4917 books match the query 'Philosophy' and 1267 start with t

cover of The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality

The Foucault Effect

Studies in Governmentality

Edited by Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller

University of Chicago Press, 1991

Based on Michel Foucault's 1978 and 1979 lectures at the Collège de France on governmental rationalities and his 1977 interview regarding his work on imprisonment, this volume is the long-awaited sequel to Power/Knowledge. In these lectures, Foucault examines the art or activity of government both in its present form and within a historical perspective as well as the different ways governmentality has been made thinkable and practicable.

Foucault's thoughts on political discourse and governmentality are supplemented by the essays of internationally renowned scholars. United by the common influence of Foucault's approach, they explore the many modern manifestations of government: the reason of state, police, liberalism, security, social economy, insurance, solidarity, welfare, risk management, and more. The central theme is that the object and the activity of government are not instinctive and natural things, but things that have been invented and learned.

The Foucault Effect analyzes the thought behind practices of government and argues that criticism represents a true force for change in attitudes and actions, and that extending the limits of some practices allows the invention of others. This unique and extraordinarily useful collection of articles and primary materials will open the way for a whole new set of discussions of the work of Michel Foucault as well as the status of liberalism, social policy, and insurance.
[more]
cover of The Foundations of Arithmetic: A Logico-Mathematical Enquiry into the Concept of Number

The Foundations of Arithmetic

A Logico-Mathematical Enquiry into the Concept of Number

Gottlob Frege

Northwestern University Press, 1980

The Foundations of Arithmetic is undoubtedly the best introduction to Frege's thought; it is here that Frege expounds the central notions of his philosophy, subjecting the views of his predecessors and contemporaries to devastating analysis. The book represents the first philosophically sound discussion of the concept of number in Western civilization. It profoundly influenced developments in the philosophy of mathematics and in general ontology.
[more]
cover of The Foundations of Knowing

The Foundations of Knowing

Roderick M. Chisholm

University of Minnesota Press, 1982

The Foundations of Knowing was first published in 1982. 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.

This collection of essays on the foundations of empirical knowledge brings together ten of Roderick M. Chisholm's most important papers in epistemology, three of them published for the first time, the others significantly revised and expanded for this edition. The essays in Part I constitute a thoroughgoing defense of foundationalism—the doctrine that our justification for believing always rests upon a self-evident basis. In Part II, Chisholm applies foundationalist principles to various areas within the theory of knowledge, and in part III he presents a history of twentieth-century American epistemology.

"Roderick M. Chisholm's work has been most influential both in the development of epistemology and in the widespread application of his analytic method. I am sure this publication featuring the unification of his views will be of great value to those working on the central issues of philosophy." Hector-Neri Castañeda, Indiana University

Roderick Chisholm is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities in the department of philosophy at Brown University. Among his books are Perceiving: A Philosophical Study, Theory of Knowledge, Person and Object,and The First Person (Minnesota, 1981).

[more]
cover of The Foundations of Natural Morality: On the Compatibility of Natural Rights and the Natural Law

The Foundations of Natural Morality

On the Compatibility of Natural Rights and the Natural Law

S. Adam Seagrave

University of Chicago Press, 2014

Recent years have seen a renaissance of interest in the relationship between natural law and natural rights. During this time, the concept of natural rights has served as a conceptual lightning rod, either strengthening or severing the bond between traditional natural law and contemporary human rights. Does the concept of natural rights have the natural law as its foundation or are the two ideas, as Leo Strauss argued, profoundly incompatible?

With The Foundations of Natural Morality, S. Adam Seagrave addresses this controversy, offering an entirely new account of natural morality that compellingly unites the concepts of natural law and natural rights. Seagrave agrees with Strauss that the idea of natural rights is distinctly modern and does not derive from traditional natural law. Despite their historical distinctness, however, he argues that the two ideas are profoundly compatible and that the thought of John Locke and Thomas Aquinas provides the key to reconciling the two sides of this long-standing debate. In doing so, he lays out a coherent concept of natural morality that brings together thinkers from Plato and Aristotle to Hobbes and Locke, revealing the insights contained within these disparate accounts as well as their incompleteness when considered in isolation. Finally, he turns to an examination of contemporary issues, including health care, same-sex marriage, and the death penalty, showing how this new account of morality can open up a more fruitful debate.
[more]
cover of The Fourfold: Reading the Late Heidegger

The Fourfold

Reading the Late Heidegger

Andrew J. Mitchell

Northwestern University Press, 2015

Heidegger’s later thought is a thinking of things, so argues Andrew J. Mitchell in The Fourfold. Heidegger understands these things in terms of what he names “the fourfold”—a convergence of relationships bringing together the earth, the sky, divinities, and mortals—and Mitchell’s book is the first detailed exegesis of this neglected aspect of Heidegger’s later thought. As such it provides entrée to the full landscape of Heidegger’s postwar thinking, offering striking new interpretations of the atomic bomb, technology, plants, animals, weather, time, language, the holy, mortality, dwelling, and more. What results is a conception of things as ecstatic, relational, singular, and, most provocatively, as intrinsically tied to their own technological commodification. A major new work that resonates beyond the confines of Heidegger scholarship, The Fourfold proposes nothing less than a new phenomenological thinking of relationality and mediation for understanding the things around us.

[more]
cover of The Fragile We: Ethical Implications Of Heidegger's "Being and Time"

The Fragile We

Ethical Implications Of Heidegger's "Being and Time"

Lawrence Vogel

Northwestern University Press, 1994

Critics have charged that Heidegger's account of authenticity is morally nihilistic, that his fundamental ontology is either egocentric or chauvinistic; and many see Heidegger's turn to Nazism in 1933 as following logically from an indifference, and even hostility, to "otherness" in the premises of his early philosophy.

In The Fragile "We": Ethical Implications of Heidegger's "Being and Time," Lawrence Vogel presents three interpretations of authentic existence—the existentialist, the historicist, and the cosmopolitan—each of which is a plausible version of the personal ideal depicted in Being and Time. He then draws parallels between these interpretations and three moments in the contemporary liberal-communitarian debate over the relationship of the "I" and the "We." His book contributes both to a diagnosis of what there is about Being and Time that invites moral nihilism and to a sense of how fundamental ontology might be recast so that "the other" is accorded an appropriate place in an account of human existence.
[more]
cover of The Fragility of Freedom: Tocqueville on Religion, Democracy, and the American Future

The Fragility of Freedom

Tocqueville on Religion, Democracy, and the American Future

Joshua Mitchell

University of Chicago Press, 1995

In this fresh interpretation of Tocqueville's thought, Joshua Mitchell explores the dynamic interplay between religion and politics in American democracy.

Focusing on Democracy in America, The Fragility of Freedom examines Tocqueville's key works and argues that his analysis of democracy is ultimately rooted in an Augustinian view of human psychology. As much a work of political philosophy as of religion, The Fragility of Freedom argues for the importance of a political theology that recognizes moderation.

"An intelligent and sharply drawn portrait of a conservative Toqueville."—Anne C. Rose, Journal of American History

"I recommend this book as one of a very few to approach seriously the sources of Tocqueville's intellectual and moral greatness."—Peter Augustine Lawler, Journal of Politics

"Mitchell ably places Democracy in America in the long conversation of Western political and theological thought."—Wilfred M. McClay, First Things

"Learned and thought-provoking."—Peter Berkowitz, New Republic
[more]
cover of The Fragility of Things: Self-Organizing Processes, Neoliberal Fantasies, and Democratic Activism

The Fragility of Things

Self-Organizing Processes, Neoliberal Fantasies, and Democratic Activism

William E. Connolly

Duke University Press, 2013

In The Fragility of Things, eminent theorist William E. Connolly focuses on several self-organizing ecologies that help to constitute our world. These interacting geological, biological, and climate systems, some of which harbor creative capacities, are depreciated by that brand of neoliberalism that confines self-organization to economic markets and equates the latter with impersonal rationality. Neoliberal practice thus fails to address the fragilities it exacerbates. Engaging a diverse range of thinkers, from Friedrich Hayek, Michel Foucault, Hesiod, and Immanuel Kant to Voltaire, Terrence Deacon, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Alfred North Whitehead, Connolly brings the sense of fragility alive as he rethinks the idea of freedom. Urging the Left not to abandon the state but to reclaim it, he also explores scales of politics below and beyond the state. The contemporary response to fragility requires a militant pluralist assemblage composed of those sharing affinities of spirituality across differences of creed, class, gender, sexual orientation, and ethnicity.
[more]
cover of The Fragments of Parmenides: A Critical Text With Introduction and Translation, the Ancient Testimonia and a Commentary

The Fragments of Parmenides

A Critical Text With Introduction and Translation, the Ancient Testimonia and a Commentary

A. H, Coxon

Parmenides Publishing, 2009

 Edited with New Translation by Richard McKirahan

With a New Preface by Malcolm Schofield

This book is a revised and expanded version of A.H. Coxon's full critical edition of the extant remains of Parmenides of Elea—the fifth-century B.C. philosopher by many considered "one of the greatest and most astonishing thinkers of all times." (Karl Popper) Coxon's presentation of the complete ancient evidence for Parmenides and his comprehensive examination of the fragments, unsurpassed to this day, have proven invaluable to our understanding of the Eleatic since the book's first publication in 1986. This edition, edited by Richard McKirahan and with a new preface by Malcolm Schofield, is released on the 100th anniversary of Coxon's birth. 
 
This new edition for the first time includes English translations of the testimonia and of any Ancient Greek throughout the book, as well as an English/Greek glossary by Richard McKirahan, and revisions by the late author himself. The text consists of Coxon's collations of the relevant folios of manuscripts of Sextus Empiricus, Proclus and Simplicius and includes all extant fragments, a commentary, the testimonia, a complete list of sources, linguistic parallels from both earlier and later authors, and the fullest critical apparatus that has appeared since Diels’ Poetarum Philosophorum Fragmenta (1901). The collection of testimonia includes the philosophical discussions of Parmenides by Plato, Aristotle and the Neoplatonists, most of which had been omitted by Diels. The introduction discusses the history of the text, the language and form of the poem, Parmenides’ use and understanding of the verb ‘to be’, his place in the history of earlier and later philosophy and the biographical tradition. In the commentary Coxon deals in detail with both the language and the subject matter of the poem and pays full attention to Parmenides’ account of the physical world. The appendix relates later Eleatic arguments to those of Parmenides. 
[more]
cover of The Frame and the Mirror: On Collage and the Postmodern

The Frame and the Mirror

On Collage and the Postmodern

Thomas P. Brockelman

Northwestern University Press, 2001

If the postmodern is a collage—as some critics have suggested—or if collage is itself a kernel of the postmodern, what does this mean for our way of understanding the world? The Frame and the Mirror uses this question to probe the distinctive character of the postmodern situation and the philosophical problem of representation. Brockelman’s work is itself a collage of sorts, using juxtapositions of critics and art historical figures to conduct a debate between such figures as Karsten Harries, Gianni Vattimo, Rosalind Krauss, Immanuel Kant, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Slavo Žižek, and Le Corbusier about issues such as truth in art, perspectivism, theatricality, the sublime, psychoanalytic theory, politics, and urbanism.

More than an introduction to the postmodern, The Frame and the Mirror advances our understanding of the contemporary world by relating its features to the peculiar characteristics of collage. Ultimately, Brockelman shows how collage demands that we reinterpret modernity, conceiving of it as suspended between a loss of certainty and a new kind of knowledge about the human condition. In doing so, his work challenges many of the claims made in the name of postmodernism—and offers in their place a new and ironic view of the cultural space in which contemporary and historical events occur.
[more]
cover of The Frankfurt School in Exile

The Frankfurt School in Exile

Thomas Wheatland

University of Minnesota Press, 2009

Members of the Frankfurt School have had an enormous effect on Western thought, beginning soon after Max Horkheimer became the director of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main, in 1930. Also known as the Horkheimer Circle, the group included such eminent intellectuals as Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, Leo Lowenthal, and Friedrich Pollock. Fleeing Nazi oppression, Horkheimer moved the Institute and many of its affiliated scholars to Columbia University in 1934, where it remained until 1950.

Until now, the conventional portrayal of the Institute has held that its members found refuge by relocating to Columbia but that they had little contact with, or impact on, American intellectual life. With insight and clarity, Thomas Wheatland demonstrates that the standard account is wrong. Based on deep archival research in Germany and in the United States, and on interviews conducted with luminaries such as Daniel Bell, Bernadine Dohrn, Peter Gay, Todd Gitlin, Nathan Glazer, Tom Hayden, Robert Merton, and others, Wheatland skillfully traces the profound connections between the Horkheimer Circle’s members and the intellectual life of the era. Reassessing the group’s involvement with the American New Left in the 1960s, he argues that Herbert Marcuse’s role was misunderstood in shaping the radical student movement’s agenda. More broadly, he illustrates how the Circle influenced American social thought and made an even more dramatic impression on German postwar sociology.

Although much has been written about the Frankfurt School, this is the first book to closely examine the relationship between its members and their American contemporaries. The Frankfurt School in Exile uncovers an important but neglected dimension of the history of the Frankfurt School and adds immeasurably to our understanding of the contributions made by its émigré intellectuals to postwar intellectual life.
[more]
cover of The Freedom of the Migrant: Objections to Nationalism

The Freedom of the Migrant

Objections to Nationalism

Vilém Flusser. Translated to the German by Kenneth Kronenberg. Edited and with an Introduction by Anke K. Finger

University of Illinois Press, 2013

Vilém Flusser was one of the most fascinating and original European thinkers of the late twentieth century. In this collection of his essays on emigration, nationalism, and information theory, he raises questions about the viability of ideas of national identity in a world whose borders are becoming increasingly arbitrary and permeable. Flusser argues that modern societies are in flux, with traditional linear and textual epistemologies being challenged by global circulatory networks and a growth in visual stimulation. Beyond globalization, Flusser's ideas about communication and identity are rooted in the Judeo-Christian concept of self-determination and self-realization through recognition of the other.
[more]
cover of The Future of Academic Freedom

The Future of Academic Freedom

Edited by Louis Menand

University of Chicago Press, 1996

At the bottom of every controversy embroiling the university today—from debates over hate-speech codes to the reorganization of the academy as a multicultural institution—is the concept of academic freedom. But academic freedom is almost never mentioned in these debates. Now nine leading academics, including Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Edward Said, Richard Rorty, and Joan W. Scott, consider the problems confronting the American University in terms of their effect on the future of academic freedom.

"Louis Menand has assembled The Future of Academic Freedom to better define and delineate what should and should not happen within our colleges and universities. . . . The whole extremely learned yet accessible debate exploits the freedoms it extols, tackling sensitive subjects such as ethnicity and ethics head-on."—Publishers Weekly

"The essays are not only sharp, elegant and lucid, but extremely well-informed about the history of American battles over academic freedom."—Alan Ryan, Times Higher Education Supplement

"[A] superb inquiry into some of the most vexing and significant issues in higher education today."—Zachary Karabell, Boston Book Review
[more]
cover of The Future of Alienation

The Future of Alienation

Richard Schacht

University of Illinois Press, 1994

Richard Schacht has long argued that alienation theory can shed important light upon aspects of life in the modern world and upon our human predicament. The essays here call for a rethinking of a variety of forms of alienation in light of contemporary dynamics and a clearer understanding of the dialectic of human selfhood and social participation.
 
