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
Can any of us ever really be free? Do we follow the rules our society gives us because we want to, or because we are forced to? Discipline, Freedom, Resistance challenges the received wisdom that discipline and freedom are opposite and mutually exclusive. Though it is typically argued that a well-ordered liberal society must discipline its more unruly citizens to maintain freedom for all, Flathman shows how resistance to rules can mean more than criminals breaking laws. Resistance can also mean political protest and political dialogues about what the rules can be. Discipline, Freedom, Resistance draws on Foucault's theories of the self to describe the inner discipline it takes to resist authority-declaring that individuals must sometimes resist forces that wish to destroy freedom, to ensure freedom.
Theories of justice often fixate on purely normative, abstract principles unrelated to real-world situations. The philosopher and theorist Axel Honneth addresses this disconnect, and constructs a theory of justice derived from the normative claims of Western liberal-democratic societies and anchored in morally legitimate laws and institutionally established practices.
Honneth's paradigm--which he terms "a democratic ethical life"--draws on the spirit of Hegel's Philosophy of Right and his own theory of recognition, demonstrating how concrete social spheres generate the tenets of individual freedom and a standard for what is just. Using social analysis to re-found a more grounded theory of justice, he argues that all crucial actions in Western civilization, whether in personal relationships, market-induced economic activities, or the public forum of politics, share one defining characteristic: they require the realization of a particular aspect of individual freedom. This fundamental truth informs the guiding principles of justice, enabling a wide-ranging reconsideration of its nature and application.
This book, the text of Martin Heidegger's lecture course of 1929/30, is crucial for an understanding of Heidegger's transition from the major work of his early years, Being and Time, to his later preoccupations with language, truth, and history. First published in German in 1983 as volume 29/30 of Heidegger's collected works, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics presents an extended treatment of the history of metaphysics and an elaboration of a philosophy of life and nature. Heidegger's concepts of organism, animal behavior, and environment are uniquely developed and defined with intensity. Of major interest is Heidegger's brilliant phenomenological description of the mood of boredome, which he describes as a "fundamental attunement" of modern times.
Though coming from different and distinct intellectual traditions, Richard Rorty and Gianni Vattimo are united in their criticism of the metaphysical tradition. The challenges they put forward extend beyond philosophy and entail a reconsideration of the foundations of belief in God and the religious life. They urge that the rejection of metaphysical truth does not necessitate the death of religion; instead it opens new ways of imagining what it is to be religious--ways that emphasize charity, solidarity, and irony. This unique collaboration, which includes a dialogue between the two philosophers, is notable not only for its fusion of pragmatism (Rorty) and hermeneutics (Vattimo) but also for its recognition of the limits of both traditional religious belief and modern secularism.
In "Anticlericalism and Atheism" Rorty discusses Vattimo's work Belief and argues that the end of metaphysics paves the way for an anti-essentialist religion. Rorty's conception of religion, determined by private motives, is designed to produce the gospel's promise that henceforth God will not consider humanity as a servant but as a friend. In "The Age of Interpretation," Vattimo, who is both a devout Catholic and a frequent critic of the church, explores the surprising congruence between Christianity and hermeneutics in light of the dissolution of metaphysical truth. As in hermeneutics, interpretation is central to Christianity, which introduced the world to the principle of interiority, dissolving the experience of objective reality into "listening to and interpreting messages." The lively dialogue that concludes this volume, moderated and edited by Santiago Zabala, analyzes the future of religion together with the political, social, and historical aspects that characterize our contemporary postmodern, postmetaphysical, and post-Christian world.
This second edition of the author's classic study of Kant's First Critique includes a new preface and extensive afterword.
This second edition of The Gathering of Reason expands on John Sallis's classic study of Kant's First Critique. This study examines the relation of imagination to reason and to human knowledge and action in general. Moving simultaneously at several different hermeneutical levels, Sallis carries out an interpretation of the Transcendental Dialectic of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Although, in contrast to the Analytic, the Dialectic seldom refers explicitly to imagination, Sallis shows that the concept of reason in the Dialectic requires the complicity of imagination. Sallis demonstrates that for Kant, reason alone does not suffice for bringing before our minds the metaphysical ideas of the soul, the world, and God; rather it is through the force of imagination that these ideas are brought forth and made effective. A new preface situates the book in relation to Sallis's later work, and an extensive afterword focuses on Kant and the Greeks.
