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This book brings together two classic texts of American cultural criticism and philosophy by George Santayana, one of the most significant philosophers of the twentieth-century.

Averroes (1126-1198), a Muslim philosopher, physician, and jurist, is most famous for his commentaries on the surviving works of Aristotle. This translation of Averroes’ Long Commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima brings to English-language readers a central work of medieval philosophy.

In the most comprehensive examination to date of Heidegger’s Nazism, Emmanuel Faye draws on previously unavailable materials to paint a damning picture of Nazism’s influence on the philosopher’s thought and politics.

This ground-breaking book, the first to examine Milton’s thinking about matter and substance throughout his entire poetic career, seeks to alter the prevailing critical view pertaining to Milton’s philosophy.

This breath-taking record of Sartre’s spirited conversations with his godson are an essential companion to the works of one of the 20th-century’s most important thinkers.

The distinguished scholar David Gelernter presents a highly original guide to Judaism as a way of life and the fundamentals of Jewish belief.

In this accessible book, a biologist reflects on the question “What is life?” and looks at the answers provided by an array of recent scientific advances. Michel Morange describes different approaches to the perennially unresolved question through history, then clearly explains today’s new answers.

This book is the first full-scale appraisal of the life and work of Jacques Derrida, one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth-century.

In this masterful work of historical scholarship, Zeev Sternhell, an internationally renowned authority on the subject, presents a controversial new view of the origins of Fascism.

In this important book, an eminent scholar seeks to reconcile accounts of the world given in the natural sciences and religion by examining initiatives in cognitive science and evolutionary biology on one hand and theology on the other.

In this pathbreaking book, one of Britain’s most interesting thinkers takes us on an exuberant tour of the human head. Blending science, philosophy, and humor, Raymond Tallis discusses the head, the astonishing range of processes and phenomena that go on within in it, and how it is connected to our sense of identity and consciousness.

In the pages of this slim, powerful book Rob Riemen argues with passion that “nobility of spirit” is the quintessence of a civilized world. It is, as Thomas Mann believed, the sole corrective for human history. Without nobility of spirit, culture vanishes. Yet in the early twenty-first century, a time when human dignity and freedom are imperiled, the conc...

This engaging book presents a full account of the tragic collapse of the friendship between Rousseau and Hume, the two most important thinkers of the eighteenth century. The authors explore the relation between the men’s quarrel and their philosophical thought and discuss how their incompatible ideas reverberate in thinking today.

This major new translation of Plato’s greatest dialogue has been eagerly awaited by those who know R. E. Allen’s accurate and readable renditions of Plato’s Dialogues. Allen provides useful notes in this volume as well as an introduction in which he considers the profound influence of The Republic on America’s Founding Fathers and on the development of constitutional...

This initial volume in a series of new translations of Plato’s works includes a general introduction and interpretive comments for the dialogues translated: the Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Gorgias, and Menexenus. 

Allen's superb new translation of Plato's Symposium brings this classic text to life for modern readers. Allen supplements his faithful and readable translation with a commentary that not only enriches our understanding of Plato's philosophy and the world of Greek antiquity but also provides insights into present-day philosophical concerns.

R.E. Allen's superb new translations of four Socratic dialogues—Ion, Hippias Minor, Laches, and Protagoras—bring these classic texts to life for modern readers. Allen introduces and comments on the dialogues in an accessible way, inviting the reader to reexamine the issues Plato continually raises in his works: Is virtue an art? Are wisdom and courage logically equivalent...

In this superb translation of the Parmenides, Allen brings one of Plato’s most significant later dialogues to a broad readership. This work is of profound philosophical importance in its own right, and it also contributes to the understanding of Plato’s subsequent dialogues, Aristotle’s criticisms of Plato, his testimony about Plato, and the origins of his own doctrines.

In this bold, powerful interpretation of Plato’s most controversial dialogue, Stanley Rosen challenges earlier readings of the Republic by Leo Strauss and his disciples. While the fundamental principles underlying the just city are theoretically attractive, to enact them in practice leads to conceptual incoherence and political disaster, Rosen argues.

Erdmut Wizisla’s groundbreaking work explores for the first time the important friendship between Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht during the crucial interwar years in Berlin, and illuminates nearly two decades of European intellectual life.

With over 450 definitions and articles, this comprehensive dictionary encompasses all the important thinkers, topics, and technical terms associated with continental philosophy. The volume features extensive cross-referencing that will enable professionals, students, and general readers to pursue related subjects and examine ideas in depth.

This landmark study—a detailed textual and thematic analysis of one of Nietzsche’s most important but least understood works—places the book in the contexts of Greek, Christian, Enlightenment, and postmodernist thought. 

Hermeneutics as Politics, perhaps the most important critique of post-modern thought ever written, is here reissued in a special fifteenth anniversary edition. In a new foreword, Robert B. Pippin argues that the book has rightfully achieved the status of a classic. Rosen illuminates the underpinnings of post-modernist thought, providing valuable insight as he pursues two arguments: first, t...

This lucid biography of Theodor Adorno, co-founder of the famous Frankfurt School and one of Germany’s most important twentieth-century thinkers, offers a fresh perspective on his life and writings. It examines the central sources of Adorno’s intellectual development and places his work in its essential political context.

American philosopher Calvin O. Schrag here sketches a new portrait of the human self by way of a critical engagement with the proponents of postmodernity, experimenting with an innovative vocabulary so as to describe self-understanding and self-formation in its discursive, action-oriented, communal and transcending dynamics.

Defining craftsmanship far more broadly than “skilled manual labor,” Richard Sennett maintains that the computer programmer, the doctor, the artist, and even the parent and citizen engage in a craftsman’s work. Craftsmanship names the basic human impulse to do a job well for its own sake, says the author, and good craftsmanship involves developing s...

