What are the best things in life? Questions like that may boggle your mind. But they don't boggle Socrates. The indomitable old Greek brings his unending questions to Desperate State University. With him come the same mind-opening and...

"Don't be so judgmental!""Why are Christians so intolerant?""Why can't we just coexist?"In an age in which preference has replaced morality, many people find it difficult to speak the truth, afraid of the...

Ayn Rand here sets forth the moral principles of Objectivism, the philosophy that holds man's life--the life proper to a rational being--as the standard of moral values and regards altruism as incompatible with man's nature, with th...

POne of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their abilit...

Miyamoto Musashi, Japan's Greatest Swordsman, wrote a list of 21 precepts for his favorite student shortly before his own death. In AMERICAN RONIN: THE WAY OF WALKING ALONE, veteran, poet, and "philosopher" Joseph Hall appli...

First published in 1981, VOLUNTARY SIMPLICITY was quickly recognized as a powerful and visionary work in the emerging dialogue over sustainable living. Now-more than twenty years later and with many of the planet′s environmental str...

In eighteenth-century Japan, Tsunetomo Yamamoto created the Hagakure, a document that served as the basis for samurai warrior behavior. Its guiding principles greatly influenced the Japanese ruling class and shaped the underlying char...

Is abortion a woman's right? When does human life begin? Should we legislate morality? What would happen if the Socrates of old suddenly appeared in modern Athens? Peter Kreeft imagines the dialog that might ensue with three worthy op...

Both entertaining and startling, The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten offers one hundred philosophical puzzles that stimulate thought on a host of moral, social, and personal dilemmas. Taking examples from sources as diverse as Plato and St...

A Holocaust survivor's surprising and thought-provoking study of forgiveness, justice, compassion, and human responsibility, featuring contributions from the Dalai Lama, Harry Wu, Cynthia Ozick, Primo Levi, and more.While imprison...

Responsibility and Judgment gathers together unpublished writings from the last decade of Arendt’s life, where she addresses fundamental questions and concerns about the nature of evil and the making of moral choices. At the heart o...

The ability to judge good from bad, right from wrong, is a uniquely human characteristic. However, given the complexity of life, it is often difficult to discern which choice to make, where our responsibilities lie, or what the conseq...

In his new book, Stephen Levine, author of the perennial best-seller Who Dies?, teaches us how to live each moment, each hour, each day mindfully--as if it were all that was left. On his deathbed, Socrates exhorted his followers to pr...

Transcendentalism isn't just a phase in Unitarian Universalist history, it is an on-going source of inspiration for Unitarian Universalists today. Drawing upon ancient wisdom and modern knowledge, Transcendentalist spirituality is at ...

"[Appiah's] work reveals the heart and sensitivity of a novelist. . . .Fascinating, erudite and beautifully written."—The New York Times Book ReviewIn this groundbreaking work, Kwame Anthony Appiah, hailed as "one of the most releva...

Aristotle first used the term ethics to name a field of study developed by his predecessors Socrates and Plato. Philosophical ethics is the attempt to offer a rational response to the question of how humans should best live. Aristotle...

The Nicomachean Ethics is the name normally given to Aristotle's best-known work on ethics. The work, which plays a pre-eminent role in defining Aristotelian ethics, consists of ten books, originally separate scrolls, and is understoo...

A selection of writings on how to achieve a more ethical society and way of life, from one of Ancient history's most celebrated thinkersHow can one live well in the world? What does it mean to be happy? In this selection from The Nic...

One of the most important philosophical works of all time, in a new Penguin Classics translation.Aristotle's classic treatise is based on his famous doctrine of the golden mean, which advocates taking the middle course between excess ...

Environmental ethics is a relatively new branch of philosophy, which studies the values and principles involved in combatting environmental problems such as pollution, loss of species and habitats, and climate change. As our environme...

Unabridged version of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, offered here for chump change. Translated into English by George Long, the book consists of the private reflections of the Emperor of Rome, on how one is to exist in a world of cha...

pstrongOne of the most powerful voices in contemporary French philosophy explodes the facile assumptions behind the recent ethical turn./strong/pAlain Badiou, one of the most powerful voices in contemporary French philosophy, shows ho...

The renowned postmodernist philosopher’s tour-de-force contemplation of sex, technology, politics and disease in Western culture after the revolutionary ‘orgy’ of the 1960s.“The most important and original French thinker of th...

Writing with wit and elegance, Simon Blackburn tackles the basic questions of ethics in this lively book, highlighting the complications and troubling issues that spring from the very simple question of how we ought to live. Blackburn...

Our self-image as moral, well-behaved creatures is dogged by scepticism, relativism, hypocrisy, and nihilism, by the fear that in a Godless world science has unmasked us as creatures fated by our genes to be selfish and tribalistic, o...

Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring Our self-image as moral, well-behaved creatures is dogged by scepticism, relativism, hypocrisy, and nihilism, and by the fear that in a Godless world science has unmasked u...

Breathing new life into the fields of philosophy and spirituality, the self-cultivation practices of the Confucian way, reinterpreted for modern times, are once again a great blessing for humanity. Similar to vipassana, the methods of...

The first book to explore the idea and effect of moral injury on veterans, their families, and their communities Although veterans make up only 7 percent of the U.S. population, they account for an alarming 20 percent of all suicides...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE ECONOMIST • "I wrote this book not sure I could follow the road to character, but I wanted at least to know what the road looks like and how othe...

Budziszewski on natural law is simply the best. . . . A must read.”—James V. Schall, S.J., author of Another Sort of Learning “Truly fundamental . . . I shall enjoy reading [it] over and over again.”—Russell Hittinger, auth...