From one of the leading policy experts of our time, an urgent rethinking of how we can better support each other to thriveWhether we realize it or not, all of us participate in the social contract every day through mutual obligations among our family, community, place of work, and fellow citizens.
Prescient essays about the state of our politics from the philosopher who predicted that a populist demagogue would become president of the United StatesRichard Rorty, one of the most influential intellectuals of recent decades, is perhaps best known today as the philosopher who, almost two decades before the 2016 U.
A comprehensive intellectual biography of the Enlightenment philosopherIn George Berkeley: A Philosophical Life, Tom Jones provides a comprehensive account of the life and work of the preeminent Irish philosopher of the Enlightenment.
The forgotten story of the nineteenth-century freethinkers and twentieth-century humanists who tried to build their own secular religionIn The Church of Saint Thomas Paine, Leigh Eric Schmidt tells the surprising story of how freethinking liberals in nineteenth-century America promoted a secular religion of humanity centered on the deistic revolutionary Thomas Paine (1737-1809) and how their descendants eventually became embroiled in the culture wars of the late twentieth century.
A classic book by one of the twentieth century's most innovative and adventurous thinkersFirst published in 1959, From Shakespeare to Existentialism offers Walter Kaufmann's critical interpretations of some of the greatest minds in Western philosophy, religion, and literature.
This book restores to us an understanding that was once settled in the "e;moral sciences"e;: that there are propositions, in morals and law, which are not only true but which cannot be otherwise.
Outlining the major competing theories in the history of political and moral philosophy--from Locke and Hume through Hart, Rawls, and Nozick--John Simmons attempts to understand and solve the ancient problem of political obligation.
At a time when the label "e;conservative"e; is indiscriminately applied to fundamentalists, populists, libertarians, fascists, and the advocates of one or another orthodoxy, this volume offers a nuanced and historically informed presentation of what is distinctive about conservative social and political thought.
A major new interpretation of Vergil's epic poem as a struggle between two incompatible versions of the Homeric heroThis compelling book offers an entirely new way of understanding the Aeneid.
A compelling exploration of how our pursuit of happiness makes us unhappyWe live in an age of unprecedented prosperity, yet everywhere we see signs that our pursuit of happiness has proven fruitless.
From sex and music to religion and politics, a history of irrationality and the ways in which it has always been with us-and always will beIn this sweeping account of irrationality from antiquity to the rise of Twitter mobs and the election of Donald Trump, Justin Smith argues that irrationality makes up the greater part of human life and history.
The classic and provocative account of how art changed irrevocably with pop art and why traditional aesthetics can't make sense of contemporary artA classic of art criticism and philosophy, After the End of Art continues to generate heated debate for its radical and famous assertion that art ended in the 1960s.
An intimate and moving portrait of daily life in New York's oldest institution of traditional rabbinic learningNew York City's Lower East Side has witnessed a severe decline in its Jewish population in recent decades, yet every morning in the big room of the city's oldest yeshiva, students still gather to study the Talmud beneath the great arched windows facing out onto East Broadway.
From Pulitzer Prize-finalist Steven Nadler, an engaging guide to what Spinoza can teach us about life's big questionsIn 1656, after being excommunicated from Amsterdam's Portuguese-Jewish community for "e;abominable heresies"e; and "e;monstrous deeds,"e; the young Baruch Spinoza abandoned his family's import business to dedicate his life to philosophy.
A revealing look at Jewish men and women who secretly explore the outside world, in person and online, while remaining in their ultra-Orthodox religious communities What would you do if you questioned your religious faith, but revealing that would cause you to lose your family and the only way of life you had ever known?
A landmark work from one of our leading political theoristsA sympathetic critique that attempts to free Left politics from its own snares, States of Injury explores how woundedness became a basis for contemporary political identity.
A moral philosopher's meditations on some of life's most important questionsWe've all had to puzzle over such profound matters as birth, death, regret, free will, agency, and love.
A masterful new account of old regime France by one of the world's most prominent political philosophersFrance before 1789 traces the historical origins of France's National Constituent Assembly of 1789, providing a vivid portrait of the ancien regime and its complex social system in the decades before the French Revolution.
A political philosophy classic from one of the foremost political thinkers of the twentieth centuryAfter Utopia was Judith Shklar's first book, a harbinger of her renowned career in political philosophy.
An expanded and updated edition of a classic work on human rights and global justiceSince its original publication, Basic Rights has proven increasingly influential to those working in political philosophy, human rights, global justice, and the ethics of international relations and foreign policy, particularly in debates regarding foreign policy's role in alleviating global poverty.
How religious ritual united a growing and diversifying Roman RepublicMany narrative histories of Rome's transformation from an Italian city-state to a Mediterranean superpower focus on political and military conflicts as the primary agents of social change.
From New York Times bestselling author Cass Sunstein, a brisk, provocative book that shows what freedom really means-and requires-todayIn this pathbreaking book, New York Times bestselling author Cass Sunstein asks us to rethink freedom.
Hailed by the Washington Post as "e;a sure-footed and witty guide to slippery ethical terrain,"e; a philosophical exploration of AI and the future of the mind that Astronomer Royal Martin Rees calls "e;profound and entertaining"e;Humans may not be Earth's most intelligent beings for much longer: the world champions of chess, Go, and Jeopardy!
How central banks and independent regulators can support rather than challenge constitutional democracyUnelected Power lays out the principles needed to ensure that central bankers and other independent regulators act as stewards of the common good.
A classic work on radical aesthetics by one of the great philosophers of the early twentieth century No work of philosopher and essayist Jose Ortega y Gasset has been more frequently cited, admired, or criticized than his response to modernism, "e;The Dehumanization of Art.
Ever since the shocking revelations of the fascist ties of Martin Heidegger and Paul de Man, postmodernism has been haunted by the specter of a compromised past.
The changing face of the liberal creed from the ancient world to todayThe Lost History of Liberalism challenges our most basic assumptions about a political creed that has become a rallying cry-and a term of derision-in today's increasingly divided public square.
A new way of understanding the essence of moral obligationThe Moral Nexus develops and defends a new interpretation of moralitynamely, as a set of requirements that connect agents normatively to other persons in a nexus of moral relations.
A superb new edition of Epictetus's famed handbook on Stoicism-translated by one of the world's leading authorities on Stoic philosophyBorn a slave, the Roman Stoic philosopher Epictetus (c.
A splendid new translation of one of the greatest books on friendship ever writtenIn a world where social media, online relationships, and relentless self-absorption threaten the very idea of deep and lasting friendships, the search for true friends is more important than ever.
Hannah Arendt's rich and varied political thought is more influential today than ever before, due in part to the collapse of communism and the need for ideas that move beyond the old ideologies of the Cold War.
A novel interpretation of architecture, ugliness, and the social consequences of aesthetic judgmentWhen buildings are deemed ugly, what are the consequences?
The life and politics of an American Jewish activist who preached radical and violent means to Jewish survivalMeir Kahane came of age amid the radical politics of the counterculture, becoming a militant voice of protest against Jewish liberalism.