In this book, Alain Badiou and Jean-Luc Nancy, the two most important living philosophers in France, discuss German philosophy from a French perspective. Written in the form of a dialogue, and revised and expanded from a 2016 conversation between the two philosophers at the Universität der Künste Berlin, the book offers not only Badiou's and Nancy's reinterpretations of German philosophers and philosophical concepts, but also an accessible introduction to the greatest thinkers of German philosophy. Badiou and Nancy discuss and debate such topics as the legacies of Kant, Hegel, and Marx, as well as Nietzsche, Adorno, Fichte, Schelling, and the unavoidable problem of Heidegger and Nazism. The dialogue is contentious, friendly, and often quotable, with strong--at times passionate--positions taken by both Badiou and Nancy, who find themselves disagreeing over Kant, for example, and in unexpected agreement on Marx, for another.
What does it mean, then, to conduct a dialogue on German philosophy from a French perspective? As volume editor Jan Völker observes, "German philosophy" and "French philosophy" describe complex constellations that, despite the reference to nation-states and languages, above all encompass shared concepts and problems--although these take a range of forms. Perhaps they can reveal their essential import only in translation.
Gianni Vattimo (1936-2023) was among the most significant Italian philosophers of the last fifty years. A controversial figure both at home and abroad, he sometimes described himself paradoxically as a "nihilist" and as a "communist Catholic." Despite his provocations--and unusually for an academic philosopher--he served two terms in the European Parliament. For decades, Vattimo was at the forefront of developments in continental philosophy, spanning hermeneutics, postmodernity, and the "return to religion." Drawing on the work of figures such as Heidegger, Marx, Nietzsche, Gadamer, Rorty, and Kuhn, Vattimo constructed his signature concept of "weak thought," a way of approaching the persistent problems of ideology, violence, and social division after the so-called end of metaphysics.
In this book, Thomas Jared Farmer provides a groundbreaking examination of Vattimo's life and work. He considers the distinctive contributions that Vattimo made to postmodern thought as well as to recent debates in political philosophy and religion. This book provides an accessible introduction to Vattimo's overall philosophical project while also contextualizing it through discussions of important intellectual figures, key events in Italian history, and details about his personal trajectory. Authoritative and comprehensive, it is an indispensable companion to the works of one of the most original thinkers to emerge in the second half of the twentieth century.
"This outstanding book... is a genuinely pivotal contribution to the lively current debate over divine foreknowledge and human freedom.... Hasker's book has three commendable features worthy of immediate note. First, it contains a carefully crafted overview of the recent literature on foreknowledge and freedom and so can serve as an excellent introduction to that literature. Second, it is tightly reasoned and brimming with brisk arguments, many of them highly original. Third, it correctly situates the philosophical dispute over foreknowledge and freedom within its proper theological context and in so doing highlights the intimate connection between the doctrines of divine omniscience and divine providence."--Faith and Philosophy"[God, Time, and Knowledge] is an elegantly written, forcefully argued challenge to traditional views, and a major contribution to the discussion of divine foreknowledge."--Philosophical Review"This is a very competent, thorough analysis of the conflict between free will and divine foreknowledge (or, on some acounts, timeless divine knowledge of our future). It is exceptionally clear."--Theological Book Review
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award
A metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll
"Every few decades an unknown author brings out a book of such depth, charity, range, wit, beauty, and originality that it is recognized at once as a major literary event. This is such a work." --Scientific American
GEB is a unique insight into the nature of "I," self, soul, and consciousness, centered on a notion that its youthful author dubbed "strange loop," inspired by the twisty self-referential construction invented by logician Kurt Gödel, whereby a sentence asserts its own unprovability. The book's chapters alternate with Bach-like contrapuntal dialogues between whimsical characters (especially Achilles and the Tortoise), and each dialogue's intricate structure exemplifies the notion being discussed in it, thus creating indirect self-reference (a fact unsuspected by the characters). The book, filled with analogies, wordplay, humor, and mind-twisting prints by M. C. Escher, has inspired generations of bright students to study cognitive science and the philosophy of mind.
