms of life'' has attracted a great deal of attention in the literature, yet it is an expression that Wittgenstein himself employs on only a relatively small number of occasions, and that he does not explicitly define. This Element gives a description of this concept that also explains Wittgenstein''s reluctance to say much about it. A short historical introduction examines the origins and uses of the term in Wittgenstein''s time. The Element then presents a survey of Wittgenstein''s employment of it, and an overview of the literature. Finally, the Element offers a methodological reading of this notion, interpreting it as a conceptual tool in Wittgenstein''s wider inquiries into the workings of our language.

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Book SynopsisWritten in 1938/9, Mindfulness (translated from the German Besinnung) is Martin Heidegger''s second major being-historical treatise. Here, Heidegger develops some of his key concepts and themes including truth, nothingness, enownment, art and Be-ing and discusses the Greeks, Nietzsche and Hegel at length. In addition to the main text, the text also includes two further important essays, A Retrospective Look at the Pathway' (1937/8) and ''The Wish and the Will (On Preserving What is Attempted)'' (1937/8), in which Heidegger surveys his unpublished works and discusses his relationship to Catholic and Protestant Christianity and reflects on his life''s path. This is a major translation of a key text from one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century, now available in the Bloomsbury Revelations Series.Trade ReviewThis is a central text for coming to terms with Heidegger's thinking ... The translation itself mirrors and maintains the haunting character of the German text. The Translators' Foreword is a masterpiece in setting the stage and opening up the possibilities for the English to stay true to the Heideggerian project of thinking the truth of be-ing. * Kenneth Maly, University of Wisconsin, USA *Table of ContentsTranslator's Foreword I. Introduction II. Leaping Ahead unto the Uniqueness of Be-ing III. Philosophy IV. On Projecting-Open Be-ing V. Truth and Knowing Awareness VI. Be-ing VII. Be-ing and Man VIII. Be-ing and Man IX. Anthropomorphism X. History XI. Technicity XII. 'History' and Technicity XIII. Be-ing and Power XIV. Be-ing and Being XV. The Thinking of Be-ing XVI. The Forgottenness of Be-ing XVII. The History of Be-ing XVIII. Gods XIX. Errancy XX. On the History of Metaphysics XXI. The Metaphysical 'Why-Question' XXII. Be-ing and 'Becoming' XXIII. Being as Actuality XXIV. Be-ing and 'Negativity' XXV. Being and Thinking, Being and Time XXVI. A Gathering into Being Mindful XXVII. The Be-ing-Historical Thinking and the Question of Being XXVIII. The Be-ing-Historical Concept of Metaphysics Appendix I: A Retrospective Look at the Pathway Appendix II: The Wish and the Will Editor's Epilogue

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Book SynopsisIllustrated guide to the controversial sociologist Jean Baudrillard, who died in 2007. Did the Gulf War take place? Is it possible to fake a bank robbery? Was sexual liberation a disaster? Jean Baudrillard has been hailed as one of France's most subtle and powerful theorists. But his provocative style and assaults on sociology, feminism and Marxism have exposed him to accusations of promoting a dangerous new orthodoxy - of being the 'pimp' of postmodernism. Introducing Baudrillard cuts beneath the controversy of this misunderstood intellectual to present his radical claims that reality has been replaced by a simulated world of images and events ranging from TV news to Disneyland. It provides a clear account of Baudrillard's work on obesity, pornography and terrorism and traces his development from critic of mass consumption to prophet of the apocalypse. Chris Horrocks' text and Zoran Jevtic?s artwork invite us to decide whether Baudrillard was a cure for the vertigo of contemporary culture - or one of its symptoms

