Essays

Phaedrus is widely recognized as one of Plato's most profound and beautiful works. It takes the form of a dialogue between Socrates and Phaedrus and its ostensible subject is love, especially homoerotic love. This new translation is accompanied by an...

A guide to the complex subject of ethics explained in clear and entertaining language. This new edition is fully revised and updated. This popular introduction to the subject of ethics poses vital contemporary questions and explores the...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.AwardsWinner of Literary Award (Art of the Essay) 2000.Book InformationISBN 9780375703478Author Annie DillardFormat PaperbackPage Count 224Imprint Vintage BooksPublisher Random...

From the sierras of New Mexico to the streets of New York and LA by night-"a sort of luminous, geometric, incandescent immensity"-Baudrillard mixes apercus and observations with a wicked sense of fun to provide a unique insight into the country that...

'Bristles with provocative insights into the tangled liaisons of sex and self' Times Higher EducationIn the third volume of his acclaimed examination of sexuality in modern Western society, Foucault investigates the Golden Age of Rome to reveal a ...

Many critics agree that Joel and Ethan Coen are one of the most visionary and idiosyncratic filmmaking teams of the last three decades. Combining thoughtful eccentricity, wry humor, irony, and often brutal violence, the Coen brothers have crafted a style...

First and foremost an outcry against injustice and inhumanity, Unto this Last is also a closely argued assault on the science of political economy, which dominated the Victorian period. Ruskin was a profoundly conservative man who looked back to the...

Provocative essays on real-world ethical questions from the world's most influential philosopherPeter Singer is often described as the world's most influential philosopher. He is also one of its most controversial. The author of important books such as...

'These hours of solitude and meditation are the only time of the day when I am completely myself' Reveries of the Solitary Walker is Rousseau's last great work, the product of his final years of exile from the society that condemned his political and...

Radical critic of a European civilization plunging into darkness, yet commemorator of the humane traditions of the old bourgeoisie--such was Walter Benjamin in the later 1930s. This volume, the third in a four-volume set, offers twenty-seven brilliant...

A Beginner's Guide to Reality is an introduction to philosophy for people who don't read philosophy. Jim Baggott's sources range from Aristotle to The Matrix. He examines the major developments in Western philosophical thought on the nature of reality,...

The final major work by one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth centuryIn the fourth and final volume of his far-reaching and influential study of human sexuality, Foucault turns his attention to early Christianity, exploring how ancient...

"We continue to live within the intellectual shadow cast by Nietzsche."-New York Times Book Review Reissued for the age of "fake news," On Truth and Untruth charts Nietzsche's evolving thinking on truth, which has exerted a powerful...

'To read through A Barthes Reader is finally to be left with the image of Barthes as one of the great public teachers of our time' New RepublicEdited by Susan Sontag, A Roland Barthes Reader offers a definitive selection of works by the French...

Peter Vardy's much acclaimed introduction to the study of ideas about God - now revised and updated. A clear, well-written guide to philosophical thinking about God. Starting with the question of what it means to say we believe in God, and...

Ten brief essays on how reading and meaningfully engaging with literature can help us live better, more purposeful lives. How do we live successfully? How do we live...

How to be Free is Tom Hodgkinson's manifesto for a liberated life.Modern life is absurd. How can we be free?If you've ever wondered why you bother to go to work, or why so much consumer culture is crap, then this book is for you. Looking to history,...

The feminist book they tried to ban in France 'A delightful book' Roxane Gay Women, especially feminists and lesbians, have long been accused of hating men. Our instinct is to deny it at all costs. (After all, women have been burnt...

During his decades of world fame as a novelist, Tolstoy also wrote prolifically in a series of essays and polemics on issues of morality, social justice and religion. These works culminated in What is Art?, published in 1898. Impassioned and...

This excellent collection is the most complete anthology of Latin American philosophers in English available today. Leading philosophers from several different Latin American countries and from various periods in the history of Latin American thought are...

Aristotle Ars RhetoricaBook InformationISBN 9780198145578Author Sir David RossFormat HardbackPage Count 220Imprint Oxford University PressPublisher Oxford University PressDimensions(mm) 194mm * 131mm * 19mm

Regarded as the founder of Neo-Platonism, Plotinus (AD 204-70) was the last great philosopher of antiquity, producing 0works that proved in many ways a precursor to Renaissance thought. Plotinus was convinced of the existence of a state of supreme...

'Language is a body, a living creature ... and this creature's home is the inarticulate as well as the articulate'. John Berger's work has revolutionized the way we understand visual language. In this new book he writes about language itself, and how it...

IDEAS THAT HAVE THE POWER TO CHANGE THE WORLDThe best of an extraordinary 70 year archive, gathered in one volume for the first time. The prestigious BBC Reith Lectures have been enriching the world with new ideas since 1948. Every year, a world-leading...

From 'one of the most influential thinkers of our time' (Sunday Times): how to respond to today's demands on our attentionIn this brilliant follow-up to The Case for Working with Your Hands, Matthew Crawford investigates the challenge of mastering one's...

The struggle which Plato has Socrates recommend to his interlocutors in Gorgias - and to his readers - is the struggle to overcome the temptations of worldly success and to concentrate on genuine morality. Ostensibly an enquiry into the value of...

Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched...

Lydia Davis returns with a timeless collection of essays on literature and language.'Precise, concentrated, lyrical. No one writes like Lydia Davis, and everyone should read her' Hanif Kureishi'A writer as mighty as Kafka, as subtle as Flaubert, and as...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781590178942Author Friederich NietzscheFormat PaperbackPage Count 136Imprint NYRB ClassicsPublisher The New York Review of Books, IncWeight(grams)...

'One of the world's most prominent postcolonial writers ... He has consistently and with great compassion penetrated the effects of colonialism and its effects on the lives of uprooted and migrating individuals' Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel...

Most American young people, like their ancestors, harbor desires for a worthy life: a life of meaning, a life that makes sense. But they are increasingly confused about what such a life might look like, and how they might, in the present age, be able to...

What is the contemporary legacy of Gramsci's notion of Hegemony? How can universality be reformulated now that its spurious versions have been so thoroughly criticized? In this ground-breaking project, Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Zizek...

Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched...

These new translations present Plato's remarkable dramatization of the momentous events surrounding the trial of Socrates in 399 BC, on charges of irreligion and corrupting the young. The Euthyphro, Defence of Socrates, and Crito form a dramatic and...

Between 1961, when she gave her first talk at the Ford Hall Forum in Boston, and 1981, when she gave the last talk of her life in New Orleans, Ayn Rand spoke and wrote about topics as varied as education, medicine, Vietnam, and the death of Marilyn...

Timaeus and Critias is a Socratic dialogue in two parts. A response to an account of an ideal state told by Socrates, it begins with Timaeus's theoretical exposition of the cosmos and his story describing the creation of the universe, from its very...

Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched...

Back in print after fifty years and with a new introduction by Ray Brassier, this often overlooked but prescient collection of Marcuse's lectures makes an impassioned plea for the overthrowing of capitalism. Analysing the work of Freud and Marx, and...

In one of the most influential philosophical works ever writen, John Stuart Mill explores the risks and responsibilities of liberty. Examining the tyranny that can come both from government and from the herd-like opinion of the majority, Mill proposes a...

Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched...