Banner Message
Please note: Due to the renovations happening to the Pritzker building, the bookstore is in a temporary location without full access to the inventory. There might be items that appear online that are not currently accesible to us to ship to you. If you order these items, you will be refunded and the rest of your order will ship. Feel free to contact us with any questions.
Philosophy
Doreen Massey (1944-2016) was one of the most influential geographers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Her ideas on space, region, identity, ethics, and capital transformed the field itself, while also attracting a wide audience in sociology, planning, political economy, cultural studies, gender studies, and beyond. The significance of her contributions is difficult to overstate. Massey established both scholarly substance and political salience for the claim that "geography matters," not as a dry defense of disciplinary turf but as a rallying cry.
This collection of Massey's writings brings together for the first time her formative contributions, showcasing the continuing relevance of her ideas to current debates on financialization, globalization, immigration, and nationalism, among other topics. With introductions and explanatory notes from the editors, the collection provides an unrivaled introduction to the range and depth of Massey's contributions, which are sure to remain an essential touchstone for social theory and critical geography for generations to come.
Philosopher Eva Brann describes the concept of doublethink/doubletalk as "a flanking approach toward comprehending a pervasively duplex world, a world that sometimes flashes fleeting signs of covert wholeness." In this, her second collection of aphorisms and observations, Brann shines a light on our world--on "the way things are"--and she does it with characteristic wit and insight.
Eva Brann is a member of the senior faculty at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, where she has taught for fifty-seven years. She is a recipient of the National Humanities Medal. This is her ninth book with Paul Dry Books.
Western philosophy is now two and a half millennia old, but much of it came in just two staccato bursts, each lasting only about 150 years. In his landmark survey of Western philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance, The Dream of Reason, Anthony Gottlieb documented the first burst, which came in the Athens of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Now, in his sequel, The Dream of Enlightenment, Gottlieb expertly navigates a second great explosion of thought, taking us to northern Europe in the wake of its wars of religion and the rise of Galilean science. In a relatively short period--from the early 1640s to the eve of the French Revolution--Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, and Hume all made their mark. The Dream of Enlightenment tells their story and that of the birth of modern philosophy.
As Gottlieb explains, all these men were amateurs: none had much to do with any university. They tried to fathom the implications of the new science and of religious upheaval, which led them to question traditional teachings and attitudes. What does the advance of science entail for our understanding of ourselves and for our ideas of God? How should a government deal with religious diversity--and what, actually, is government for? Such questions remain our questions, which is why Descartes, Hobbes, and the others are still pondered today.
Yet it is because we still want to hear them that we can easily get these philosophers wrong. It is tempting to think they speak our language and live in our world; but to understand them properly, we must step back into their shoes. Gottlieb puts readers in the minds of these frequently misinterpreted figures, elucidating the history of their times and the development of scientific ideas while engagingly explaining their arguments and assessing their legacy in lively prose.
With chapters focusing on Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Pierre Bayle, Leibniz, Hume, Rousseau, and Voltaire--and many walk-on parts--The Dream of Enlightenment creates a sweeping account of what the Enlightenment amounted to, and why we are still in its debt.
"Might this be a dream?" In this book, distinguished philosopher J. J. Valberg approaches the familiar question about dream and reality by seeking to identify its subject matter: what is it that would be the dream if "this" were a dream? It turns out to be a subject matter that contains the whole of the world, space, and time but which, like consciousness for Sartre, is nothing "in itself." This subject matter, the "personal horizon," lies at the heart of the main topics--the first person, the self, and the self in time--explored at length in the book.
The personal horizon is, Valberg contends, the subject matter whose center each of us occupies, and which for each of us ceases with death. This ceasing to be presents itself solipsistically not just as the end of everything "for me" but as the end of everything absolutely. Yet since it is the same for everyone, this cannot be. Death thus confronts us with an impossible fact: something that cannot be but will be. The puzzle about death is one of several extraphilosophical puzzles about the self that Valberg discusses, puzzles that can trouble everyday consciousness without any contribution from philosophy. Nor can philosophy resolve the puzzles. Its task is to get to the bottom of them, and in this respect to understand ourselves--a task philosophy has always set itself.
Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) is considered one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century in spite of his well-known transgressions--his complicity with National Socialism and his inability to show remorse or compassion for its victims. In The Duplicity of Philosophy's Shadow, Elliot R. Wolfson intervenes in a debate that has seen much attention in scholarly and popular media from a unique perspective, as a scholar of Jewish mysticism and philosophy who has been profoundly influenced by Heidegger's work.
Wolfson sets out to probe Heidegger's writings to expose what remains unthought. In spite of Heidegger's explicit anti-Semitic statements, Wolfson reveals some crucial aspects of his thinking--including criticism of the biological racism and militant apocalypticism of Nazism--that betray an affinity with dimensions of Jewish thought: the triangulation of the concepts of homeland, language, and peoplehood; Jewish messianism and the notion of historical time as the return of the same that is always different; inclusion, exclusion, and the status of the other; the problem of evil in kabbalistic symbolism. Using Heidegger's own methods, Wolfson reflects on the inextricable link of truth and untruth and investigates the matter of silence and the limits of speech. He challenges the tendency to bifurcate the relationship of the political and the philosophical in Heidegger's thought, but parts company with those who write off Heidegger as a Nazi ideologue. Ultimately, The Duplicity of Philosophy's Shadow argues, the greatness and relevance of Heidegger's work is that he presents us with the opportunity to think the unthinkable as part of our communal destiny as historical beings.
Early Polemical Writings covers the young Kierkegaard's works from 1834 through 1838. His authorship begins, as it was destined to end, with polemic. Kierkegaard's first published article touches on the theme of women's emancipation, and the other articles from his student years deal with freedom of the press.
Modern readers can see the seeds of Kierkegaard's future career these early pieces. In "From the Papers of One Still Living," his review of Hans Christian Andersen's novel Only a Fiddler, Kierkegaard rejects the notion that environment is decisive in determining the fate of genius. He also puts forward his belief that each person needs a life-view or life for which and by which to live, a thought he explores further in the comic play The Battle between the Old and the New Soap-Cellars.
About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
During John Dewey's lifetime (1859-1952), one public opinion poll after another revealed that he was esteemed to be one of the ten most important thinkers in American history. His body of thought, conventionally identified by the shorthand word "Pragmatism," has been the distinctive American philosophy of the last fifty years. His work on education is famous worldwide and is still influential today, anticipating as it did the ascendance in contemporary American pedagogy of multiculturalism and independent thinking. His University of Chicago Laboratory School (founded in 1896) thrives still and is a model for schools worldwide, especially in emerging democracies. But how was this lifetime of thought enmeshed in Dewey's emotional experience, in his joys and sorrows as son and brother, husband and father, and in his political activism and spirituality? Acclaimed biographer Jay Martin recaptures the unity of Dewey's life and work, tracing important themes through the philosopher's childhood years, family history, religious experience, and influential friendships.
Based on original sources, notably the vast collection of unpublished papers in the Center for Dewey Studies, this book tells the full story, for the first time, of the life and times of the eminent American philosopher, pragmatist, education reformer, and man of letters. In particular, The Education of John Dewey highlights the importance of the women in Dewey's life, especially his mother, wife, and daughters, but also others, including the reformer Jane Addams and the novelist Anzia Yezierska. A fitting tribute to a master thinker, Martin has rendered a tour de force portrait of a philosopher and social activist in full, seamlessly reintegrating Dewey's thought into both his personal life and the broader historical themes of his time.
There is much to be learned philosophically from this volume, but philosophical instruction was not Kierkegaard's aim here, except in the broad sense of self-knowledge and deepened awareness. Indicating the intention of the discourses, the titles include "The Expectancy of Faith," "Love Will Hide a Multitude of Sins," "Strengthening in the Inner Being," "To Gain One's Soul in Patience," "Patience in Expectancy," and "Against Cowardliness."
In tone and substance these works are in accord with the concluding words of encouragement in Either/Or, which was paired with the first volume of discourses: "Ask yourself and keep on asking until you find the answer, for one may have known something many times, acknowledged it; one may have willed something many times, attempted it--and yet, only the deep inner motion, only the heart's indescribable emotion, only that will convince you that what you have acknowledged belongs to you, that no power can take it from you--for only the truth that builds up is truth for you."
Søren Kierkegaard, the nineteenth-century Danish philosopher rediscovered in the twentieth century, is a major influence in contemporary philosophy, religion, and literature. He regarded Either/Or as the beginning of his authorship, although he had published two earlier works on Hans Christian Andersen and irony. The pseudonymous volumes of Either/Or are the writings of a young man (I) and of Judge William (II). The ironical young man's papers include a collection of sardonic aphorisms; essays on Mozart, modern drama, and boredom; and "The Seducer's Diary." The seeming miscellany is a reflective presentation of aspects of the "either," the esthetic view of life.
Part II is an older friend's "or," the ethical life of integrated, authentic personhood, elaborated in discussions of personal becoming and of marriage. The resolution of the "either/or" is left to the reader, for there is no Part III until the appearance of Stages on Life's Way. The poetic-reflective creations of a master stylist and imaginative impersonator, the two men write in distinctive ways appropriate to their respective positions.
Topics treated include the Gettier problem, the nature of explanation and inductive inference, the justification of foundations for knowledge in terms of inference to the best explanation, the possibility of realist interpretations of contemporary science, reference (as it bears on recent antirealist arguments), and the relations between empirical psychology and epistemology. Professor Goldman defends the need for a foundational theory of justification and presents a version that refutes standard criticisms of that doctrine. His defense of realism takes into account contemporary advances in semantics and philosophy of science. It attempts to clarify the kinds of skeptical argument the philosopher must take seriously, without succumbing to them. While recent epistemology has tended to dismiss the traditional foundational approach, it has not provided a suitable alternative. Goldman breaks new ground by adapting that approach within his explanationist, inductive theory.
Most historical accounts of "the West" take it for granted that the guiding principles of the Western tradition--reason, progress, and freedom--have been passed down directly from ancient Greece to modern Europe, evolving in isolation from all non-Western cultures. Today, many political analysts and cultural critics maintain that the Western tradition is fast approaching its end, for better or worse, as it becomes more and more integrated with non-Western cultures in an increasingly globalized world. But what if we are witnessing something else entirely--not the "end" of the West but rather another historical mutation of the idea of the West itself?
This groundbreaking work shows that whether the West is hailed as the source of all historical progress or scorned as the root of all cultural imperialism, it remains a deeply problematic concept that is intrinsically connected to an ethnocentric view of the world. In a critical reading of the continental philosophers Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas, and Derrida as well as the postcolonial thinkers Said, Mohanty, Bhabha, and Trinh, Sean Meighoo strikes at the intellectual foundations of Western exceptionalism until its ideological supports show through. Deconstructing the concept of the West in his provocative interpretations of Martin Bernal's controversial publication Black Athena and the Beatles' second film Help!, Meighoo poses a formidable question to philosophers, writers, political analysts, and cultural critics alike: Can we mount an effective critique of Western ethnocentrism without reinforcing the very idea of the West?
Current debates about gender identity are fraught with contradictions. Even as we increasingly recognize gender as an assigned category or social convention, we still see it as inherent to who we are, fundamental to our sense of self. But the quest to find one's true self is unfulfillable. How can we find alternatives to the focus on getting our identity "right"?
This book offers a cultural critique of gender narratives, spanning traditional conformity to gender roles, the modern quest for individual authenticity beyond gender, and the recent social media-fueled concern with curating gendered profiles. Hans-Georg Moeller puts Daoist philosophy into conversation with present-day thinkers, showing why it helps us rethink common notions about identity. Discussing a wide range of cases, from Chinese foot binding to the politics around transgender issues today, he argues that we can defuse our anxieties by recognizing that gender--like all identities--is social, not individual, and changes at different times and in different places. Accessibly written and empathetic, The Enigma of Gender calls on us to be at ease with whoever we happen to be.