This poetic meditation on professional sport by one of the major figures of twentieth-century French literature will appeal both to sports enthusiasts and to those with a literary bent. Published here in an elegant paperback gift edition, Roland Barthes’s inspired What Is Sport? ponders bull fighting, car racing, the Tour de France, hockey, and soccer.

What is honor? Has its meaning changed since ancient times? Is it an outmoded notion? Does it still have the power to direct our behavior? In this provocative book Alexander Welsh considers the history and meaning of honor and dismisses the idea that we live in a post-honor culture. He notes that we have words other than honor, such as respect, self-...

This engaging book seeks to revive an understanding of honorable ambition.  Drawing from classical accounts of Plato, Aristotle, and Thucydides, the author presents a compelling picture of greatness. Modern thinkers who disdain ambition are mistaken, the author contends, and he offers an appreciation of what makes leaders great.

In this brilliant book, William J. Bouwsma amends the conventional view of the European Renaissance as the root and foundation of modern culture, arguing instead that while it had a beginning and a climax, the Renaissance also had an ending. Bouwsma examines closely the waning of the Renaissance culture of freedom and creativity, and he offers an original interpretation of the place of the Renaiss...

This is intellectual history at its best, or what Kuklick calls “the history of difficult ideas.”  The author, historian and philosopher, tells a fascinating story of the men, the ideas, and the institutions that formed American philosophy.  He has made a successful attempt to bridge the gap between social history and the history of ideas. 

In this illuminating book, Laurence Lampert provides a section by section interpretation of one of Nietzsche’s mature masterpieces, Beyond Good and Evil. Lampert emphasizes the book’s unity and depth as a comprehensive new teaching on nature and humanity and its harmony with Nietzsche’s other masterpiece, Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

In this groundbreaking biography, Joachim Köhler examines Nietzsche’s philosophy through a reconstruction of the controversial thinker’s inner life. Köhler demonstrates how Nietzsche’s homosexuality (Zarathustra’s secret) fundamentally influenced his life and work, and further, how the concealment of his forbidden sexual desire deeply compromised Nietzsche’s...

Did modernity begin with the Renaissance and end with post-modernity? In this book, a distinguished scholar challenges both these assumptions, discussing the roots, development, and impact of modern thought, tracing the fundamental principles of modernity to the late fourteenth century, and affirming that modernity is still an influential force in contemporary culture.

Many disciplines create books of readings by the dozens; it is a rare event when a reader helps to create a discipline. On its publication in 1952, Main Currents of Western Thought did just that. “As of the moment, intellectual history is both popular and suspect,” Franklin Le Van Baumer wrote in his introduction, adding that it “currently enjoys something like a vogue on ...

This study sheds new light on Marx’s achievement by presenting a critical reading of his interpretation of culture.  Dupré discusses the relation of Marx to previous philosophers, especially Hegel; the stages of development and contradictions within Marx’s conception of culture; and the contributions of the various Marxists who followed Marx.

First published in Paris in 1511, The Praise of Folly has enjoyed enormous and highly controversial success from the author’s lifetime down to our own day. The Folly has no rival, except perhaps Thomas More’s Utopia, as the most intense and lively presentation of the literary, social, and theological aims and methods of Northern Humanism. Clarence H. ...

Nearly five centuries after Thomas More wrote Utopia, his book continues to address issues of powerful contemporary concern—religious pluralism, women’s rights, state-sponsored education, colonialism, and justified warfare. Clarence Miller’s new translation of this foundational text in philosophy and political theory reflects with unprecedented accuracy the sense and tone ...

This is the first book to examine in full the interconnections between Vico’s new science and Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Donald Phillip Verene analyzes Vico’s major works, demonstrating how images from Joyce’s work offer keys to Vico’s philosophy.

This anthology of Edmund Burke’s important speeches, letters, and pamphlets shows the genius of the great eighteenth-century British statesman and the depth of his concern with reform—particularly in America, India, and Ireland. Selected, introduced, and annotated by David Bromwich, these writings cover Burke’s thinking over his entire career and across the wide range of his poli...

G. W. F. Hegel offers perhaps the most profound and systematic modern attempt to understand the state as the realization of human freedom. In this comprehensive examination of the philosopher’s ideas on freedom, Paul Franco focuses particularly on Hegel’s masterpiece, Philosophy of Right. Franco traces the development of Hegel’s ideas and relates them to modern political t...

This book offers an account of idealism, one of the great “black holes” of contemporary philosophical discussion. Tom Rockmore focuses on Kant and idealist constructivism, situates the philosopher in relation to thinking that preceded and that followed his own, and argues that constructivism offers a lively, important approach to knowledge after the decline of metaphysical realism.

In this book—the first large-scale survey of the complex relationship between Hegel’s idealism and Anglo-American analytic philosophy—Tom Rockmore argues that analytic philosophers have, since the generation of Moore and Russell, consistently misread and misappropriated Hegel.

This landmark book is now reissued in a new edition that has been vastly rewritten and updated to respond to recent Kantian literature. It includes a new discussion of the Third Analogy, a greatly expanded discussion of Kant’s Paralogisms, and entirely new chapters dealing with Kant’s theory of reason, his treatment of theology, and the important Appendix to the Dialectic.

Kant’s brilliant original contributions to political thought cannot be understood without attention to his dynamic concept of provisional right, Elisabeth Ellis argues in this book—the first comprehensive interpretation of Kant’s political theory. Ellis traces the idea through Kant’s works and demonstrates its application in contemporary debates and policy decisions.

