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General Philosophy and Philosophers
Publishes August 2009
By organizing the narrative according to the intersection of two relations (life/death, metaphysics/sociality) and two logics (neo-platonic/aporetic) the book presents material over a millennial history in a narrative of the comedy of education and the mis-education of reason. This framework, clearly declared at the outset, allows the author to present the essence of arguments while maintaining a powerful argumentative and even dramatic thrust absent from many more antiquarian histories of philosophy. At the same time the book covers the important stages of the history of philosophy and introduces in a novel way the contributions of Islamic and Jewish thinkers.
Published December 2004
'Invaluable for students and anyone wishing to understand many of the main issues in Philosophy for the first time.' - Keith Maslin, Head of Philosophy and Critical Thinking, Esher College
This substantially revised and updated edition of Calvin Pinchin's balanced and lucid introductory guide to philosophy is organized around the key areas students will cover, including: Theory of Knowledge; Ethics; Social and Political Philosophy; Philosophy of Religion; Philosophy of Mind; and - new for this edition - Philosophy of Science.
Published September 2002
'...these are very useful books, both of which I would recommend as valuable contributions to introductory literature in the field of philosophy.' - Elizabeth Burns, Think
Designed for complete beginners, Philosophy: Key Texts is an introduction to philosophy and gives a clear, readable overview of five major texts by Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, Sartre and Russell. As well as providing help in how to analyze these sources, Baggini encourages the reader to question the arguments and positions presented. Invaluable at the start of a course of study, as a concise revision aid, or as a lucid, jargon-free guide for anyone who wants an insight into philosophy, Philosophy: Key Texts can be used either independently, or together with its companion volume - Philosophy: Key Themes.
Published September 2002
'A concise and well-structured overview of 5 of the themes taught at AS and A2 level: Theory of Knowledge, Philosophy of Religion, Moral Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind and Political Philosophy.' - Gareth Southwell, Philosophy Online
Philosophy: Key Themes is a beginner's guide to understanding and critiquing philosophical arguments. Each chapter introduces one of the five major themes covered on philosophy courses: Theory of Knowledge, Moral Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Mind and Political Philosophy. Baggini's approach combines explanation with summary while encouraging the reader to question the arguments and positions presented. This text can be used either independently, or together with its companion volume - Philosophy: Key Texts.
Published November 2007
The broadside against religion launched by a new breed of evangelical atheists has generated much heat but little light. Locked in battle against their Christian opponents the argument goes nowhere fast, and in an age of extremism, nurtures the dangerous vice of intolerance. Mark Vernon was an Anglican priest, left a conviction atheist, but now finds himself to be a committed and increasingly passionate agnostic. Part personal story, part philosophical search, After Atheism argues that the contemporary lust for certainty is demeaning of our humanity. The key to wisdom - as Socrates, the great theologians and the best scientists know - is understanding the limits of our knowledge.
Published September 2005
In this new, accessible philosophy of friendship, Mark Vernon examines the love called friendship upon which so much happiness depends. He links the resources of the philosophical tradition with numerous illustrations from modern culture to ask about friendship and sex, work, politics and spirituality. Unusually, he argues that Plato and Nietzsche, as much as Aristotle and Aelred, should be put centre stage. Their penetrating and occasionally tough insights are invaluable if friendship is to be a full, not merely sentimental, way of life for today.
Published May 2006
'I think this will make a fine textbook. It's a book I would have very much wished to have read when I first studied philosophy. It is consistently engaging and lucid. It never patronises the reader, it challenges the reader in just the right way. It is historically informed, without being a history of philosophy, and it covers a lot of philosophical ground. This is really a remarkable achievement for a lone author.' - Dr. Damian Cox, School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics, University of Queensland, Australia
This is a clear, accessible introduction to the method and subject of Philosophy. Written to meet the needs of students, there are clear note structures at the end of each chapter to help students use the ideas confidently, with movements in thought represented on intellectual maps that will allow them to see how each fits into the whole. The text is enriched with fascinating insights into the lives and ideas of philosophers, which makes it an absorbing read.
Classic Texts
Published August 2007
Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is both one of the most rewarding of all philosophical works, and one of the most difficult. Norman Kemp Smith's translation is immensely valuable, not simply because he rendered Kant's language into readable English, but also because his own extensive understanding of the Critique made him acutely aware of the pitfalls of translation.
The text followed is that of the second edition of 1787, and a translation is also given of all first-edition passages which in the second edition have been either altered or omitted. For this reissue of Norman Kemp Smith's classic translation, renowned Kant scholar Gary Banham has contributed a unique, extensive bibliography of secondary resources. Combined with Howard Caygill's context-setting introduction and guide to further reading, this reissue provides the definitive edition of this cornerstone of Western intellectual history.
