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Philip Sparrow Tells All
Lost Essays by Samuel Steward, Writer, Professor, Tattoo Artist
Samuel Steward
University of Chicago Press, 2015
Samuel Steward (1909–93) was an English professor, a tattoo artist for the Hells Angels, a sexual adventurer who shared the considerable scope of his experiences with Alfred Kinsey, and a prolific writer whose publications ranged from scholarly articles to gay erotica (the latter appearing under the pen name Phil Andros). Perhaps his oddest authorial role was as a monthly contributor between 1944 and 1949 to the Illinois Dental Journal, an obscure trade publication for dentists, where writing as Philip Sparrow he produced a series of charming, richly allusive, and often quirky essays on a wildly eclectic assortment of topics.

In Philip Sparrow Tells All, Jeremy Mulderig has collected thirty of these engaging but forgotten columns, prefacing them with revealing introductions that relate the essays to people and events in Steward’s life and to the intellectual and cultural contexts in which he wrote during the 1940s. In these essays we encounter such famous friends of Steward as Gertrude Stein, André Gide, and Thornton Wilder. We hear of his stint as a holiday sales clerk at Marshall Field’s (where he met and seduced fellow employee Rock Hudson), of his roles as an opera and ballet extra in hilariously shoddy costumes, of his hoarding tendencies, his disappointment with the drabness of men’s fashions, and his dread of turning forty. We go along with him to a bodybuilding competition and a pet cemetery, and together we wander the boulevards of Paris and the alleys of Algiers. Throughout, Mulderig’s entertaining annotations explain the essays’ wide-ranging allusions and also highlight their gay subtext, which constituted a kind of private game that Steward played with his mostly oblivious audience of Midwestern dentists.

The first collection of any of Samuel Steward’s writings to be republished since his death in 1993, Philip Sparrow Tells All makes these lost essays available to a broad readership that Steward imagined but never actually enjoyed when he wrote them. In doing so, it takes a major step toward documenting his important place in twentieth-century gay literature and history.
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Philippe Aries and the Politics of French Cultural History
Patrick H. Hutton
University of Massachusetts Press, 2004
The author of Centuries of Childhood and other landmark historical works, Philippe Ariès (1914–1984) was a singular figure in French intellectual life. He was both a political reactionary and a path-breaking scholar, a sectarian royalist who supported the Vichy regime and a founder of the new cultural history—popularly known as l'histoire des mentalités—that developed in the decades following World War II. In this book, Patrick H. Hutton explores the relationship between Ariès's life and thought and evaluates his contribution to modern historiography, in France and abroad.

According to Hutton, the originality of Ariès's work and the power of his appeal derived from the way he drew together the two strands of his own intellectual life: his enduring ties to the old cultural order valued by the right-wing Action Française, and a newfound appreciation for the methodology of the leftist Annales school of historians. A demographer by training, he pioneered a new route into the history of private life that eventually won him a wide readership and in late life an appointment to the faculty of the prestigious École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. At the same time, he fashioned himself as a man of letters in the intellectual tradition of the Action Française and became a perspicacious journalist as well as a stimulating writer of autobiographical memoirs. In Hutton's view, this helps explain why, more than any other historian, Philippe Ariès left his personal signature on his scholarship.
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Philippics
Cicero
Harvard University Press

Cicero (Marcus Tullius, 106–43 BCE), Roman lawyer, orator, politician and philosopher, of whom we know more than of any other Roman, lived through the stirring era which saw the rise, dictatorship, and death of Julius Caesar in a tottering republic. In his political speeches especially and in his correspondence we see the excitement, tension and intrigue of politics and the part he played in the turmoil of the time. Of about 106 speeches, delivered before the Roman people or the Senate if they were political, before jurors if judicial, 58 survive (a few of them incompletely). In the fourteenth century Petrarch and other Italian humanists discovered manuscripts containing more than 900 letters of which more than 800 were written by Cicero and nearly 100 by others to him. These afford a revelation of the man all the more striking because most were not written for publication. Six rhetorical works survive and another in fragments. Philosophical works include seven extant major compositions and a number of others; and some lost. There is also poetry, some original, some as translations from the Greek.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Cicero is in twenty-nine volumes.

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Philippics 1–6
Edited and translated by D. R. Shackleton BaileyRevised by John T. Ramsey and Gesine Manuwald
Harvard University Press, 2009

Invectives against Antony.

Cicero (Marcus Tullius, 106–43 BC), Roman advocate, orator, politician, poet, and philosopher, about whom we know more than we do of any other Roman, lived through the stirring era that saw the rise, dictatorship, and death of Julius Caesar in a tottering republic. In Cicero’s political speeches and in his correspondence we see the excitement, tension, and intrigue of politics and the part he played in the turmoil of the time. Of about 106 speeches, 58 survive (a few incompletely), 29 of which are addressed to the Roman people or Senate, the rest to jurors. In the fourteenth century Petrarch and other Italian humanists discovered manuscripts containing more than 900 letters, of which more than 800 were written by Cicero, and nearly 100 by others to him. This correspondence affords a revelation of the man, all the more striking because most of the letters were not intended for publication. Six works on rhetorical subjects survive intact and another in fragments. Seven major philosophical works are extant in part or in whole, and there are a number of shorter compositions either preserved or known by title or fragments.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Cicero is in twenty-nine volumes.

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Philippics 7–14
Edited and translated by D. R. Shackleton BaileyRevised by John T. Ramsey and Gesine Manuwald
Harvard University Press, 2009

Invectives against Antony.

Cicero (Marcus Tullius, 106–43 BC), Roman advocate, orator, politician, poet, and philosopher, about whom we know more than we do of any other Roman, lived through the stirring era that saw the rise, dictatorship, and death of Julius Caesar in a tottering republic. In Cicero’s political speeches and in his correspondence we see the excitement, tension, and intrigue of politics and the part he played in the turmoil of the time. Of about 106 speeches, 58 survive (a few incompletely), 29 of which are addressed to the Roman people or Senate, the rest to jurors. In the fourteenth century Petrarch and other Italian humanists discovered manuscripts containing more than 900 letters, of which more than 800 were written by Cicero, and nearly 100 by others to him. This correspondence affords a revelation of the man, all the more striking because most of the letters were not intended for publication. Six works on rhetorical subjects survive intact and another in fragments. Seven major philosophical works are extant in part or in whole, and there are a number of shorter compositions either preserved or known by title or fragments.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Cicero is in twenty-nine volumes.

[more]

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Philippine Confluence
Iberian, Chinese and Islamic Currents, C. 1500-1800
Edited by Jos Gommans and Ariel Lopez
Leiden University Press, 2020
Situated at the crossroads of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, the Spanish Philippines offer historians an intriguing middle ground of connected histories that raises fundamental new questions about conventional ethnic, regional and religious identities. This volume adds a new global perspective to the history of the Philippines by juxtaposing Iberian, Chinese and Islamic perspectives. By navigating various underexplored archival resources, senior and junior scholars from Asia, Europe and the Americas explore the diverse cultural, religious, and economic flows that shaped the early modern Philippine milieu. By zooming in from the global to the local, this book offers eleven fascinating Philippine case studies of early modern globalization.
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Philippine Digital Cultures
Brokerage Dynamics on YouTube
Cheryll Ruth Soriano
Amsterdam University Press, 2022
Social media platforms have been pivotal in redefining the conduct of contemporary society. Amid the proliferation of a range of new and ubiquitous online platforms, YouTube, a video-based platform, remains a key driver in the democratisation of creative, playful, vernacular, intimate, as well as political expressions. As a critical node of contemporary communication and digital cultures, its steady uptake and appropriation in a social media-savvy nation such as the Philippines requires a critical examination of its role in the continued reconstruction of identities, communities, and broader social institutions. This book closely analyses the diverse content and practices of amateur Filipino YouTubers, exposing and problematising the dynamics of brokering the contested aspirational logics of beauty and selfhood, interracial relationships, world-class labour, and progressive governance in a digital sphere. Ultimately, Philippine Digital Cultures: Brokerage Dynamics on YouTube offers a fresh, compelling, and nuanced account of YouTube as an important site for the mediation of culture, economy, and politics in Philippine postcolonial modernity amid rapid economic globalisation and digitalisation.
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Philippine Sanctuary
A Holocaust Odyssey
Bonnie M. Harris
University of Wisconsin Press, 2022
During World War II, the United States government and many Western democracies limited or closed themselves off entirely to Jewish refugees. By contrast, a Pacific island nation decided to keep its doors open. Between 1938 and 1941, the Philippine Commonwealth provided safe asylum to more than 1,300 German Jews. In highlighting the efforts by Philippine president Manual Quezon and High Commissioner Paul V. McNutt, Bonnie M. Harris offers fuller implications for our understanding of the Roosevelt administration's response to the Holocaust.
This untold history is brought to life by focusing on the incredible journey of synagogue cantor Joseph Cysner. Drawing from oral histories, memoirs, and personal papers, Harris documents Cysner's harrowing escape from the Nazis and his heroic rescue by the American-led Jewish community of the Philippines in 1939. Moving and rich in historical detail, Philippine Sanctuary reveals new insights for an overlooked period in our recent history, and emphasizes the continued importance of humanitarian efforts to aid those being persecuted.
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The Philippine Temptation
Dialectics of Philippines-U.S. Literary Relations
E. San Juan
Temple University Press, 1996

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The Philistines and Other Sea Peoples in Text and Archaeology
Ann E. Killebrew
SBL Press, 2013
The search for the biblical Philistines, one of ancient Israel’s most storied enemies, has long intrigued both scholars and the public. Archaeological and textual evidence examined in its broader eastern Mediterranean context reveals that the Philistines, well-known from biblical and extrabiblical texts, together with other related groups of “Sea Peoples,” played a transformative role in the development of new ethnic groups and polities that emerged from the ruins of the Late Bronze Age empires. The essays in this book, representing recent research in the fields of archaeology, Bible, and history, reassess the origins, identity, material culture, and impact of the Philistines and other Sea Peoples on the Iron Age cultures and peoples of the eastern Mediterranean. The contributors are Matthew J. Adams, Michal Artzy, Tristan J. Barako, David Ben-Shlomo, Mario Benzi, Margaret E. Cohen, Anat Cohen-Weinberger, Trude Dothan, Elizabeth French, Marie-Henriette Gates, Hermann Genz, Ayelet Gilboa, Maria Iacovou, Ann E. Killebrew, Sabine Laemmel, Gunnar Lehmann, Aren M. Maeir, Amihai Mazar, Linda Meiberg, Penelope A. Mountjoy, Hermann Michael Niemann, Jeremy B. Rutter, Ilan Sharon, Susan Sherratt, Neil Asher Silberman, and Itamar Singer.
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Phillies '93
An Incredible Season
Rich Westcott
Temple University Press, 1994

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Phillies Reader
Richard Orodenker
Temple University Press, 2005
An anthology of some of the best writing about the up-and-down history of the Philadelphia Phillies, this updated paperback edition features several new essays—including one about Citizens Bank Park—and the team's recent history. The stories herein provide fans with some of the best sportswriting about the woes and triumphs of Phillies baseball. The Phillies Reader features essays on the athletic achievements of such legendary players as Chuck Klein, Richie Ashburn, Dick Allen, and Mike Schmidt; the political turmoil surrounding the "ok" from manager Ben Chapman to "ride" Jackie Robinson about the color of his skin; the bizarre shooting of Eddie Waitkus; the heroics of the Whiz Kids; the heartbreak of '64; and the occasional triumphs and frequent travails of controversial managers Gene Mauch, Frank Lucchesi, and Danny Ozark. It asks why fans boo great players such as Del Ennis, but forgave Pat Burrell for his horrendous 2003 slump. Featuring essays by Red Smith, Pete Dexter, Roger Angell, and James Michener, among others, The Phillies Reader presents a compendium of Phillies literature that reveals what it is that makes legends.
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Phillis Wheatley and the Romantics
John C. Shields
University of Tennessee Press, 2010

Phillis Wheatley was the first African American to publish a book. Born in Gambia in 1753, she came to America aboard a slave ship, the Phillis. From an early age, Wheatley exhibited a profound gift for verse, publishing her first poem in 1767. Her tribute to a famed pastor, “On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield,” followed in 1770, catapulting her into the international spotlight, and publication of her 1773 Poems on Various Subjects Religious and Moral in London created her an international star.

Despite the attention she received at the time, history has not been kind to Wheatley. Her work has long been neglected or denigrated by literary critics and historians. John C. Shields, a scholar of early American literature, has tried to help change this perception, and Wheatley has begun to take her place among the elite of American writers.