We have been told that we are living in the Anthropocene, a geological era shaped by humans rather than by nature. In Enlivenment, German philosopher Andreas Weber presents an alternative understanding of our relationship with nature, arguing not that humans control nature but that humans and nature exist in a commons of mutual transformation. There is no nature-human dualism, he contends, because the fundamental dimension of existence is shared in what he calls "aliveness." All subjectivity is intersubjectivity. Self is self-through-other. Seeing all beings in a common household of matter, desire, and imagination, an economy of metabolic and economic transformation, is "enlivenment." This perspective allows us to move beyond Enlightenment-style thinking that strips material reality of any subjectivity.
To take this step, Weber argues, we need to supplant the concept of techné with the concept of poiesis as the element that brings forth reality. In a world not divided into things and ideas, culture and nature, reality arises from the creation of relationships and continuous fertile transformations; any thinking in terms of relationships comes about as a poetics. The self is always a function of the whole; the whole is equally a function of the individual. Only this integrated freedom allows humanity to reconcile with the natural world.
This first English edition of Enlivenment has been expanded and updated from the German edition.
Why human nature is an aesthetic phenomenon--and why we need art and philosophy to understand ourselves
In The Entanglement, philosopher Alva Noë explores the inseparability of life, art, and philosophy, arguing that we have greatly underestimated what this entangled reality means for understanding human nature. Life supplies art with its raw materials, but art, Noë argues, remakes life by giving us resources to live differently. Our lives are permeated with the aesthetic. Indeed, human nature is an aesthetic phenomenon, and art--our most direct and authentic way of engaging the aesthetic--is the truest way of understanding ourselves. All this suggests that human nature is not a natural phenomenon. Neither biology, cognitive science, nor AI can tell a complete story of us, and we can no more pin ourselves down than we can fix or settle on the meaning of an artwork. Even more, art and philosophy are the means to set ourselves free, at least to some degree, from convention, habit, technology, culture, and even biology. In making these provocative claims, Noë explores examples of entanglement--in artworks and seeing, writing and speech, and choreography and dancing--and examines a range of scientific efforts to explain the human. Challenging the notions that art is a mere cultural curiosity and that philosophy has been outmoded by science, The Entanglement offers a new way of thinking about human nature, the limits of natural science in understanding the human, and the essential role of art and philosophy in trying to know ourselves.
These essays, written in the spirit of Goethe's Epimetheus who "traces the quick deed to the dim realm of form-combining possibilities", display the depth and breadth of Tallis's fascination with our lives. Whether discussing philosophical "hardy perennials" like time, or a mundane artefact like ink, Tallis challenges us to think differently about who we are and why we are.
The first part of the book - Analysis - dives into the deep-end to explore some of the big questions in philosophy: perception, knowledge and belief; time; the relationship between mathematics and reality; and probability and causation. The middle section - Tetchy Interludes - takes a wry look at some aspects of contemporary art; stupidity (including the author's own); and Christmas. The third part - Celebration - is more experimental in both its subject matter and treatment. It celebrates the complexity of ordinary, everyday consciousness by contemplating the miracle of speech, artefacts that have transformed our lives (and what they reveal about our cognition) such as the wheel, the sail, and ink; and 'snapshots' of the author's own consciousness on an ordinary day, of past consciousness, as captured in historical memory. Notwithstanding their diversity in theme and style, these essays share the common aim of discovering and celebrating the submerged riches in the "quick deeds" of our everyday lives and perceptions.