They call for a renewed interest in alienation theory; they counter the myth that, with the collapse of the Soviet empire, Marx's thinking has been "refuted"; and they argue for an enhanced sensitivity to the problem of how we describe, interpret, and evaluate the world around us in light of the complexity and diversity that alienation theory reveals.
 
[more]
cover of The Future of Humanity: From Global Civilization to Great Civilization

The Future of Humanity

From Global Civilization to Great Civilization

Zhouying Jin

Intellect Books, 2022

A study of topics connected to the future of mankind, with a particular emphasis on the economic, social, and geopolitical effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

This book seeks to underscore the importance of dealing with our planet’s common crises—climate change, species extinction, land and food shortages, water pollution, and many more global catastrophes. In the face of these calamities, this book calls for the transformation of human development model and civilization paradigm: Promote the transformation from industrial civilization to global Civilization and then strive to realize the great civilization. 

The far-reaching effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have gone beyond the fields of health, deeply impacting economic, social, and geopolitical affairs worldwide. The still-unfolding health crisis has forced many to rethink the axioms of what they know as “civilization.” In this book, Zhouying Jin contends that if the human beings who share the earth cannot guide the direction of technological innovation to create a more advanced human civilization, then they are doomed to move toward self-destruction. The Future of Humanity calls on human beings to prepare for the future by altering their destructive relationship with nature and abandoning people-centered thinking to promote an awakening of all mankind.
[more]
cover of The Future of Humanity: Global Civilization and China's Rejuvenation

The Future of Humanity

Global Civilization and China's Rejuvenation

Zhouying Jin

Intellect Books, 2018

The Future of Humanity seeks to answer the question: “What kind of global civilization should human beings pursue and what do we have to do collectively?,” one a question that has preoccupied scholars, philosophers, and politicians for centuries. In doing so, the book tackles concepts as monumental as the keys to happiness, alien nonconventional intelligence, immortality, morality, and China’s possible role in bringing about a better worldjoining this global discussion.

To navigate these many and complex topics, Jin combines the spiritual insights of ancient Chinese thinkers with a deep respect for the accomplishments and discoveries of modern Western science, exploring and explaining her distinct vision for a what a better, global future civilization could be.
[more]
cover of The Future of Illusion: Political Theology and Early Modern Texts

The Future of Illusion

Political Theology and Early Modern Texts

Victoria Kahn

University of Chicago Press, 2013

In recent years, the rise of fundamentalism and a related turn to religion in the humanities have led to a powerful resurgence of interest in the problem of political theology. In a critique of this contemporary fascination with the theological underpinnings of modern politics, Victoria Kahn proposes a return to secularism—whose origins she locates in the art, literature, and political theory of the early modern period—and argues in defense of literature and art as a force for secular liberal culture.

Kahn draws on theorists such as Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss, Walter Benjamin, and Hannah Arendt and their readings of Shakespeare, Hobbes, Machiavelli, and Spinoza to illustrate that the dialogue between these modern and early modern figures can help us rethink the contemporary problem of political theology. Twentieth-century critics, she shows, saw the early modern period as a break from the older form of political theology that entailed the theological legitimization of the state. Rather, the period signaled a new emphasis on a secular notion of human agency and a new preoccupation with the ways art and fiction intersected the terrain of religion. 
[more]
cover of The Future of Totality: Fredric Jameson and the Prospects of Critical Theory

The Future of Totality

Fredric Jameson and the Prospects of Critical Theory

Nicholas Brown, Maria Elisa Cevasco, Fabio Akcelrud Durão, and Robert T. Tally Jr., editors

Duke University Press, 2026

Following his death in 2024, Fredric Jameson’s vast body of work continues to challenge orthodoxies while retaining close ties to older critical and philosophical traditions, notably dialectical criticism, formal analysis, and utopian discourse. The Future of Totality brings together a selection of Jameson's former students and other prominent scholars thinking from Jameson, rather than writing on him, to represent future directions of Jamesonian thought in the tradition of dialectical criticism and cultural study. Through four sections reflecting and building on Jameson’s legacy, focusing on theory, critical reading of new forms, the reshaping of contemporary problematics, and new dimensions inspired by Jameson, The Future of Totality makes its own intervention about the continuity and innovation of Jameson’s contributions. Serving both as a tribute to the scholar and as a space for thinking about the future of his work, these essays explore new and unforeseen dimensions to which Jameson’s work leads.
[more]
cover of The Future of an Illusion: Film, Feminism, and Psychoanalysis

The Future of an Illusion

Film, Feminism, and Psychoanalysis

Constance Penley

University of Minnesota Press, 1989

The Future of an Illusion was first published in 1989. 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 Future of an Illusion documents the pivotal role Constance Penley has played in the development of feminist film theory. Penley analyzes the primary movements that have shaped the field: the conjunction of feminism, film theory, and psychoanalysis, and the inherent debates surrounding the politics of women and representation. These debates center on the position of women in the classical Hollywood narrative, the construction of the spectator's desire in pornography and eroticism, and the implicitly male bias in psychoanalytically oriented film theory. Essential to anyone studying the sexual policies of representation, The Future of an Illusion ranges from avant-garde films to video, popular cinema, television, literature, and critical and cultural theory.

Constance Penley is associate professor of English and film studies at the University of Rochester. A co-editor of the journal Camera Obscura,she is the editor of Feminism and Film Theory.

[more]
cover of The Future without a Past: The Humanities in a Technological Society

The Future without a Past

The Humanities in a Technological Society

John Paul Russo

University of Missouri Press, 2005

In The Future without a Past, John Paul Russo goes beyond currently given reasons for the decline of the humanities and searches out its root causes in the technologization of everyday life. His main premise is that we are undergoing a transformation at the hands of technological imperatives such as rationalization, universalism, monism, and autonomy. The relation between ourselves and nature has altered to such a degree that we no longer live in a natural environment but in a technological one. According to Russo, technological values have actually eroded human values instead of being “humanized” by them.
            What are the implications of this shift for the humanities, traditionally seen as safeguards of the human? Russo addresses this question by situating the decline of the humanities within the larger social and historical panorama. He explores how technological values have infiltrated the humanities to the point of weakening their instruction and undermining their force; at the same time, he shows how the humanities have confronted these trends and can continue to do so. Russo believes that if we understand how technology “works” and the nature of its powers, we will then know in which realms it must be accepted and where it should be resisted.
            Russo outlines the components of the technological system and examines their impact on the educational system. He also discusses the loss of historical memory, including the so-called loss of the self and the transformation of the library. He studies the parallels between technological and literary values in criticism and theory, concluding with an analysis of the fiction of Don DeLillo, one of the most prominent contemporary novelists. DeLillo’s exploration of technology in American life, matched by a powerful critique of it from a broadly humanistic and religious perspective, serves to summarize the themes of the book as a whole.    
            The Future without a Past will appeal to scholars and students of literary studies, intellectual and cultural history, philosophy, ethics, media studies, and American studies, as well as to general readers who are seeking deeper insights into today’s cultural debates.
[more]
cover of The Gadamer Reader: A Bouquet of the Later Writings