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Book SynopsisThis edition of Utilitarianism supplements the text of Mill's classic essay with 58 related remarks carefully selected from Mill's other writings, ranging from his treatise on logic to his personal correspondence. In these remarks, Mill comments on specific passages of Utilitarianism, elaborates on topics he handles briefly in Utilitarianism, and discusses additional aspects of his moral thought. Short introductory comments accompany the related remarks, and an editor's introduction provides an overview of Utilitarianism crafted specifically to enhance accessibility for first-time readers of the essay.Trade Review"Some of the ambiguity of Utilitarianism can be resolved, or at least debated, by attention to Mill's other writings. Eggleston's edition provides the primary sources for such discussion in its endnotes. A serious teacher of Utilitarianism should use this edition." —Henry West, Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, Macalester College"Eggleston has produced easily the best edition of Utilitarianism available. By conveniently including so many of the relevant passages from supplementary works, all organized for ease of reference, scholars and students alike will now have at their fingertips the materials needed to make sense of Mill's classic text. This is important not just for an accurate understanding of Mill's own moral and political philosophy, but for a proper appreciation of utilitarianism as a leading moral tradition." —Piers Norris Turner, Associate Professor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University"Wonderful idea to publish Mill's Utilitarianism with related remarks from Mill's other writings. Like Nietzsche, Mill clearly assumed that the readers of Utilitarianism knew his other writings, which is no longer the case. That is why this is such a valuable edition, especially for students." —Robert H. Haraldsson, University of Iceland

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Book SynopsisThrough a collection of works from key thinkers in natural philosophy, the second edition of The Scientific Background to Modern Philosophy illuminates the central role scientific writing played in developing modern philosophical thought. This revised and expanded edition includes many new translations and incorporates works by foundational eighteenth- and nineteenth-century thinkers not in the first edition, including selections from works by Jean-Baptiste, le Rond d’Alembert, Denis Diderot, Émilie Du Châtelet, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Joseph Priestley, Immanuel Kant, Carl Linnaeus, William Paley, and Charles Robert Darwin. These new additions provide students with a more comprehensive understanding of the scientific context in which the major philosophical works of the modern era were written and complement the selections from works by Nicolaus Copernicus, Francis Bacon, Galileo Galilei, René Descartes, Robert Boyle, Christiaan Huygens, and Isaac Newton that are retained from the first edition.Trade Review"Students will find it approachable and accessible, and they will have at their fingertips a good deal of material for discussion of theories of matter and method in seventeenth-century science." -- Catherine Wilson, in Canadian Philosophical Review

