Topics in philosophy Books

How has September 11 and the declaration of the 'global war on terror' changed our conceptions of politics? How has it affected our understanding of democracy, human rights, personal freedom and government accountability? How should we respond in the...

This anthology contains some of the more important Marxist thinkers now working on dialectics. As a whole the book is an unusual 'Introduction to Dialectics', a systematic restatement of what it is and how to use it, a survey of most of the main debates...

Tocqueville Today? Contexts, Interpretations and Usages; R.Geenens & A.De Dijn Liberalism, Democracy, and Empire: Tocqueville on Algeria; J.Pitts Creating Concitoyens : Tocqueville on the Legacy of Slavery; C. Welch Reading Tocqueville: Diachrony,...

John Burbidge shows that, far from incorporating everything into an all-consuming necessity, Hegel's philosophy requires the novelty of unexpected contingencies to maintain its systematic pretensions. To know without fear of failure is to expect that...

Some arguments for the objectivity of ethical claim have a 'companions in guilt' form. These arguments defend the objective credentials of ethical claims by comparing them with other claims the objective credentials of which are not in doubt, but which...

Is it either possible or desirable to aim at truth? The answer seems clearly 'yes'. However, the question of what it really means for our beliefs and assertions to be 'truth-directed' is not obvious. In a highly original treatment, Nicholas Unwin argues...

The existence of pornography is a contemporary moral problem par excellence. Its production, exchange and consumption raise a host of moral and political concerns: coercion, exploitation, harm, freedom of expression and the promulgation of sexist...

Social enterprises have been a growing phenomenon around the world in the past decade. The authors of this volume argue that they represent a unique type of organization. By combining social goals with a business orientation, both critical for their...

Examining stem cell biology from a philosophy of science perspective, this book clarifies the field's central concept, the stem cell, as well as its aims, methods, models, explanations and evidential challenges. The first chapters discuss what stem cells...

Repression receives little attention in philosophical literature. This study of cases of repression that inhibit an agent's deliberative access to his reasons argues that an agent cannot correctly deliberate about a reason to overcome repression as if he...

This collection is devoted to Gilbert Ryle's philosophy of mind and language. It features essays from prominent scholars on the topics of category mistakes, hypotheticals, dispositions, emotion, thinking, perception, and the task-achievement distinction.

The Things We Do and Why We Do Them argues against the common assumption that there is a kind of thing called "action" which all reason-giving explanation of action are geared towards. Sandis explains why all theories concerned with the form which any...

Taking insights from the philosophy of science and technology, theories of participatory democracy and Critical Theory, the author tackles and explores how democratic participation in scientific research and technological innovation could be possible, as...

Going beyond the present controversy surrounding personhood in various non-philosophical contexts, this book seeks to defend the renewed philosophical interest in issues connected with this topic and the need for a more credible philosophical conception...

Air Transport and the European Union investigates the emergence of the EU as a major policy actor in aviation and examines how Europeanization has transformed the governance, organization and structure of the sector since the mid1980s. It addresses the...

Mainstream philosophical discussions of ethics usually involve either a search for a problem-solving theory (such as utilitarianism), or an exploration of ontological status (of things like obligations or reasons). This book will argue that such efforts...

Is nature creation or merely the product of non-intentional, natural processes? Mats Wahlberg argues that our perceptual experiences of nature can settle this question in favor of creation. He suggests that biological nature has expressive properties of...

It is impossible to overstate the ways in which Claude Lefort has influenced democratic theorizing over the past three decades. With the impact he has had on some of the 20th and 21st Centuries most notable and important Political Theorists from Ernesto...

This book seeks to set humanism on a new footing. No longer Enlightenment intuitions of an autonomous, disconnected, and rational self but a philosophy oriented towards the relationship between self and other. With this, it seeks to provide an escape...

What is mathematics about? And if it is about some sort of mathematical reality, how can we have access to it? This is the problem raised by Plato, which still today is the subject of lively philosophical disputes. This book traces the history of the...

Cultural and historical accounts of the public intellectual and French feminism have been remiss in their failure to recognise an important group of major women intellectuals in France. In particular, studies of French feminism and public intellectuals...

This is the first volume dedicated to a direct exploration of Wittgenstein and Plato. It is a compilation of essays by thirteen authors of diverse geographical provenance, orientation and philosophical interest.   The volume offers the most complete...

This book presents a comparative historical overview of the transformation of the position of women in interconnected spheres of social life across the Mediterranean region. Many Mediterranean countries share a common historical background characterized...

This book focuses on normative questions that arise about globalization. Much social science research is devoted to exploring the political, legal, social and economic changes that occur all around us. This books offers an introductory treatment of the...

In this ambitious and bold book, Ralph Schroeder develops a new social theory centred on the notion of limits. The current era, from the 1970s onwards, has seen a departure from the three defining trends of the modern age: the struggle for social...

An exploration of the philosophical foundation of modern medicine which explains why such a medicine possesses the characteristics it does and where precisely its strengths as well as its weaknesses lie. Written in plain English, it should be accessible...

If the advancement toward the administered world is nearing completion, if spectacularised societies, industrialised cultures, and reified consciousness have taken control, then, Adorno and Art shows how radical and revolutionary Adorno's aesthetic...

The current economic crisis is causing large impact on the behavior of financial markets and institutions. Crisis, Risk and Stability in Modern Banking presents an indepth insight into key topics related to the behavior of financial institutions in the...

We know that we are fallible creatures, liable to cognitive bias. But we also have a strong and stubborn tendency to overestimate our reasoning capacities. This presents a problem for any attempt to help us reason in more accurate ways: While we might...

Events such as the phone-hacking scandal, Wikileaks and the Mohammed cartoons controversy have placed ethics of media at the centre of current debates. Media are not only centralised institutions, but also technologies and means through which we sustain...

Through a close and extensive reading of his works, Dialectics of Human Nature in Marx's Philosophy demonstrates that Marx's explanations are fundamentally dialectical, and that his dialectic method, as well as his philosophical system, is inconceivable...

This book is a conceptualization of the literary aesthetic in relation to ethics, in particular, an ethics for a concern for the Self. Bringing Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's constructivist thinking into a practical domain, Sabrina Achilles rethinks...

The Emergent Multiverse presents a striking new account of the "many worlds" approach to quantum theory. The point of science, it is generally accepted, is to tell us how the world works and what it is like. But quantum theory seems to fail to do this:...

Judith Butler has been arguably the most important gender theorist of the past twenty years. This edited volume draws leading international political theorists into dialogue with her political theory. Each chapter is written by an acclaimed political...

In contemporary non-mainstream economic debate, it is widely thought that the functioning of a market economy needs a set of rules (i.e. institutions) which bind agents in their behaviour, allowing efficient outcomes. This idea is contrary to the General...

Ayatollah Murtaza Mutahhari was a significant figure in the movement which brought the Islamic Republic of Iran into being. Mutahhari, a student of Ayatollah Khomeini and particularly close to his mentor, had broad theoretical concerns regarding...

Very Little ... Almost Nothing puts the question of the meaning of life back at the centre of intellectual debate. Its central concern is how we can find a meaning to human finitude without recourse to anything that transcends that finitude. A profound...

The Social and Political Thought of Noam Chomsky questions Chomsky's claim not to have a theory about the relationship between human beings and their society other than that which 'can be written on the back of postage stamp'. Edgley compares Chomsky's...

Truth without Objectivity provides a critique of the mainstream view of 'meaning'. Kölbel examines the standard solutions to the conflict implicit in this view, demonstrating their inadequacy and developing instead his own relativist theory of truth.The...