Kant’s views on politics, peace, and history as expressed in key writings on these topics remain as relevant today as when they were written more than two centuries ago. This volume contains a comprehensive collection of Kant’s writings on international relations theory and political philosophy, newly translated and accompanied by stimulating essays.

In this book, one of the most important texts in the history of ethics, Kant searches for the supreme principle of morality and presents his argument for a conception of the moral life. This edition includes a new translation and comprehensive annotations by preeminent Kant scholar Allen W. Wood, as well as essays discussing the issues raised by the text. 

This book poses an eloquent challenge to the common conception of the hermeneutical tradition as a purely modern German specialty. Kathy Eden traces a continuous tradition of interpretation from Republican Rome to Reformation Europe, arguing that the historical grounding of modern hermeneutics is in the ancient tradition of rhetoric.

Here Mark Roche examines literature in its function as teacher of virtue and moral excellence, arguing that the current crisis in the humanities may be traced to the separation of art and morality. As our sense of intrinsic value becomes lost in this technological age, says Roche, literature helps us grapple with ethical challenges.

This is the first translation of a powerful work in modern Italian philosophy and rhetoric, a work that develops Nietzschean themes and anticipates the conclusions of, among others, Martin Heidegger. Written in 1910, it is a deeply personal book, reflecting the young author’s struggle to make sense of modern life.

The popularity of Kabbalah, a Jewish mystical movement at least 900 years old, has grown astonishingly in recent decades. In this original piece of scholarship a noted expert on Kabbalah provides for the first time a broad overview of the major trends in the “kabbalistic Renaissance” of recent decades together with in-depth discussions of major figures an...

With wit and wisdom seven acclaimed scholars in sociology, history, science, and theology examine the debate between creationists and evolutionists and the teaching of evolution in America’s schools. This volume marks the one-hundredth anniversary of The Terry Lecture Series.

A renowned critic demolishes the insistent claims of atheists and others who assert that science has rendered God and faith obsolete. Seasoning his serious book with humor, Terry Eagleton reexamines God, Jesus, free will, scientific thought, and liberalism to arrive at the conclusion that reason and faith are by no means mutually exclusive.

In this provocative book, David Bentley Hart dismantles distorted religious “histories” offered up by Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and other contemporary critics of religion. He counters their polemics with a brilliant account of Christianity and its message of human charity as the most revolutionary movement in all of Western history.

Despite the differences of their subject matter, science and theology have a cousinly relationship, John Polkinghorne argues in this thought-provoking book. From a unique perspective as both theoretical physicist and Anglican priest, he uncovers an array of significant parallels between quantum physics and theology.

 

One of our great theologians, also a physicist, here sets a new agenda for religion’s dialogue with science. John Polkinghorne approaches the dialogue from a little-explored perspective in which theology shapes the discussion, and he argues convincingly that science and theology can inform one another in significant ways.

Reality is multi-layered, consisting not only of the scientific processes of the natural world but also the personal dimension of human nature, asserts quantum physicist/Anglican priest John Polkinghorne in his latest book. His integrated view of reality draws on insights both scientific and religious to expand our understanding of the nature and complexity of reality.

 

John Polkinghorne brings unique qualifications to his exploration of the possibilities of believing in God in an age of science: he is internationally known as a theoretical physicist and as a theologian. In this thought-provoking book, Polkinghorne focuses on the collegiality between science and theology, contending that the inquiries of these "intellectual cousins" are parallel.

In this captivating book, one of the most highly-regarded scientist-theologians of our time offers a thought-provoking exploration of the interaction between science and theology. John Polkinghorne defends the place of theology in the university, discusses the role of revelation in religion, and focuses closely on reconciling what science can say about the processes of the universe with theology&#...

Do we live in a world that makes sense, not just now but forever? If the universe is going to end in collapse or decay, can it really be a divine creation? Is there a credible hope of a destiny beyond death? In this engaging book, a leading scientist-theologian draws on ideas from science, scripture, and theology to address these and other important questions.

In this classic work, the eminent Catholic philosopher Étienne Gilson deals with one of the most important and perplexing metaphysical problems: the relation between our notion of God and demonstrations of his existence. Gilson examines Greek, Christian, and modern philosophy as well as the thinking that has grown out of our age of science in this fundamental analysis of the problem of God.

In this eloquent introduction to early Christian thought, eminent religious historian Robert Louis Wilken examines the tradition that such figures as St. Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa, and others set in place. These early thinkers constructed a new intellectual and spiritual world, Wilken shows, and they can still be heard as living voices in the modern world.

Two highly respected religious scholars, one a Christian and the other a Jew, explore the origins of the belief in resurrection. They clarify what is surprising to many—that the Jews believed in resurrection long before the emergence of Christianity—and they discuss deep and meaningful connections between their two faiths.

This provocative volume explores the origins of the Jewish doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. Contrary to the widely accepted modern view, the ancient rabbis were keenly committed to the belief that at the end of time, God would restore the deserving dead to life, argues eminent theologian Jon D. Levenson.

In this remarkable book, one of the world’s leading theologians offers insights into the history and significance of Christian creeds. Jaroslav Pelikan addresses essential questions about the Christian tradition: the origins of creeds; their function; their political role; how they relate to Christian institutions, worship, and service; and how they help to explain the major divisions of the...

This pathbreaking book tells the story of American metaphysical religion more fully than it has ever been told before, along the way revising the entire panorama of American religious history. Catherine L. Albanese argues that metaphysical religion has been more influential than previously recognized and that it offers key insights into mainstream American religion.

