This New York Times bestseller is the hilarious philosophy course everyone wishes they'd had in school Outrageously funny, Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar . . . has been a breakout bestseller ever since authors—and born vaudevi...

In this beautifully written and brilliantly reasoned collection of essays, Ayn Rand throws new light on the nature of art and its purpose in human life. Once again, Rand demonstrates her bold originality and her refusal to let convent...

Peter Adamson offers an accessible, humorous tour through a period of eight hundred years when some of the most influential of all schools of thought were formed: from the third century BC to the sixth century AD. He introduces us to ...

"A volume of Adorno is equivalent to a whole shelf of books on literature." --Susan Sontag A reflection on everyday existence in the 'sphere of consumption of late Capitalism', this work is Adorno's literary and philosophi...

On 6 April 1967, at the invitation of the Socialist Students of Austria at the University of Vienna, Theodor W. Adorno gave a lecture which is not merely of historical interest. Against the background of the rise of the National D...

A short history of cynicism, from the fearless speech of the ancient Greeks to the jaded negativity of the present. Everyone's a cynic, yet few will admit it. Today's cynics excuse themselves half-heartedly—“I hate to be ...

Collected here are Althusser's most significant philosophical writings from 1965 to 1978.Intended to contribute, in his own words, to a "left-wing critique of Stalinism that would help put some substance back into the revolutionary pr...

Louis Althusser is remembered today as the scourge of humanist Marxism, but that was his later incarnation, an identity formed by years grappling with the intellectual inheritance of Hegel and Catholicism. The Spectre of Hegel collect...

Includes essays and excerpts from the works of prominent modern thinkers such as Umberto Eco, Jacques Derrida, and Isaiah Berlin among others.

In his treatise on law comprising questions 90-97 of the Summa Theologica, St. Thomas presents a philosophical analysis of the nature and structure of law. Believing that law achieves its results by imposing moral obligations rather t...

Hannah Arendt began her scholarly career with an exploration of Saint Augustine's concept of caritas, or neighborly love, written under the direction of Karl Jaspers and the influence of Martin Heidegger. After her German academic lif...

The author’s final work, presented in a one-volume edition, is a rich, challenging analysis of man’s mental activity, considered in terms of thinking, willing, and judging. Edited by Mary McCarthy; Indices.

For more than two thousand years. Aristotle’s Art of Rhetoric has shaped thought on the theory and practice of rhetoric, the art of persuasive speech. In three sections, Aristotle discusses what rhetoric is, as well as the three...

Written in 350 BC, Aristotle’s “De Anima” or “On the Soul” is not a work on spirituality, as the title would suggest, but rather a work that could be described as one of biopsychology, or a work on the su...

The Art of Rhetoric , a guide on the principles behind oratorical skill, is a core text on the art of persuasion. Aristotle contends that rhetoric is one of the key elements of philosophy – along with logic and dialectic. The wo...

The Art of Rhetoric , a guide on the principles behind oratorical skill, is a core text on the art of persuasion. Aristotle contends that rhetoric is one of the key elements of philosophy – along with logic and dialectic. The wo...

A major treatise on moral philosophy by Aristotle, this is the first time the Eudemian Ethics has been published in its entirety in any modern language. Equally important, the volume has been translated by Sir Anthony Kenny, one of Br...

Aristotle's great work that laid the foundations for Galileo, Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein's much later discoveries about the natural laws of life and the universe. In the philosophical language of Aristotle and the Greeks of A...

Hume's "naturalist" approach to a wide variety of philosophical topics resulted in highly original theories about perception, self-identity, causation, morality, politics, and religion, all of which are discussed in this stimulating i...

Classic introduction to objectives and methods of schools of empiricism and linguistic analysis, especially of the logical positivism derived from the Vienna Circle. Topics: elimination of metaphysics, function of philosophy, nature o...

Two eminent French philosophers discuss German philosophy―including the legacy of Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Adorno, Fichte, Marx, and Heidegger―from a French perspective.In this book, Alain Badiou and Jean-Luc Nancy, the two most im...

Taboo and sacrifice, transgression and language, death and sensuality—Georges Bataille pursues these themes with an original, often startling perspective. He challenges any single discourse on the erotic. The scope of his inquiry ra...

The first full-length translation in English of an essential work of postmodernist thought

Poststructuralism changes the way we understand the relations between human beings, their culture, and the world. Following a brief account of the historical relationship between structuralism and poststructuralism, this Very Short In...

Principles of Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous

This volume includes the major works of the British Empiricists, philosophers who sought to derive all knowledge from experience. All essays are complete except that of Locke, which Professor Richard Taylor of Brown University has ski...

In The Roots of Romanticism, one of the twentieth century's most influential philosophers dissects and assesses a movement that changed the course of history. Brilliant, fresh, immediate, and eloquent, these celebrated Mellon Lectures...

David Hume is generally recognized as England's greatest philosopher, as well as a notable historian and essayist. Yet his work is delicately poised between scepticism and naturalism, between despair at the limited powers of the mind ...

This volume records a remarkable encounter in critical and philosophical thinking: a meeting of two of the great pioneers in contemporary thought, Maurice Blanchot and Jacques Derrida, who are also bound together by friendship and a c...

Written in the sixth century, The Consolation of Philosophy was one of the most popular and influential works of the Middle Ages. Boethius composed the masterpiece while imprisoned and awaiting the death sentence for treason. The Chri...