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We are all afraid that new dangers pose a threat to our hard-won freedoms, so what deserves attention is precisely the notion of freedom. The concept of freedom is deceptively simple. We think we understand it, but the moment we try and define it we...

No judgement of taste is innocent - we are all snobs. Pierre Bourdieu's Distinction brilliantly illuminates the social pretentions of the middle classes in the modern world, focusing on the tastes and preferences of the French bourgeoisie. First...

WITH AN INTRODUCTION, PLUS EXTENSIVE NOTES AND REFERENCES BY HERMIONE LEE This volume combines two books which were among the greatest contributions to feminist literature this century. Together they form a brilliant attack on sexual inequality. A Room...

Why do we love to swear so much? Why do we get so offended when others do it? With wit and insight, philosopher Rebecca Roache seeks answers to these and other puzzling questions about bad language. When someone swears at you, it can sting. Likewise,...

Augusto Boal saw theatre as a mirror to the world, one that we can reach into to change our reality. This book, The Theatre of the Oppressed, is the foundation to 'Forum Theatre', a popular radical form practised across the world. Boal's techniques...

Forty years after the defeat of Nazism, and twenty years after the great wave of decolonization, how is it that racism remains a growing phenomenon? What are the special characteristics of contemporary racism? How can it be related to class divisions and...

The extraordinary early life in India and England of one of the world's leading public intellectualsWhere is 'home'? For Amartya Sen, home has been many places - Dhaka in modern Bangladesh, the little university town of Santiniketan, where he was raised...

Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World presents a highly original global theory of culture. Here, in his greatest work, Rene Girard explores the function of violence, mimetic desire and the mechanism of the scapegoat, in the history of society...

Here, for the first time in English, is volume one of Jurgen Habermas's long-awaited magnum opus: The Theory of Communicative Action. This pathbreaking work is guided by three interrelated concerns: (1) to develop a concept of communicative rationality...

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...

This major work retraces the emergence and development of the Bourgeois public sphere - that is, a sphere which was distinct from the state and in which citizens could discuss issues of general interest. In analysing the historical transformations of...

A philosopher examines the complicated phenomenon of gaslighting“Gaslighting” is suddenly in everyone’s vocabulary. It’s written about, talked about, tweeted about, even sung about (in “Gaslighting” by The Chicks). It’s become shorthand for being...

Violence and the Sacred is Rene Girard's landmark study of human evil. Here Girard explores violence as it is represented and occurs throughout history, literature and myth. Girard's forceful and thought-provoking analyses of Biblical narrative, Greek...

The environment has long been the undisputed territory of the political Left, which has seen the principal threats to the earth as issuing from international capitalism, consumerism and the over-exploitation of natural resources. In Green Philosophy,...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781947534551Author Shashi TharoorFormat PaperbackPage Count 320Imprint Scribe USPublisher Scribe USWeight(grams) 431gDimensions(mm) 234mm * 152mm * 25mm

At its beginning, every age has been "modern." We speak of "pre-" and "post-" modern ages. We are likewise tempted to identify what is most up-to-date with what is true. But to be up-to-date is to be out-of-date. If we find what is really true in any...

An engaging and illuminating exploration of grief-and why, despite its intense pain, it can also help us growExperiencing grief at the death of a person we love or who matters to us-as universal as it is painful-is central to the human condition...

Who ought to govern? Why should I obey the law? How should conflict be controlled? What is the proper education for a citizen and a statesman? These questions probe some of the deepest and most enduring problems that every society confronts, regardless...

A trenchant case for a novel philosophical position: that our political thinking is driven less by commitments to freedom or fairness than by an aversion to hierarchy.Niko Kolodny argues that, to a far greater extent than we recognize, our political...

In 1930 the great economist Keynes predicted that, over the next century, income would rise steadily, people's basic needs would be met and no one would have to work more than fifteen hours a week. Why was he wrong?Robert and Edward Skidelsky argue that...

Why you don't have a self-and why that's a good thingIn Losing Ourselves, Jay Garfield, a leading expert on Buddhist philosophy, offers a brief and radically clear account of an idea that at first might seem frightening but that promises to liberate us...

Here Scruton explains the connection between good wine and serious thought with a heady mix of humour and philosophy. We are familiar with the medical opinion that a daily glass of wine is good for the health and also the rival opinion that any more...

Humanity now stands at a crossroads between a world of unimaginable wonders and one of unprecedented terrors. The choices we make now will determine not only the shape of our future, but whether there will be, for us as a species, a future at all. But,...

In this joyous introduction to the major debates in Western philosophy, we see how cartoons can shed light and humour on life's Big Questions. Topics such as gender, morality and the meaning of life are examined here with a razor wit and eye. Open...

Three centuries ago, Voltaire published his Dictionnaire philosophique, taking in such idiosyncratic topics as adultery, mountains, nakedness, and others besides. In 1957, another French philosopher of more recent vintage, Roland Barthes, mused in his...

Forty years in the making, this long-awaited reinterpretation of Hegel's The Phenomenology of Spirit is a landmark contribution to philosophy by one of the world's best-known and most influential philosophers.In this much-anticipated work, Robert Brandom...

An entertaining and enlightening anthology of classical Greek and Roman writings on animals-and our vital relationships with themHow to Care about Animals is a fascinating menagerie of passages from classical literature about animals and the lives we...

Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) was one of the major intellectual figures of the twentieth century. Born in Konigsberg to secular Jewish parents, she was a student of the two major exponents of Existenz...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781590177815Author Simone WeilFormat PaperbackPage Count 96Imprint NYRB ClassicsPublisher The New York Review of Books, IncWeight(grams) 120gDimensions(mm)...

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)...

There is a radical agency in John Moriarty's work that we as readers don't always spot. As our heads spin with mythological cross-referencing, poetical leaps and the philosophical bent, it is clear that there is nothing domestic, nothing tame, about John...

'Brilliant interweaving of personal experience, imaginative musing and political clarity' Kate Mosse Virginia Woolf exposes the prejudices and constraints against which women writers struggled for centuries, and argues for a more equal literary ...

'Important . . . powerful . . . . an explanation of why Black protest is such a dangerous prospect to the white power structure' Kehinde Andrews, GuardianWhere is the path to racial justice? In this ground-breaking book, philosopher Lewis R. Gordon...

How institutional and interpersonal policing have been central to worldmaking Policing is constitutive of colonial modernity: normalizing, internalizing, and legalizing anti-Black violence as the ongoing condition for white life and freedom. The result,...

The Inclusion of the Other contains Habermas's most recent work in political theory and political philosophy. Here Habermas picks up some of the central themes of Between Facts and Norms and elaborates them in relation to current political debates. One...

This expanded edition of John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism includes the text of his 1868 speech to the British House of Commons defending the use of capital punishment in cases of aggravated murder. The speech is significant both because its topic...

More and more, we present ourselves and encounter others through profiles. A profile shows us not as we are seen directly but how we are perceived by a broader public. As we observe how others observe us, we calibrate our self-presentation accordingly...

From the beginning, the French philosopher Claude Lefort has set himself the task of interpreting the political life of modern society - and over time he has succeeded in elaborating a distinctive conception of modern democracy that is linked to both...

Virtually everyone supports religious liberty, and virtually everyone opposes discrimination. But how do we handle the hard questions that arise when exercises of religious liberty seem to discriminate unjustly? How do we promote the common good while...

This inaugural volume in the Munich Lectures in Ethics series presents lectures by noted philosopher Philip Kitcher. In these lectures, Kitcher develops further the pragmatist approach to moral philosophy, begun in his book The Ethical Project. He uses...