Philosophy Books
Page 1 of 9 - 210 results
Masterpieces of World Philosophy: Nearly 100 Classics of the World's Greatest Philosophers Analyzed and Explained
Magill, Frank N. (Edt)
(Hardcover)
List Price: $48.95 Sale: $20.56
Nearly 100 classics of the world's greatest philosophers analyzed and explained.
Great Thinkers of the Western World
McGreal, Ian P.
(Hardcover)
List Price: $47.00 Sale: $19.71
Great Thinkers of the Western World is a concise and authoritative guide to the principal theoretical ideas of the outstanding thinkers in Western History. From Parmenides to Albert Camus, these men and women have profoundly influenced the development of Western civilization through their theories and revolutionary ideas and by providing intellectual, scientific or spiritual illumination. Articles on 116 thinkers are arranged chronologically, making it easy for readers to follow and appreciate the development of ideas from the early Greeks through the first half of the twentieth century. Each article provides basic biographical information, a list of the thinker's major works, a summary of his or her principal ideas, an essay explaining the thinker's most significant theories and indicating his or her place in the history of thought and a brief bibliography of further readings. An absorbing, accessible and highly informative introduction to the greatest minds of Western civilization, Great Thinkers of the Western World improves our understanding of Western thought and how it evolved.
The End Is Always Near: Apocalyptic Moments, from the Bronze Age Collapse to Nuclear Near Misses (Large Print)
Carlin, Dan
(Paperback)
List Price: $31.99 Sale: $12.06
Do tough times create tougher people? Can humanity handle the power of its weapons without destroying itself? Will human technology or capabilities ever peak or regress? No one knows the answers to such questions, but no one asks them in a more interesting way than Dan Carlin.In The End is Always Near, Dan Carlin looks at questions and historical events that force us to consider what sounds like fantasy; that we might suffer the same fate that all previous eras did. Will our world ever become a ruin for future archaeologists to dig up and explore? The questions themselves are both philosophical and like something out of The Twilight Zone.Combining his trademark mix of storytelling, history and weirdness Dan Carlin connects the past and future in fascinating and colorful ways. At the same time the questions he asks us to consider involve the most important issue imaginable: human survival. From the collapse of the Bronze Age to the challenges of the nuclear era the issue has hung over humanity like a persistent Sword of Damocles.Inspired by his podcast, The End is Always Near challenges the way we look at the past and ourselves. In this absorbing compendium, Carlin embarks on a whole new set of stories and major cliffhangers that will keep readers enthralled. Idiosyncratic and erudite, offbeat yet profound, The End is Always Near examines issues that are rarely presented, and makes the past immediately relevant to our very turbulent present.
The Father of Lights: A Theology of Beauty (Theology for the Life of the World)
Johnson, Junius
(Hardcover)
List Price: $26.00 Sale: $11.12
"Every good giving and every perfect gift is from on high, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning" (James 1:17). This verse conveys a powerful image of God as the source and referent of all beauty. This book demonstrates how the experience of beauty is related to our inherent longing for the God who is reflected in such moments. Richly informed by Junius Johnson's expertise on Bonaventure and von Balthasar, the book offers a robust, full-orbed theology of beauty, showing how it has functioned as a theological concept from biblical times to the present day.
I You We Them: Walking into the World of the Desk Killer (Volume 1)
Gretton, Dan
(Hardcover)
List Price: $40.00 Sale: $11.12
A landmark historical investigation into crimes against humanity and the nature of evilVast and revelatory, Dan Gretton’s I You We Them is an unprecedented study of the perpetrators of crimes against humanity: the “desk killers” who ordered and directed some of the worst atrocities of the modern era. From Albert Speer’s complicity in Nazi barbarism to Royal Dutch Shell’s role in the murders of the Nigerian activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and the rest of the Ogoni Nine, Gretton probes the depths of the figure “who, by giving orders, uses paper or a phone or a computer to kill, instead of a gun.”Over the past twenty years, Gretton has interviewed survivors and perpetrators, and pored over archives and thousands of pages of testimony. His insight into the psychology of the desk killer is contextualized by the journey he took to penetrate it. Woven into the narrative are his contemplative interludes - perspectives gleaned during walks in the woods, reminiscences about a lost love, and considerations of timeless moral conundrums. The result is a genre-bending work steeped as much in personal reflection as it is in literature and historical and psychological illumination.A synthesis of history, reportage, and memoir, I You We Them is the first volume of a groundbreaking journal of discovery that bears witness to and reckons with the largest and most pressing questions before humanity.