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Book SynopsisBenjamin’s famous “Work of Art“ essay sets out his boldest thoughts—on media and on culture in general. This book contains the second, and most daring, of the four versions of the “Work of Art“ essay—the one that addresses the utopian developments of the modern media.Trade ReviewUntil recently, Walter Benjamin’s seminal essay, The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, was available to English-speaking readers only in the version that appeared in the 1968 collection Illuminations. Harvard’s new volume of the German cultural critic’s writings on media offers as its title-piece an earlier, edgier incarnation—the second of three composed between 1935 and 1939—in a superior translation… Throughout The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, Benjamin’s startling, often oblique language reveals his subjects from unexpected angles… This volume amply demonstrates the keenness and ingenuity of Benjamin’s intuitions at the dawn of modern media culture. -- Ross Benjamin * Times Literary Supplement *Freshly translated (it used to be called ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,’ which, although more lumberingly Teutonic, has the virtue of evoking an image of robot sex) and newly packaged with an assortment of his other ‘writings on media’ in a hipster-friendly paperback, Benjamin’s best-known work is…well, as they say on Facebook, it’s complicated. Man, is it ever complicated. The essay begins by describing the ways film and photography have changed human perception. Benjamin argues that because such exact simulacra of reality can be mass-distributed and mass-consumed, we have a new, more distant relationship to authentic reality—and he concludes that these changes in perception clear a path for fascism. Not exactly cheerleadery, then. And while it’s easy to be distracted by Benjamin’s dusty examples—Chaplin’s films and Picasso’s paintings—and therefore lulled into thinking he’s describing a different world…well, don’t be. Substitute blogs and social-networking platforms and Twitter and YouTube and Wikipedia for film and photography, and the nearly century-old essay becomes a relevant, piercing alarm. -- Emily Gould * Technology Review *The editors and publisher of this volume deserve credit for organizing its contents thematically rather than chronologically. Such a format encourages readers to approach Benjamin’s work discursively, thereby fostering a superior sense of the recurrent ideas, themes, motifs and concepts that Benjamin employed time and again. -- Noah Isenberg * The Nation *A juicy selection of [Benjamin’s] many short pieces on pop culture. -- George Fetherling * Seven Oaks *The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility and Other Writings on Media reflects Benjamin’s most salient thoughts on media and on culture in general in their most realized form, still maintaining an edge under the skin of everyone who reads it. The visual arts morph into literature and theory and then back to images, gestures and thought. Here the editors have situated this essay as the cornerstone of a vast collection of writings that demonstrates what was revolutionary about Benjamin’s explorations on media. He was so prescient, and mind you, Virginia, he was alive only until 1940. We are now talking about 2008 and his work is not just timely, but powerful, important, clairvoyant, and necessary. This is the second and most daring version of the ‘Work of Art’ essay which tracks Benjamin’s observations on the production and reception of art; on film, radio, and photography; on the telephone, on children’s books, on Charlie Chaplin and so much more. He was not a critic for the 20th century, he was a theoretician for all time. This volume will probably become a text for some classes, but it is an introduction, a force that must be dealt with by anyone interested in culture, in the media, in the arts, to debates on the digital age. He could explore implications of these themes and be so prescient about what we are experiencing today. Oh, if he were alive today, he would tell us about the future, I am sure. This is a must for anyone who wants to be introduced to Benjamin, or one who wants more and more of what he has to say—and this one is thankfully in English. * Umbrella *In recent decades, Benjamin’s essay on the work of art may have been quoted more often than any other single source in an astonishing range of areas—from new-left media theory to cultural studies, from film and art history to visual culture, from the postmodern art scene to debates on the future of art, especially film, in the digital age. The antinomies and ambivalences in Benjamin’s thinking, his efforts to explore the most extreme implications of opposing stances, are still invaluable for illuminating the contradictions in today’s media environment. Anyone interested in the fate of art, perception, and culture in the industrialized world must welcome this collection of Benjamin’s writings on media. -- Miriam HansenIn wanting to be a great literary critic [Benjamin] discovered that he could only be the last great literary critic… He explained certain aspects of the modern with an authority that seventy years of unpredictable change have not vitiated. -- Frank KermodeWalter Benjamin’s work, fragmentary and partly esoteric as it is, fully withstands a comparative measure, and surpasses any of its rivals in philosophic consequences. There has been no more original, no more serious critic and reader in our time. -- George SteinerThis one-volume gathering of Benjamin’s dialectical writing on media of all kinds, ranging from children’s literature to cinema, has at its heart the second, most expansive version of his path-breaking essay ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility.’ Readers familiar only with partial versions of this piece, where Benjamin began to record the melancholy loss of aesthetic presence at the turn of the twentieth century, will find their understanding transformed—for this second version, like all the essays and supplemental texts included here, explores a set of latent, utopian possibilities inherent in mechanical means of art-making. Benjamin, the visionary magus of particulars, reveals profoundly, and repeatedly, both the grounds and the consequences of our ever-changing image of the made world. -- Susan StewartTable of Contents* A Note on the Texts * Editors' Introduction I. The Production, Reproduction, and Reception of the Work of Art * The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility: Second Version * Theory of Distraction * To the Planetarium * Garlanded Entrance * The Rigorous Study of Art * Imperial Panorama * The Telephone * The Author as Producer * Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century * Eduard Fuchs, Collector and Historian * Review of Sternberger's Panorama II. Script, Image, Script-Image * Attested Auditor of Books * This Space for Rent * The Antinomies of Allegorical Exegesis * The Ruin * Dismemberment of Language * Graphology Old and New III. Painting and Graphics * Painting and the Graphic Arts * On Painting, or Sign and Mark * A Glimpse into the World of Children's Books * Dream Kitsch * Moonlit Nights on the Rue La Boetie * Chambermaids' Romances of the Past Century * Antoine Wiertz: Thoughts and Visions of a Severed Head * Some Remarks on Folk Art * Chinese Paintings at the Bibliotheque Nationale IV. Photography * News about Flowers * Little History of Photography * Letter from Paris (2): Painting and Photography * Review of Freund's Photographie en France au dix-neuvieme siecle V. Film * On the Present Situation of Russian Film * Reply to Oscar A. H. Schmitz * Chaplin * Chaplin in Retrospect * Mickey Mouse * The Formula in Which the Dialectical Structure of Film Finds Expression VI. The Publishing Industry and Radio * Journalism * A Critique of the Publishing Industry * The Newspaper * Karl Kraus * Reflections on Radio * Theater and Radio * Conversation with Ernst Schoen * Two Types of Popularity: Fundamental Reflections on a Radio Play * On the Minute * Index

