Philosophy Books

Zygmunt Bauman was one of the most important social theorists of recent decades. He did major work on the Holocaust, the postmodern and much else, up to fifty-eight books in English on almost as many topics. In this book, Australian sociologist Peter...

The rise of populism, Donald Trump's election and the result of the EU referendum in the UK have been widely interpreted as a rejection of the post-war liberal order - the manifestation of a desire to undermine the political system that people feel has...

As innovations in military technologies race toward ever-greater levels of automation and autonomy, debates over the ethics of violent technologies tread water. Death Machines reframes these debates, arguing that the way we conceive of the ethics of...

Debating civilisations offers an up-to-date evaluation of the re-emerging field of civilisational analysis, tracing its main currents and comparing it to rival paradigms such as Marxism, globalisation theory and postcolonial sociology. The book suggests...

This book presents thirteen essays from a leading contemporary political scientist, with a substantial introduction bringing together the themes. The topics covered include political and social power, freedom, choice, rights, responsibility, the author's...

An influential thinker's fascinating reflections and meditations on reacclimating to his native Senegal as a young academic after years of study abroad The call to morning prayer. A group run at daybreak along the Corniche in Dakar. A young woman...

A philosopher and former racing cyclist examines how competitive riders lose their sense of self as they pursue perfect motion and mastery over painAfter ten years as a racing cyclist, riding in up to ninety races a year, Olivier Haralambon became a...

Rethinking our relationship with Earth in a time of environmental emergencyThe world is changing. Progress no longer has a future but any earlier sense of Earth as "providential" seems of merely historical interest. The apparent absence of Earthly...

Who's worse, the Young-Girl or the Man-Child?Tiqqun's Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl is a controversial work of anticapitalist philosophy that has attracted musicians, playwrights, feminist theorists, and men's-rights activists...

A powerful new examination of the performative that asks "what's next?" for this well-worn conceptFrom its humble origins in J. L. Austin's speech-act theory of the 1950s, the performative has grown to permeate wildly diverse scholarly fields, ranging...

A new critical approach to cinema and media based on Buddhism as a philosophical discourse How can a philosophical discourse generated in Asia help us reframe and renew cinema and media theory? Cinema Illuminating Reality provides a possible way to do...

A groundbreaking look at Gaia theory's intersections with neocybernetic systems theory Often seen as an outlier in science, Gaia has run a long and varied course since its formulation in the 1970s by atmospheric chemist James Lovelock and microbiologist...

Thinking through object-oriented ontology-and the work of architects such as Rem Koolhaas and Zaha Hadid-to explore new concepts of the relationship between form and functionObject-oriented ontology has become increasingly popular among architectural...

Bringing the word sustainability back from the brink of clich-to a substantive, truly sustainable future Is sustainability a hopelessly vague word, with meager purpose aside from a feel-good appeal to the consumer? In The Three Sustainabilities, Allan...

TheTomb of the Artisan Godprovides a radical rereading of Timaeus, Plato's metaphysical text ontime, eternity, and the relationship between soul and body. Now available inEnglish with a new preface by Serge Margel, this engagement with Platonicthought...

Presents thirty novel terms that do not yet exist in English to envision ways of responding to the environmental challenges of our generation As the scale and gravity of climate change becomes undeniable, a cultural revolution must ultimately match...

A vital and timely reminder that modern life owes as much to outlandishthinking as to dominant ideologies.What do the Nag Hammadi library, Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, speculativefeminist historiography, Marcus Garvey's finances, and maps drawn by...

"How to judge - Jean-Francois Lyotard?" It is from this initial question that one of France's most heralded philosophers of the twentieth century begins his essay on the origin of the law, of judgment, and the work of his colleague Jean-Francois Lyotard...

Veer Ecology is a groundbreaking guide for the twenty-first century, with theeditors asking thirty brilliant thinkers to each propose one verb that stressesthe forceful potential of inquiry, weather, biomes, apprehensions, and desiresto swerve...

This book is adaring and provocative response to the masculinist and techno-normativeapproach to the Anthropocene so often taken by technoscientists, artists,humanists, and social scientists. By coining and, for the first time, fullyexploring the concept...

The Villa Tugendhat, designed by Mies van der Rohe in 1928, is an icon of architectural modernism. Behind the Glass tells the true story of the large family connected to it, who rose to prominence through industrial textile manufacturing.The book traces...

The Logic of Love in the Canterbury Tales argues that Geoffrey Chaucer's magnum opus draws inventively on the resources of late medieval logic to conceive of love as an "insoluble." Philosophers of the fourteenth century expended great...

Henry David Thoreau built his small cabin on Walden Pond in 1845 and, for two years, lived there as simply as possible, eliminating the unnecessary material and spiritual details that intrude upon human happiness. Thoreau described his experiences in...