What is the common bond that links different religious traditions? Discussing a wide range of Western and Eastern religions, one of the world's most prominent philosophers of religion presents an interpretation of religions as culturally conditioned responses to a universal divine reality. John Hick's groundbreaking work provides not only a foundation for religious affirmation but also a framework...

In this stimulating book a distinguished theologian reflects on the development of atheism from the beginnings of modernity to the present day, offering a new interpretation of the origins of atheistic consciousness.

This important book offers the first comprehensive history of religious dualism, the doctrine that cosmos and man are constant battlegrounds for the forces of good and evil and their supernatural protagonists. Yuri Stoyanov traces crucial stages in the evolution of dualism from its early expression in late Egyptian religion and the revelations of Zoroaster to the revival of the “Great Heresy...

In this unique introductory survey—more modest in scope but more scholarly in method than Cardinal Newman’s great programmatic essay of 1845—Mr. Pelikan presents three case histories of the particular doctrines that have crucial points of division among Christians. His cogent analyses of Cyprian on Original Sin, Athanasius on the Virgin Mary, and Hilary on the Holy Spirit demonst...

Is something true because we believe it to be so or because it is true? In this book an eminent philosopher offers a critique of the value driven concept of truth as it was suggested by Kant and developed by such philosophers as Foucault, Derrida, and Rorty. David Weissman argues that truth can be objectively determined as the correspondence between statement and fact, that what can be said about ...

Already technology enables parents to select some genetic traits for their children, and soon it will be possible to begin to shape ourselves as a species. Countering loud cries of alarm, bioethics expert Ronald Green explains why our fears about genetic engineering are overblown and how we can move forward responsibly to create a better future.

Already technology enables parents to select some genetic traits for their children, and soon it will be possible to begin to shape ourselves as a species. Countering loud cries of alarm, bioethics expert Ronald Green explains why our fears about genetic engineering are overblown and how we can move forward responsibly to create a better future.

Whether stem cell research lives up to its promise will largely depend upon new laws as yet unwritten, says the author of this timely book. He identifies, analyzes, and proposes answers to controversial legal questions concerning cloning, patenting stem cells lines, government funding of research that destroys embryos, and much more.

Whether stem cell research lives up to its promise will largely depend upon new laws as yet unwritten, says the author of this timely book. He identifies, analyzes, and proposes answers to controversial legal questions concerning cloning, patenting stem cells lines, government funding of research that destroys embryos, and much more.

The brain is at once a physical object, a living organ, and the cradle of the mind. This book introduces the general reader to its complexities through a series of clinical tales that illustrate its workings, level by level, from atom to psyche. Each narrative opens a window onto the experience of the patient, the life of the doctor, and the science that makes sense of the brain.

In this thought-provoking book, neurologist Adam Zeman offers an enlightening view of consciousness seen through the lenses of science and of philosophy. Zeman explores the physiology of the brain and nervous system, cognition and awareness, vision and the senses, and feelings and the soul, enhancing his discussion with case studies of neurological patients and observations of young children’...

Renowned neuroscientist and Nobel Laureate Dr. Gerald M. Edelman here offers a new theory of knowledge based on startling advancements in brain science. In accessible language he describes how our brains and bodies give rise to knowledge, creativity, and mental experience and predicts a future in which brain-based devices will be conscious.

A leading neuroscientist here explains the workings of the brain and the connections between mind and body. Nobel Laureate Dr. Gerald Edelman explores the relation of consciousness to causation, evolution, the development of the self, and the origins of feelings, learning, and memory, basing his fascinating discussion on recent remarkable advances in science and medicine.

In this elegantly written book, an eminent psychologist traces the history of the field of psychology during the last fifty years—the period of his own career. Jerome Kagan examines seminal events in the field, reveals how his assumptions have changed, and offers penetrating critiques of many popular ideas in contemporary psychology and neurobiology.

This engrossing book explores the profound implications of personal information on the Internet, preserved forever even if it is false, biased, or humiliating. Brimming with examples of online gossip, slander, and rumor, the book discusses the tensions between privacy and free speech and proposes how to balance the two. What information about you is on the Internet? ...

This engrossing book explores the profound implications of personal information on the Internet, preserved forever even if it is false, biased, or humiliating. Brimming with examples of online gossip, slander, and rumor, the book discusses the tensions between privacy and free speech and proposes how to balance the two. What information about you is on the Internet? ...

As physicians are faced with new and wonderful options for saving lives, transplanting organs, and furthering research, they also must wrestle with new and troubling choices—who should receive scarce and vital treatment, how we determine when life ends, what limits should be placed on care for the dying, and more. This book by renowned theologian Paul Ramsey, first published thirty years ago...

One of America's leading writers on medical ethics offers a major contribution to the ongoing debate concerning medical practice and public policy in such matters as abortion, euthanasia, and the right to die. These legal issues, Ramsey suggests, both affect and reflect the morality of our times.

“Because those who come after us may not be like us, or because those like us may not come after us, or because after a time there may be none to come after us, mankind must now set to work to insure that those who come after us will be more unlike us.  In this there is at work the modern intellect’s penchant for species suicide.”  With these words Paul Ramsey brings to...

In considering the moral and ethical problems involved in fetal research, Paul Ramsey deals with the ways in which medical policy is formulated. This important continuation of Ramsey's contribution to medical ethics does not tell the reader what to think about experimentation on fetuses, but how to think about this form of research.

This deeply insightful book traces the development of Husserl’s thought from his earliest investigations in philosophy—informed by his work as a mathematician—to his publication of Ideas in 1913. Jitendra N. Mohanty, an internationally renowned Husserl scholar, presents a masterful study that illuminates Husserl’s central concerns and p...