In Phillis Wheatley and the Romantic Age, Shields contends that Wheatley was not only a brilliant writer but one whose work made a significant impression on renowned Europeans of the Romantic age, such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who borrowed liberally from her works, particularly in his famous distinction between fancy and imagination. Shields shows how certain Wheatley texts, particularly her “Long Poem,” consisting of “On Recollection,” “Thoughts on the Works of Providence,” and “On Imagination,” helped shape the face of Romanticism in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Phillis Wheatley and the Romantic Age helps demolish the long-held notion that literary culture flowed in only one direction: from Europe to the Americas. Thanks to Wheatley’s influence, Shields argues, the New World was influencing European literary masters far sooner than has been generally understood.

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The Philly Fan's Code
The 50 Toughest, Craziest, Most Legendary Philadelphia Athletes of the Last 50 Years
Mike Tanier
Temple University Press, 2011

Face it: Philadelphia athletes are often as tough as their fans are passionate. How else to explain the rabid appeal of the bone-crunching Broad Street Bullies? Chuck Bednarik was one of the looniest tunes in Philadelphia sports history, but fuggedabout him. In The Philly Fan's CodeNew York Times sportswriter Mike Tanier provides fun and opinionated essays that evaluate the 50 greatest, toughest, and most eccentric legends of Philly sports since Concrete Charlie hung up his cleats.

Using his own "rubric" to calculate the impact of each athlete, Tanier ranks well-adjusted players like Mark Howe alongside both unpredictable athletes like Brad Lidge—who followed an almost perfect season with a 162-game catastrophe—and quirky ones, such as Wilt Chamberlain, who may be better known for bragging about his sexual conquests than for scoring 100 points in a game. And let's not forget our visitor from Planet Lovetron… Then there are the real wild cards-players like Terrell Owens, who does sit-ups in his driveway and whose impact—for better or worse— outlasted the few actual games he played for the Eagles. As for Tanier's choice for the No. 1 toughest, craziest, most legendary player, well, you'll have to read the book to see if you agree. Whether you do or don't, The Philly Fan's Code will provide hours of debates and memories of who our toughest sports heroes were—or weren't.

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Philly Sports
Teams, Games, and Athletes from Rocky's Town
Ryan Swanson
University of Arkansas Press, 2016

Philadelphia sports—anchored by the Eagles, Flyers, Phillies, and 76ers—have a long, and sometimes tortured, history. Philly fans have booed more than their share and have earned a reputation as some of the most hostile in the country. They’ve been known, so the tales go, to jeer Santa Claus and cheer at the injury of an opposing player.

Strangely though, much of America’s perception of Philadelphia sports has been shaped by a fictional figure: Rocky. The series of Hollywood films named after their title character has told and retold the Cinderella story of an underdog boxer rising up against long odds. One could plausibly make the argument that Rocky is Philadelphia’s most famous athlete.

Beyond the major sports franchises and Rocky, lesser-known athletic competition in Philadelphia offers much to the interested observer. The city’s boxing culture, influence on Negro Leagues baseball, role in establishing interscholastic sport, and leadership in the rise of cricket all deserve and receive close investigation in this new collection.  Philly Sports combines primary research and personal experiences—playing in the Palestra, scouting out the tombstones of the city’s best athletes, enjoying the fervor of a Philadelphia night with a local team in pursuit of a championship title. The essence of Philadelphia sport, and to a certain extent the city itself, is distilled here.

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Philo
Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
Harry Austryn Wolfson
Harvard University Press
In this authoritative study Professor Wolfson’s purpose is to trace the processes of reasoning by which Philo Judaeus of Alexandria arrived at his philosophic principles. These principles later became the common foundations of Jewish, Christian, and Moslem philosophy, and in the 17th century were made the target of attack by Spinoza. This comprehensive work will be indispensable to all serious students of Philo’s thought.
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Philo
Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
Harry Austryn Wolfson
Harvard University Press
In this authoritative study Professor Wolfson’s purpose is to trace the processes of reasoning by which Philo Judaeus of Alexandria arrived at his philosophic principles. These principles later became the common foundations of Jewish, Christian, and Moslem philosophy, and in the 17th century were made the target of attack by Spinoza. This comprehensive work will be indispensable to all serious students of Philo’s thought.
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Philo
Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: Structure and Growth of Philosophical Systems from Plato to Spinoza, 2, Fourth printing, revised 1962
Harry Austryn Wolfson
Harvard University Press

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The Philo of Alexandria Scripture Index
Sean A. Adams
SBL Press, 2023

The Philo of Alexandria Scripture Index identifies and lists every instance in which Philo of Alexandria cites or alludes to passages from Jewish Scripture. With 7,831 references, this book is the most comprehensive study of its kind to date. Unlike other volumes with a single index of Philo’s citations and allusions organized by biblical book, this volume includes a second index that follows Philo’s treatise order. This second format allows students and scholars easily to examine Philo’s engagement with Scripture in individual treatises and to interrogate how Philo collected and grouped intertexts. In addition to the indices, Sean A. Adams and Zanne Domoney-Lyttle provide an introduction to their methodology and their selection of texts, including Philo’s fragmentary works and those that survive only in the Armenian tradition.

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Philo of Alexandria's Exposition on the Tenth Commandment
Hans Svebakken
SBL Press, 2012
In his comprehensive exposition of the Tenth Commandment (Spec. 4.79–131), Philo considers the prohibition “You shall not desire”: what sort of desire it prohibits (and why) and how the Mosaic dietary laws collectively enforce that prohibition. This volume offers the first complete study of Philo’s exposition, beginning with an overview of its content, context, and place in previous research. In-depth studies of Philo’s concept of desire and his concept of self-control provide background and demonstrate Philo’s fundamental agreement with contemporary Middle-Platonic moral psychology, especially in his theory of emotion (pathos). A new translation of the exposition, with commentary, offers a definitive explanation of Philo’s view of the Tenth Commandment, including precisely the sort of excessive desire it targets and how the dietary laws work as practical exercises for training the soul in self-control.
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Philo T Farnsworth
Donald Godfrey
University of Utah Press, 2001

Philo T. Farnsworth (1906–1971) has been called the "forgotten father of television." He grew up in Utah and southern Idaho, and was described as a genius by those who knew and worked with him. With only a high school education, Farnsworth drew his first television schematic for his high school teacher in Rigby, Idaho. Subsequent claims and litigation notwithstanding, he was the first to transmit a television image.

Farnsworth filed ten patents between 1927 and 1929 for camera tubes (transmitting), circuitry, and the cathode ray tube (viewing). After his early years as an inventor in San Francisco, he worked as an engineer, doing battle with RCA in the 1930s over patent rights, formed the Farnsworth Television Company in the 1940s, and worked for IT&T after their purchase of the Farnsworth enterprises. Every television set sold utilized at least six of his basic patents.

Because of endless legal wrangling with RCA over patent rights, he received very little financial reward for his television patents. Donald Godfrey examines the genius and the failures in the life of Philo Farnsworth as he struggled to be both inventor and entrepreneur.

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Philo, Volume I
On the Creation. Allegorical Interpretation of Genesis 2 and 3
Philo
Harvard University Press

Syncretistic exegesis.

The philosopher Philo was born about 20 BC to a prominent Jewish family in Alexandria, the chief home of the Jewish Diaspora as well as the chief center of Hellenistic culture; he was trained in Greek as well as Jewish learning. In attempting to reconcile biblical teachings with Greek philosophy he developed ideas that had wide influence on Christian and Jewish religious thought.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of the works of Philo is in ten volumes and two supplements, distributed as follows. Volume I: Creation; Interpretation of Genesis II and III. II: On the Cherubim; The Sacrifices of Abel and Cain; The Worse Attacks the Better; The Posterity and Exile of Cain; On the Giants. III: The Unchangeableness of God; On Husbandry; Noah's Work as a Planter; On Drunkenness; On Sobriety. IV: The Confusion of Tongues; The Migration of Abraham; The Heir of Divine Things; On the Preliminary Studies. V: On Flight and Finding; Change of Names; On Dreams. VI: Abraham; Joseph; Moses. VII: The Decalogue; On Special Laws Books I–III. VIII: On Special Laws Book IV; On the Virtues; Rewards and Punishments. IX: Every Good Man Is Free; The Contemplative Life; The Eternity of the World; Against Flaccus; Apology for the Jews; On Providence. X: On the Embassy to Gaius; indexes. Supplement I: Questions on Genesis. II: Questions on Exodus; index to supplements.

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Philo, Volume II
On the Cherubim. The Sacrifices of Abel and Cain. The Worse Attacks the Better. On the Posterity and Exile of Cain. On the Giants
Philo
Harvard University Press

Syncretistic exegesis.

The philosopher Philo was born about 20 BC to a prominent Jewish family in Alexandria, the chief home of the Jewish Diaspora as well as the chief center of Hellenistic culture; he was trained in Greek as well as Jewish learning. In attempting to reconcile biblical teachings with Greek philosophy he developed ideas that had wide influence on Christian and Jewish religious thought.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of the works of Philo is in ten volumes and two supplements, distributed as follows. Volume I: Creation; Interpretation of Genesis II and III. II: On the Cherubim; The Sacrifices of Abel and Cain; The Worse Attacks the Better; The Posterity and Exile of Cain; On the Giants. III: The Unchangeableness of God; On Husbandry; Noah's Work as a Planter; On Drunkenness; On Sobriety. IV: The Confusion of Tongues; The Migration of Abraham; The Heir of Divine Things; On the Preliminary Studies. V: On Flight and Finding; Change of Names; On Dreams. VI: Abraham; Joseph; Moses. VII: The Decalogue; On Special Laws Books I–III. VIII: On Special Laws Book IV; On the Virtues; Rewards and Punishments. IX: Every Good Man Is Free; The Contemplative Life; The Eternity of the World; Against Flaccus; Apology for the Jews; On Providence. X: On the Embassy to Gaius; indexes. Supplement I: Questions on Genesis. II: Questions on Exodus; index to supplements.

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Philo, Volume III
On the Unchangeableness of God. On Husbandry. Concerning Noah’s Work as a Planter. On Drunkenness. On Sobriety
Philo
Harvard University Press

Syncretistic exegesis.

The philosopher Philo was born about 20 BC to a prominent Jewish family in Alexandria, the chief home of the Jewish Diaspora as well as the chief center of Hellenistic culture; he was trained in Greek as well as Jewish learning. In attempting to reconcile biblical teachings with Greek philosophy he developed ideas that had wide influence on Christian and Jewish religious thought.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of the works of Philo is in ten volumes and two supplements, distributed as follows. Volume I: Creation; Interpretation of Genesis II and III. II: On the Cherubim; The Sacrifices of Abel and Cain; The Worse Attacks the Better; The Posterity and Exile of Cain; On the Giants. III: The Unchangeableness of God; On Husbandry; Noah's Work as a Planter; On Drunkenness; On Sobriety. IV: The Confusion of Tongues; The Migration of Abraham; The Heir of Divine Things; On the Preliminary Studies. V: On Flight and Finding; Change of Names; On Dreams. VI: Abraham; Joseph; Moses. VII: The Decalogue; On Special Laws Books I–III. VIII: On Special Laws Book IV; On the Virtues; Rewards and Punishments. IX: Every Good Man Is Free; The Contemplative Life; The Eternity of the World; Against Flaccus; Apology for the Jews; On Providence. X: On the Embassy to Gaius; indexes. Supplement I: Questions on Genesis. II: Questions on Exodus; index to supplements.

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Philo, Volume IV
On the Confusion of Tongues. On the Migration of Abraham. Who Is the Heir of Divine Things? On Mating with the Preliminary Studies
Philo
Harvard University Press

Syncretistic exegesis.

The philosopher Philo was born about 20 BC to a prominent Jewish family in Alexandria, the chief home of the Jewish Diaspora as well as the chief center of Hellenistic culture; he was trained in Greek as well as Jewish learning. In attempting to reconcile biblical teachings with Greek philosophy he developed ideas that had wide influence on Christian and Jewish religious thought.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of the works of Philo is in ten volumes and two supplements, distributed as follows. Volume I: Creation; Interpretation of Genesis II and III. II: On the Cherubim; The Sacrifices of Abel and Cain; The Worse Attacks the Better; The Posterity and Exile of Cain; On the Giants. III: The Unchangeableness of God; On Husbandry; Noah's Work as a Planter; On Drunkenness; On Sobriety. IV: The Confusion of Tongues; The Migration of Abraham; The Heir of Divine Things; On the Preliminary Studies. V: On Flight and Finding; Change of Names; On Dreams. VI: Abraham; Joseph; Moses. VII: The Decalogue; On Special Laws Books I–III. VIII: On Special Laws Book IV; On the Virtues; Rewards and Punishments. IX: Every Good Man Is Free; The Contemplative Life; The Eternity of the World; Against Flaccus; Apology for the Jews; On Providence. X: On the Embassy to Gaius; indexes. Supplement I: Questions on Genesis. II: Questions on Exodus; index to supplements.