This book represents the most comprehensive account to date of an important but widely contested approach to ethics--intuitionism, the view that there is a plurality of moral principles, each of which we can know directly. Robert Audi casts intuitionism in a form that provides a major alternative to the more familiar ethical perspectives (utilitarian, Kantian, and Aristotelian). He introduces intuitionism in its historical context and clarifies--and improves and defends--W. D. Ross's influential formulation. Bringing Ross out from under the shadow of G. E. Moore, he puts a reconstructed version of Rossian intuitionism on the map as a full-scale, plausible contemporary theory.
A major contribution of the book is its integration of Rossian intuitionism with Kantian ethics; this yields a view with advantages over other intuitionist theories (including Ross's) and over Kantian ethics taken alone. Audi proceeds to anchor Kantian intuitionism in a pluralistic theory of value, leading to an account of the perennially debated relation between the right and the good. Finally, he sets out the standards of conduct the theory affirms and shows how the theory can help guide concrete moral judgment.The Good in the Right is a self-contained original contribution, but readers interested in ethics or its history will find numerous connections with classical and contemporary literature. Written with clarity and concreteness, and with examples for every major point, it provides an ethical theory that is both intellectually cogent and plausible in application to moral problems.
"[Tuan] explores answers to an old and unanswerable question: how should we live? . . . The Good Life is a little anthology of good feeling, touchstones of joy . . . These pleasures make the book a pleasure, not of conviction or belief, but of conversation's meandering exploration."--New York Times Book Review
"Tuan, after all, is one of the few geographers who can be read for pleasure, and by the public as well as by the professional. But read not merely for pleasure, nor yet to mark, learn, and inwardly digest. Rather, consider Tuan's challenge to identify your concept of the good life, and then try to construct that life."--Environment and Planning D: Society and Space
How an acceptance of our limitations can lead to a more fulfilling life and a more harmonious society
We live in a world oriented toward greatness, one in which we feel compelled to be among the wealthiest, most powerful, and most famous. This book explains why no one truly benefits from this competitive social order, and reveals how another way of life is possible--a good-enough life for all. Avram Alpert shows how our obsession with greatness results in stress and anxiety, damage to our relationships, widespread political and economic inequality, and destruction of the natural world. He describes how to move beyond greatness to create a society in which everyone flourishes. By competing less with each other, each of us can find renewed meaning and purpose, have our material and emotional needs met, and begin to lead more leisurely lives. Alpert makes no false utopian promises, however. Life can never be more than good enough because there will always be accidents and tragedies beyond our control, which is why we must stop dividing the world into winners and losers and ensure that there is a fair share of decency and sufficiency to go around. Visionary and provocative, The Good-Enough Life demonstrates how we can work together to cultivate a good-enough life for all instead of tearing ourselves apart in a race to the top of the social pyramid.
How should we live? What do we owe to other people? In Goodness and Advice, the eminent philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson explores how we should go about answering such fundamental questions. In doing so, she makes major advances in moral philosophy, pointing to some deep problems for influential moral theories and describing the structure of a new and much more promising theory.
Thomson begins by lamenting the prevalence of the idea that there is an unbridgeable gap between fact and value--that to say something is good, for example, is not to state a fact, but to do something more like expressing an attitude or feeling. She sets out to challenge this view, first by assessing the apparently powerful claims of Consequentialism. Thomson makes the striking argument that this familiar theory must ultimately fail because its basic requirement--that people should act to bring about the "most good"--is meaningless. It rests on an incoherent conception of goodness, and supplies, not mistaken advice, but no advice at all. Thomson then outlines the theory that she thinks we should opt for instead. This theory says that no acts are, simply, good: an act can at most be good in one or another way--as, for example, good for Smith or for Jones. What we ought to do is, most importantly, to avoid injustice; and whether an act is unjust is a function both of the rights of those affected, including the agent, and of how good or bad the act is for them. The book, which originated in the Tanner lectures that Thomson delivered at Princeton University's Center for Human Values in 1999, includes two chapters by Thomson ("Goodness" and "Advice"), provocative comments by four prominent scholars--Martha Nussbaum, Jerome Schneewind, Philip Fisher, and Barbara Herrnstein Smith--and replies by Thomson to those comments.