The Gadamer Reader

A Bouquet of the Later Writings

Hans-Georg Gadamer

Northwestern University Press, 2007

The German volume Gadamer Lesebuch [A Gadamer Reader] (1997), selected and edited by Jean Grondin in consultation with Hans-Georg Gadamer himself, contains a set of essays that present a cross section of writings by one of the twentieth century's greatest philosophers. The volume begins with an autobiographical sketch and culminates in a conversation with Jean Grondin that looks back over a lifetime of productive philosophical work. The essays not already available in English have here been translated by Richard E. Palmer, a respected translator of Gadamer's writings. The sixteen essays contained in the Lesebuch are augmented here by three other essays: Gadamer's last essay on Derrida, "Hermeneutics Tracking the Trace" (1994) and two essays on practical philosophy. The Gadamer Reader: A Bouquet of the Later Writings richly conveys the scope and depth of Gadamer's thought, covering the range of his work in hermeneutics, aesthetics, practical philosophy, and essays on Plato, Hegel, and Heidegger. In addition, Palmer offers introductory remarks before each essay that explain its importance in the context of Gadamer's writings and define its key terms. Throughout, in both his translation and commentary, his aim is to make this critically important philosopher as clear and accessible as possible to an English-speaking audience.
[more]
cover of The Gaia Hypothesis: Science on a Pagan Planet

The Gaia Hypothesis

Science on a Pagan Planet

Michael Ruse

University of Chicago Press, 2013

In 1965 English scientist James Lovelock had a flash of insight: the Earth is not just teeming with life; the Earth, in some sense, is life. He mulled this revolutionary idea over for several years, first with his close friend the novelist William Golding, and then in an extensive collaboration with the American scientist Lynn Margulis. In the early 1970s, he finally went public with the Gaia hypothesis, the idea that everything happens for an end: the good of planet Earth. Lovelock and Margulis were scorned by professional scientists, but the general public enthusiastically embraced Lovelock and his hypothesis. People joined Gaia groups; churches had Gaia services, sometimes with new music written especially for the occasion. There was a Gaia atlas, Gaia gardening, Gaia herbs, Gaia retreats, Gaia networking, and much more. And the range of enthusiasts was—and still is—broad.
           
In The Gaia Hypothesis, philosopher Michael Ruse, with his characteristic clarity and wit, uses Gaia and its history, its supporters and detractors, to illuminate the nature of science itself. Gaia emerged in the 1960s, a decade when authority was questioned and status and dignity stood for nothing, but its story is much older. Ruse traces Gaia’s connection to Plato and a long history of goal-directed and holistic—or organicist—thinking and explains why Lovelock and Margulis’s peers rejected it as pseudoscience. But Ruse also shows why the project was a success. He argues that Lovelock and Margulis should be commended for giving philosophy firm scientific basis and for provoking important scientific discussion about the world as a whole, its homeostasis or—in this age of global environmental uncertainty—its lack thereof.
           
Melding the world of science and technology with the world of feeling, mysticism, and religion, The Gaia Hypothesis will appeal to a broad range of readers, from students and scholars of the history and philosophy of science to anyone interested in New Age culture.

[more]
cover of The Genealogy of Genealogy: Nietzsche, Foucault, and the Coils of Critical History

The Genealogy of Genealogy

Nietzsche, Foucault, and the Coils of Critical History

Jason Ananda Josephson Storm

University of Chicago Press, 2026

A daring reassessment of the critical method that reshaped the humanities and an invitation to imagine new ways of doing history.

The genealogical method—a mode of historical analysis that shows that what looks timeless is in fact contingent, bound to shifting relations of meaning, knowledge, and power—has become the dominant paradigm of humanistic inquiry. In The Genealogy of Genealogy, Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm turns this influential practice back on itself, tracing its unlikely rise through Nietzsche and Foucault and uncovering its suppressed ties to eugenics and racism. He rethinks the very stakes of critical history and proposes new tools for thinking about historical continuity, change, and difference.

Provocative and timely, The Genealogy of Genealogy offers both a diagnosis and a vision, challenging scholars across the humanities and social sciences to rethink how we write history and whether our most trusted methods are fit for the futures we seek to build.
[more]
cover of The Genesis of Desire

The Genesis of Desire

Jean-Michel Oughourlian

Michigan State University Press, 2010

We seem to be abandoning the codes that told previous generations who they should love. But now that many of us are free to choose whoever we want, nothing is less certain. The proliferation of divorces and separations reveal a dynamic we would rather not see: others sometimes reject us as passionately as we are attracted to them.
     Our desire makes us sick. The throes of rivalry are at the heart of our attraction to one another. This is the central thesis of Jean-Michel Oughourlian's The Genesis of Desire, where the war of the sexes is finally given a scientific explanation. The discovery of mirror neurons corroborates his ideas, clarifying the phenomena of empathy and the mechanisms of violent reciprocity.
     How can a couple be saved when they have declared war on one another? By helping them realize that desire originates not in the self but in the other. There are strategies that can help, which Dr. Oughourlian has prescribed successfully to his patients. This work, alternating between case studies and more theoretical statements, convincingly defends the possibility that breakups need not be permanent.

[more]
cover of The Genesis of Kant's Critique of Judgment

The Genesis of Kant's Critique of Judgment

John H. Zammito

University of Chicago Press, 1992

In this philosophically sophisticated and historically significant work, John H. Zammito reconstructs Kant's composition of The Critique of Judgment and reveals that it underwent three major transformations before publication. He shows that Kant not only made his "cognitive" turn, expanding the project from a "Critique of Taste" to a Critique of Judgment but he also made an "ethical" turn. This "ethical" turn was provoked by controversies in German philosophical and religious culture, in particular the writings of Johann Herder and the Sturm und Drang movement in art and science, as well as the related pantheism controversy. Such topicality made the Third Critique pivotal in creating a "Kantian" movement in the 1790s, leading directly to German Idealism and Romanticism.

The austerity and grandeur of Kant's philosophical writings sometimes make it hard to recognize them as the products of a historical individual situated in the particular constellation of his time and society. Here Kant emerges as a concrete historical figure struggling to preserve the achievements of cosmopolitan Aufkl-rung against challenges in natural science, religion, and politics in the late 1780s. More specifically Zammito suggests that Kant's Third Critique was animated throughout by a fierce personal rivalry with Herder and by a strong commitment to traditional Christian ideas of God and human moral freedom.

"A work of extraordinary erudition. Zammito's study is both comprehensive and novel, connecting Kant's work with the aesthetic and religious controversies of the late eighteenth century. He seems to have read everything. I know of no comparable historical study of Kant's Third Critique."-Arnulf Zweig, translator and editor of Kant's ;IPhilosophical Correspondence, 1759-1799;X

"An intricate, subtle, and exciting explanation of how Kant's thinking developed and adjusted to new challenges over the decade from the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason to the appearance of the Critique of Judgment."—John W. Burbidge, Review of Metaphysics

"There has been for a long time a serious gap in English commentary on Kant's Critique of Judgment; Zammito's book finally fills it. All students and scholars of Kant will want to consult it."—Frederick Beiser, Times Literary Supplement
[more]
cover of The Genesis of Values

The Genesis of Values

Hans Joas

University of Chicago Press, 2001

Public and intellectual debates have long struggled with the concept of values and the difficulties of defining them. With The Genesis of Values, renowned theorist Hans Joas explores the nature of these difficulties in relation to some of the leading figures of twentieth-century philosophy and social theory: Friedrich Nietzsche, William James, Max Scheler, John Dewey, Georg Simmel, Charles Taylor, and Jürgen Habermas. Joas traces how these thinkers came to terms with the idea of values, and then extends beyond them with his own comprehensive theory. Values, Joas suggests, arise in experiences in self-formation and self-transcendence. Only by appreciating the creative nature of human action can we understand how our values arise.
[more]
cover of The Geographical Imagination in America, 1880-1950