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Philo, Volume IX
Every Good Man is Free. On the Contemplative Life. On the Eternity of the World. Against Flaccus. Apology for the Jews. On Providence
Philo
Harvard University Press

Syncretistic exegesis.

The philosopher Philo was born about 20 BC to a prominent Jewish family in Alexandria, the chief home of the Jewish Diaspora as well as the chief center of Hellenistic culture; he was trained in Greek as well as Jewish learning. In attempting to reconcile biblical teachings with Greek philosophy he developed ideas that had wide influence on Christian and Jewish religious thought.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of the works of Philo is in ten volumes and two supplements, distributed as follows. Volume I: Creation; Interpretation of Genesis II and III. II: On the Cherubim; The Sacrifices of Abel and Cain; The Worse Attacks the Better; The Posterity and Exile of Cain; On the Giants. III: The Unchangeableness of God; On Husbandry; Noah's Work as a Planter; On Drunkenness; On Sobriety. IV: The Confusion of Tongues; The Migration of Abraham; The Heir of Divine Things; On the Preliminary Studies. V: On Flight and Finding; Change of Names; On Dreams. VI: Abraham; Joseph; Moses. VII: The Decalogue; On Special Laws Books I–III. VIII: On Special Laws Book IV; On the Virtues; Rewards and Punishments. IX: Every Good Man Is Free; The Contemplative Life; The Eternity of the World; Against Flaccus; Apology for the Jews; On Providence. X: On the Embassy to Gaius; indexes. Supplement I: Questions on Genesis. II: Questions on Exodus; index to supplements.

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Philo, Volume V
On Flight and Finding. On the Change of Names. On Dreams
Philo
Harvard University Press

Syncretistic exegesis.

The philosopher Philo was born about 20 BC to a prominent Jewish family in Alexandria, the chief home of the Jewish Diaspora as well as the chief center of Hellenistic culture; he was trained in Greek as well as Jewish learning. In attempting to reconcile biblical teachings with Greek philosophy he developed ideas that had wide influence on Christian and Jewish religious thought.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of the works of Philo is in ten volumes and two supplements, distributed as follows. Volume I: Creation; Interpretation of Genesis II and III. II: On the Cherubim; The Sacrifices of Abel and Cain; The Worse Attacks the Better; The Posterity and Exile of Cain; On the Giants. III: The Unchangeableness of God; On Husbandry; Noah's Work as a Planter; On Drunkenness; On Sobriety. IV: The Confusion of Tongues; The Migration of Abraham; The Heir of Divine Things; On the Preliminary Studies. V: On Flight and Finding; Change of Names; On Dreams. VI: Abraham; Joseph; Moses. VII: The Decalogue; On Special Laws Books I–III. VIII: On Special Laws Book IV; On the Virtues; Rewards and Punishments. IX: Every Good Man Is Free; The Contemplative Life; The Eternity of the World; Against Flaccus; Apology for the Jews; On Providence. X: On the Embassy to Gaius; indexes. Supplement I: Questions on Genesis. II: Questions on Exodus; index to supplements.

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Philo, Volume VI
On Abraham. On Joseph. On Moses
Philo
Harvard University Press

Syncretistic exegesis.

The philosopher Philo was born about 20 BC to a prominent Jewish family in Alexandria, the chief home of the Jewish Diaspora as well as the chief center of Hellenistic culture; he was trained in Greek as well as Jewish learning. In attempting to reconcile biblical teachings with Greek philosophy he developed ideas that had wide influence on Christian and Jewish religious thought.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of the works of Philo is in ten volumes and two supplements, distributed as follows. Volume I: Creation; Interpretation of Genesis II and III. II: On the Cherubim; The Sacrifices of Abel and Cain; The Worse Attacks the Better; The Posterity and Exile of Cain; On the Giants. III: The Unchangeableness of God; On Husbandry; Noah's Work as a Planter; On Drunkenness; On Sobriety. IV: The Confusion of Tongues; The Migration of Abraham; The Heir of Divine Things; On the Preliminary Studies. V: On Flight and Finding; Change of Names; On Dreams. VI: Abraham; Joseph; Moses. VII: The Decalogue; On Special Laws Books I–III. VIII: On Special Laws Book IV; On the Virtues; Rewards and Punishments. IX: Every Good Man Is Free; The Contemplative Life; The Eternity of the World; Against Flaccus; Apology for the Jews; On Providence. X: On the Embassy to Gaius; indexes. Supplement I: Questions on Genesis. II: Questions on Exodus; index to supplements.

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Philo, Volume VII
On the Decalogue. On the Special Laws, Books 1–3
Philo
Harvard University Press

Syncretistic exegesis.

The philosopher Philo was born about 20 BC to a prominent Jewish family in Alexandria, the chief home of the Jewish Diaspora as well as the chief center of Hellenistic culture; he was trained in Greek as well as Jewish learning. In attempting to reconcile biblical teachings with Greek philosophy he developed ideas that had wide influence on Christian and Jewish religious thought.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of the works of Philo is in ten volumes and two supplements, distributed as follows. Volume I: Creation; Interpretation of Genesis II and III. II: On the Cherubim; The Sacrifices of Abel and Cain; The Worse Attacks the Better; The Posterity and Exile of Cain; On the Giants. III: The Unchangeableness of God; On Husbandry; Noah's Work as a Planter; On Drunkenness; On Sobriety. IV: The Confusion of Tongues; The Migration of Abraham; The Heir of Divine Things; On the Preliminary Studies. V: On Flight and Finding; Change of Names; On Dreams. VI: Abraham; Joseph; Moses. VII: The Decalogue; On Special Laws Books I–III. VIII: On Special Laws Book IV; On the Virtues; Rewards and Punishments. IX: Every Good Man Is Free; The Contemplative Life; The Eternity of the World; Against Flaccus; Apology for the Jews; On Providence. X: On the Embassy to Gaius; indexes. Supplement I: Questions on Genesis. II: Questions on Exodus; index to supplements.

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Philo, Volume VIII
On the Special Laws, Book 4. On the Virtues. On Rewards and Punishments
Philo
Harvard University Press

Syncretistic exegesis.

The philosopher Philo was born about 20 BC to a prominent Jewish family in Alexandria, the chief home of the Jewish Diaspora as well as the chief center of Hellenistic culture; he was trained in Greek as well as Jewish learning. In attempting to reconcile biblical teachings with Greek philosophy he developed ideas that had wide influence on Christian and Jewish religious thought.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of the works of Philo is in ten volumes and two supplements, distributed as follows. Volume I: Creation; Interpretation of Genesis II and III. II: On the Cherubim; The Sacrifices of Abel and Cain; The Worse Attacks the Better; The Posterity and Exile of Cain; On the Giants. III: The Unchangeableness of God; On Husbandry; Noah's Work as a Planter; On Drunkenness; On Sobriety. IV: The Confusion of Tongues; The Migration of Abraham; The Heir of Divine Things; On the Preliminary Studies. V: On Flight and Finding; Change of Names; On Dreams. VI: Abraham; Joseph; Moses. VII: The Decalogue; On Special Laws Books I–III. VIII: On Special Laws Book IV; On the Virtues; Rewards and Punishments. IX: Every Good Man Is Free; The Contemplative Life; The Eternity of the World; Against Flaccus; Apology for the Jews; On Providence. X: On the Embassy to Gaius; indexes. Supplement I: Questions on Genesis. II: Questions on Exodus; index to supplements.

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Philo, Volume X
On the Embassy to Gaius. General Indexes
Philo
Harvard University Press

A diplomatic mission to the emperor Caligula.

The philosopher Philo was born about 20 BC to a prominent Jewish family in Alexandria, the chief home of the Jewish Diaspora as well as the chief center of Hellenistic culture; he was trained in Greek as well as Jewish learning. In attempting to reconcile biblical teachings with Greek philosophy he developed ideas that had wide influence on Christian and Jewish religious thought.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of the works of Philo is in ten volumes and two supplements, distributed as follows. Volume I: Creation; Interpretation of Genesis II and III. II: On the Cherubim; The Sacrifices of Abel and Cain; The Worse Attacks the Better; The Posterity and Exile of Cain; On the Giants. III: The Unchangeableness of God; On Husbandry; Noah's Work as a Planter; On Drunkenness; On Sobriety. IV: The Confusion of Tongues; The Migration of Abraham; The Heir of Divine Things; On the Preliminary Studies. V: On Flight and Finding; Change of Names; On Dreams. VI: Abraham; Joseph; Moses. VII: The Decalogue; On Special Laws Books I–III. VIII: On Special Laws Book IV; On the Virtues; Rewards and Punishments. IX: Every Good Man Is Free; The Contemplative Life; The Eternity of the World; Against Flaccus; Apology for the Jews; On Providence. X: On the Embassy to Gaius; indexes. Supplement I: Questions on Genesis. II: Questions on Exodus; index to supplements.

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Philodemus in Italy
The Books from Herculaneum
Marcello Gigante
University of Michigan Press, 2002
A lively and concise survey of current scholarship on difficult but fascinating texts by this Epicurean poet and philosopher
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Philodemus, On Anger
David Armstrong
SBL Press, 2020

The first English translation of On Anger

This latest volume in the Writings from the Greco-Roman World series provides a translation of a newly edited Greek text of Philodemus’s On Anger, now supplemented with the help of multispectral imaging. As our sole evidence for the Epicurean view of what constitutes natural and praiseworthy anger as distinguished from unnatural pleasure in vengeance and cruelty for their own sake, this text is crucial to the study of ancient thought about the emotions. Its critique of contemporary Stoic and Peripatetic theories of anger offers crucial new information for the history of philosophy in the last two centuries BCE. The introduction and commentary also make use of newly revised texts and readings from several other ancient treatises on anger.

Features

  • An apparatus representing work on the text since the papyrus was opened in 1805
  • A full explication of the Epicurean theory of natural anger as an emotion without pleasure
  • One of the Herculaneum papyri that survived the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE
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Philodemus, On Property Management
Voula Tsouna
SBL Press, 2013
Philodemus was an important Epicurean philosopher active in southern Italy in the first century B.C.E. His treatise On Property Management, whose surviving part is completely translated here into English for the first time, focuses primarily on the vices or virtues involved in the acquisition and preservation of property and wealth. The extant remains of the work contain the most extensive and thorough treatment of property management found in any Hellenistic author. Philodemus criticizes rival writings by Xenophon and Theophrastus on the subject of oikonomia, or property management, and defends his own Epicurean views on the topic. More systematic and philosophical than rival approaches, the treatise clarifies many moral issues pertaining to the possession and preservation of property and wealth and provides plausible answers to a cluster of moral questions.
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Philology and Its Histories
Sean Gurd
The Ohio State University Press, 2010
There has never been any shortage of interest in philology, its status, its history, or its origins. Today, after more than twenty years of serial “returns to philology” under the banner of deconstruction, the new medieval studies, critical bibliography, and a particular kind of globally aware activist criticism, philology has again become available as a respectable posture for contemporary literary scholars. But what is “philology,” and how can we attend to it, either as a contemporary practice or as an age-old object of endorsement and critique?
 
In this volume, edited by Sean Gurd, noted scholars discuss the history of philology from antiquity to the present. This book addresses a wide variety of authors, documents, and movements, among them Greek papyri, Latin textual traditions, the Renaissance, eighteenth-century antiquarianism, and deconstruction.
 
It is too easy to see philology as the bearer of an antiquated but forceful authority. When philologists take up the tools of textual criticism, they contribute to the very form of texts; seeking to articulate the protocols of correct interpretation, they aspire to be the legislators of reading practice. Nonetheless, Philology and Its Histories argues that philology is not a conservative or ideologically loaded master-discourse, but a tradition of searching, fundamentally ungrounded, dealing with the insecurity of questions rather than the safety of answers. For good or ill, philology is where literature happens; we do well to pay heed to it and to its changes over the course of millennia.
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Philology of the Flesh
John T. Hamilton
University of Chicago Press, 2018
As the Christian doctrine of Incarnation asserts, “the Word became Flesh.” Yet, while this metaphor is grounded in Christian tradition, its varied functions far exceed any purely theological import. It speaks to the nature of God just as much as to the nature of language.

In Philology of the Flesh, John T. Hamilton explores writing and reading practices that engage this notion in a range of poetic enterprises and theoretical reflections. By pressing the notion of philology as “love” (philia) for the “word” (logos), Hamilton’s readings investigate the breadth, depth, and limits of verbal styles that are irreducible to mere information. While a philologist of the body might understand words as corporeal vessels of core meaning, the philologist of the flesh, by focusing on the carnal qualities of language, resists taking words as mere containers.

By examining a series of intellectual episodes—from the fifteenth-century Humanism of Lorenzo Valla to the poetry of Emily Dickinson, from Immanuel Kant and Johann Georg Hamann to Friedrich Nietzsche, Franz Kafka, and Paul Celan—Philology of the Flesh considers the far-reaching ramifications of the incarnational metaphor, insisting on the inseparability of form and content, an insistence that allows us to rethink our relation to the concrete languages in which we think and live.
 