"It is safer to be feared than loved." These words embody the spirit of The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli's classic work of political philosophy. Machiavelli's advice for how a ruler should acquire and ruthlessly exercise power over others continues to be...

Living in AWE was written to address the urgent need for positive change at this critical time in human history. This book provides tools, principles and frameworks for both the personal and systemic transformation we need. This transformation requires...

Here is the essential guide to the human brain, an authoritative reference book and timeline thatexamines the one point four kilos of matter inside our heads that does all our thinking for us.With 100 billion nerve cells joined by thousands more joining...

Here is the essential guide to philosophy, an authoritative yet fun reference book and timeline on the compilation of human knowledge. Both art and science attempt answers to the big questions-what is truth, how to be good, and where did we come...

The acclaimed French classicist Marcel Detienne's first book traces the odyssey of "truth," aletheia, from mytho-religious concept to philosophical thought in archaic Greece. Detienne begins by examining how truth in Greek literature first emerges as an...

In his stunning essay, Coldness and Cruelty, Gilles Deleuze provides a rigorous and informed philosophical examination of the work of the late 19th-century German novelist Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. Deleuze's essay, certainly the most profound study yet...

"Expressionism in Philosophy" is both a pivotal reading of Spinoza's work and also a crucial text within the development of Deleuze's own thought. It was the culmination of a series of monographic studies by Deleuze (on Hume, Bergson, Nietzsche, Proust,...

Following in the wake of "War in the Age of Intelligent Machines", Manuel De Landa presents a synthesis of historical development over the last one thousand years. The work sketches the outlines of a renewed materialist philosophy of history in the...

Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet are leaders in a contemporary French classical scholarship that has produced a a stunning reconfiguration of Greek thought and literature. In this work, published here as a single volume, the authors present a...

"Since the end of the last century," Walter Benjamin wrote, "philosophy has made a series of attempts to lay hold of the 'true' experience as opposed to the kind that manifests itself in the standardized, denatured life of the civilized masses. It is...

Attributed to Iamblichus (4th cent. AD), The Theology of Arithmetic is about the mystical, mathmatical and cosmological symbolism of the first ten numbers. Its is the longest work on number symbolism to survive from the ancient world, and Robin...

With an introduction to the life of Porphyry and an overview of Neoplatonic thought by David Fideler.

If you've ever had questions about the inconsistencies between chakra systems or wondered where the names, colors, locations, and other associations came from--you'll find the answers here, along with 24 tables and 28 black-and-white illustrations...

Deepening global crises surround us. We are beset by climate change, fracking, tar sands extraction, GMOs, and mass extinctions of species, to say nothing of nuclear weapons proliferation and Fukushima, the worst nuclear disaster in history. Many of us...

Everyone wants to be happy...don't they? Everyone seeks fulfillment in life...don't they? Unfortunately, this is not the common state in life today and much is due to the human failing of greed. This book offers a solution.Science explains and...

Achaan Chah spent many years walking and meditating in the forest monastery of Wat Ba Pong, engaging in the uncomplicated and disciplined Buddhist practice called dhudanga. A Still Forest Pool reflects the quiet, intensive, and joyous practice of the...

The Age of Lovecraft is the first sustained analysis of HowardPhillips Lovecraft in relation to twenty-first-century critical theory andculture. This volume offers the most thorough examination of Lovecraft's placein contemporary philosophy  to...

Henri Lefebvrereviews the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels for analysis on the life andgrowth of the city, describing its transition from life under feudalism tomodern industrial capitalism. Now available in English, Marxist Thought andthe City...

In AgainstPurity, Alexis Shotwell proposes a powerful new conception of socialmovements as custodians for the past and incubators for liberated futures. AgainstPurity undertakes an analysis that draws on theories of race, disability,gender, and animal...

As a transformative thinker of the twentieth century, whose work spanned all branches of the humanities, Michel Foucault had a complex and profound relationship with literature. And yet this critical aspect of his thought, because it was largely...

Stone maps the force, vivacity, and stories within our most mundane matter, stone. For too long stone has served as an unexamined metaphor for the "really real": blunt factuality, nature's curt rebuke. Yet, medieval writers knew that stones drop with...

A new translation of Derrida's groundbreaking juxtaposition of Hegel and Genet, forcing two incompatible discourses into dialogue with each otherJacques Derrida's famously challenging book Glas puts the practice of philosophy and the very acts of writing...

From the rediscovery of Alfred North Whitehead's work to the rise of new materialist thought, including object-oriented ontology, there has been a rapid turn toward speculation in philosophy as a way of moving beyond solely human perceptions of nature...

Tracing war's expansion beyond the battlefield to the concept of the human being itself As military and other forms of political violence become the planetary norm, On Posthuman War traces the expansion of war beyond traditional theaters of battle...