Published April 2008
This new edition is the first to combine John Stuart Mill's influential work with a set of relevant primary sources by Mill and his contemporaries. Alan Kahan's introduction provides students with crucial background on nineteenth-century British politics and society; intriguing biographical details about Mill's early life, intellectual career, and marriage; and thought-provoking discussion of the core issues of autonomy and freedom that On Liberty addresses. The related primary documents - including an excerpt from Mill's famous proto-feminist treatise On the Subjection of Women - offer useful insights into the philosopher's intellectual outlook as well as a fascinating view into On Liberty's rather stormy reception. Excerpts from Mill's diary and autobiography, contemporary reviews of On Liberty, and appreciations of Mill by his colleagues all deepen students' understanding of this remarkable work and its equally remarkable author. Headnotes and gloss notes to the documents, a selected bibliography, a chronology of Mill's life, and a set of questions for consideration offer additional pedagogical support.
Published November 2007
When first published, Evil and the God of Love instantly became recognized as a modern theological classic, widely viewed as the most important work on the problem of evil to appear in English for more than a generation. It has continued to be at the centre of discussions ever since. Alongside a new preface by the author, this reissue of the work includes a foreword by Marilyn McCord Adams.
Michel Foucault: Lectures at the Collège de France Series
Published May 2009
Marking a major development in Foucault's thinking, this book derives from the lecture course which he gave at the Collège de France between January and April, 1978. Taking as his starting point the notion of 'bio-power', introduced both in his 1976 course Society Must be Defended and in the first volume of his History of Sexuality, Foucault sets out to study the foundations of this new technology of power over population. Distinct from disciplinary techniques, the mechanisms of power are here finely entwined with technologies of security, and it is to the 18th century developments of these technologies with which the first chapters of the book are concerned. By the fourth lecture however Foucault's attention turns, focusing newly on a history of 'governmentality' from the first centuries of the Christian era through to the emergence of the modern nation state. As Michel Sennerlart explains in his afterword, the effect of this change of direction is to "shift the center of gravity of the lectures from the question of biopower to that of government, to such an extent that the latter almost entirely eclipses the former..." Consequently, in light of Foucault's later work, these lectures represent a radical turning point at which the transition to the problematic of the "government of self and others" begins.
Published August 2008
Madness and Civilization undertook the archaeology of the division according to which, in Western society, the madman found himself separated from the sane. That book ends with the medicalization of madness at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Michel Foucault's 1973/1974 course, Psychiatric Power, pursues this history whilst reorienting his project: in this course Foucault sketches the genealogy of psychiatry, of its characteristic form of power/knowledge. In order to give an account of this form of psychiatric and medical knowledge about madness, one must begin from the apparatuses and the techniques of power that organize the treatment of the mad in the period which goes from Philippe Pinel to Jean-Martin Charcot. Psychiatry is not born as a consequence of progress concerning the knowledge of madness but from disciplinary apparatuses in which the régime imposed on madness is organized.
From this point of view, Psychiatric Power continues the project of a history of the human sciences. The course concludes at the end of the nineteenth century at the moment of the double 'depsychiatrisation' of madness, now dispersed between the neurologist and the psychoanalyst. The summary of the course at the end of this volume contains the core of what Foucault perhaps didn't have time to discuss in the course itself. Read in conjunction with the course, Psychiatric Power goes so far as to propose a genealogy of the antipsychiatric movements which so marked the 1960s.
Published April 2008
Michel Foucault's lectures at the Collège de France in 1979, The Birth of Biopolitics, pursue and develop further the themes of his lectures from the previous year, Security, Territory, Population. Having shown how Eighteenth century political economy marks the birth of a new governmental rationality - seeking maximum effectiveness by governing less and in accordance with the naturalness of the phenomena to be governed - Michel Foucault undertakes the detailed analysis of the forms of this liberal governmentality. This involves describing the political rationality within which the specific problems of life and population were posed: "Studying liberalism as the general framework of biopolitics".
Theory of Knowledge
Published June 2009
Knowledge offers students not just a state-of-the-art treatment of what is central to current debates in Epistemology, but also a new way of doing epistemology. It asks why we care about knowledge, and discusses core epistemological questions, such as the problem of scepticism, or the status of virtue epistemology in the light of this account of epistemic value. Duncan Pritchard casts new light on stale debates, discussing many of the main themes in contemporary epistemology.
