History & Surveys

In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Albert Camus declared that a writer's duty is twofold: "the refusal to lie about what one knows and the resistance against oppression." These twin obsessions help explain something of Camus' remarkable character,...

How did the evil nature of slavery become enshrined in law in Great Britain? What drove the change in public perception? What were the key victories on the journey to abolition and who were the key players? What is to prevent a similar evil gaining...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780929524177Author Julia Haig GaisserFormat PaperbackPage Count 52Imprint Bryn Mawr CommentariesPublisher Bryn Mawr CommentariesWeight(grams) 80g

Roger Scruton is one of the most widely respected philosophers of our time, whose often provocative views never fail to stimulate debate. In Modern Philosophy he turns his attention to the whole of the field, from the philosophy of logic to aesthetics,...

The collective belief in the End of the World, as described in the Biblical Book of Revelation, can be seen in public reaction to terrorist outrages such as those of Sept. 11, in the preoccupation with disasters, in the obsession with UFO's and the...

A reprint of the Bobbs-Merrill edition of 1970.These essays lead the reader through the land of the wonderful shrinking genie to the warehouse where the infinity machines are kept. By careful examination of a lamp that is switched on and off infinitely...

A key introductory philosophy textbook, making use of an innovative, interactive technique for reading philosophical texts Reading Philosophy: Selected Texts with a Method for Beginners, Second Edition, provides a unique approach to reading philosophy,...

What are human beings like? How is knowledge possible? What is truth? Where do moral values come from? Questions like these have stood at the centre of Western philosophy for centuries. In addressing them, philosophers have made certain fundamental...

It was not until 1961 that Foucault published his first major book, History of Madness. He had already been working as an academic for a decade, teaching in Lille and Paris, writing, organizing cultural programmes and lecturing in Uppsala, Warsaw and...

A biography of the boldest and most unsettling of the early modern philosophers, Spinoza, which examines the man's life, relationships, writings, and career, while also forcing us to rethink how we previously understood Spinoza's reception in his own...

'Do not act as if you had ten thousand years to live ... while you have life in you, while you still can, make yourself good.' The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) is a private notebook of philosophical reflections, written by a Roman...

By his writings, the surviving bulk of which exceeds that of any other ancient author, Augustine came to influence not only his contemporaries but also the West since his time. This Very Short Introduction traces the development of Augustine's thought,...

Solomon, the legend goes, had a magic ring which enabled him to speak to the animals in their own language. Konrad Lorenz was gifted with a similar power of understanding the animal world. He was that rare beast, a brilliant scientist who could write...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781890350017Author Peter KingsleyFormat PaperbackPage Count 272Imprint Golden Sufi Center,U.S.Publisher Golden Sufi Center,U.S.Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 153mm...

Rene Descartes (1596-1650) had a remarkably short working life, and his output was small, yet his contributions to philosophy and science have endured to the present day. He is perhaps best known for his statement 'Cogito, ergo sum'. By a mixture of...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9788793494589Author PlatoFormat PaperbackPage Count 1184Imprint Fili PublicPublisher Fili PublicWeight(grams) 1619gDimensions(mm) 234mm * 156mm * 59mm

In the first century BCE, Marcus Tullius Cicero, orator, statesman, and defender of republican values, created these philosophical treatises on such diverse topics as friendship, religion, death, fate and scientific inquiry. A pragmatist at heart,...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781600251139Author Albert SchweitzerFormat PaperbackPage Count 124Imprint Maurice BassettPublisher Maurice Bassett

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781931019040Author AnonymousFormat PaperbackPage Count 116Imprint Bryn Mawr CommentariesPublisher Bryn Mawr CommentariesWeight(grams) 150g

From the philosophy of Aristotle and Confucius, to Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae, to the paintings of Raphael, Botticelli and many more, fascination with the virtues has endured and evolved to fit a wide range of cultural, religious, and philosophical...

Epistemology, or the theory of knowledge, is concerned with how we know what we do and what justifies us in believing what we do. The philosophical literature in epistemology has mushroomed in the past four decades, and interest in the topic continues to...

This book intends to establish, against his numerous modern critics, that the ancient philosopher Parmenides was a mystic. Instead of arriving at his conclusions by cold reason, Parmenides found the unity of Being, which he called "the Truth,"...

Investigates the intellectual affinities of Adorno and Nietzsche, culminating in a discussion of their readings of Wagner, who serves as a medium and supplement for their critiques of modern culture.This is the first book to provide a broad and...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781628451283Author Oswald SpenglerFormat PaperbackPage Count 554Imprint Windham PressPublisher Windham PressWeight(grams) 975gDimensions(mm) 246mm * 189mm *...

In addresses written for a wide general audience, one of the twentieth century's most prominent thinkers, Claude Levi-Strauss, here offers the insights of a lifetime on the crucial questions of human existence. Responding to questions as varied as 'Can...

The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius are treasured today-as they have been over the centuries-as an inexhaustible source of wisdom. And as one of the three most important expressions of Stoicism, this is an essential text for everyone interested in ancient...

Philip Burton explores Augustine's treatment of language in his Confessions - a major work of Western philosophy and literature, with continuing intellectual importance. One of Augustine's key concerns is the story of his own encounters with language:...

The Critique of Practical Reason is the second of Kant's three Critiques, one of his three major treatises on moral theory, and a seminal text in the history of moral philosophy. Originally published three years after his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of...

In this definitive historical investigation, Italian author and philosopher Domenico Losurdo argues that from the outset liberalism, as a philosophical position and ideology, has been bound up with the most illiberal of policies: slavery, colonialism,...

When published in 1981, The Mismeasure of Man was immediately hailed as a masterwork, the ringing answer to those who would classify people, rank them according to their supposed genetic gifts and limits. And yet the idea of innate limits-of biology as...

This book brings together three major studies from Isaiah Berlin's central intellectual project - to explain the opposition to the excessively scientistic French Enlightenment by getting under the skin of its critics and giving a sympathetic account of...

The Animal That Therefore I Am is the long-awaited 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. The book was...

The philosopher Wittgenstein is considered by many to be the most influential and significant of the 20th century. This book introduces him to students of theology and focuses on his writings dealing with theological issues such as the inner life,...

"The Government of Poland is the only finished work in which Rousseau himself dons the mantle of legislator, applying the principles of the Social Contract to the real world around him. Poland teaches us much about the mysterious art of the Social...

'Yes, what is Dionysian? - This book provides an answer - "a man who knows" speaks in it, the initiate and disciple of his god.' The Birth of Tragedy (1872) is a book about the origins of Greek tragedy and its relevance to the German culture of its...

The fundamental tetralogy on Socrates' final days.Plato of Athens, who laid the foundations of the Western philosophical tradition and in range and depth ranks among its greatest practitioners, was born to a prosperous and politically active family circa...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781872292120Author Boris MouravieffFormat PaperbackPage Count 256Imprint Praxis Institute PressPublisher Praxis Institute Press

The Ego and His Own, the seminal defence of individualism, coloured the thinking of Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Ernst, Henrik Ibsen and Victor Serge, among many others, some of whom would vigorously deny any such influence in later years. Less reticent...

Jonathan Israel presents the first major reassessment of the Western Enlightenment for a generation. Continuing the story he began in the best-selling Radical Enlightenment , and now focusing his attention on the first half of the eighteenth century, he...

"Gill's and Ryan's Parmenides is, simply, superb: the Introduction, more than a hundred pages long, is transparently clear, takes the reader meticulously through the arguments, avoids perverseness, and still manages to make sense of the dialogue as a...