What does it mean to be awake? What exactly is therapeutic about retail therapy? From getting ready in the morning, through heading to work, going to a party, having sex and falling back to sleep, this book provides a commentary on what history's greatest philosophers have said about the meaning behind everything we do.

Provides a digest of consolations for many of our psychological ills.

This is a text about the big questions in life: knowledge, consciousness, fate, God, truth, goodness, justice. It is for anyone who believes there are big questions out there, but does not know how to approach them. Think sets out to explain what they are and why they are important.

History Of Western Philosophy was published in 1946. A dazzlingly ambitious project, it remains unchallenged to this day as the ultimate introduction to Western philosophy.

Presents 100 thought experiments: short scenarios which pose a problem in a vivid and concrete way, and invites the reader to think about possible answers for him/herself. Experiments cover identity, religion, art, ethics, language, knowledge and more. This book aims to make philosophy not only mind-stretching but also entertaining.

'Straw Dogs' is a radical work of philosophy that challenges our most cherished assumptions about what it means to be human. John Gray explores how the world and human life look once humanism has been finally abandoned.

A sequel to Can a Robot be Human? , this book engages the reader in a romp through the best bits of philosophical thought. With the aid of tall stories, jokes, common sense and bizarre insights, it tackles some of life's most important questions and introduces the puzzles that can keep you pondering throughout the night.

Collected here in a single volume for the first time, On Liberty, Utilitarianism, Considerations on Representative Government, and The Subjection of Women show Mill applying his liberal utilitarian philosophy to a range of issues that remain vital today - issues of the nature of ethics, the scope and limits of individual liberty, the merits of and costs of democratic government, and the place of .

He that is to govern a whole nation, must read in himself, not this, or that particular man; but mankind. Leviathan is both a magnificent literary achievement and the greatest work of political philosophy in the English language. Permanently challenging, it has found new applications and new refutations in every generation. Hobbes argues that human beings are first and foremost concerned with ...

Describes how the ancient Persian prophet Zarathustra descends from his solitude in the mountains to tell the world that God is dead and that the Superman, the human embodiment of divinity, is his successor. This title argues that the meaning of existence is not to be found in religious pieties or meek submission, but in a powerful life force.

Offers readings of the history of philosophy and sets out a critique of the unavowed fideism at the heart of post-Kantian philosophy. This book introduces a philosophical alternative to the forced choice between dogmatism and critique.

John Ruskins insights into the need for individual artistic freedom, and his disdain for the mass-production art of the Victorian era, radically altered society's perception of creative design and remain powerfully relevant to our ideas of beauty today.

An encounter between Deleuze the philosopher, Proust the novelist, and Beckett the writer creating interdisciplinary and inter-aesthetic bridges between them, covering textual, visual, sonic and performative phenomena, including provocative speculation about how Proust might have responded to Deleuze and Beckett.

Evoking the contemporary Zeitgeist of looming ecological, political and economic disaster, a distinguished group of thinkers invite a compelling reconsideration of the ways we, as representing subjects, might be more deeply implicated in catastrophic events than we ordinarily imagine.

Rene Descartes was a central figure in the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. In his Discourse on Method he outlined the contrast between mathematics and experimental sciences, and the extent to which each one can achieve certainty. Drawing on his own work in geometry, optics, astronomy and physiology, Descartes developed the hypothetical method that characterizes modern science, ..

An anthology of essential writings that cover some of the most influential ideas about the philosophical implications of Darwinism, since the publication of On the Origin of Species .

The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy comprises over fifty specially commissioned essays by experts on the philosophy of this period. Starting in the late eighth century, with the renewal of learning some centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire, a sequence of chapters take the reader through developments in many and varied fields, including logic and language, natural philosophy, ...

In both a philosophical and a practical work, Clausewitz defines the essential nature of war, debates the qualities of a great commander, assesses the relative strengths of defensive and offensive war, and - in highly controversial passages - considers the relationship between war and politics.

A knowledge of Heidegger's Sein und Zeit is essential for anyone who wishes to understand a great deal of recent continental work in theology as well as philosophy. Yet until this translation first appeared in 1962, this fundamental work of one of the most influential European thinkers of the century remained inaccessible to English readers. In fact the difficulty of Heidegger's thought was ...