One of the world's leading epistemologists provides a sophisticated, revisionist introduction to the subject
In this concise book, one of the world's leading epistemologists provides a sophisticated, revisionist introduction to the problem of knowledge in Western philosophy. Modern and contemporary accounts of epistemology tend to focus on limited questions of knowledge and skepticism, such as how we can know the external world, other minds, the past through memory, the future through induction, or the world's depth and structure through inference. This book steps back for a better view of the more general issues posed by the ancient Greek Pyrrhonists. Returning to and illuminating this older, broader epistemological tradition, Ernest Sosa develops an original account of the subject, giving it substance not with Cartesian theology but with science and common sense. Descartes is a part of this ancient tradition, but he goes beyond it by considering not just whether knowledge is possible in the first place, but also how we can properly attain it. In Cartesian epistemology, Sosa finds a virtue-theoretic account, one that he extends beyond the Cartesian context. Once epistemology is viewed in this light, many of its problems can be solved or fall away. The result is an important reevaluation of epistemology that will be essential reading for students and teachers.
Shem-Tov Falaquera (c. 1225-1295) was a student of the writings of Maimonides and a leading expositor of the medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophical traditions. His Epistle of the Debate (Iggeret ha-Vikkuah) is a delightful dialogue between two Jews, one learned in philosophy and the other not, about the permissibility and desirability of philosophical investigation by Jews.
It is perhaps the most important medieval text devoted to the theme of the relationship between reason and religion by a Jewish thinker, and it is an excellent introduction to Jewish philosophy. This volume contains the first critical edition of the Hebrew text of the Epistle of the Debate and an annotated English translation, the first into a modern language. The volume also includes essays on the sources of the Epistle and on Falaquera's position on the relation between reason and religion.
With the publication of French Philosophy of the Sixties, Alain Renaut and Luc Ferry in 1985 launched their famous critique against canonical figures such as Foucault, Derrida, and Lacan, bringing under rigorous scrutiny the entire post-structuralist project that had dominated Western intellectual life for over two decades. Their goal was to defend the accomplishments of liberal democracy, particularly in terms of basic human rights, and to trace the reigning philosophers' distrust of liberalism to an "antihumanism" inherited mainly from Heidegger. In The Era of the Individual, widely hailed as Renaut's magnum opus, the author explores the most salient feature of post-structuralism: the elimination of the human subject. At the root of this thinking lies the belief that humans cannot know or control their basic natures, a premise that led to Heidegger's distrust of an individualistic, capitalist modern society and that allied him briefly with Hitler's National Socialist Party. While acknowledging some of Heidegger's misgivings toward modernity as legitimate, Renaut argues that it is nevertheless wrong to equate modernity with the triumph of individualism. Here he distinguishes between individualism and subjectivity and, by offering a history of the two, powerfully redirects the course of current thinking away from potentially dangerous, reductionist views of humanity.
Renaut argues that modern philosophy contains within itself two opposed ways of conceiving the human person. The first, which has its roots in Descartes and Kant, views human beings as subjects capable of arriving at universal moral judgments. The second, stemming from Leibniz, Hegel, and Nietzsche, presents human beings as independent individuals sharing nothing with others. In a careful recounting of this philosophical tradition, Renaut shows the resonances of these traditions in more recent philosophers such as Heidegger and in the social anthropology of Louis Dumont. Renaut's distinction between individualism and subjectivity has become an important issue for young thinkers dissatisfied with the intellectual tradition originating in Nietzsche and Heidegger. Moreover, his proclivity toward the Kantian tradition, combined with his insights into the shortcomings of modernity, will interest anyone concerned about today's shifting cultural attitudes toward liberalism. Originally published in 1997. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
This is the first English-language intellectual biography of the German-Jewish philosopher Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945), a leading figure on the Weimar intellectual scene and one of the last and finest representatives of the liberal-idealist tradition. Edward Skidelsky traces the development of Cassirer's thought in its historical and intellectual setting. He presents Cassirer, the author of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, as a defender of the liberal ideal of culture in an increasingly fragmented world, and as someone who grappled with the opposing forces of scientific positivism and romantic vitalism. Cassirer's work can be seen, Skidelsky argues, as offering a potential resolution to the ongoing conflict between the "two cultures" of science and the humanities--and between the analytic and continental traditions in philosophy. The first comprehensive study of Cassirer in English in two decades, this book will be of great interest to analytic and continental philosophers, intellectual historians, political and cultural theorists, and historians of twentieth-century Germany.