This book presents a new English translation of two seminal works by Jean-Paul Sartre, the most dominant European intellectual of the post-World War II decades. The volume includes Sartre’s “Existentialism Is a Humanism” and his analysis of Camus’s The Stranger, along with a discussion of these works by acclaimed Sartre biographer Annie Cohen-Solal.

This landmark book focuses on Eugen Fink, Husserl’s research assistant during the last decade of the renowned phenomenologist’s life, and shows that Fink was actually a collaborator with Husserl, contributing indispensable elements to the recasting of Husserl’s philosophical ideas.

This book offers a reevaluation and fresh analysis of German philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey’s hermeneutics of life, placing his ideas against the background of the development of philosophy during the past two centuries.

This new translation makes this work more accessible to students than ever before. It combines smoothness with accuracy and provides conventional translations of Greek passages that Heidegger translated unconventionally. There are also extensive notes, a German-English glossary, and an introduction that discusses the history of the text, its basic themes, and its place in Heidegger’s oeuvre....

This provocative book draws on the thinking of three great political philosophers to diagnose the malady of today’s liberal democracies: soft despotism. A condition that occurs as paternalistic state power expands, soft despotism may be nonviolent, but it seriously undermines the spirit of self-government, says historian Paul Rahe.

This fresh examination of the works of Montesquieu seeks to understand the shortcomings of the modern democratic state in light of the great political thinker’s insightful critique of liberal democracy.

In this important book, one of our boldest and most original thinkers charges that conventional explanations of poverty are mistaken, and that the anti-poverty policies built upon them are doomed to fail. Charles Karelis proposes a new and persuasive explanation for what keeps people poor and shows how this fresh perspective can reinspire the long-stalled campaign against poverty.

Hannah Arendt’s prize-winning biographer presents a concise guide to the great political philosopher’s major works and thought. Elisabeth Young-Bruehl shows how the ideas Arendt developed in the post-World War II years are just as relevant today, illuminating such vitally important topics as totalitarianism, terrorism, globalization, war, and “radical evil.”

This is the first complete account of the intellectual development of Leo Strauss, one of the most important political theorists of the 20th century and one whose legacy continues to be hotly contested. The volume clarifies Strauss’s ideas and explores the heart of his work: God and politics.

Anne Norton examines how prominent neo-conservatives and senior members of the Bush administration have appropriated—or misappropriated—the ideas of political theorist Leo Strauss. Concise and readable, the book reveals how Strauss’s intellectual heirs have shaped the conservative agenda and influenced the war on Iraq.

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From one of the most influential teachers and scholars in American political theory, this provocative book examines political life and what drives it. George Kateb ponders the dignity of the individual, the need for constant vigilance against the erosion of our democratic rights, and how our commitment to high ideals can too easily lead to immoral ends.

One of our most respected political scientists offers a thought-provoking exploration of political equality and its relation to democracy. Robert A. Dahl considers the history of political equality and looks to its future. Is it possible to close the huge gap between the ideal of equality and its actual achievement? How? Will there be greater inequality in the U.S.?

In this provocative book, one of our most eminent political scientists questions the extent to which the American Constitution furthers democratic goals. Robert Dahl reveals the Constitution’s potentially antidemocratic elements and explains why they are there, compares the American constitutional system to other democratic systems, and explores how we might alter our political system to ach...

In this book, political thinker Hans Blokland examines how modernization undermines citizens’ possibilities and abilities to give their society meaning and direction. He analyzes the work of Max Weber, Karl Mannheim, and Joseph Schumpeter to arrive at provocative conclusions about modern politics and democracies.

Part history of philosophy, part philosophical investigation, this book rewrites central chapters in the history of jurisprudence by uncovering a continuity among four great legal philosophers: Plato, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Hobbes, and John Austin. In their theories of law, the author argues, these thinkers represent successive chapters in a single fascinating story.

 

 

When do governments merit our allegiance, and when should they be denied it? Ian Shapiro investigates this political dilemma, evaluating answers that have been proposed by utilitarian, Marxist, social contract, and democratic traditions.

This highly acclaimed, prize-winning biography of one of the foremost political philosophers of the twentieth century is here reissued in a trade paperback edition for a new generation of readers. In a new preface the author offers an account of writings by and about Arendt that have appeared since the book’s 1982 publication, providing a reassessment of her subject’s life and achievem...

Michael Walzer is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading political theorists. His broad-ranging work has covered some of the most crucial political ideas of our time, from democracy to social justice, nationalism, multiculturalism, and terrorism. This collection brings together some of his most important work and includes a substantial introduction by Da...

This thought-provoking second volume of The Jewish Political Tradition is concerned with the theme of membership. The book brings together the most important texts on membership topics from 3,000 years of Jewish history, many newly translated or translated for the first time. Commentaries from modern religious and secular scholars, representing a range of viewpoints on the right and the lef...

This book launches a landmark four-volume collaborative work exploring the political thought of the Jewish people from biblical times to the present. The texts and commentaries in Volume 1 address the basic question of who ought to rule the community. The contributors—eminent philosophers, lawyers, political theorists, and other scholars working in different fields of Jewish studies—di...

An eminent philosopher on the subject of war and ethics offers in this book his most provocative arguments about contemporary military conflicts and the ethical issues they raise. Michael Walzer examines particular recent wars, including that in Iraq, and argues persuasively for a moral perspective on the use of armed force.

Distinguished political philosopher Michael Walzer here offers a provocative reappraisal of the core tenets of liberalism. Ranging over contested issues including multiculturalism, pluralism, difference, civil society, and racial and gender justice, he suggest ways in which liberal theory might be revised to make it more hospitable to the claims of equality.

