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"A profound personal meditation on human existence and a tour-de-force weaving together of historic and contemporary thought on the deepest question of all: why are we here?" — Gabor Maté M.D., author, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts As our civilization careens toward climate breakdown, ecological destruction, and gaping inequality, people are losing their existential moorings. The dominant worldview of disconnection, which tells us we are split between mind and body, separate from each other, an...

Ariel is a long essay by the Uruguayan critic Jose Enrique Rodo (1871-1917). It is an attempt to formulate a characteristic Latin American spirit; it emphasizes spiritual values as against exclusively materialist progress. When it was first published in 1900 it provoked a wide response from the youth of Latin America to whom it was addressed, and brought immediate fame to its author. It remains his best and most important work. This edition contains the Spanish text of Ariel, with a long introdu...

One of the major works of John Locke (1632-1704), this detailed and comprehensive guide is mainly concerned with moral education. While concentrating on its role in creating a responsible adult and on the importance of virtue as a transmitter of culture, it also ranges over such practical topics as the effectiveness of physical punishment, how best to teach foreign languages, table manners, and varieties of crying. This critical edition is based on the third (1695) edition, and includes variant...

In Rousseau and Critical Theory, Alessandro Ferrara argues that among the modern philosophers who have shaped the world we inhabit, Rousseau is the one to whom we owe the idea that identity can be a source of normativity (moral and political) and that an identity's potential for playing such a role rests on its capacity for being authentic. This normative idea of authenticity brings unity to Rousseau's reflections on the negative effects of the social order, on the just political order, on educa...

The Rationalism of Georg Lukacs is a collection of essays and engaging scholarship which uncovers new dimensions of the philosopher's work. The relevance of Lukacs's ideas should be seen in the light of a sharp decline in critical thought as well the continued need to rehabilitate a thinker that was representative of a rational radical perspective.

This book begins from the premise, which it seeks to elaborate, that the poorest human being shares with the richest, a natural nature. This, it is claimed, is not the trivial thesis it is sometimes represented as being. Rather, significant moral consequences flow from the assumption that all human beings share a set of natural needs. Using this starting point, the book also seeks to defend an objectivist epistemology.

THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION-The definitive statement of Ayn Rand's philosophy as interpreted by her best student and chosen heir. This brilliantly conceived and organized book is Dr. Leonard Peikoff's classic text on the abstract principles and practical applications of Objectivism, based on his lecture series "The Philosophy of Objectivism." Ayn Rand said of these lectures: "Until or unless I write a comprehensive treatise on my philosophy, Dr. Peikoff's course is the only authorized prese...

Equality is a widely championed social ideal. But what is equality? And what action is required if present-day societies are to root out their inequalities? The Equal Society collects fourteen philosophical essays, each with a fresh perspective on these questions. The authors explore the demands of egalitarian justice, addressing issues of distribution and rectification, but equally investigating what it means for people to be equals as producers and communicators of knowledge or as members of...

Science aims at the discovery of general principles of special kinds that are applicable for the explanation and prediction of the phenomena of the world in the form of theories and laws. When the phenomena themselves happen to be general, the principlesinvolved assume the form of theories; and when they are p- ticular, they assume the form of general laws. Theories themselves are sets of laws and de nitions that apply to a common domain, which makes laws indispensable to science. Understanding...

This book is about the great moral issues underlying many of the headline-making political controversies of our times. It is not a comforting book but a book about disturbing and dangerous trends. "The Quest for Cosmic Justice" shows how confused conceptions of justice end up promoting injustice, how confused conceptions of equality end up promoting inequality, and how the tyranny of social visions prevents many people from confronting the actual consequences of their own beliefs and policies. T...

The readings collected here-of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Rosa Luxemburg, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and Antonio Gramsci- reflect the experience of the labor, socialist, and communist movements that did so much to shape modern history. A dedication to working-class revolution gives coherence to the influential philosophical, economic, sociological, and historical works of these writers. Paul Le Blanc's introductory essay probes the structure and dynamics of Marxism as a political or...

The menace of a post-truth era challenges conventional policy-making and science. Instead of fighting an uphill battle against populist solutions, those involved in both policy-making and science have to find innovative ways to collaborate, and make use of the vast amounts of knowledge that are already available. Knowledge brokerage, in this context, is more than a simple question-and-answer game: it is a process of co-creating and re-framing knowledge. In addition, Knowledge Brokerage for Susta...

From David Hume's famous puzzle about "the missing shade of blue," to current research into the science of colour, the topic of colour is an incredibly fertile region of study and debate, cutting across philosophy of mind, epistemology, metaphysics, and aesthetics, as well as psychology. Debates about the nature of our experience of colour and the nature of colour itself are central to contemporary discussion and argument in philosophy of mind and psychology, and philosophy of perception. This...

This letter shows the importance Locke attached to the Conduct, and its intended place within the body of the Essay. Unfortunately he never completed the work, which was finally published only in the Posthumous Works of 1706. The big topic which Locke was only just beginning to open up was that of the 'Ethics of Belief'. Every man, he tells us, should regulate his ascent by the evidence alone - a maxim easier to state than to understand, and easier to understand that to put into practice.