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The Philosopher and His Poor
Jacques Rancière
Duke University Press, 2004
What has philosophy to do with the poor? If, as has often been supposed, the poor have no time for philosophy, then why have philosophers always made time for them? Why is the history of philosophy—from Plato to Karl Marx to Jean-Paul Sartre to Pierre Bourdieu—the history of so many figures of the poor: plebes, men of iron, the demos, artisans, common people, proletarians, the masses? Why have philosophers made the shoemaker, in particular, a remarkably ubiquitous presence in this history? Does philosophy itself depend on this thinking about the poor? If so, can it ever refrain from thinking for them?

Jacques Rancière’s The Philosopher and His Poor meditates on these questions in close readings of major texts of Western thought in which the poor have played a leading role—sometimes as the objects of philosophical analysis, sometimes as illustrations of philosophical argument. Published in France in 1983 and made available here for the first time in English, this consummate study assesses the consequences for Marx, Sartre, and Bourdieu of Plato’s admonition that workers should do “nothing else” than their own work. It offers innovative readings of these thinkers’ struggles to elaborate a philosophy of the poor. Presenting a left critique of Bourdieu, the terms of which are largely unknown to an English-language readership, The Philosopher and His Poor remains remarkably timely twenty years after its initial publication.

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The Philosopher and the Storyteller
Eric Voegelin and Twentieth-Century Literature
Charles R. Embry
University of Missouri Press, 2008

Throughout his philosophical career, Eric Voegelin had much to say about literature in both his published work and his private letters. Many of his most trenchant comments regarding the analysis of literature appear in his correspondence with critic Robert Heilman, and, through his familiarity with that exchange, Charles Embry has gained extraordinary insight into Voegelin’s literary views.

The Philosopher and the Storyteller is the first book-length study of the literary dimensions of Voegelin’s philosophy—and the first to use his philosophy to read specific novels. Bringing to bear a thorough familiarity with both Voegelin and great literature, Embry shows that novels—like myths, philosophy, and religious texts—participate in the human search for the truth of existence, and that reading literature within a Voegelinian framework exposes the existential and philosophical dimensions of those works.

Embry focuses on two key elements of Voegelin’s philosophy as important for reading literature: metaxy, the in-between of human consciousness, and metalepsis, human participation in the community of being. He shows how Voegelin’s philosophy in general is rooted in literary-symbolic interpretation and, therefore, provides a foundation for the interpretation of literature. And finally he explores Voegelin’s insistence that the soundness of literary criticism lies in the consciousness of the reader.

Embry then offers Voegelinian readings that vividly illustrate the principles of this approach. First he considers Graham Swift’s Waterland as an example of the human search for meaning in the modern world, then he explores the deformation and recovery of reality in Heimito von Doderer’s long and complex novel The Demons, and finally he examines how Flannery O’Connor’s The Violent Bear It Away mythically expresses the flux of divine presence in what Voegelin calls the Time of the Tale.

The Philosopher and the Storyteller unites fiction and philosophy in the common quest to understand our nature, our world, and our cosmos. A groundbreaking exploration of the connection between Voegelin and twentieth-century literature, this book opens a new window on the philosopher’s thought and will motivate readers to study other novels in light of this approach.

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Philosopher Fish
Sturgeon, Caviar, and the Geography of Desire
Richard Adams Carey
Brandeis University Press, 2024
An updated new edition of Richard Adams Carey’s illuminating journey across the globe to uncover the secrets of the sturgeon.
 
From the acclaimed eco-journalist Rick Carey comes a fascinating chronicle of a fast-disappearing fish—and of the people whose lives and livelihoods depend on it. Since the days of the Persian Empire, caviar has trumpeted status, wealth, prestige, and sex appeal. In this remarkable journey to caviar’s source, Carey immerses himself in the world of the sturgeon, the fish that lays these golden eggs. The sturgeon has a fascinating biological past—and a very uncertain future. Sturgeon populations worldwide have declined seventy percent in the last twenty years. Meanwhile, the beluga sturgeon, producer of the most coveted caviar, has climbed to number four on the World Wildlife Fund’s most-endangered species list. A high-stakes cocktail of business, crime, diplomacy, technology, and the dilemmas of conservation, The Philosopher Fish is the epic story of a 250-million-year-old fish struggling to survive.
 
This new edition includes new chapters bringing up to date the story of this elusive and mysterious fish, and the people involved with both preserving and exploiting it.
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The Philosopher of Palo Alto
Mark Weiser, Xerox PARC, and the Original Internet of Things
John Tinnell
University of Chicago Press, 2023
A compelling biography of Mark Weiser, a pioneering innovator whose legacy looms over the tech industry’s quest to connect everything—and who hoped for something better.

When developers and critics trace the roots of today’s Internet of Things—our smart gadgets and smart cities—they may single out the same creative source: Mark Weiser (1952–99), the first chief technology officer at Xerox PARC and the so-called “father of ubiquitous computing.” But Weiser, who died young at age 46 in 1999, would be heartbroken if he had lived to see the ways we use technology today. As John Tinnell shows in this thought-provoking narrative, Weiser was an outlier in Silicon Valley. A computer scientist whose first love was philosophy, he relished debates about the machine’s ultimate purpose. Good technology, Weiser argued, should not mine our experiences for saleable data or demand our attention; rather, it should quietly boost our intuition as we move through the world.
 
Informed by deep archival research and interviews with Weiser’s family and colleagues, The Philosopher of Palo Alto chronicles Weiser’s struggle to initiate a new era of computing. Working in the shadows of the dot-com boom, Weiser and his collaborators made Xerox PARC headquarters the site of a grand experiment. Throughout the building, they embedded software into all sorts of objects—coffeepots, pens, energy systems, ID badges—imbuing them with interactive features. Their push to integrate the digital and the physical soon caught on. Microsoft’s Bill Gates flagged Weiser’s Scientific American article “The Computer for the 21st Century” as a must-read. Yet, as more tech leaders warmed to his vision, Weiser grew alarmed about where they wished to take it. 
 
In this fascinating story of an innovator and a big idea, Tinnell crafts a poignant and critical history of today’s Internet of Things. At the heart of the narrative is Weiser’s desire for deeper connection, which animated his life and inspired his notion of what technology at its best could be.
 
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Philosopher On Dover Beach
Roger Scruton
St. Augustine's Press, 2017
“It is a great pity that we in the United States do not have our own Roger Scruton. As              his . . . collection of essays reminds us, he is an accomplished philosopher who writes    trenchantly about many important political, social and religious issues, who cares
passionately about art and culture and who is also a brilliant conservative polemicist. . . .
     “Mr. Scruton has two great virtues as a critic. One is his ability to combine a delicate appreciation of culture with the robust analytical skills of a trained philosopher. . . .
     “Mr. Scruton’s other great virtue is his habit of assessing things from the inside,
taking them on their own terms. If his judgments are often harsh, one nevertheless comes away feeling that he has made the best case possible for his subject. This makes his        criticism more devastating yet also more generous than the criticism of most other        commentator.” – Roger Kimball, New York Times Book Review

“Each essay has been constructed with considerable care, and the positions taken are    clearly stated and soundly argued. . . . He shows . . . that the philosopher-critic is alive          and well. . . . Recommended for all academic libraries.” – Library Journal

“[Scruton] writes eloquently of the way in which social bonds, if refashioned in contractual form. ‘become profane, a system of façade, a Disneyland version of what was formerly 
dignified and monumental.’” – Peter Clarke, London Review of Books


 
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The Philosopher, or On Faith
George Amiroutzes
Harvard University Press

“God necessarily exists, since it is not possible for things to be otherwise, as Aristotle shows in the Metaphysics.” So Mehmed II, the Ottoman conqueror of both Constantinople and Trebizond, tells George Amiroutzes, the Byzantine scholar and native of Trebizond, in the beginning of a conversation reported in Amiroutzes’s dialogue The Philosopher, or On Faith.

The dialogue is a literary recreation of the conversations between Mehmed, a Muslim, and Amiroutzes, a Christian. In the course of The Philosopher, the two debate the role of logic and rationality in religious debate, the nature of God, and the fate of the body and soul in the afterlife. Surprisingly complex and subtle arguments emerge, firmly situated in their fifteenth-century context but steeped in the long Greek philosophical tradition.

Previously known only from a sixteenth-century Latin translation, The Philosopher was rediscovered in a Greek manuscript in Toledo. In this volume, John Monfasani presents both the editio princeps and the first translation from the Greek, with an introduction that discusses the life of Amiroutzes and the text, the text and translation with full apparatus and notes, and two appendixes that present documents related to the relationship between Amiroutzes and Mehmed.

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Philosophers at Table
On Food and Being Human
Raymond D. Boisvert and Lisa Heldke
Reaktion Books, 2016
When you boil it down, one of the most important things we do each day is eat. The question of eating—what, and how—may seem simple at first, but it is dense with complex meanings, reflecting myriad roles that food plays and has played over the centuries. In fact, as Raymond D. Boisvert and Lisa Heldke show in this book, it’s difficult to imagine a more philosophically charged act than eating. Philosophers at Table explores the philosophical scaffolding that supports this crucial aspect of everyday life, showing that we are not just creatures with minds, but also with stomachs. 

Examining a cornucopia of literary works, myths, histories, and film—not to mention philosophical ideas—the authors make the case for a bona fide philosophy of food. They look at Babette’s Feast as an argument for hospitality as a central ethical virtue. They compare fast food in Accra to the molecular gastronomy of Spain as a way of considering the nature of food as art. And they bite into a slug—which is, unsurprisingly, completely gross—to explore tasting as a learning tool, a way of knowing. A surprising, original take on something we have not philosophically savored enough, Philosophers at Table invites readers to think in fresh ways about the simple and important act of eating. 
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A Philosopher's Economist
Hume and the Rise of Capitalism
Margaret Schabas and Carl Wennerlind
University of Chicago Press, 2020
Reconsiders the centrality and legacy of Hume’s economic thought and serves as an important springboard for reflections on the philosophical underpinnings of economics.

Although David Hume’s contributions to philosophy are firmly established, his economics has been largely overlooked. A Philosopher’s Economist offers the definitive account of Hume’s “worldly philosophy” and argues that economics was a central preoccupation of his life and work. Margaret Schabas and Carl Wennerlind show that Hume made important contributions to the science of economics, notably on money, trade, and public finance.  Hume’s astute understanding of human behavior provided an important foundation for his economics and proved essential to his analysis of the ethical and political dimensions of capitalism. Hume also linked his economic theory with policy recommendations and sought to influence people in power. While in favor of the modern commercial world, believing that it had and would continue to raise standards of living, promote peaceful relations, and foster moral refinement, Hume was not an unqualified enthusiast. He recognized many of the underlying injustices of capitalism, its tendencies to promote avarice and inequality, as well as its potential for political instability and absolutism.
 
Hume’s imprint on modern economics is profound and far-reaching, whether through his close friend Adam Smith or later admirers such as John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich Hayek. Schabas and Wennerlind’s book compels us to reconsider the centrality and legacy of Hume’s economic thought—for both his time and ours—and thus serves as an important springboard for reflections on the philosophical underpinnings of economics.
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Philosophers of the Renaissance
Paul Richard Blum
Catholic University of America Press, 2010
Philosophers of the Renaissance introduces readers to philosophical thinking from the end of the Middle Ages through the sixteenth century.
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Philosophers Speak for Themselves
Berkeley, Hume, and Kant
Edited by Thomas Vernor Smith and Marjorie Grene
University of Chicago Press, 1957
The philosophic search for truth has been evident in all ages and among all peoples. The developments of each generation require new philosophies and the recasting of old ones. The eighteenth century was no exception, and the scientific advances of the times brought about many innovations in philosophic thought. At a time when scientists were reducing certain phenomena of the natural world to expressions of a few simple mathematical laws, men such as Berkeley, Hume, and Kant were trying to discover how far and on what basis human reason could be applied with similar success in other fields. The selections in this book, preceded by short biographical sketches, document this philosophic search. "The selections are liberal and well chosen, indeed only an examination of the table of contents will give an adequate idea of the value of this volume. . . . How better can one become a modern thinker than by reading and studying at first hand the writings that have made modern thought possible?"—Roger W. Holmes, The Philosophical Review
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Philosophers Speak for Themselves
From Descartes to Locke
Edited by Thomas Vernor Smith and Marjorie Grene
University of Chicago Press, 1940
Modern thought and modes of living have been immeasurably influenced by the philosophers of the Enlightenment—men such as Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Newton, Leibniz, and Locke. Gathered together in this book and preceded by valuable biographical sketches are selections from the basic and most significant writings of each of these men.
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The Philosopher's Toothache
Embodied Stoicism in Early Modern English Drama
Donovan Sherman
Northwestern University Press, 2022
The Philosopher’s Toothache proposes that early modern Stoicism constituted a radical mode of performance. Stoicism—with its focus on bodily sensation, imagined spectatorship, and daily mental and physical exercise—exists as what the philosopher Pierre Hadot calls a “way of life,” a set of habits and practices. To be a Stoic is not to espouse doctrine but to act.