Drawing on the work of fourteen distinguished historians, this wide-ranging book explores political thinking in Europe from the Renaissance to the early Enlightenment. It is the first survey in English to pay due regard to Hungary, Poland-Lithuania, Scandinavia, the realm of Eastern Orthodoxy, and the political thought of Islam. 

Walzer examines five "regimes of toleration"—from multinational empires to immigrant societies—and describes the strengths and weaknesses of each regime, as well as the varying forms of toleration and exclusion each fosters. He shows how power, class, and gender interact with religion, race, and ethnicity in the different regimes and discusses how toleration works—and how it shou...

In this important book, a leading constitutional theorist offers a compelling defense of American constitutional practice. Lawrence G. Sager views judges as active partners in the enterprise of securing political justice and describes the process of constitutional adjudication as a promising and distinctly democratic addition to that enterprise.

In this original reading of John Stuart Mill’s political and moral writings, Robert Devigne shows that misconstrual of Mill’s thought has impaired our understanding of modern liberalism. Devigne explains how Mill turned to Greek ethical theory, romantic thought, and past religious practices to reconcile the conflicts and antinomies that hobbled liberal political theory.

Just as Martin Luther confronted the dominant establishment of his day with 95 theses, Anne Norton here challenges the orthodoxies of political science with 95 provocative theses of her own. She rejects a narrow and parochial political science, opening the gates to new practices, new principles, new questions, more methods, and more demanding ethical and scientific criteria.

This book reprints Descartes' major works, Discourse on Method and Meditations, and presents essays by leading scholars that explore his contributions in metaphysics, epistemology, physics, mathematics, political theory, ethics, psychoanalysis, literature and the arts, and place his ideas in the context of his time and our own.

Since its publication almost 150 years ago, John Henry Cardinal Newman's The Idea of a University has had extraordinary influence on the shaping and goals of higher education. This important and accessible edition includes new essays by five leading scholars who explore the background and present day relevance of Cardinal Newman's themes, a biographical sketch of his life, questions for dis...

A classic of the Western tradition, Machiavelli's The Prince has influenced political and philosophical thought since its publication four centuries ago. In this new edition of Machiavelli's momentous book, Angelo M. Codevilla provides a translation uniquely faithful to the original, and especially sensitive to the author's use of verbal imprecision, including puns, double meanings, and the...

This volume brings together three of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s most important political writings, works that inspired not only the French Revolution but also all modern movements for political transformation. Accompanying essays by major scholars convey a sense of the still vital and contentious debate that surrounds Rousseau, his ideas, and his legacy.

John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty has provoked controversy since its first publication in 1859. This classic work is now available in a new edition that includes essays by distinguished scholars.

Among the most influential writings in the history of political thought, these works by John Locke remain vital to political debates today. This outstanding new volume also includes interpretive essays by prominent Locke scholars Ian Shapiro, John Dunn, and Ruth Grant. 

Never out of print since first published in 1790, Burke’s Reflections established him as the chief framer of modern European conservative political thought. This excellent new edition presents Burke’s enduring text along with a historical introduction by Frank M. Turner and four lively critical essays by leading scholars.

This new edition of Matthew Arnold's influential text is accompanied by four specially commissioned essays that analyze Arnold's ideas from divergent political and literary perspectives and link them to contemporary concerns over the health of western culture in an increasingly multicultural society. The edition reprints for the first time in unaltered form the original 1869 text of Culture and...

In this book, one of the most important texts in the history of ethics, Kant searches for the supreme principle of morality and presents his argument for a conception of the moral life. This edition includes a new translation and comprehensive annotations by preeminent Kant scholar Allen W. Wood, as well as essays discussing the issues raised by the text. 

Kant’s views on politics, peace, and history as expressed in key writings on these topics remain as relevant today as when they were written more than two centuries ago. This volume contains a comprehensive collection of Kant’s writings on international relations theory and political philosophy, newly translated and accompanied by stimulating essays.

First published in 1865, Sesame and Lilies stands as a classic nineteenth-century statement on the natures and duties of men and women. This volume returns the book to print and reunites both halves of the work—Ruskin’s critique of Victorian manhood and his counsel to women and parents of girls. Accompanying essays place the book within historical debates on men, women, c...

This engaging book presents a full account of the tragic collapse of the friendship between Rousseau and Hume, the two most important thinkers of the eighteenth century. The authors explore the relation between the men’s quarrel and their philosophical thought and discuss how their incompatible ideas reverberate in thinking today.

This book is the first to systematically examine Leibniz’s scattered writings on two mysteries of Christian thought, the Trinity and Incarnation. Contrary to previous views of Leibniz, the philosopher emerges as a thinker receptive to traditional Christian theology and committed to defending the legitimacy of truths beyond the full grasp of human reason....

This volume presents the correspondence between Gottfried Leibniz, one of Europe’s most influential Enlightenment scholars, and Batholomew Des Bosses, a Jesuit philosopher keenly interested in Leibniz’s philosophy. With new translations of the letters and an authoritative introduction, the book makes a unique contribution to Leibniz scholarship.

This volume contains papers that represent Leibniz’s early thoughts on the problem of evil, centering on a dialogue, the Confessio philosophi, in which he formulates a general account of God’s relation to sin and evil that becomes a fixture in his thinking. All but one of the writings are available in English for the first time.

This book gathers together for the first time texts written by the great seventeenth-century German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz on the composition of the continuum. The texts are presented with facing-page English translations, together with an introduction, notes, appendixes containing related excerpts from earlier works by Leibniz and his predecessors, and a glossary.