The Elementary Forms of Religious Life
Durkheim, Emile
(Paperback)
List Price: $27.99 Sale: $10.19
Published in 1912, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life was the last major book by the great sociologist Emile Durkheim. An early translation has remained the only English-language version available, despite many errors. Now a sociologist and religious scholar offers a much-needed new translation that will restore Durkheim's work to its original brilliance.
Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil
Neiman, Susan
(Hardcover)
List Price: $30.00 Sale: $10.19
As an increasingly polarized America fights over the legacy of racism, Susan Neiman, author of the contemporary philosophical classic Evil in Modern Thought, asks what we can learn from the Germans about confronting the evils of the pastIn the wake of white nationalist attacks, the ongoing debate over reparations, and the controversy surrounding Confederate monuments and the contested memories they evoke, Susan Neiman’s Learning from the Germans delivers an urgently needed perspective on how a country can come to terms with its historical wrongdoings. Neiman is a white woman who came of age in the civil rights–era South and a Jewish woman who has spent much of her adult life in Berlin. Working from this unique perspective, she combines philosophical reflection, personal stories, and interviews with both Americans and Germans who are grappling with the evils of their own national histories.Through discussions with Germans, including Jan Philipp Reemtsma, who created the breakthrough Crimes of the Wehrmacht exhibit, and Friedrich Schorlemmer, the East German dissident preacher, Neiman tells the story of the long and difficult path Germans faced in their effort to atone for the crimes of the Holocaust. In the United States, she interviews James Meredith about his battle for equality in Mississippi and Bryan Stevenson about his monument to the victims of lynching, as well as lesser-known social justice activists in the South, to provide a compelling picture of the work contemporary Americans are doing to confront our violent history. In clear and gripping prose, Neiman urges us to consider the nuanced forms that evil can assume, so that we can recognize and avoid them in the future.
Seven Types of Atheism
Gray, John
(Hardcover)
List Price: $25.00 Sale: $10.19
For a generation now, public debate has been corroded by a shrill, narrow derision of religion in the name of an often vaguely understood “science.” John Gray’s stimulating and enjoyable new book, Seven Types of Atheism, describes the complex, dynamic world of older atheisms, a tradition that is, he writes, in many ways intertwined with and as rich as religion itself.Along a spectrum that ranges from the convictions of “God-haters” like the Marquis de Sade to the mysticism of Arthur Schopenhauer, from Bertrand Russell’s search for truth in mathematics to secular political religions like Jacobinism and Nazism, Gray explores the various ways great minds have attempted to understand the questions of salvation, purpose, progress, and evil. The result is a book that sheds an extraordinary light on what it is to be human.
Sun-Tzu: The Art of Warfare
Sun-Tzu
(Hardcover)
List Price: $25.00 Sale: $9.98
The most widely read military classic in human history, this work has been the seminal guide on the philosophy of war for two millennia. But in 1972, Chinese archaeologists unearthed a cache of manuscripts, and scholars found five hitherto unknown chapters. This edition is the first English translation to take advantage of the newly discovered materials.
Surfing with Sartre: An Aquatic Inquiry into a Life of Meaning
James, Aaron
(Hardcover)
List Price: $27.95 Sale: $9.98
Author Aaron James uses the experience and the ethos of surfing to explore key concepts in philosophy. The existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once declared "the ideal limit of aquatic sports . . . is waterskiing." The avid surfer and lavishly credentialed academic philosopher Aaron James vigorously disagrees, and in Surfing with Sartre he intends to expound the thinking surfer's view of the matter, in the process elucidating such philosophical categories as freedom, being, phenomenology, morality, epistemology, and even the emerging values of what he terms "leisure capitalism." In developing his unique surfer-philosophical worldview, he draws from his own experience of surfing and from surf culture and lingo, and includes many relevant details from the lives of the philosophers, from Aristotle to Wittgenstein, with whose thought he engages. In the process, he'll speak to readers in search of personal and social meaning in our current anxious moment, by way of doing real, authentic philosophy.