The Geographical Imagination in America, 1880-1950

Susan Schulten

University of Chicago Press, 2001

In this rich and fascinating history, Susan Schulten tells a story of Americans beginning to see the world around them, tracing U.S. attitudes toward world geography from the end of nineteenth-century exploration to the explosion of geographic interest before the dawn of the Cold War. Focusing her examination on four influential institutions—maps and atlases, the National Geographic Society, the American university, and public schools—Schulten provides an engaging study of geography, cartography, and their place in popular culture, politics, and education.
[more]
cover of The Gestation of German Biology: Philosophy and Physiology from Stahl to Schelling

The Gestation of German Biology

Philosophy and Physiology from Stahl to Schelling

John H. Zammito

University of Chicago Press, 2017

The emergence of biology as a distinct science in the eighteenth century has long been a subject of scholarly controversy. Michel Foucault, on the one hand, argued that its appearance only after 1800 represented a fundamental rupture with the natural history that preceded it, marking the beginnings of modernity. Ernst Mayr, on the other hand, insisted that even the word "biology" was unclear in its meaning as late as 1800, and that the field itself was essentially prospective well into the 1800s.
 
In The Gestation of German Biology, historian of ideas John Zammito presents a different version of the emergence of the field, one that takes on both Foucault and Mayr and emphasizes the scientific progress throughout the eighteenth century that led to the recognition of the need for a special science. The embrace of the term biology around 1800, Zammito shows, was the culmination of a convergence between natural history and human physiology that led to the development of comparative physiology and morphology—the foundations of biology. Magisterial in scope, Zammito’s book offers nothing less than a revisionist history of the field, with which anyone interested in the origins of biology will have to contend.
[more]
cover of The Ghost of Karl Marx

The Ghost of Karl Marx

Ronan de Calan and Donatien Mary

Diaphanes, 2015

At its most basic, philosophy is about learning how to think about the world around us. It should come as no surprise, then, that children make excellent philosophers! Naturally inquisitive, pint-size scholars need little prompting before being willing to consider life’s “big questions,” however strange or impractical. Plato & Co. introduces children—and curious grown-ups—to the lives and work of famous philosophers, from Descartes to Socrates, Einstein, Marx, and Wittgenstein. Each book in the series features an engaging—and often funny—story that presents basic tenets of philosophical thought alongside vibrant color illustrations.

                In The Ghost of Karl Marx, the philosopher is saddened when the town weavers must sell their cloth cheaply to compete with machines. The farmers too cannot sell their crops and have no money to buy new seeds. Forced to leave their work, the townspeople form an angry crowd in front of the factories, but what is to be done when there are so many hungry people and so few jobs to pay for food to eat? Concealed in one of the weavers’ sheets, the philosopher makes a solemn vow to give this story a happy ending by finding the Market, that infernal magician, and ridding the town of him once and for all.
               
Plato & Co.’s clear approach and charming illustrations make this series the perfect addition to any little library.
[more]
cover of The Gift Paradigm: A Short Introduction to the Anti-Utilitarian Movement in the Social Sciences

The Gift Paradigm

A Short Introduction to the Anti-Utilitarian Movement in the Social Sciences

Alain Caillé

Prickly Paradigm Press, 2020

In his classic essay The Gift, Marcel Mauss argued that gifts can never be truly free; rather, they bring about an expectation of reciprocal exchange. For over one hundred years, his ideas on economy, social relations, and exchange have inspired new modes of thought, none more so than what crystallized in the 1980s around an innovative group of French academics. In TheGift Paradigm, Alain Caillé provides the first in-depth, English-language introduction to La Revue du MAUSS—or, “Anti-Utilitarian Movement in the Social Sciences,” combining the work of anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers, and others. Today, the very idea of a “general social science” seems unthinkable, unless you count the pervasive sway of a utilitarian logic in orthodox economics, or the diffuse influence of neoliberalism. Here, Caillé offers a distinctly different reading of economy and society, inspired by Mauss—as vital now as ever.
[more]
cover of The Gift of Active Empathy: Scheler, Bakhtin, and Dostoevsky

The Gift of Active Empathy

Scheler, Bakhtin, and Dostoevsky

Alina Wyman

Northwestern University Press, 2016

This innovative study brings the early writings of Mikhail Bakhtin into conversation with Max Scheler and Fyodor Dostoevsky to explore the question of what makes emotional co-experiencing ethically and spiritually productive. In Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, Bakhtin's well-known concept of the dialogical partner expresses what he sees as the potential of human relationships in Dostoevsky's work. But his earlier reflections on the ethical and aesthetic uses of empathy, in part inspired by Scheler's philosophy, suggest a still more fundamental form of communication that operates as a basis for human togetherness in Dostoevsky. Applying this rich and previously neglected theoretical apparatus in a literary analysis, Wyman examines the obstacles to active empathy in Dostoevsky's fictional world, considers the limitations and excesses of empathy, addresses the problem of frustrated love in The Idiot and Notes from Underground, and provides a fresh interpretation of two of Dostoevsky's most iconic characters, Prince Myshkin and Alyosha Karamazov.
[more]
cover of The Gift of Death

The Gift of Death

Jacques Derrida

University of Chicago Press, 1995

In The Gift of Death, Jacques Derrida's most sustained consideration of religion to date, he continues to explore questions introduced in Given Time about the limits of the rational and responsible that one reaches in granting or accepting death, whether by sacrifice, murder, execution, or suicide. Derrida analyzes Patocka's Heretical Essays on the History of Philosophy and develops and compares his ideas to the works of Heidegger, Levinas, and Kierkegaard.

A major work, The Gift of Death resonates with much of Derrida's earlier writing and will be of interest to scholars in anthropology, philosophy, and literary criticism, along with scholars of ethics and religion.

"The Gift of Death is Derrida's long-awaited deconstruction of the foundations of the project of a philosophical ethics, and it will long be regarded as one of the most significant of his many writings."—Choice

"An important contribution to the critical study of ethics that commends itself to philosophers, social scientists, scholars of relgion . . . [and those] made curious by the controversy that so often attends Derrida."—Booklist

"Derrida stares death in the face in this dense but rewarding inquiry. . . . Provocative."—Publishers Weekly
[more]
cover of The Gift of Death, Second Edition & Literature in Secret

The Gift of Death, Second Edition & Literature in Secret

Jacques Derrida

University of Chicago Press, 2008

The Gift of Death, Jacques Derrida’s most sustained consideration of religion, explores questions first introduced in his book Given Time about the limits of the rational and responsible that one reaches in granting or accepting death, whether by sacrifice, murder, execution, or suicide. Derrida analyzes Czech philosopher Jan Patocka’s Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History and develops and compares his ideas to the works of Heidegger, Lévinas, and Kierkegaard. One of Derrida’s major works, The Gift of Death resonates with much of his earlier writing, and this highly anticipated second edition is greatly enhanced by David Wills’s updated translation.
 
This new edition also features the first-ever English translation of Derrida’s Literature in Secret. In it, Derrida continues his discussion of the sacrifice of Isaac, which leads to bracing meditations on secrecy, forgiveness, literature, and democracy. He also offers a reading of Kafka’s Letter to His Father and uses the story of the flood in Genesis as an embarkation point for a consideration of divine sovereignty.
 