Although the prestige of the Enlightenment has declined in recent years, this book argues that it was a more complex phenomenon than either its detractors or advocates assume. The Enlightenment includes rationalist as well as antirationalist tendencies, a critique of traditional morality and religion, and even the beginning of a moral renewal and spiritual revival.

Here a distinguished American historian challenges the belief that the eighteenth century was essentially modern in its temper. In crystalline prose Carl Becker demonstrates that the period commonly described as the Age of Reason was, in fact, very far from that; that Voltaire, Hume, Diderot, and Locke were living in a medieval world, and that these philosophers “demolished the Heavenly City...

Here Steven B. Smith offers a new reading of Spinoza’s Ethics. He asserts that it is a celebration of human freedom and its attendant joys and responsibilities and that it belongs among the great founding documents of the Enlightenment.

Baruch Spinoza (1632-77)—often recognized as the first modern Jewish thinker—was also a founder of modern liberal political philosophy. This book is the first to connect systematically these two aspects of Spinoza's legacy. Smith shows that Spinoza was a politically engaged theorist who both advocated and embodied a new conception of the emancipated individual, a thinker who decisively...

Begun in 1837, Thoreau’s Journal spans twenty-five years and functions as a record of his interior life and a key to his other writings. This beautifully produced gift edition of the Journal, carefully selected and annotated by Jeffrey S. Cramer, provides a fully rounded portrait of Thoreau. The volume will make a welcome addition to any book lover’s libr...

The ultimate gift edition of Walden, this volume is the most authoritative and richly annotated version of Thoreau’s American classic ever published. New readers as well as those well familiar with the text will find themselves immersed in Thoreau’s unique and fascinating world, guided by notes that illuminate the bibliographical, historical, and geographical contexts of his lif...

This handsome, affordable paperback edition of Walden is the most authoritative version of Thoreau’s masterpiece to date.  Cramer’s newly edited text is based on the original 1854 edition of Walden, with emendations taken from Thoreau’s draft manuscripts, his own markings on page proofs, and notes in his personal copy of the book. An elegantly produced paperbac...

This book offers the first intensive study of the religious thought and experience of Henry David Thoreau. Alan Hodder recovers the lost spiritual dimension of the writer’s life, revealing—Thoreau’s rejection of organized religion notwithstanding —a writer whose inner life was fed by spiritual currents. At the heart of Thoreau’s life were episodes he called his ecstas...

This book presents, the first comprehensive and authoritative collection of Emerson's writings against slavery and the subjugation of American Indians, writings that reveal Emerson's deep commitment to this reform movement. Included are some speeches and lectures that have never before been collected in any edition of Emerson's writings.

Here Joel Porte focuses on Emerson and Thoreau as writers, tracing their individual achievements and their points of intersection and arguing that they were complementary literary geniuses, mutually inspiring and inspired.

Roderick Nash’s classic study of America’s changing attitudes toward wilderness has received wide acclaim since its initial publication in 1967. The Los Angeles Times has listed it among the one hundred most influential books published in the last quarter century, Outside Magazine has included it in a survey of “books that changed our world,” and it has been c...

This volume presents substantial selections from the writings of such key American Transcendentalists as Margaret Fuller, Bronson Alcott, and Theodore Parker. Included are sermons and diary entries as well as essays on labor, religion, education, slavery, women’s rights, literature, and German metaphysics.

This is the first full-length biography in English of one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. Jean Grondin appraises the life and achievement of Hans-Georg Gadamer, traces the development of his ideas, sheds light on his major opus Truth and Method, and addresses Gadamer’s controversial actions amid the catastrophe of Nazi Germany.

This volume presents six lively conversations with one of the twentieth century’s most influential philosophers. Looking back over his life and thought, Gadamer takes up key issues in his philosophy, addresses points of controversy, and replies to his critics, including those who accuse him of having been in complicity with the Nazis. These conversations are both a lucid introduction to the ...

In this selection of writings from Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Gesammelte Werke, here translated into English for the first time, the philosopher probes deeply into the hermeneutic significance of questions surrounding religion and ethics. Gadamer discusses such issues as the nature of moral behavior, ethics as a form of knowing, and the hermeneutic task of mediating ethos and philosophical ...

In this accessible collection of writings, now available together in English for the first time, renowned German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer explores important philosophical issues. He brings into sharp focus his thoughts on such topics as the power of language, the social role and influence of science, and the idea of reason.

Hans-Georg Gadamer is widely known both for his theory of hermeneutics and for his studies of the great philosophers. The essays on Plato translated in this book show the power of Gadamer's phenomenological approach to illuminate difficult philosophical texts.

These five essays on Hegel give the English-speaking reader a long-awaited opportunity to read the work of one of Germany's most distinguished philosophers, Hans-Georg Gadamer. Gadamer's unique hermeneutic method will have a lasting effect on Hegel studies.

One of this century's most important philosophers her focuses on Plato's Protagoras, Phaedo, Republic, and Philebus and on Aristotle's three moral treatises to show the essential continuity of Platonic and Aristotelian reflection on the nature of the good. In so doing Gadamer not only succeeds in giving us an incisive example of his interpretive art but also gives us a ...

Michael Oakeshott’s achievements in political philosophy and the philosophy of history, aesthetics, religion, and education have been monumental. This authoritative book introduces readers to the life and thought of this eminent philosopher and sets his work in historical context.

In the first revisionist account of modernism in British literature to appear in many years, Perry Meisel rejects the usual claim that literary modernism is a response to the decaying conditions of modern life. Instead, he argues that modernism is an imaginative response to the impossibility of being original when coming of age too late in a literary and cultural tradition. Meisel traces two strai...