The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World
Svensson, Patrik
(Hardcover)
List Price: $28.99 Sale: $9.76
The Book of Eels is both a meditation on the world’s most elusive fish - the eel - and a reflection on the human conditionRemarkably little is known about the European eel, Anguilla anguilla. So little, in fact, that scientists and philosophers have, for centuries, been obsessed with what has become known as the “eel question”: Where do eels come from? What are they? Are they fish or some other kind of creature altogether? Even today, in an age of advanced science, no one has ever seen eels mating or giving birth, and we still don’t understand what drives them, after living for decades in freshwater, to swim great distances back to the ocean at the end of their lives. They remain a mystery.Drawing on a breadth of research about eels in literature, history, and modern marine biology, as well as his own experience fishing for eels with his father, Patrik Svensson crafts a mesmerizing portrait of an unusual, utterly misunderstood, and completely captivating animal. In The Book of Eels, we meet renowned historical thinkers, from Aristotle to Sigmund Freud to Rachel Carson, for whom the eel was a singular obsession. And we meet the scientists who spearheaded the search for the eel’s point of origin, including Danish marine biologist Johannes Schmidt, who led research efforts in the early twentieth century, catching thousands upon thousands of eels, in the hopes of proving their birthing grounds in the Sargasso Sea.Blending memoir and nature writing at its best, Svensson’s journey to understand the eel becomes an exploration of the human condition that delves into overarching issues about our roots and destiny, both as humans and as animals, and, ultimately, how to handle the biggest question of all: death. The result is a gripping and slippery narrative that will surprise and enchant.
The End Is Always Near: Apocalyptic Moments, from the Bronze Age Collapse to Nuclear Near Misses
Carlin, Dan
(Hardcover)
List Price: $29.99 Sale: $9.76
Do tough times create tougher people? Can humanity handle the power of its weapons without destroying itself? Will human technology or capabilities ever peak or regress? No one knows the answers to such questions, but no one asks them in a more interesting way than Dan Carlin.In The End is Always Near, Dan Carlin looks at questions and historical events that force us to consider what sounds like fantasy; that we might suffer the same fate that all previous eras did. Will our world ever become a ruin for future archaeologists to dig up and explore? The questions themselves are both philosophical and like something out of The Twilight Zone.Combining his trademark mix of storytelling, history and weirdness Dan Carlin connects the past and future in fascinating and colorful ways. At the same time the questions he asks us to consider involve the most important issue imaginable: human survival. From the collapse of the Bronze Age to the challenges of the nuclear era the issue has hung over humanity like a persistent Sword of Damocles.Inspired by his podcast, The End is Always Near challenges the way we look at the past and ourselves. In this absorbing compendium, Carlin embarks on a whole new set of stories and major cliffhangers that will keep readers enthralled. Idiosyncratic and erudite, offbeat yet profound, The End is Always Near examines issues that are rarely presented, and makes the past immediately relevant to our very turbulent present.
The Senecans: Four Men and Margaret Thatcher
Stothard, Peter
(Hardcover)
List Price: $29.95 Sale: $9.76
A year after the death of Margaret Thatcher, a young historian arrives to ask Peter Stothard, Editor of the Time Literary Supplement and former editor of The Time, some sharp questions about his memories of the Thatcher era. During the interview the offices from where he long observed British politics are being systematically flattened by wrecking balls. From the dust and destruction of a collapsing newspaper plant emerge portraits of the Senecans, four of the men who made the Thatcher court so different from that of her successors. As well as love of Britain's first female Prime Minister they shared strange Latin lessons in a crumbling riverside bar. They took their name from their taste for the work of Lucius Annaeus Seneca, a pioneer writer from Cordoba in Roman Spain, a philosopher, courtier and acquirer of massive wealth from the age of the Emperor Nero.Blending memoir with ancient and modern politics in the manner of his acclaimed diaries, Spartacus Road and Alexandria, Peter Stothard sheds a sideways light on Margaret Thatcher's "believing age," a personal picture of our recent history. In finally identifying his interviewer he also answers questions about his own literary and political journey.
A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism
Gopnik, Adam
(Hardcover)
List Price: $28.00 Sale: $9.76
A stirring defense of liberalism against the dogmatisms of our time from an award-winning and New York Times bestselling author.Not since the early twentieth century has liberalism, and liberals, been under such relentless attack, from both right and left. The crisis of democracy in our era has produced a crisis of faith in liberal institutions and, even worse, in liberal thought.A Thousand Small Sanities is a manifesto rooted in the lives of people who invented and extended the liberal tradition. Taking us from Montaigne to Mill, and from Middlemarch to the civil rights movement, Adam Gopnik argues that liberalism is not a form of centrism, nor simply another word for free markets, nor merely a term denoting a set of rights. It is something far more ambitious: the search for radical change by humane measures. Gopnik shows us why liberalism is one of the great moral adventures in human history - and why, in an age of autocracy, our lives may depend on its continuation.
Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment
Fukuyama, Francis
(Hardcover)
List Price: $26.00 Sale: $9.51
The New York Times bestselling author of The Origins of Political Order offers a provocative examination of modern identity politics: its origins, its effects, and what it means for domestic and international affairs of state.
Character: The History of a Cultural Obsession
Garber, Marjorie
(Hardcover)
List Price: $32.00 Sale: $9.25
A spirited, engaging investigation into the concept of character, an enduring human obsession in literature, psychology, politics, and everyday lifeWhat is “character”? How can it be measured, improved, or built? Are character traits fixed or changeable? Is character innate, or can it be taught?Since at least the time of Aristotle, philosophers, theologians, moralists, artists, and scientists have engaged with the enigma of human character. In its oldest usage, “character” derives from a word for engraving or stamping, yet over time, it has come to mean a moral idea, a type, a literary persona, and a physical or physiological manifestation, observable in works of art and scientific experiments. It is an essential term in drama and the focus of self-help books.In Character: The History of a Cultural Obsession, Marjorie Garber points out that character seems more relevant than ever today - the term is omnipresent in discussions of politics, ethics, gender, morality, and the psyche. References to character flaws, character issues, character assassination, and allegations of “bad” and “good” character are inescapable in the media and in contemporary political debates.What connection does “character,” in this moral or ethical sense, have with the concept of a character in a novel or a play? Do our notions about fictional characters help to produce our ideas about moral character? Can character be formed, or taught, in schools, in scouting, in the home? From Plutarch to John Stuart Mill, from Shakespeare to Darwin, from Theophrastus to Freud, from nineteenth-century phrenology to twenty-first-century brain scans, the search for the sources and components of human character still preoccupies us.The question of character arises in virtually every area of modern life. And in each case, there is the same fundamental tension: is it innate or intrinsic to the individual, or something that can be learned or modeled? At a time when both the meaning and the value of this term are put in question, no issue is more important, and no topic more vital, surprising, and fascinating.With her distinctive verve, humor, and vast erudition, Marjorie Garber explores the stakes of these conflations, confusions, and heritages, from ancient Greece to the present day.
Greek and Roman Philosophy After Aristotle
Saunders, Jason L. (Edt)
(Paperback)
List Price: $23.99 Sale: $9.05
This book brings together over twenty-five of the most important works of Western philosophy written from 322 B.C.E. - the death of Aristotle - to the close of the third century C.E. Eminent philosopher Jason Saunders' choices for this concise volume emphasize the range and significance of the leading philosophers of the Hellenistic Age. Supplemented by Dr. Saunders' enlightening introduction, descriptive notes, and extensive bibliography, these readings provide an essential introduction for students and general readers alike to the enormous influence of Greek philosophy on the formative years of Christianity as well as the early Christians' distrust of it.
The Tao of Bill Murray: Real-Life Stories of Joy, Enlightenment, and Party Crashing
Edwards, Gavin
(Hardcover)
List Price: $26.00 Sale: $9.05
This collection of the most epic, hilarious, and strange Bill Murray stories, many of which have never before been reported, spotlights the star's extraordinary ability to infuse the everyday with surprise, absurdity, and wonder. No one will ever believe you. New York Times bestselling author Gavin Edwards, like the rest of us, has always been fascinated with Bill Murray--in particular the beloved actor's adventures off-screen, which rival his filmography for sheer entertainment value. Edwards traveled to the places where Murray has lived, worked, and partied, in search of the most outrageous and hilarious Bill Murray stories from the past four decades, many of which have never before been reported. Bill once paid a child five dollars to ride his bike into a swimming pool. The star convinced Harvard's JV women's basketball team to play with him in a private game of hoops. Many of these surreal encounters ended with Bill whispering, "No one will ever believe you" into a stranger's ear. But The Tao of Bill Murray is more than just a collection of wacky anecdotes. This volume puts the actor's public clowning into a larger context, as Edwards distills Murray's unique way of being into a set of guiding principles. A sideways mix of comedy and philosophy, full of photo bombs, late-night party crashes, and movie-set antics, this is the perfect book for anyone who calls themselves a Bill Murray fan--which is to say, everyone.