Political and Social Philosophy
Published October 2008
This anthology brings together for the first time selections of Nietzsche's political commentary found throughout his corpus, including some never before translated writings from his youth. The texts were carefully chosen to highlight Nietzsche's political views and arranged chronologically to allow the reader to trace the development of Nietzsche's political thought from his youth to his final writings of 1888. In their introduction and prefaces, Frank Cameron and Don Dombowsky insightfully demonstrate that Nietzsche was an observer of and responded to the political events which shaped the Bismarckian era. In the past two decades Nietzsche's political thought has received increasing attention, yet only rarely has there been any attempt to situate it historically. This anthology thus provides an essential resource for understanding Nietzsche's political ideas as they were stirred by the conflicts of this turbulent era.
Published April 2009
Violence holds considerable philosophical interest, especially today, and yet this concept has not been given sufficient attention by contemporary philosophers. This is the first anthology of philosophical essays on the nature and justifiability of violence. The essays in this volume, taken from the last 100 years, explore a range of philosophical issues pertaining to violence. Three basic questions are scrutinized: 'What is violence?', 'Is violence always wrong?', and 'Can violence be justified?'. Students and Philosophers in political and moral philosophy, but also political theorists, political scientists, and political sociologists, will find this an important and valuable contribution.
Ethics and Moral Philosophy
Publication July 2009
In this substantially revised and updated new edition of Animal Rights, Mark Rowlands provides a lucid defence of the moral claims of animals. The book examines each of the major ethical traditions: utilitarianism and Peter Singer's defence of animal liberation; natural rights doctrine and Tom Regan's case for animal rights, virtue ethics; and the Rosalind Hursthouse/Roger Scruton dispute on blood sports. It also provides the most detailed, sophisticated and comprehensive contractarian defence of animals ever developed.
Published April 2008
Paul Smith's clear and concise introduction provides a comprehensive and incisive examination of key concepts and theories in moral and political philosophy. With a clear focus on the essentials of each topic, he presupposes no prior knowledge and relates moral philosophy to social and political issues. Chapters can be read independently, but are interconnected, enabling students to develop a coherent understanding of the subject.
New Waves Series
Published November 2008
Over the last few decades, philosophy of religion has regained its position as one of the central areas of analytic philosophy and attracted much attention from scholars in numerous fields. New Waves in Philosophy of Religion presents cutting-edge research by some of the best philosophers of religion of the new generation. They discuss perennial problems and emerging issues from refreshingly new points of view and develop original ideas. It addresses such topics as: divine attributes, the origin of the universe, evolution and design, implications and puzzles of religious doctrines, morality and God, and the meaning of life.
Published November 2007
This volume contains work by the very best young scholars working in applied ethics, gathering a range of new perspectives on highly relevant topics, including the environment, animals, computers, freedom of speech, human enhancement, war and poverty. For researchers and students in applied ethics, this is both a unique snapshot on the cutting edge of work in the field and a view of where it's headed.
Published December 2007
"This book provides a valuable look at the work of up and coming epistemologists. The topics covered range from the central issues of mainstream epistemology to the more formal issues in epistemic logic and confirmation theory. This book should be read by anyone interested in seeing where epistemology is currently focused and where it is heading" - Stewart Cohen, Arizona State University.
Published August 2008
New Waves In Aesthetics is a collection of essays by leading young scholars on central issues in analytic aesthetics. Many of the topics taken up in the collection are familiar - including aesthetic judgment, aesthetic properties, the ontology of art, theories of art, metaphor, imagination, expressions, creativity and fiction. But the treatment of these topics is new, enriched by knowledge of the history of aesthetics, recent developments in the art world, and recent debates in other areas of philosophy and the humanities in general, as well as in cognitive science. Other topics in the collection may be less familiar, either because they draw our attention to oft-ignored aspects of art and aesthetic experience, such as the personification of art, or because they advocate revision of a widely accepted view - say, of the relation between the work of Kant and Arthur Danto. Overall, the diversity and rigour of the collection reflects the current liveliness, and confirms the bright future of analytic aesthetics.
Published December 2008
This collection of essays breaks new ground by providing an unparalleled snapshot of new work in political philosophy. The book brings together up-and-coming scholars from across the globe using such diverse methodologies as critical theory and social choice theory, historical analysis and conceptual analysis. The volume demonstrates the vibrancy of contemporary political theorizing not only when treating perennial topics-democracy, equality, legitimacy, liberty, patriotism, political freedom, rationality-but also when revivifying topics briefly out of favor-human needs, ideology, judgment, political aesthetics-and tackling topics more recently put on the agenda-citizenship, collective agency, cultural contexts, feminism, identity, multiculturalism, social suffering, subjectivity.
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