“An important contribution to the critical study of ethics that commends itself to philosophers, social scientists, scholars of religion . . . [and those] made curious by the controversy that so often attends Derrida.”—Booklist, on the first edition
[more]
cover of The Gift of Death, Second Edition & Literature in Secret

The Gift of Death, Second Edition & Literature in Secret

Jacques Derrida

University of Chicago Press, 2008

The Gift of Death, Jacques Derrida’s most sustained consideration of religion, explores questions first introduced in his book Given Time about the limits of the rational and responsible that one reaches in granting or accepting death, whether by sacrifice, murder, execution, or suicide. Derrida analyzes Czech philosopher Jan Patocka’s Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History and develops and compares his ideas to the works of Heidegger, Lévinas, and Kierkegaard. One of Derrida’s major works, The Gift of Death resonates with much of his earlier writing, and this highly anticipated second edition is greatly enhanced by David Wills’s updated translation.
 
This new edition also features the first-ever English translation of Derrida’s Literature in Secret. In it, Derrida continues his discussion of the sacrifice of Isaac, which leads to bracing meditations on secrecy, forgiveness, literature, and democracy. He also offers a reading of Kafka’s Letter to His Father and uses the story of the flood in Genesis as an embarkation point for a consideration of divine sovereignty.
 
“An important contribution to the critical study of ethics that commends itself to philosophers, social scientists, scholars of religion . . . [and those] made curious by the controversy that so often attends Derrida.”—Booklist, on the first edition
[more]
cover of The Gift: Expanded Edition

The Gift

Expanded Edition

Marcel Mauss

HAU, 2016

Scan down a list of essential works in any introduction to anthropology course and you are likely to see Marcel Mauss’ masterpiece, The Gift. With this new translation, Mauss’ classic essay is returned to its original context, published alongside the works that framed its first publication in the 1923–24 issue of L’Année Sociologique. With a critical foreword by Bill Maurer and a new introduction by translator Jane Guyer, this expanded edition is certain to become the standard English version of the essay—a gift that keeps on giving.

Included alongside the “Essay on the Gift” are Mauss’ memorial accounts of the work of Émile Durkheim and his colleagues who were lost during World War I, as well as his scholarly reviews of influential contemporaries such as Franz Boas, J. G. Frazer, Bronislaw Malinowski, and others. Read in the context of these additional pieces, the “Essay on the Gift” is revealed as a complementary whole, a gesture of both personal and political generosity: Mauss’ honor for his fallen colleagues; his aspiration for modern society’s recuperation of the gift as a mode of repair; and his own careful, yet critical, reading of his intellectual milieu. The result sets the scene for a whole new generation of readers to study this essay alongside pieces that exhibit the erudition, political commitment, and generous collegial exchange that first nourished the essay into life.
[more]
cover of The Glance of the Medusa: The Physiognomy of Mysticism

The Glance of the Medusa

The Physiognomy of Mysticism

László F. Földényi

Seagull Books, 2018

In The Glance of the Medusa, Lászó F. Földényi offers a mesmerizing examination of the rich history of European culture through the lens of mythology and philosophy. Embracing the best traditions of essay writing, this volume invites readers on a spiritual and intellectual adventure. The seven essays bear testimony to Földényi’s encyclopedic knowledge and ask whether it is possible to overcome our fear of passing away. In doing so, they illuminate moments of mystical experience viewed in a historical perspective while inviting readers to engage with such moments in the present by immersing themselves into the process of reading and thinking.
 
Rather than providing firm answers to burning questions, The Glance of the Medusa highlights the limits of definition, conjuring up situations in which Man partakes of unutterable experiences—such as passion, pleasure, fear, poetry, or disgust—suggesting that moments of ecstasy cannot be pinned down or captured, only drawn a little closer.
 
[more]
cover of The God of Faith and Reason

The God of Faith and Reason

Robert Sokolowski

Catholic University of America Press, 1995

[more]
cover of The Gold Leaf Lady and Other Parapsychological Investigations

The Gold Leaf Lady and Other Parapsychological Investigations

Stephen E. Braude

University of Chicago Press, 2007

For over thirty years, Stephen Braude has studied the paranormal in everyday life, from extrasensory perception and psychokinesis to mediumship and materialization. The Gold Leaf Lady and Other Parapsychological Investigations is a highly readable and often amusing account of his most memorable encounters with such phenomena. Here Braude recounts in fascinating detail five particular cases—some that challenge our most fundamental scientific beliefs and others that expose our own credulousness.
 
Braude begins with a south Florida woman who can make thin gold-colored foil appear spontaneously on her skin. He then travels to New York and California to test psychokinetic superstars—and frauds—like Joe Nuzum, who claim to move objects using only their minds. Along the way, Braude also investigates the startling allegations of K.R., a policeman in Annapolis who believes he can transfer images from photographs onto other objects—including his own body—and Ted Serios, a deceased Chicago elevator operator who could make a variety of different images appear on Polaroid film. Ultimately, Braude considers his wife’s surprisingly fruitful experiments with astrology, which she has used to guide professional soccer teams to the top of their leagues, as well as his own personal experiences with synchronicity—a phenomenon, he argues, that may need to be explained in terms of a refined, extensive, and dramatic form of psychokinesis.
 
Heady, provocative, and brimming with eye-opening details and suggestions, The Gold Leaf Lady and Other Parapsychological Investigations will intrigue both adherents and detractors of its controversial subject matter alike.
[more]
cover of The Golden Age of Phenomenology at the New School for Social Research, 1954–1973

The Golden Age of Phenomenology at the New School for Social Research, 1954–1973

Lester Embree

Ohio University Press, 2017

This collection focuses on the introduction of phenomenology to the United States by the community of scholars who taught and studied at the New School for Social Research from 1954 through 1973. During those years, Dorion Cairns, Alfred Schutz, and Aron Gurwitsch—all former students of Edmund Husserl—came together in the department of philosophy to establish the first locus of phenomenology scholarship in the country. This founding trio was soon joined by three other prominent scholars in the field: Werner Marx, Thomas M. Seebohm, and J. N. Mohanty. The Husserlian phenomenology that they brought to the New School has subsequently spread through the Anglophone world as the tradition of Continental philosophy.

The first part of this volume includes original works by each of these six influential teachers of phenomenology, introduced either by one of their students or, in the case of Seebohm and Mohanty, by the thinkers themselves. The second part comprises contributions from twelve leading scholars of phenomenology who trained at the New School during this period. The result is a powerful document tracing the lineage and development of phenomenology in the North American context, written by members of the first two generations of scholars who shaped the field.

Contributors: Michael Barber, Lester Embree, Jorge García-Gómez, Fred Kersten, Thomas M. T. Luckmann, William McKenna, J. N. Mohanty, Giuseppina C. Moneta, Thomas Nenon, George Psathas, Osborne P. Wiggins, Matthew M. Seebohm, and Richard M. Zaner.

[more]
cover of The Good European: Nietzsche's Work Sites in Word and Image

The Good European

Nietzsche's Work Sites in Word and Image

David Farrell Krell and Donald L. Bates

University of Chicago Press, 1997

Through photographs and translations of Friedrich Nietzsche's evocative writings on his work sites, David Farrell Krell and Donald L. Bates explore the cities and landscapes in which Nietzsche lived and worked.

"A brilliant juxtaposition of life and thought. . . . The sympathy of this pictorial biography is rivaled by few books on Nietzsche."—Charles M. Stang, Boston Book Review

"[A] distinguished addition to the Nietzsche-friendly corpus."—Alain de Botton, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"An odd and oddly endearing record of Nietzsche's travels."—John Banville, New York Review of Books

[more]
cover of The Good Is Love: The Body and Human Acts in Humanae Vitae and John Paul II

The Good Is Love

The Body and Human Acts in Humanae Vitae and John Paul II

Adrian Reimers

St. Augustine's Press, 2020

John Paul II in his personalist approach to moral questions reaffirmed that as sin offends that which is good, if we truly know what human love is––and that it is good––we would thereby see how certain acts can never be acceptable insofar as they in all cases wound this love. Yet in moral debates surrounding love, sex and contraception Adrian Reimers observes that we are not using this approach and these debates are not advancing the cause of real love. 