Informed by work in both classical philosophy and performance studies, Donovan Sherman argues that Stoicism infused the complex theatrical culture of early modern England. Plays written and performed during this period gave life to Stoic exercises that instructed audiences to cultivate their virtue, self-awareness, and creativity. By foregrounding Stoicism’s embodied nature, Sherman recovers a vital dimension too often lost in reductive portrayals of the Stoics by early modern writers and contemporary scholars alike. The Philosopher’s Toothache features readings of dramatic works by William Shakespeare, Cyril Tourneur, and John Marston alongside considerations of early modern adaptations of classical Stoics (Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius) and Neo-Stoics such as Justus Lipsius. These plays model Stoic virtues like unpredictability, indifference, vulnerability, and dependence—attributes often framed as negative but that can also rekindle a sense of responsible public action.
 
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The Philosophic Thought of Ayn Rand
Edited by Douglas J. Den Uyl and Douglas B. Rasmussen
University of Illinois Press, 1984
      "An excellent book that provides
      a systematic account of Rand's work as a philosopher.... The Philosophic
      Thought of Ayn Rand gathers contributions from professional philosophers
      (some of them quite renowned) to tackle the various components --- metaphysical/epistemological,
      ethical, and social/political --- of Rand's comprehensive system. All the
      contributors demonstrate the particular genius of current academic philosophy:
      the painstaking and meticulous analysis of assumptions with an eye toward
      the coherence and consistency of the conclusions derived therefrom.... Thorough
      and judicious, this book will provide the reader with the intellectual leverage
      necessary to understand an often confusing, always controversial, occasionally
      original, and perhaps curiously contemporary writer and thinker."
      -- Lloyd Lewis, Modern Fiction Studies
     
 
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The Philosophical Actor
A Practical Meditation for Practicing Theatre Artists
Donna Soto-Morettini
Intellect Books, 2010

There have been many books published on acting, actor training, and practical theories for preparing for a role, but none of these books have ever looked philosophically at the language and the concepts that we use when we talk about acting. The Philosophical Actor is the first attempt to grapple with the fundamental questions of truth, art, and human nature unexamined in past treatments, from the first great essay by Diderot to the exhaustive system described by Stanislavski. With wide appeal to actors, directors, acting students, acting teachers and trainers, Donna Soto-Morettini draws from twenty-five years of experience as an acting teacher and director to introduce innovative ways of thinking about acting.

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Philosophical Arguments
Charles Taylor
Harvard University Press, 1995

Charles Taylor is one of the most important English-language philosophers at work today; he is also unique in the philosophical community in applying his ideas on language and epistemology to social theory and political problems. In this book Taylor brings together some of his best essays, including "Overcoming Epistemology," "The Validity of Transcendental Argument," "Irreducibly Social Goods," and "The Politics of Recognition." As usual, his arguments are trenchant, straddling the length and breadth of contemporary philosophy and public discourse.

The strongest theme running through the book is Taylor's critique of disengagement, instrumental reason, and atomism: that individual instances of knowledge, judgment, discourse, or action cannot be intelligible in abstraction from the outside world. By developing his arguments about the importance of "engaged agency," Taylor simultaneously addresses themes in philosophical debate and in a broader discourse of political theory and cultural studies. The thirteen essays in this collection reflect most of the concerns with which he has been involved throughout his career--language, ideas of the self, political participation, the nature of modernity. His intellectual range is extraordinary, as is his ability to clarify what is at stake in difficult philosophical disputes. Taylor's analyses of liberal democracy, welfare economics, and multiculturalism have real political significance, and his voice is distinctive and wise.

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Philosophical Correspondence, 1759-1799
Immanuel Kant
University of Chicago Press, 1986
Drawn from the Prussian Academy edition of Kant's collected works, these letters make it possible to trace the development of Kant's thought from his earliest worries about the topics discussed in the Critique of Pure Reason to his attempts in later life to meet the objections of his critics and erstwhile disciples.  "Perhaps the major value of these writings is their demonstration of Kant's own attitude towards his philosophical works."—Paul Arthur Schilpp, Saturday Review
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Philosophical Explanations
Robert Nozick
Harvard University Press, 1983

In this highly original work, Robert Nozick develops new views on philosophy’s central topics and weaves them into a unified philosophical perspective. It is many years since a major work in English has ranged so widely over philosophy’s fundamental concerns: the identity of the self, knowledge and skepticism, free will, the question of why there is something rather than nothing, the foundations of ethics, the meaning of life.

Writing in a distinctive and personal philosophical voice, Mr. Nozick presents a new mode of philosophizing. In place of the usual semi-coercive philosophical goals of proof, of forcing people to accept conclusions, this book seeks philosophical explanations and understanding, and thereby stays truer to the original motivations for being interested in philosophy.

Combining new concepts, daring hypotheses, rigorous reasoning, and playful exploration, the book exemplifies how philosophy can be part of the humanities.

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Philosophical Fragments
Friedrich SchlegelTranslated by Peter FirchowForeword by Rodolphe Gasche
University of Minnesota Press, 1991

Philosophical Fragments was first published in 1991. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

At a time when the function of criticism is again coming under close skeptical scrutiny, Schlegel's unorthodox, highly original mind, as revealed in these foundational "fragments," provides the critical framework for reflecting on contemporary experimental texts.

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The Philosophical Hitchcock
“Vertigo” and the Anxieties of Unknowingness
Robert B. Pippin
University of Chicago Press, 2017
On the surface, The Philosophical Hitchcock: Vertigo and the Anxieties of Unknowingness, is a close reading of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 masterpiece Vertigo. This, however, is a book by Robert B. Pippin, one of our most penetrating and creative philosophers, and so it is also much more. Even as he provides detailed readings of each scene in the film, and its story of obsession and fantasy, Pippin reflects more broadly on the modern world depicted in Hitchcock’s films. Hitchcock’s characters, Pippin shows us, repeatedly face problems and dangers rooted in our general failure to understand others—or even ourselves—very well, or to make effective use of what little we do understand. Vertigo, with its impersonations, deceptions, and fantasies, embodies a general, common struggle for mutual understanding in the late modern social world of ever more complex dependencies. By treating this problem through a filmed fictional narrative, rather than discursively, Pippin argues, Hitchcock is able to help us see the systematic and deep mutual misunderstanding and self-deceit that we are subject to when we try to establish the knowledge necessary for love, trust, and commitment, and what it might be to live in such a state of unknowingness.
 
A bold, brilliant exploration of one of the most admired works of cinema, The Philosophical Hitchcock will lead philosophers and cinephiles alike to a new appreciation of Vertigo and its meanings.
 
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Philosophical Imagination and Cultural Memory
Appropriating Historical Traditions
Patricia Cook, ed.
Duke University Press, 1993
Does philosophy have a future? Postmodern thought, with its rejection of claims to absolute truth or moral objectivity, would seem to put the philosophical enterprise in jeopardy. In this volume some of today's most influential thinkers face the question of philosophy's future and find an answer in its past. Their efforts show how historical traditions are currently being appropriated by philosophy, how some of the most provocative questions confronted by philosophers are given their impetus and direction by cultural memory.
Unlike analytic philosophy, a discipline supposedly liberated from any manifestation of cultural memory, the movement represented by these essays demonstrates how the inquiries, narratives, traditions, and events of our cultural past can mediate some of the most interesting exercises of the present-day philosophical imagination. Attesting to the power of historical tradition to enhance and redirect the prospects of philosophy these essays exemplify a new mode of doing philosophy.
The product of a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute in 1990, it is the task of this book to show that history can be reclaimed by philosophy and resurrected in postmodernity.

Contributors. George Allan, Eva T. H. Brann, Arthur C. Danto, Lynn S. Joy, George L. Kline, George R. Lucas, Jr., Alasdair MacIntyre, Robert C. Neville, John Rickard, Stanley Rosen, J. B. Scheenwind, Donald Phillip Verene

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Philosophical Inquiries
An Introduction to Problems of Philosophy
Nicholas Rescher
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010
In Philosophical Inquiries, Nicholas Rescher offers his perspectives on many of the foundational concerns of philosophy and reminds us that the purpose of philosophy is to “question the questions.” Rescher sees the need to inquire as an evolutionary tool for adapting to a hostile environment and shows how philosophy has thus developed in an evolutionary fashion, building upon acquired knowledge and upon itself. In a historical thread that informs and enriches his overview, Rescher recalls the contributions of Aristotle, Plato, Plotinus, Kant, Hegel, Leibniz, Laplace, Bertrand Russell, and others.

Among his many topics, Rescher discusses knowledge and the unattainablity of absolutes, skepticism and its self-defeating nature, the limits of science vs. the limits of cognition, refuting reality as mind-independent, and idealism and divining our role in nature. He considers the universe and intelligence as the product of intelligent design, science and religion as non-conflicting and purposeful pursuits, and determinism and other fallacies surrounding the concept of free will. Rescher views morality in its hierarchal structure, its applicability to human coexistence, and its ontological commitment to the enhancement of value for ourselves and our world. He examines questions of authority and the problem of judging past actions or knowledge by present standards. Overall, he argues for philosophy as an unavoidable tool for rational, cogent responses to large questions.
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Philosophical Instruments
Minds and Tools at Work
Daniel Rothbart. Foreword by Rom Harré
University of Illinois Press, 2006

The surprising roles of instruments and experimentation in acquiring knowledge

In Philosophical Instruments Daniel Rothbart argues that our tools are not just neutral intermediaries between humans and the natural world, but are devices that demand new ideas about reality. Just as a hunter's new spear can change their knowledge of the environment, so can the development of modern scientific equipment alter our view of the world.

Working at the intersections of science, technology, and philosophy, Rothbart examines the revolution in knowledge brought on by recent advances in scientific instruments. Full of examples from historical and contemporary science, including electron scanning microscopes, sixteenth-century philosophical instruments, and diffraction devices used by biochemical researchers, Rothbart explores the ways in which instrumentation advances a philosophical stance about an instrument's power, an experimenter's skills, and a specimen's properties. Through a close reading of engineering of instruments, he introduces a philosophy from (rather than of) design, contending that philosophical ideas are channeled from design plans to models and from model into the use of the devices.

[more]

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A Philosophical Introduction to Probability
Maria Carla Galavotti
CSLI, 2004
Not limited to merely mathematics, probability has a rich and controversial philosophical aspect. A Philosophical Introduction to Probability showcases lesser-known philosophical notions of probability and explores the debate over their interpretations. Galavotti traces the history of probability and its mathematical properties and then discusses various philosophical positions on probability, from the Pierre Simon de Laplace's “classical” interpretation of probability to the logical interpretation proposed by John Maynard Keynes. This book is a valuable resource for students in philosophy and mathematics and all readers interested in notions of probability.
[more]

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Philosophical Legacies
Essays on the Thought of Kant, Hegel, and Their Contemporaries (Studies in Philosophy and the History of Philosophy, Volume 50)
Daniel O. Dahlstrom
Catholic University of America Press, 2008
The essays trace carefully the histories of the influences of earlier thinkers and their legacies upon later thinkers.
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The Philosophical Life
Arthur P. Urbano
Catholic University of America Press, 2013
Ancient biographies were more than accounts of the deeds of past heroes and guides for moral living. They were also arenas for debating pressing philosophical questions and establishing intellectual credentials, as Arthur P. Urbano argues in this study of biographies composed in Late Antiquity
[more]

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Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium
Hume's Pathology of Philosophy
Donald W. Livingston
University of Chicago Press, 1998
The Scottish philosopher David Hume is commonly understood as the original proponent of the "end of philosophy." In this powerful new study, Donald Livingston completely revises our understanding of Hume's thought through his investigation of Hume's distinction between "true" and "false" philosophy. For Hume, false philosophy leads either to melancholy over the groundlessness of common opinion or delirium over transcending it, while true philosophy leads to wisdom. Livingston traces this distinction through all of Hume's writings, providing a systematic pathology of the corrupt philosophical consciousness in history, politics, philosophy, and literature that characterized Hume's own time as well as ours.

By demonstrating how a philosophical method can be used to expose the political motivations behind intellectual positions, historical events, and their subsequent interpretations, Livingston revitalizes Hume's thought and reveals its relevance for contemporary dicussions of politics, nationalism, and ideology for the first time.