The Courage to Be Happy: Discover the Power of Positive Psychology and Choose Happiness Every Day
Kishimi, Ichiro
(Hardcover)
List Price: $25.00 Sale: $8.83
What if one simple choice could unlock your destiny?Already a major Japanese bestseller, this eye-opening and accessible follow-up to the "compelling" (Marc Andreessen) international phenomenon The Courage to be Disliked shares the powerful teachings of Alfred Adler, one of the giants of 19th-century psychology, through another illuminating dialogue between the philosopher and the young man.Three years after their first conversation, the young man finds himself disillusioned and disappointed, convinced Adler's teachings only work in theory, not in practice. But through further discussions between the philosopher and the young man, they deepen their own understandings of Adler's powerful teachings, and learn the tools needed to apply Adler's teachings to the chaos of everyday life.To be read on its own or as a companion to the bestselling first book, The Courage to Be Happy reveals a bold new way of thinking and living, empowering you to let go of the shackles of past trauma and the expectations of others, and to use this freedom to create the life you truly desire.Plainspoken yet profoundly moving, reading The Courage to Be Happy will light a torch with the power to illuminate your life and brighten the world as we know it. Discover the courage to choose happiness.
The Power of Meaning: Crafting a Life That Matters
Smith, Emily Esfahani
(Hardcover)
List Price: $28.00 Sale: $8.83
In a culture obsessed with happiness, this wise, stirring book points the way toward a richer, more satisfying life.Too many of us believe that the search for meaning is an esoteric pursuit - that you have to travel to a distant monastery or page through dusty volumes to discover life’s secrets. The truth is, there are untapped sources of meaning all around us - right here, right now.To explore how we can craft lives of meaning, Emily Esfahani Smith synthesizes a kaleidoscopic array of sources - from psychologists, sociologists, philosophers, and neuroscientists to figures in literature and history such as George Eliot, Viktor Frankl, Aristotle, and the Buddha. Drawing on this research, Smith shows us how cultivating connections to others, identifying and working toward a purpose, telling stories about our place in the world, and seeking out mystery can immeasurably deepen our lives.To bring what she calls the four pillars of meaning to life, Smith visits a tight-knit fishing village in the Chesapeake Bay, stargazes in West Texas, attends a dinner where young people gather to share their experiences of profound loss, and more. She also introduces us to compelling seekers of meaning - from the drug kingpin who finds his purpose in helping people get fit to the artist who draws on her Hindu upbringing to create arresting photographs. And she explores how we might begin to build a culture that leaves space for introspection and awe, cultivates a sense of community, and imbues our lives with meaning.Inspiring and story-driven, The Power of Meaning will strike a profound chord in anyone seeking a life that matters.
Being and Time
Heidegger, Martin
(Softcover)
List Price: $19.95 Sale: $8.40
"What is the meaning of being?" This is the central question of Martin Heidegger's profoundly important work, in which the great philosopher seeks to explain the basic problems of existence. A central influence on later philosophy, literature, art, and criticism—as well as existentialism and much of postmodern thought—Being and Time forever changed the intellectual map of the modern world. As Richard Rorty wrote in the New York Times Book Review, "You cannot read most of the important thinkers of recent times without taking Heidegger's thought into account."
Process and Reality (Corrected Edition)
Whitehead, Alfred North
(Paperback)
List Price: $19.95 Sale: $8.40
Alfred North Whitehead, philosopher, mathematician, and prolific author, was one of the most influential scholars of his age, and Process and Reality, his magnum opus, is one of the major philosophical works of the modern world. SC, 413 pages.
The Security Principle: From Serenity to Regulation
Gros, Frederic
(Paperback)
List Price: $26.95 Sale: $8.40
In The Security Principle, French philosopher Frédéric Gros takes a historical approach to the concept of security, looking at its evolution from the Stoics to the social network. With lucidity and rigour, Gros’s approach is fourfold, looking at security as a mental state, as developed by the Greeks; as an objective situation and absence of all danger, as prevailed in the Middle Ages; as guaranteed by the nation-state and its trio of judiciary, police, and military; and finally biosecurity, control, regulation, and protection in the flux of contemporary society. In this deeply thought-provoking account, Gros’s exploration of security shines a light both on its past meanings and its present uses, exposing the contemporary abuses of security and the pervasiveness of it in everyday life in the Global North.
The Tao of Abundance
Boldt, Laurence G.
(Softcover)
List Price: $22.00 Sale: $8.40
Advocating new definitions of success, the author draws on Eastern philosophy to create a program for achieving true wealth. Rich with practical ways to develop trust, sharpen awareness, and tap into sources of satisfaction, The Tao of Abundance shows how fulfillment within leads to prosperity outside.
Page 1 of 9 - 210 results
To Top