The papers in this volume of Ernst Cassirer’s unpublished works give insight into the major issues that engaged Cassirer’s interest between 1935 and 1945.  The book begins with his inaugural address at the University of Göteborg, Sweden, in the first years of his exile from Hitler’s Germany, and ends with a talk to the Columbia Philosophy Club.  The note that intro...

This new translation of The Logic of the Cultural Sciences (formerly entitled The Logic of the Humanities) makes Ernst Cassirer’s classic study available again to English readers. Contributing a wealth of ideas to continuing debates about culture, Cassirer here considers the disciplines commonly referred to as the humanities, defining and justifying the basic philosophic...

The Symbolic Forms has long been considered the greatest of Cassirer's works. Into it he poured all the resources of his vast learning about language and myth, religion, art, and science—the various creative symbolizing activities and constructions through which man has expressed himself and given intelligible objective form to his experience.

The Symbolic Forms has long been considered the greatest of Cassirer’s works.  Into it he poured all the resources of his vast learning about language and myth, religion, art, and science—the various creative symbolizing activities and constructions through which man has expressed himself and given intelligible objective form to this experience.  

This fourth volume of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, available now for the first time in English, fittingly concludes Ernst Cassirer's magnum opus. At his death in 1945, the great twentieth-century philosopher left manuscripts for this final volume. In these writings Cassirer grounds his conception of symbolic forms on a particular notion of human nature and discusses Basis Phenomena.

This book is the first ever to provide a commentary on Ernst Cassirer’s Metaphysics of Symbolic Forms. The Metaphysics challenges the widely held notion that Cassirer had no metaphysics, or was even antimetaphysical, and Thora Ilin Bayer explores the metaphysical views that underlie the philosopher’s conceptions of symbolic form and human culture.

The political left must radically revise its outdated view of human nature, Peter Singer argues in this groundbreaking book. The renowned bioethicist shows how the new insights of twentieth-century evolutionary theory, particularly on the evolution of cooperation, can help the left to attain its social and political goals. A Darwinian left, Singer says, would have a better understanding of which s...

Despite a fateful alliance with the Nazis, Carl Schmitt has exercised a profound influence on post-war European political and legal thought—on both the Right and the Left. This illuminating book traces for the first time the permutations of Schmitt’s ideas after the Second World War and explains why interest in the controversial political theorist continues.

In this rich collection of philosophical writings, Stanley Rosen addresses topics ranging from eros, poetry, and freedom to the problems of negation and knowledge through sense perception. Throughout these diverse essays, Rosen’s philosophical principles emerge: textual hermeneutics and philosophical analysis cannot be legitimately separated, and philosophical investigation must be oriented ...

Eminent philosopher Stanley Rosen presents the first comprehensive study of the main approaches to theoretical mastery of the concept of the ordinary. He evaluates the responses of a wide range of modern and contemporary thinkers and grapples with the peculiar problem of the ordinary: how to define it without transforming it into a technical (and so, extraordinary) artifact.

Gregory Fried offers in this book a careful investigation of Martin Heidegger’s understanding of politics. Fried focuses not on the debate over Heidegger’s personal involvement with Nazism, but on whether and how the formulation of the philosopher’s ontology relates to the political thinking expressed in his philosophical works. Many postmodernists, Fried shows, fail to avoid the...

This provocative discussion of the new and exciting field of neuroarthistory examines how the neural basis of the mind contributes to an understanding of art.

In this remarkable book a renowned art historian chronicles his own shifting responses to two extraordinary paintings by Poussin that he viewed almost daily over a period of months. T. J. Clark provides a riveting analysis of the two landscapes and much more--deeply considered meditations on the hold of the visual image on the viewer’s imagination.

This richly documented book examines the attempts of the French Surrealist artist André Masson (1896–1987) to define “self” in his art in the period between the early 1920s and 1940, the most fruitful period of classic Surrealism, culminating in the emergence of existentialism. Through a close reading of Masson̵...

In the first English translation of this authoritative, lively book, the celebrated Italian novelist and philosopher Umberto Eco presents a learned summary of medieval aesthetic ideas. First published twenty years ago and now translated into English for the first time, the book juxtaposes theology and science, poetry and mysticism, in order to explore the relationship that existed between the aest...

This book is the first collection of Bernard Williams’s extensive writings on opera—articles, essays, talks, program notes, two unpublished pieces, and more. The selections reflect Williams’s lifelong engagement with all facets of opera, its performance, and its power to move both the heart and the intellect. His book is a treasure for opera scholar and general reader alike.

It is impossible not to be drawn in to the provocative, and even contentious, discussion that Harvey Mansfield sets before us. He offers the first comprehensive study of manliness, a quality both bad and good, mostly male, and often irrational. Is manliness necessary? Is it obsolete? Is there a way for us to give it honest and honorable employment?

This important book confronts the brutal history of the twentieth century to unravel the psychological mystery of why so many atrocities occurred—the Holocaust, Hiroshima, the Gulag, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and others—and how we can prevent their recurrence. Jonathan Glover finds disturbing similarities in the psychology of those involved with atrocities, yet offers hope that the...

In this stimulating book, six leading philosophers—Karl-Otto Apel, Robert Brandom, Karsten Harries, Martha Nussbaum, Barry Stroud, and Allen Wood—consider the nature of philosophy. The authors address many fascinating subjects, including what makes philosophy different from other branches of the humanities and whether and how philosophy can contribute to political transformation.

This magisterial book provides an analysis of the course of Western intellectual history between A.D. 400 and 1400. The book is arranged in two parts: the first surveys the comparative modes of thought and varying success of Byzantine, Latin-Christian, and Muslim cultures, and the second takes the reader from the twelfth-century revival of learning to the high Middle Ages and beyond, the period in...