[more]

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A Philosophical Novelist
George Santayana and the Last Puritan
H. T. Kirby-Smith
Southern Illinois University Press, 1997

H. T. Kirby-Smith uses Santayana’s 1936 novel, The Last Puritan, as both an occasion and a means for bringing into focus the complex relations between Santayana’s life, his personality, and his philosophy. Opening with an account of Santayana’s various literary styles and arguing for the significance of Santayana’s writing of philosophy as literature, Kirby-Smith notes that Santayana saw the rational life as a continual adjustment and accommodation of contradictory claims. And he saw a literary style as an accommodation of the author to the reader.

Chapters 2 through 5 provide the philosophical background for a consideration of The Last Puritan, summarizing exactly how Santayana assimilated other philosophies into his own.

Chapters 6 and 7 incorporate Santayana’s three-volume autobiography, his letters and memoirs, and biographical studies by others into a psychological portrait of the author. All of this is in preparation for chapters 8 and 9, which focus on The Last Puritan. Kirby-Smith closes with a chapter that serves as a legal brief in defense of the author against the harsh, sometimes malicious attacks of his critics.

[more]

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Philosophical Orations, Volume I
Orations 1–21
Maximus of Tyre
Harvard University Press, 2023

A Platonic evangelist’s lectures on the good life.

Maximus of Tyre, active probably in the latter half of the second century AD, was a devoted Platonist whose only surviving work consists of forty-one brief addresses on various topics of ethical, philosophical, and theological import including the nature of divinity, the immortality of the soul, the sources of good and evil, the injustice of vengeance, the tyranny of pleasures and desires, the contribution of the liberal arts, and the pursuit of happiness, among many others. These addresses are conveniently labeled orations, but their fluid and hybrid style resists precise generic categorization, so that they could also be called discourses, speeches, lectures, talks, inquiries, essays, or even sermons.

In his orations Maximus strove to elucidate the philosophical life of virtue, especially as exemplified in the career of Socrates and in the writings of Plato, inviting his audience, sometimes addressed as young men, to share in his knowledge, to appreciate his fresh presentation of philosophical topics, and perhaps even to join him in pursuing philosophy. Drawing on the Hellenic cultural tradition from Homer to the death of Alexander the Great, Maximus offers a rich collection of the famous philosophical, literary, and historical figures, events, ideas, successes, and failures that constituted Greek paideia in the so-called Second Sophistic era.

This edition of Maximus’ Philosophical Orations offers a fresh translation, ample annotation, and a text fully informed by current scholarship.

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Philosophical Orations, Volume II
Orations 22–41
Maximus of Tyre
Harvard University Press, 2023

A Platonic evangelist’s lectures on the good life.

Maximus of Tyre, active probably in the latter half of the second century AD, was a devoted Platonist whose only surviving work consists of forty-one brief addresses on various topics of ethical, philosophical, and theological import including the nature of divinity, the immortality of the soul, the sources of good and evil, the injustice of vengeance, the tyranny of pleasures and desires, the contribution of the liberal arts, and the pursuit of happiness, among many others. These addresses are conveniently labeled orations, but their fluid and hybrid style resists precise generic categorization, so that they could also be called discourses, speeches, lectures, talks, inquiries, essays, or even sermons.

In his orations Maximus strove to elucidate the philosophical life of virtue, especially as exemplified in the career of Socrates and in the writings of Plato, inviting his audience, sometimes addressed as young men, to share in his knowledge, to appreciate his fresh presentation of philosophical topics, and perhaps even to join him in pursuing philosophy. Drawing on the Hellenic cultural tradition from Homer to the death of Alexander the Great, Maximus offers a rich collection of the famous philosophical, literary, and historical figures, events, ideas, successes, and failures that constituted Greek paideia in the so-called Second Sophistic era.

This edition of Maximus’ Philosophical Orations offers a fresh translation, ample annotation, and a text fully informed by current scholarship.

[more]

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The Philosophical Papers of Alan Donagan, Volume 1
Historical Understanding and the History of Philosophy
Alan Donagan
University of Chicago Press, 1994
A major voice in late twentieth-century philosophy, Alan Donagan is distinguished for his theories on the history of philosophy and the nature of morality. The Philosophical Papers of Alan Donagan, volumes 1 and 2, collect 28 of Donagan's most important and best-known essays on historical understanding and ethics from 1957 to 1991.

Volume 1 includes essays on Spinoza, Descartes, Bradley, Collingwood, Russell, Moore, and Popper, as well as two previously unpublished papers on the history of philosophy as a discipline, and on Ryle and Wittgenstein's nature of philosophy. Linked by Donagan's commitment to the central importance of history for philosophy and his interest in problems of historical understanding, these essays represent the remarkable scope of Donagan's thought.
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The Philosophical Papers of Alan Donagan, Volume 2
Action, Reason, and Value
Alan Donagan
University of Chicago Press, 1994
A major voice in late twentieth-century philosophy, Alan Donagan is distinguished for his theories on the history of philosophy and the nature of morality. The Philosophical Papers of Alan Donagan, volumes 1 and 2, collect 28 of Donagan's most important and best-known essays on historical understanding and ethics from 1957 to 1991.

Volume 2 addresses issues in the philosophy of action and moral theory. With papers on Kant, von Wright, Sellars, and Chisholm, this volume also covers a range of questions in applied ethics—from the morality of Truman's decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to ethical questions in medicine and law.
[more]

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Philosophical Perspectives on Metaphor
Mark Johnson, Editor
University of Minnesota Press, 1981

Philosophical Perspectives on Metaphor was first published in 1981. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

"We are," says Mark Johnson, "in the midst of metaphormania." The past few years have seen an explosion of interest in metaphor as a vehicle for exploring the relations between language and thought. While a number of recent books have dealt with metaphor from the standpoints of several disciplines, there is no collection that shows the best of the work that has been done in the field of philosophy. Mark Johnson has brought together essays that define the central issues of the discussion in this field.

His introductory essay offers a critical survey of historically influential treatments of figurative language (including those of Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Kant, and Nietzsche) and sets forth the nature of various issues that have been of interest to philosophers. Thus, it provides a context in which to understand the motivations, influences, and significance of the collected essays. An annotated bibliography serves as a catalog of all relevant literature.

Philosophical Perspectives on Metaphor provides an entry point into the philosophical exploration of metaphor for students, philosophers, linguists, psychologists, artists, critics, or anyone interested in language and its relation to understanding and experience.

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Philosophical Problems of the Internal and External Worlds
Essays on the Philosophy of Adolf Grünbaum
John Earman
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994
The inaugural volume of the Pitt-Konstanz series, devoted to the work of philosopher Adolf Grünbaum, encompasses the philosophical problems of space, time, and cosmology, the nature of scientific methodology, and the foundations of psychoanalysis.
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Philosophical psychology
psychology, emotions, and freedom
Craig Steven Titus
Catholic University of America Press, 2009

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Philosophical Remarks
Ludwig Wittgenstein
University of Chicago Press, 1980
When in May 1930, the Council of Trinity College, Cambridge, had to decide whether to renew Wittgenstein's research grant, it turned to Bertrand Russell for an assessment of the work Wittgenstein had been doing over the past year. His verdict: "The theories contained in this new work . . . are novel, very original and indubitably important. Whether they are true, I do not know. As a logician who likes simplicity, I should like to think that they are not, but from what I have read of them I am quite sure that he ought to have an opportunity to work them out, since, when completed, they may easily prove to constitute a whole new philosophy."

"[Philosophical Remarks] contains the seeds of Wittgenstein's later philosophy of mind and of mathematics. Principally, he here discusses the role of indispensable in language, criticizing Russell's The Analysis of Mind. He modifies the Tractatus's picture theory of meaning by stressing that the connection between the proposition and reality is not found in the picture itself. He analyzes generality in and out of mathematics, and the notions of proof and experiment. He formulates a pain/private-language argument and discusses both behaviorism and the verifiability principle. The work is difficult but important, and it belongs in every philosophy collection."—Robert Hoffman, Philosophy

"Any serious student of Wittgenstein's work will want to study his Philosophical Remarks as a transitional book between his two great masterpieces. The Remarks is thus indispensible for anyone who seeks a complete understanding of Wittgenstein's philosophy."—Leonard Linsky, American Philosophical Association
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The Philosophical Roots of Anthropology
William Adams
CSLI, 1998
Anthropologists claim to have made mankind aware of its own prehistory and its importance to human self-understanding. Yet, anthropologists seem hardly to have discovered their own discipline's prehistory or to have realized its importance. William Y. Adams attempts to rectify this myopic self-awareness by applying anthropology's own tools on itself and uncovering the discipline's debt to earlier thinkers.

Like most anthropologists, Adams had previously accepted the premise that anthropology's intellectual roots go back no further than the moral philosophy of the Enlightenment, or perhaps at the earliest to the humanism of the Renaissance. In this volume, Adams recognizes that many good ideas were anticipated in antiquity and that these ideas have had a lasting influence on anthropological models in particular. He has chosen five philosophical currents whose influence has been, and is, very widespread, particularly in North American anthropology: progressivism, primitivism, natural law, German idealism, and "Indianology". He argues that the influences of these currents in North American anthropology occur in a unique combination that is not found in the anthropologies of other countries. Without neglecting the anthropologies of other countries, this work serves as the basis for the explanation of the true historical and philosophical underpinnings of anthropology and its goals.
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Philosophical Standardism
An Empiricist Approach to Philosophical Methodology
Nicholas Rescher
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000
Philosophical Standardism is ideal for bringing one of the field’s preeminent scholars into the classroom. In this novel empirical treatment of fundamental issues in philosophy, Nicholas Rescher propounds an unorthodox approach to philosophical doctrines that is predicated on the idea of standardism.
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The Philosophical Status of Diagrams
Mark Greaves
CSLI, 2001
The use of diagrams in logic and geometry has encountered resistance in recent years. For a proof to be valid in geometry, it must not rely on the graphical properties of a diagram. In logic, the teaching of proofs depends on sentenial representations, ideas formed as natural language sentences such as "If A is true and B is true...." No serious formal proof system is based on diagrams.

This book explores the reasons why structured graphics have been largely ignored in contemporary formal theories of axiomatic systems. In particular, it elucidates the systematic forces in the intellectual history of mathematics which have driven the adoption of sentential representational styles over diagrammatic ones. In this book, the effects of historical forces on the evolution of diagrammatically-based systems of inference in logic and geometry are traced from antiquity to the early twentieth-century work of David Hilbert. From this exploration emerges an understanding that the present negative attitudes towards the use of diagrams in logic and geometry owe more to implicit appeals to their history and philosophical background than to any technical incompatibility with modern theories of logical systems.
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The Philosophical Structure of Historical Explanation
Paul A. Roth
Northwestern University Press, 2020

In The Philosophical Structure of Historical Explanation, Paul A. Roth resolves disputes persisting since the nineteenth century about the scientific status of history. He does this by showing why historical explanations must take the form of a narrative, making their logic explicit, and revealing how the rational evaluation of narrative explanation becomes possible. Roth situates narrative explanations within a naturalistic framework and develops a nonrealist (irrealist) metaphysics and epistemology of history—arguing that there exists no one fixed past, but many pasts. The book includes a novel reading of Thomas S. Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, showing how it offers a narrative explanation of theory change in science. This book will be of interest to researchers in historiography, philosophy of history, philosophy of science, philosophy of social science, and epistemology.