Reimers draws upon the encyclical Humanae Vitae and John Paul II’s catechesis known as the theology of the body to respond to the stalled development of moral theology on the issues most crucial to human love and intimacy. “It is time, we are told, for a ‘paradigm shift’ in the Catholic Church’s moral teaching, such shift representing a more pastoral and less dogmatic approach to moral issues,” writes Reimers. His claim that “a paradigm shift in moral theology and philosophy may be valuable––perhaps vital––to scholars who think and write about these sciences and to teachers who communicate moral truth” is not an exhortation to redefine moral truths. Rather, he argues that an approach to contraception, for example, that relies exclusively on natural law is a hackneyed one and often “tedious.”

John Paul II’s series of catechetical addresses known as the theology of the body was originally composed in the 1970s after Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae. Albeit derived from the writing of an archbishop and not yet pope, Reimers identifies John Paul II’s perspectives on love, sex and contraception as an essential force behind this so-called paradigm shift in continuity with the profound and unchanging truths set forth in Humanae Vitae. As Reimers states, “Moral truths do not change, even if our ways to understand them improve.”

How, then, is our sense of the goodness or badness of contraception meant to be helped by such a development of thought? Ethics grounded philosophically tends to lean toward legalism in the context of moral actions, says Reimers, as it emphasizes conformity to God’s law and largely overlooks “the relationship between moral behavior and the human person’s ultimate end of beatitude with God.” The important principle of the necessarily two-fold description that natural law gives to sex––namely, as unitive and procreative––must not be the authoritative end of the discussion regarding the moral nature of contraception. In an age where technology has given human beings new power it seems there must be new rules as well, and the conquest of procreative acts changes the human perception of the limitations once associated with harmful acts. Herein lies the importance of John Paul II’s catechesis––the goodness or badness of acts is not just concerned with end of a particular act. As Reimers writes, “If we are to understand the complex relationships among love, marriage, and their sexual expression, we must situate these within the context of the end of the human being.”

A position on contraception and human sexuality cannot be comprehensive without a concept of love properly understood. Human acts must bring us closer to sanctity, not to comfort or possession. Holiness is the perfection of love, and its pursuit aims at ultimate beatitude. This end, the truest love human can know, is the end which ultimately condemns contraception once and for all, as “contracepted sex is contrary to holiness.” Reimers unpacks this sometimes difficult truth in eight chapters, which begin with love and conclude with faithfulness to moral norms and a spirituality of marriage.  

The arguments surrounding contraception and “good sex” seem to have set the grounds for coherently choosing a side rather than to have succeeded in presenting certain human acts as definitively immoral. As Reimers notes, a natural law position on contraception often fails to employ its greatest ally: the reality of authentic human love and “victory” of the individual in one’s sanctity as achieved through that love. This work will reorient the objectives and claims of the moral debate, as well as influence the popular notion of what love is and what it cannot be. It is an aid to scholars, students and study groups, humanists, and those who seek to deepen the sense of love’s highest physical expression. 
[more]
cover of The Good Life in the Scientific Revolution: Descartes, Pascal, Leibniz, and the Cultivation of Virtue

The Good Life in the Scientific Revolution

Descartes, Pascal, Leibniz, and the Cultivation of Virtue

Matthew L. Jones

University of Chicago Press, 2006

Amid the unrest, dislocation, and uncertainty of seventeenth-century Europe, readers seeking consolation and assurance turned to philosophical and scientific books that offered ways of conquering fears and training the mind—guidance for living a good life.

The Good Life in the Scientific Revolution presents a triptych showing how three key early modern scientists, René Descartes, Blaise Pascal, and Gottfried Leibniz, envisioned their new work as useful for cultivating virtue and for pursuing a good life. Their scientific and philosophical innovations stemmed in part from their understanding of mathematics and science as cognitive and spiritual exercises that could create a truer mental and spiritual nobility.  In portraying the rich contexts surrounding Descartes’ geometry, Pascal’s arithmetical triangle, and Leibniz’s calculus, Matthew L. Jones argues that this drive for moral therapeutics guided important developments of early modern philosophy and the Scientific Revolution.

[more]
cover of The Good Quit: Mastering the Fine Art of Giving Up

The Good Quit

Mastering the Fine Art of Giving Up

Jeffrey A. Lockwood

University of Wyoming Press, 2026

Quitting is a vital and pervasive phenomenon that shapes our lives. The Good Quit is an enlightening and provocative challenge to the common perceptions around the choice to quit. Rather than offering simplistic how-to advice, scientist-turned-philosopher Jeffrey A. Lockwood makes full use of biological, psychological, and social sciences to unpack what constitutes quitting for the right reasons, at the right time, and in the right way, using both fundamental principles and concrete examples. He explores the full range of ways in which quitting can occur in the human experience, including addictions, careers, diets, games, habits, jobs, politics, relationships, religions, sports, and wars.
 
Masterful quitting contributes to genuine success, but this practice nevertheless has been largely overlooked by scholars, teachers, coaches, and leaders. This book is a three-part exploration. In conceptual terms it asks, Is it really quitting if the decision is reversible, involuntary, or partial? In normative terms, it explores whether quitting must be well-reasoned, -timed, and -enacted to be justifiable. In applicable terms, it emphasizes phronesis, or “practical wisdom,” and contributes to the understanding that what constitutes quitting, and doing so well, is vital to making decisions about whether to persevere or abandon difficult ventures.

Flourishing is more complex than “grit-or-quit” advocates suggest. To thrive, we must come to know why, when, and how to quit. The Good Quit approaches this topic from an expansive and philosophical point of view, making it valuable for anyone contemplating the what, when, why, and how of quitting.
 
[more]
cover of The Gospel of Happiness: How Secular Psychology Points to the Wisdom of Christian Practice

The Gospel of Happiness

How Secular Psychology Points to the Wisdom of Christian Practice

Christopher Kaczor

St. Augustine's Press, 2019

Just as Aristotelian metaphysics provided a new basis for the natural theology of Aquinas’s time, so too, positive psychology provides a basis for a natural moral theology in our own time. this book marshals the empirically verifiable findings of positive psychology that show the wisdom of the Christian tradition. Christian warnings about the dangers of greed, coveting a neighbor’s goods (social comparison), and pride find an empirical verification. Likewise, positive psychology vindicates the wisdom of Christian teaching on the importance of forgiveness, of gratitude, of humility, and of serving one’s neighbor. moreover, positive psychology also can be a service to Christian believers by helping them in their struggles with willpower, by providing new motivations for prayer, and by helping them identify their signature strengths. Finally, this book argues, in a variety of ways, that it is folly to think that even the best of psychology can serve as a replacement for Christianity.

[more]
cover of The Government of Desire: A Genealogy of the Liberal Subject

The Government of Desire

A Genealogy of the Liberal Subject

Miguel de Beistegui

University of Chicago Press, 2018

Liberalism, Miguel de Beistegui argues in The Government of Desire, is best described as a technique of government directed towards the self, with desire as its central mechanism.  Whether as economic interest, sexual drive, or the basic longing for recognition, desire is accepted as a core component of our modern self-identities, and something we ought to cultivate. But this has not been true in all times and all places. For centuries, as far back as late antiquity and early Christianity, philosophers believed that desire was an impulse that needed to be suppressed in order for the good life, whether personal or collective, ethical or political, to flourish.  Though we now take it for granted, desire as a constitutive dimension of human nature and a positive force required a radical transformation, which coincided with the emergence of liberalism.
 