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Book SynopsisIn this wide-ranging and probing book Erin Manning extends her previous inquiries into the politics of movement to the concept of the minor gesture. The minor gesture, although it may pass almost unperceived, transforms the field of relations. More than a chance variation, less than a volition, it requires rethinking common assumptions about human agency and political action. To embrace the minor gesture''s power to fashion relations, its capacity to open new modes of experience and manners of expression, is to challenge the ways in which the neurotypical image of the human devalues alternative ways of being moved by and moving through the world—in particular what Manning terms 'autistic perception.' Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari''s schizoanalysis and Whitehead''s speculative pragmatism, Manning''s far-reaching analyses range from fashion to depression to the writings of autistics, in each case affirming the neurodiversity of the minor and the alternative politics it gestuTrade Review"Manning emphasizes a kind of affect that brings to the fore a feeling of being a part of a larger environment, something relational, something that helps people to see themselves as part of something bigger." -- Karen Simecek * Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory *"The Minor Gesture is a fascinating and intellectually challenging book that successfully problematises common-sense (neurotypical) understandings of perception, action and embodiment. In doing so it politicises mundane everyday experience and calls for sustained critique of normatively framed lifeworlds." -- Ben Simmons * Disability & Society *"A wide-ranging and carefully argued book. . . . Now that we know just how much mental activity escapes our conscious awareness and defies standard and dialectical accounts of knowledge, reason, and agency, efforts like Manning’s to better understand neurodiversity and to mobilize that understanding for research-creation and political activism alike are invaluable." -- Eugene W. Holland * Contemporary Political Theory *Table of ContentsPreface ix Introduction: In a Minor Key 1 1. Against Method 26 2. Artfulness: Emergent Collectives and Processes of Individuation 46 3. Weather Patterns, or How Minor Gestures Entertain the Environment 64 4. Dress Becomes Body: Fashioning the Force of Form 86 5. Choreographing the Political 111 6. Carrying the Feeling 131 7. In the Act: The Shape of Precarity 165 8. What a Body Can Do: A Conversation with Arno Boehler 189 Postscript: Affirmation without Credit 201 Notes 233 References 261 Index 269

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Book Synopsis“We should be grateful to Schopenhauer for managing to express the truth about life so beautifully.” — Alain De Botton, author of The Consolations of PhilosophyThe Essential Schopenhauer delivers the first comprehensive English anthology of the seminal philosopher’s writings, edited by Wolfgang Schirmacher, president of the International Schopenhauer Association. This indispensable collection affords readers a uniquely accessible gateway into the monolithic thinker’s prodigious body of work. Just as the Harper Perennial Basic Writings series renders the work of Heidegger and Nietzsche accessible for English readers, The Essential Schopenhauer gives us unprecedented access to the complex ideas of this profound and influential thinker.Trade Review“Schopenhauer’s beautiful, exceptionally dark philosophy liberates us from the intolerable burden placed upon us by our contemporary optimism. The Essential Schopenhauer is a book to turn to when all others have failed.” — Alain de Botton, bestselling author of The Consolations of Philosophy and How Proust Can Change Your Life “Unquestionably one of the most profound and penetrating intellects.” — New York Times “A great philosopher” — The Guardian “Schopenhauer’s philosophy has had a special attraction for those who wonder about life’s meaning, along with those engaged in music, literature, and the visual arts.” — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

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