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Philosophical Topics 22
The Philosophy of Daniel Dennett
Christopher S. Hill
University of Arkansas Press, 1995
Contributors: Lynne Rudder Baker, Ned Block, Fred Dretske, Ivan Fox, Joseph Levine, Eric Lormand, Jeff McConnell, Brian P. McLaughlin, John O’Leary-Hawthorne, Georges Rey, Mark Richard, David M. Rosenthal, Carol Rovane, Michael Slote, Joseph Thomas Tolliver, Robert Van Gulick, Stephen Webb, Stephen L. White, and Daniel Dennett.
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Philosophical Topics 27.2
The Intersection of Analytic and Continental Philosophy
Hubert L. Dreyfus
University of Arkansas Press, 1999

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Philosophical Topics 32.1-2
Agency
John M. Fischer
University of Arkansas Press, 2004
Contents
 
Luck Egalitarianism Interpreted and Defended
Richard J. Arneson
 
Three Theories of Self-Governance
Michael E. Bratman
 
Reflections on an Argument from Luck
Randolph Clarke
 
Responsibility for Character
Andrew Eshleman
 
Internally Doing and Intentionally Not Doing
Carl Ginet
 
Irreplaceability and Unique Value
Christopher Grau
 
Freedom, Hedonism, and the Intrinsic Value of Lives
Ishtiyaque Haji
 
Determinism, Randomness, and Value
Noa Latham
 
Responsibility and Globally Manipulated Agents
Michael McKenna
 
The Illusion of Conscious Will and the Causation of Intentional Actions
Alfred R.Mele
 
Deliberative Alternatives
Dana Nelkin
 
Reasons Explanation and Agent Control: In Search of an Integrated Account
Timothy O’Connor and John Ross Churchill
 
Moral Accountability
Marina Oshana
 
Is Our Conception of Agent-Causation Coherent?
Derk Pereboom
 
Responsibility and the Condition of Moral Sense
Paul Russell
 
Ignorance and Blame
Ira M. Schnall
 
Conflicting Attitudes,Moral Agency, and Conceptions of the Self
Angela M. Smith
 
Toward an Axiological Defense of Libertarianism
Daniel Speak
 
Free Agents
Galen Strawson
 
Libertarianism and Skepticism about Free Will: Some Arguments against Both
Manuel Vargas
 
Free Will Demystified: A Dispositional Account
Kadri Vihvelin
 
Constructing Normativity
R. Jay Wallace
 
Neurophilosophy of Moral Responsibility: The Case for Revisionist Compatibilism
Henrik Walter
 
Trying, Intending, and Attempted Crimes
Gideon Yaffe
 
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Philosophical Topics 34.1 and 34.2
Analytic Kantianism
James Conant
University of Arkansas Press, 2006
Analytic Kantianism

Issue Editor: James Conant

Contributors: Robert Brandom, Eli Friedlander, Michael Friedman, Hannah Ginsborg, Arata Hamawaki, Andrea Kern, Michael Kremer, Thomas Land, Thomas Lockhart, Béatrice Longuenesse, John McDowell, A.W. Moore, Sebastian Rödl, and Clinton Tolley.

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Philosophical Topics 41.2
Envisioning Plurality: Feminist Perspectives on Pluralism in Ethics, Politics, and Social Theory
Jean Keller
University of Arkansas Press, 2015

Contents:
Why a Feminist Volume on Pluralism? – Bonnie Mann and Jean Keller
PLURALISM ’S FAILURES AND CERTAIN CONDITIONS FOR THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCCESS
Indigenous Agencies and the Pluralism of Empire – Scott L. Pratt
What Would Philosophic Pluralism Look Like?: True Dialogue, Epistemic Credibility, Rational Parity, and Death in the University – Jennifer Lisa Vest
Asking Too Much? Civility vs. Pluralism – Alison Reiheld
Attending to Others: Simone Weil and Epistemic Pluralism – Shari Stone-Mediatore
FEMINIST PLURALISM AND RELIGIOUS WORLDVIEWS
Islamic Feminisms and Freedom – Allison Weir
Is an “Islamic Feminism” Possible?: Gender Politics in the Contemporary Islamic Republic of Iran – Paria Gashtili
Beyond the Modern/Religious Dichotomy: The Veil and Feminist Solidarity in Contemporary Turkey – Fulden Ibrahimhakkioglu
Philosophy, Religion, Race, and Queerness: A Question of Accommodation or Access – Kim Q. Hall
FEMINIST PLURALISM AND FUNDAMENTAL VALUES
Value Pluralism, Intuitions, and Reflective Equilibrium – Lisa Tessman
Radical-cum-Relation: Bridging Feminist Ethics and Native Individual Autonomy – Shay Welch

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Philosophical Topics 42.1
The Second Person
James Conant
University of Arkansas Press, 2016

Contents:
Introduction – James Conant and Sebastian Rödl
THE FUNDAMENTAL CHARACTER OF THE SECOND PERSON AS A FORM OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Action and Passion – Anton Ford
What Binds Us Together: Normativity and the Second Person – Glenda Satne
Alethic Holdings – Jeremy Wanderer
THE SECOND PERSON AS A FORM OF PRACTICAL CONSCIOUSNESS
The Transmission of Skill – Will Small
For Oneself and Toward Another: The Puzzle about Recognition – Matthias Haase
THE SECOND PERSON AS THE FORM OF PRIVATE LAW
The Very Thought of (Wronging) You – Ariel Zylberman
The Idea of an Ethical Community: Kant and Hegel on the Necessity of Human Evil and the Love to Overcome It – Wolfram Gobsch
The Social and the Sociable – Stephen Darwall
THE PLACE OF THE SECOND PERSON IN THEORETICAL KNOWLEDGE
Theoretical Anarchism – Benjamin McMyler
Darwall on Action and the Idea of a Second-Personal Reason – Fabian Börchers
Kant on Testimony and the Communicability of Empirical Knowledge – Alexandra Newton
Testimony and Generality – Sebastian Rödl
ADDRESS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Understanding Others in Social Interactions – Monika Dullstein
What Is It to Know Someone? – David Lauer
On Address – Adrian Haddock

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Philosophical Topics 42.2
Contemporary Tractatus
Edward Minar
University of Arkansas Press, 2016

Contents:
Eliminating Ethics: Wittgenstein, Ethics, and the Limits of Sense – Edmund Dain
Addressing Russell Resolutely? – Cora Diamond
Missing a Step Up the Ladder – Eli Friedlander
Wittgenstein and “Tonk”: Inference and Representation in the Tractatus (and Beyond) – Martin Gustafsson
Resolute Reading – Kelly Dean Jolley
The Method of Language-Games as a Method of Logic – Oskari Kuusela
Austerity, Psychology, and the Intelligibility of Nonsense – Denis McManus
Showing, the Medium Voice, and the Unity of the Tractatus – Jean-Philippe Narboux
Analysis, Independence, Simplicity, and the General Sentence-Form – Thomas Ricketts
In What Way Does Logic Involve Necessity? – Sanford Shieh
Solipsism and the Limits of Sense in the Tractatus – Jônadas Techio

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Philosophical Topics 44.1
Essays on the Philosophy of Frederick Stoutland
Martin Gustafsson
University of Arkansas Press, 2016

Contents:

Introduction – Martin Gustafsson
Self-Awareness and Cognitive Agency in Descartes’s Meditations – Lilli Alanen
Why an Aristotelian Account of Truth Is (More or Less) All We Need – Jeff Malpas
The Social Aspects of Aristotle’s Theory of Action – Dorothea Frede
Voluntarism, Intellectualism, and Anselm on Motivation – Tomas Ekenberg
Why Kant is not a Kantian – James Conant
“A Contrast between Two Pictures”: The Case of Perception – Jennifer Hornsby
On What Is in Front of Your Nose – Anton Ford
Expression and Self-Consciousness – Stina Bäckström
Bodily Movement and Its Significance – Will Small
Anscombe’s Bird, Wittgenstein’s Cat: Intention, Expression, and Convention – Martin Gustafsson
Film Noir and Weakly Intentional Actions: An Anscombian Analysis – Elinor Hållén
Theory, Interpretation, and Law: Some Worries about Dworkin’s Account of Their Relation – Lisa Van Alstyne
Stoutland vs. Metaphysics – Lars Hertzberg

[more]

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Philosophical Topics 45.2
Philosophy of Language
Jason Stanley
University of Arkansas Press, 2017

Contributors: Luvell Anderson, Keota Fields, Justin Khoo, Carlotta Pavese, Brian Rabern, Jennifer M. Saul, Una Stojnic, Eric Swanson, Lynne Tirrell

Contents:
Hermeneutical Impasses – Luvell Anderson
Intensional Liar – Keota Fields
Code Words in Political Discourse – Justin Khoo
A Theory of Practical Meaning – Carlotta Pavese
Racial Figleaves, the Shifting Boundaries of the Permissible, and the Rise of Donald Trump – Jennifer M. Saul
Omissive Implicature – Eric Swanson
Toxic Speech: Toward an Epidemiology of Discursive Harm – Lynne Tirrell
SYMPOSIUM ON TWO DIMENSIONAL SEMANTICS
On the Connection between Semantic Content and the Objects of Assertion – Una Stojnić
A Bridge from Semantic Value to Content – Brian Rabern

[more]

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The Philosophical Vision of John Duns Scotus
An Introduction
Mary Beth Ingham
Catholic University of America Press, 2004
In this much-anticipated work, distinguished authors Mary Beth Ingham and Mechthild Dreyer present an accessible introduction to the philosophy of the thirteenth century Franciscan John Duns Scotus
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Philosophical Witnessing
The Holocaust as Presence
Berel Lang
Brandeis University Press, 2009
In this volume, eminent scholar Berel Lang brings the perspective of philosophical analysis to bear on issues related to the Holocaust. Setting out from a conception of philosophical “witnessing” that expands and illuminates the standard view of the witness, he confronts the question of what philosophy can add to the views of the Holocaust provided in other disciplines. Drawing on the philosophical areas of political theory, ethics, aesthetics, and the philosophy of history, he draws attention especially to the post-Holocaust emphasis on the concepts of genocide and “group rights.” Lang’s study, which emphasizes the moral choices that now face post-Holocaust thought, inspires the reader to think of the Holocaust in new ways, showing how its continued presence in contemporary consciousness affects areas of thought and practice not directly associated with that event.
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Philosophical Writing
Locke, Berkeley, Hume
John J. Richetti
Harvard University Press, 1983

Locke, Berkeley, and Hume have profoundly influenced moral and political thought. Yet part of their persuasiveness and stature is inextricably bound to their skill with words. In Philosophical Writing, John Richetti suspends purely philosophical questions in order to analyze the writing strategies of the three great eighteenth-century British philosophers.

In place of recent analysis that finds philosophical writing undermined by its rhetorical operations, this assessment explores the self-conscious attempts of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume to strike a balance between the rational demonstration they adhere to as philosophers and the powerful persuasiveness they manage in their writing. Richetti shows that, though the three share a deep distrust of language and rhetoric, they also share a confidence in crafted writing and a dependence on its techniques for dramatizing and promoting their thought. Placing each in context of the thought and literature of the times, he describes their differing approaches to the problem of a suitable rhetorical mode for philosophy.

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Philosophical Writings
Simone de Beauvoir; Edited by Margaret A. Simons with Marybeth Timmermann and Mary Beth Mader;Foreword by Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir
University of Illinois Press, 2021
Despite growing interest in her philosophy, Simone de Beauvoir remains widely misunderstood. She is typically portrayed as a mere intellectual follower of her companion, Jean-Paul Sartre. In Philosophical Writings, Beauvoir herself shows that nothing could be further from the truth.

Beauvoir's philosophical work suffers from a lack of English-language translation or, worse, mistranslation into heavily condensed popular versions. Philosophical Writings provides an unprecedented collection of complete, scholarly editions of philosophical texts that cover the first twenty-three years of Beauvoir's career, including a number of recently discovered works. Ranging from metaphysical literature to existentialist ethics, Philosophical Writings brings together diverse elements of Beauvoir's work while highlighting continuities in the development of her thought. Each of the translations features detailed notes and a scholarly introduction explaining its larger significance.

Revelatory and long overdue, Philosophical Writings adds to the ongoing resurgence of interest in Beauvoir's thought and to her growing influence on today's philosophical curriculum.

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Philosophies of Art and Beauty
Selected Readings in Aesthetics from Plato to Heidegger
Albert Hofstadter and Richard Kuhns
University of Chicago Press, 1976
This anthology is remarkable not only for the selections themselves, among which the Schelling and the Heidegger essays were translated especially for this volume, but also for the editors' general introduction and the introductory essays for each selection, which make this volume an invaluable aid to the study of the powerful, recurrent ideas concerning art, beauty, critical method, and the nature of representation. Because this collection makes clear the ways in which the philosophy of art relates to and is part of general philosophical positions, it will be an essential sourcebook to students of philosophy, art history, and literary criticism.
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Philosophies singulières
Conversation avec Michaël Crevoisier
Mehdi Belhaj Kacem and Bernard Stiegler
Diaphanes, 2021
Rarement les philosophes dont la formation s’est faite à l'écart de l’université se sont entretenus. Le temps d’une conversation Mehdi Belhaj Kacem et Bernard Stiegler se sont prêtés au jeu, échangeant à propos de ce qui les lie à la philosophie. Inévitablement, la mort tragique de Bernard Stiegler survenue un an plus tard, donne à lire ce texte avec un regard affecté. D’autant plus qu’ici, l’enthousiasme des échanges nous fait sentir le mouvement vivant de philosophies à l’œuvre, continuant de se constituer en système.

En effet, bien que les œuvres de ces deux auteurs soient singulières, l’une et l’autre procèdent d’une même exigence qui les place au centre de la tradition philosophique : produire un système conceptuel qui donne à penser la nouveauté de la situation historique. À quoi bon la cohérence d’une philosophie qui ne nous dirait rien de ce qu’est devenu le monde ? Que vaudrait l’abstraction conceptuelle si celle-ci n’était pas au service de la compréhension de ce qui nous transforme ? Ainsi, les deux auteurs nous appellent à ne pas oublier : l’enjeu de la philosophie n’est pas la philosophie. Cette exigence critique, la présente conversation la réfléchit à bras le corps, non sans détours et tourments, mais avec franchise et esprit de liberté.
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Philosophizing the Everyday
Revolutionary Praxis and the Fate of Cultural Theory
John Roberts
Pluto Press, 2006
After modernism and postmodernism, it is argued, the everyday supposedly is where a democracy of taste is brought into being - the place where art goes to recover its customary and collective pleasures, and where the shared pleasures of popular culture are indulged, from celebrity magazines to shopping malls.

