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Long claimed to be the dominant conception of practical reason, the Humean theory that reasons for action are instrumental, or explained by desires, is the basis for a range of worries about the objective prescriptivity of morality. As a result, it has come under intense attack in recent decades. A wide variety of arguments have been advanced which purport to show that it is false, or surprisingly, even that it is incoherent. Slaves of the Passions aims to set the record straight, by advancing a...

It was during his campaigns against the barbarians that the Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius, wrote his famous "Meditations". They record the passing thoughts, the maxims and the musings on life and death of a sensitive and humble mind which had been trained in that stoic philosophy which contributed so much to Christianity. In this translation from the scholarly Greek in which Marcus kept his private journal, Staniforth gives us a simple and straightforward version of a work which has often been...

This book describes how nonsense in our daily living are dilemmas beyond our handling, which thereby makes us realise our nonsense is our access to the Beyond as deep Nonsense. Our description of daily dilemmas beyond us makes us sense them as our secret Open Sesame to the Beyond quite beyond us to suffuse and support us. Nothing is more enthralling and essential to our existence than this thrilling odyssey into the Beyond-Nonsense as our Matrix of living. We unpack this compact complex in this...

Our Miniature Editions TM collection continues to grow! Since 1989, when our first minis appeared, Running Press has offered an astonishing range of subjects, sure to find a place in any booklover's library! Visit the golf course for nine holes, head to the kitchen with the Silver Palate chefs, travel to the heavens above, or rediscover the wonders of nature in your own backyard.

From Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Poetics to Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy, the theme of tragedy has been subject to radically conflicting philosophical interpretations. Despite being at the heart of philosophical debate from Ancient Greece to the Nineteenth Century, however, tragedy has yet to receive proper treatment as a philosophical tradition in its own right. Philosophy and Tragedy is a compelling contribution to that oversight and the first book to address the topic in a major way...

Everyday Humanism seeks to move the discussion of humanism's positive contributions to life away from the macro-level to focus on the everyday, or micro-dimensions of our individual and collective existence. How might humanist principles impact parenting? How might these principles inform our take on aging, on health, on friendship? These are just a few of the issues around everyday life that needed interpretation from a humanist perspective. Through attention to key issues, the volume seeks to...

Studying in turn the treatments of mental conflict in Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics, A.W. Price demonstrates how the arguments of the Greeks are still relevant to philosophical discussion today.

This volume surveys a variety of philosophical views on what it is that makes an individual life or life in general worth living, valuable or meaningful. It contains pieces from the whole philosophical tradition, ranging from the Bible, Aristotle and Lucretius to Schopenhauer and Sartre. A number questions are reflected upon: Can religion provide an answer to death, suffering or the lack of purpose in life? Is it correct to regard the sanctity of life (including non-human life) as a fundamental...

Uncovering the theoretical and creative interconnections between posthumanism and philosophies of immanence, this volume explores the influence of the philosophy of immanence on posthuman theory; the varied reworkings of immanence for the nonhuman turn; and the new pathways for critical thinking created by the combination of these monumental discourses. With the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari serving as a vibrant node of immanence, this volume maps a multip...

Our culture attempts to separate competing ideological factions by denying relationships between multiple perspectives and influences outside of one's own narrow interpretive community. The distinguished essayists in this volume find Daniel R. Schwarz's pluralistic, self-questioning approach to what he calls "reading texts and reading lives" quite relevant to the current historical moment and political situation. A legendary scholar of modernist literature, Schwarz's critical principles are a he...

While humanist sensibilities have played a formative role in the advancement of our species, critical attention to humanism as a field of study is a more recent development. As a system of thought that values human needs and experiences over supernatural concerns, humanism has gained greater attention amid the rapidly shifting demographics of religious communities, especially in Europe and North America. This outlook on the world has taken on global dimensions as well, with activists, artists, a...

Sonic Intimacy asks us who-or what-deserves to have a voice, beyond the human. Arguing that our ears are far too narrowly attuned to our own species, the book explores four different types of voices: the cybernetic, the gendered, the creaturely, and the ecological. Through both a conceptual framework and a series of case studies, Dominic Pettman tracks some of the ways in which these voices intersect and interact. He demonstrates how intimacy is forged through the ear, perhaps even more than thr...

This remarkable collection of almost 1,400 aphorisms was originally published in three instalments. The first (now Volume I) appeared in 1878, just before Nietzsche abandoned academic life, with a first supplement entitled The Assorted Opinions and Maxims following in 1879, and a second entitled The Wanderer and his Shadow a year later. In 1886 Nietzsche republished them together in a two-volume edition, with new prefaces to each volume. Both volumes are presented here in R. J. Hollingdale's dis...

In recent years the concepts of individual autonomy and political liberalism have been the subjects of intense debate, but these discussions have occurred largely within separate academic disciplines. Autonomy and the Challenges to Liberalism contains essays devoted to foundational questions regarding both the notion of the autonomous self and the nature and justification of liberalism. Written by leading figures in moral, legal and political theory, the volume covers inter alia the following to...

This collection of Bacon's English writings includes all of the major literary works on which his reputation rests: "The Advancement of Learning", the "Essays" (in their first and final versions), and "The New Atlantis". It also includes 16 works not reprinted for over a century, which show Bacon's remarkable abilities in politics, law, theology and poetry. The selections are annotated in detail, with particular emphasis placed on explaining Bacon's language.

"Mind, Brain and the Quantum" presents a radically new approach to the mind-body problem, drawing together consideratons from such fields as the philosophy of mind, cognitive science, neurophysiology, relativity and quantum mechanics. The very existence of consciousness, Michael Lockwood argues, poses a challenge to the traditional view of matter, as also do the paradoxes of quantum theory. If mind as revealed in introspection, the matter as manifested in observation and experiment, are to be se...