By critically exploring Foucault’s claim that Western civilization is a civilization of desire, de Beistegui crafts a provocative and original genealogy of this shift in thinking. He shows how the relationship between identity, desire, and government has been harnessed and transformed in the modern world, shaping our relations with others and ourselves, and establishing desire as an essential driving force for the constitution of a new and better social order. But is it? The Government of Desire argues that this is precisely what a contemporary politics of resistance must seek to overcome. By questioning the supposed universality of a politics based on recognition and the economic satisfaction of desire, de Beistegui raises the crucial question of how we can manage to be less governed today, and explores contemporary forms of counter-conduct.

​Drawing on a host of thinkers from philosophy, political theory, and psychoanalysis, and concluding with a call for a sovereign and anarchic form of desire, The Government of Desire is a groundbreaking account of our freedom and unfreedom, of what makes us both governed and ungovernable.
[more]
cover of The Grace and the Severity of the Ideal: John Dewey and the Transcendent

The Grace and the Severity of the Ideal

John Dewey and the Transcendent

Victor Kestenbaum

University of Chicago Press, 2002

In this highly original book, Victor Kestenbaum calls into question the oft-repeated assumption that John Dewey's pragmatism has no place for the transcendent. Kestenbaum demonstrates that, far from ignoring the transcendent ideal, Dewey's works—on education, ethics, art, and religion—are in fact shaped by the tension between the natural and the transcendent.

Kestenbaum argues that to Dewey, the pragmatic struggle for ideal meaning occurs at the frontier of the visible and the invisible, the tangible and the intangible. Penetrating analyses of Dewey's early and later writings, as well as comparisons with the works of Hans-Georg Gadamer, Michael Oakeshott, and Wallace Stevens, shed new light on why Dewey regarded the human being's relationship to the ideal as "the most far-reaching question" of philosophy. For Dewey, the pragmatic struggle for the good life required a willingness "to surrender the actual experienced good for a possible ideal good." Dewey's pragmatism helps us to understand the place of the transcendent ideal in a world of action and practice.
[more]
cover of The Great Debate: Nietzsche, Culture, and the Scandinavian Welfare Society

The Great Debate

Nietzsche, Culture, and the Scandinavian Welfare Society

Georg Brandes and Harald Høffding

University of Wisconsin Press, 2024

In 1889, Danish literary critic Georg Brandes published “Aristocratic Radicalism: An Essay on Friedrich Nietzsche,” which transformed the as-yet-unknown German-Swiss philosopher into a European, and ultimately global, phenomenon. The article sparked a furious public debate between Brandes and a fellow Dane, philosopher Harald Høffding, who swiftly issued a rebuttal,  “Democratic Radicalism: An Objection.” What began as a scholarly disagreement over Nietzsche’s philosophy rapidly spiraled into a sprawling contest of competing visions of society’s future, one radically aristocratic and the other radically democratic.

Marking the moment at which the uniquely Nordic concept of social democratic welfare was first contested in the public sphere, this debate provides insights into not only Nietzschean philosophy and its immediate reception but also the foundational concept of modern Scandinavian social, cultural, and political organization. This volume presents, for the first time in any language other than Danish, the debate in its entirety: three essays by Brandes and three by Høffding. A critical introduction by editor and translator William Banks explores the exchange in its context and convincingly argues that the principles contested by the two Danish luminaries still very much resonate in Western society today.
[more]
cover of The Great Image Has No Form, or On the Nonobject through Painting

The Great Image Has No Form, or On the Nonobject through Painting

François Jullien

University of Chicago Press, 2009

In premodern China, elite painters used imagery not to mirror the world around them, but to evoke unfathomable experience. Considering their art alongside the philosophical traditions that inform it, The Great Image Has No Form explores the “nonobject”—a notion exemplified by paintings that do not seek to represent observable surroundings.

François Jullien argues that this nonobjectifying approach stems from the painters’ deeply held belief in a continuum of existence, in which art is not distinct from reality. Contrasting this perspective with the Western notion of art as separate from the world it represents, Jullien investigates the theoretical conditions that allow us to apprehend, isolate, and abstract objects. His comparative method lays bare the assumptions of Chinese and European thought, revitalizing the questions of what painting is, where it comes from, and what it does. Provocative and intellectually vigorous, this sweeping inquiry introduces new ways of thinking about the relationship of art to the ideas in which it is rooted.

[more]
cover of The Great Refusal: Herbert Marcuse and Contemporary Social Movements

The Great Refusal

Herbert Marcuse and Contemporary Social Movements

Andrew Lamas

Temple University Press, 2016

Herbert Marcuse examined the subjective and material conditions of radical social change and developed the "Great Refusal," a radical concept of "the protest against that which is." The editors and contributors to the exciting new volume The Great Refusal provide an analysis of contemporary social movements around the world with particular reference to Marcuse's revolutionary concept. The book also engages-and puts Marcuse in critical dialogue with-major theorists including Slavoj Žižek and Michel Foucault, among others.

The chapters in this book analyze different elements and locations of the contemporary wave of struggle, drawing on the work and vision of Marcuse in order to reveal, with a historical perspective, the present moment of resistance. Essays seek to understand recent uprisings-such as the Zapatistas in Mexico, the Arab Spring, and the Occupy movement-in the context of Marcuse's powerful conceptual apparatus.

The Great Refusal also charts contemporary social movements against global warming, mass incarceration, police brutality, white supremacy, militarization, technological development, and more, to provide insights that advance our understanding of resistance today.

Contributors include: Kevin B. Anderson, Stanley Aronowitz, Joan Braune, Jenny Chan, Angela Y. Davis, Arnold L. Farr, Andrew Feenberg, Michael Forman, Christian Fuchs, Stefan Gandler, Christian Garland, Toorjo Ghose, Imaculada Kangussu, George Katsiaficas, Douglas Kellner, Sarah Lynn Kleeb, Filip Kovacevic, Lauren Langman, Heather Love, Peter Marcuse, Martin J. Beck Matuštík, Russell Rockwell, AK Thompson, Marcelo Vieta, and the editors.

[more]
cover of The Greeks and Us: Essays in Honor of Arthur W. H. Adkins

The Greeks and Us

Essays in Honor of Arthur W. H. Adkins

Edited by Robert B. Louden and Paul Schollmeier

University of Chicago Press, 1996

Arthur W. H. Adkins's writings have sparked debates among a wide range of scholars over the nature of ancient Greek ethics and its relevance to modern times. Demonstrating the breadth of his influence, the essays in this volume reveal how leading classicists, philosophers, legal theorists, and scholars of religion have incorporated Adkins's thought into their own diverse research.

The timely subjects addressed by the contributors include the relation between literature and moral understanding, moral and nonmoral values, and the contemporary meaning of ancient Greek ethics. The volume also includes an essay from the late Adkins himself illustrating his methodology in an analysis of the "Speech of Lysias" in Plato's Phaedrus.

The Greeks and Us will interest all those concerned with how ancient moral values do or do not differ from our own.

Contributors include Arthur W. H. Adkins, Stephanie Nelson, Martha C. Nussbaum, Paul Schollmeier, James Boyd White, Bernard Williams, and Lee Yearley.

Commentaries by Wendy Doniger, Charles M. Gray, David Grene, Robert B. Louden, Richard Posner, and Candace Vogler.
[more]