John Roberts argues that this understanding of the everyday downgrades its revolutionary meaning and philosophical implications. Bringing radical political theory back to the centre of the discussion, he shows how notions of cultural democratization have been oversimplified. Asserting that the everyday should not be narrowly identified with the popular, Roberts critiques the way in which the concept is now overly associated with consumption and 'ordinariness'.

Engaging with the work of key thinkers including, Lukács, Arvatov, Benjamin, Lefebvre, Gramsci, Barthes, Vaneigem, and de Certeau, Roberts shows how the concept of the everyday continues to be central to debates on ideology, revolution and praxis. He offers a lucid account of different approaches that developed over the course of the twentieth century, making this an ideal book for anyone looking for a politicised approach to cultural theory.

John Roberts is a Senior Research Fellow in Fine Art at the University of Wolverhampton. He is the author of The Art of Interruption: Realism, Photography and the Everyday (Manchester University Press, 1997) and The Philistine Controversy (Verso, with Dave Beech, 2002), plus other books and numerous articles, in Radical Philosophy and elsewhere.

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Philosophy 101 by Socrates
An Introduction to Philosophy via Plato's Apology
Peter Kreeft
St. Augustine's Press, 2002
Philosophy means “the love of wisdom.” Kreeft uses the dialogues of Socrates to help the reader grow in that love. He says that no master of the art of philosophizing has ever been more simple, clear, and accessible to beginners as has Socrates. He focuses on Plato’s dialogues, the Apology of Socrates, as a lively example to imitate, and a model partner for the reader for dialogue. Kreeft calls it “the Magna Carta of philosophy,” a timeless classic that is “a portable classroom.”

“If only every introductory course were as engaging as Philosophy 101 by Peter Kreeft! Kreeft offers a marvelous way of using Plato’s Apology both to introduce the whole scope of philosopher and to evoke a personal response. Even the diffident freshman, prone to keeping a new subject like philosopher as arm’s length, will feel the enchantment of love-for-wisdom that philosophy is supposed to be.” – Joseph W. Koterski, S.J., chair, Department of Philosophy, Fordham University

“A terrific introduction to philosophy through this not uncontroversial commentary on Plato’s Apology. Not everyone will agree that Socrates provided the best possible defense for himself nor that he intended to. But Kreeft’s is an eminently defensible reading of the Apology and will awaken many a student to the delights of Plato and Philosophy. The comparisons of Socrates with Christ are fascinating. This book will go a long way to consoling those who are not privileged to have Socrates or Kreeft as teachers in the flesh.” – Janet Smith, Sacred Heart Major Seminary, Detroit

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Philosophy and Art
Daniel O. Dahlstrom
Catholic University of America Press, 2018
The 13 essays in this collection are marked by a diversity of philosophical styles and perspectives on art. While some authors focus on specific forms of art, others are more concerned with the interpretation given to art by past and contemporary philosop
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Philosophy and Non-Philosophy since Merleau-Ponty
Hugh J. Silverman
Northwestern University Press, 1997
In Philosophy and Non-Philosophy since Merleau-Ponty, editor Hugh J. Silverman has collected essays from the leading scholars in Continental philosophy, creating a forum for the discussion of contemporary writings and differing perspectives on the role of philosophy (and its relation to "non-philosophy") since the death of Merleau-Ponty: Sartre, Barthes, Heidegger, Lacan, Levinas, Deleuze, Foucault, Lyotard, Habermas, and Derrida.

Included in this volume is Silverman's translation of Merleau-Ponty's last course at the Collège de France in 1960-61 and an extensive research bibliography. Originally published in 1988, Philosophy and Non-Philosophy since Merleau-Ponty is a fascinating inquiry into the developments, directions, and ruptures in Continental philosophy since Merleau-Ponty's death in 1961.
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The Philosophy and Politics of Czech Dissidence from Patocka to Havel
Aviezer Tucker
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000

A critical study of the philosophy and political practice of the Czech dissident movement Charter 77. Aviezer Tucker examines how the political philosophy of Jan Patocka (1907–1977), founder of Charter 77, influenced the thinking and political leadership of Vaclav Havel as dissident and president.

Presents the first serious treatment of Havel as philosopher and Patocka as a political thinker. Through the Charter 77 dissident movement in Czechoslovakia, opponents of communism based their civil struggle for human rights on philosophic foundations, and members of the Charter 77 later led the Velvet Revolution. After Patocka’s self-sacrifice in 1977, Vaclav Havel emerged a strong philosophical and political force, and he continued to apply Patocka’s philosophy in order to understand the human condition under late communism and the meaning of dissidence. However, the political/philosophical orientation of the Charter 77 movement failed to provide President Havel with an adequate basis for comprehending and responding to the extraordinary political and economic problems of the postcommunist period.

In his discussion of Havel's presidency and the eventual corruption of the Velvet Revolution, Tucker demonstrates that the weaknesses in Charter 77 member's understanding of modernity, which did not matter while they were dissidents, seriously harmed their ability to function in a modern democratic system. Within this context, Tucker also examines Havel’s recent attempt to topple the democratic but corrupt government in 1997–1998. The Philosophy and Politics of Czech Dissidence from Patocka to Havel will be of interest to students of philosophy and politics, scholars and students of Slavic studies, and historians, as well as anyone fascinated by the nature of dissidence.

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Philosophy and the Young Child
Gareth Matthews
Harvard University Press, 1980

Philosophy and the Young Child presents striking evidence that young children naturally engage in a brand of thought that is genuinely philosophical. In a series of exquisite examples that could only have been gathered by a professional philosopher with an extraordinary respect for young minds, Gareth Matthews demonstrates that children have a capacity for puzzlement and mental play that leads them to tackle many of the classic problems of knowledge, value, and existence that have traditionally formed the core of philosophical thought. Matthews’s anecdotes reveal children reasoning about these problems in a way that must be taken seriously by anyone who wants to understand how children think.

Philosophy and the Young Child provides a powerful antidote to the widespread tendency to underestimate children’s mental ability and patronize their natural curiosity. As Matthews shows, even child psychologists as insightful as Piaget have failed to grasp the subtlety of children’s philosophical frame of mind. Only in children’s literature does Matthews find any sensitivity to children’s natural philosophizing. Old favorites like Winnie the Pooh, the Oz books, and The Bear That Wasn’t are full of philosophical puzzlers that amuse and engage children. More important, these stories manage to strip away the mental defensiveness and conventionality that so often prevent adults from appreciating the way children begin to think about the world.

Gareth Matthews believes that adults have much to gain if they can learn to “do philosophy” with children, and his book is a rich source of useful suggestions for parents, teachers, students, and anyone else who might like to try.

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Philosophy as Agôn
A Study of Plato’s Gorgias and Related Texts
Robert Metcalf
Northwestern University Press, 2018
In Philosophy as Agôn: A Study of Plato's Gorgias and Related Texts, Robert Metcalf offers a fresh interpretation of Plato's dialogues as dramatic texts whose philosophy is not so much a matter of doctrine as it is a dynamic, nondogmatic, and open-ended practice of engaging others in agonistic dialogue.

Metcalf challenges prevailing interpretations according to which the agôn (contest or struggle) between the interlocutors in the dialogues is inessential to Plato's philosophical purpose, or simply a reflection of the cultural background of ancient Greek life. Instead, he argues that Plato understands philosophy as essentially agonistic—involving the adversarial engagement of others in dialogue such that one's integrity is put to the test through this engagement, and where the agôn is structured so as to draw adversaries together in agreement about the matters at issue, though that agreement is always open to future contest.

Based on a careful reading of the Gorgias and related Socratic dialogues, such as Apology and Theaetetus, Metcalf contends that agôn is indispensable to the critique of prevailing opinions, to the transformation of the interlocutor through shame-inducing refutation, and to philosophy as a lifelong training (askêsis) of oneself in relation to others.
 
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Philosophy Beside Itself
On Deconstruction and Modernism
Stephen W. MelvilleForeword by Donald Marshall
University of Minnesota Press, 1986

Philosophy Beside Itself was first published in 1986. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

The writings of French philosopher Jacques Derrida have been the single most powerful influence on critical theory and practice in the United States over the past decade. But with few exceptions American philosophers have taken little or no interest in Derrida's work, and the task of reception, translation, and commentary has been left to literary critics. As a result, Derrida has appeared as a figure already defined by essentially literary critical activities and interests.

Stephen Melville's aim in Philosophy Beside Itself is to insist upon and clarify the distinctions between philosophy and criticism. He argues that until we grasp Derrida's philosophical project as such, we remain fundamentally unable to see his significance for criticism. In terms derived from Stanley Cavell's writings on modernism, Melville develops a case for Derrida as a modernist philosopher, working at once within and against that tradition and discipline.

Melville first places Derrida in a Hegelian context, the structure of which he explores by examining the work of Heidegger, Lacan, and Bataille. With this foundation, he is able to reappraise the project of deconstructive criticism as developed in Paul de Man's Blindness and Insight and further articulated by other Yale critics. Central to this critique is the ambivalent relationship between deconstructive criticism and Lacanian psychoanalysis. Criticism—radical self-criticism—is a central means through which the difficult facts of human community come to recognition, and Melville argues for criticism as an activity intimately bound to the ways in which we do and do not belong in time and in community. Derrida's achievement has been to find a new and necessary way to assert that the task of philosophy is criticism; the task of literary criticism is to assume the burden of that achievement.

Stephen Melville is an assistant professor of English at Syracuse University, and Donald Marshall is a professor of English at the University of Iowa.

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Philosophy Between the Lines
The Lost History of Esoteric Writing
Arthur M. Melzer
University of Chicago Press, 2014
Philosophical esotericism—the practice of communicating one’s unorthodox thoughts “between the lines”—was a common practice until the end of the eighteenth century. The famous Encyclopédie of Diderot, for instance, not only discusses this practice in over twenty different articles, but admits to employing it itself. The history of Western thought contains hundreds of such statements by major philosophers testifying to the use of esoteric writing in their own work or others’. Despite this long and well-documented history, however, esotericism is often dismissed today as a rare occurrence. But by ignoring esotericism, we risk cutting ourselves off from a full understanding of Western philosophical thought.
           
Arthur M. Melzer serves as our deeply knowledgeable guide in this capacious and engaging history of philosophical esotericism. Walking readers through both an ancient (Plato) and a modern (Machiavelli) esoteric work, he explains what esotericism is—and is not. It relies not on secret codes, but simply on a more intensive use of familiar rhetorical techniques like metaphor, irony, and insinuation. Melzer explores the various motives that led thinkers in different times and places to engage in this strange practice, while also exploring the motives that lead more recent thinkers not only to dislike and avoid this practice but to deny its very existence. In the book’s final section, “A Beginner’s Guide to Esoteric Reading,” Melzer turns to how we might once again cultivate the long-forgotten art of reading esoteric works.

Philosophy Between the Lines is the first comprehensive, book-length study of the history and theoretical basis of philosophical esotericism, and it provides a crucial guide to how many major writings—philosophical, but also theological, political, and literary—were composed prior to the nineteenth century.
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Philosophy by Other Means
The Arts in Philosophy and Philosophy in the Arts
Robert B. Pippin
University of Chicago Press, 2021
Throughout his career, Robert B. Pippin has examined the relationship between philosophy and the arts. With his writings on film, literature, and visual modernism, he has shown that there are aesthetic objects that cannot be properly understood unless we acknowledge and reflect on the philosophical concerns that are integral to their meaning. His latest book, Philosophy by Other Means, extends this trajectory, offering a collection of essays that present profound considerations of philosophical issues in aesthetics alongside close readings of novels by Henry James, Marcel Proust, and J. M. Coetzee.

The arts hold a range of values and ambitions, offering beauty, playfulness, and craftsmanship while deepening our mythologies and enriching the human experience. Some works take on philosophical ambitions, contributing to philosophy in ways that transcend the discipline’s traditional analytic and discursive forms. Pippin’s claim is twofold: criticism properly understood often requires a form of philosophical reflection, and philosophy is impoverished if it is not informed by critical attention to aesthetic objects. In the first part of the book, he examines how philosophers like Kant, Hegel, and Adorno have considered the relationship between art and philosophy. The second part of the book offers an exploration of how individual artworks might be considered forms of philosophical reflection. Pippin demonstrates the importance of practicing philosophical criticism and shows how the arts can provide key insights that are out of reach for philosophy, at least as traditionally understood.
 
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