Modern Philosophy

This volume explores the metaphysics of Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714-1762) and its decisive influence on Immanuel Kant. For over a century, scholars have recognized the significance of Baumgarten's Metaphysics, both because of its impact on Kant's intellectual development and because of the way it fundamentally informed the work of generations of German philosophers, including Moses Mendelssohn, Thomas Abbt, Johann Gottfried Herder, Solomon Maimon, Johann August Eberhard, and arguably even Georg Friedrich Hegel.

In his groundbreaking and controversial book The DIM Hypothesis, Dr. Leonard Peikoff casts a penetrating new light on the process of human thought and thereby on Western culture and history. In this far-reaching study, Peikoff identifies the three methods people use to integrate concrete data into a whole, as when connecting diverse experiments by a scientific theory, separate laws into a constitution, or single events into a story.

In this beautifully written and brilliantly reasoned collection of essays, Ayn Rand throws new light on the nature of art and its purpose in human life. Once again, she demonstrates her bold originality and her refusal to let conventional ideas define her sense of the truth. Rand eloquently asserts that one cannot create art without infusing it with one's own value judgments and personal philosophy - even an attempt to withhold moral overtones only results in a deterministic or naturalistic message.

The good news is that the great thinkers from history have proposed the same strategies for happiness and fulfilment. The bad news is that these turn out to be the very things most discouraged by contemporary culture. This knotty dilemma is the subject of The Age of Absurdity - a wry and accessible investigation into how the desirable states of well-being and satisfaction are constantly undermined by modern life.

Many think of the internet as an unprecedented and overwhelmingly positive achievement of modern human technology. But is it? In The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is, Justin Smith offers an original deep history of the internet, from the ancient to the modern world - uncovering its surprising origins in nature and centuries-old dreams of radically improving human life by outsourcing thinking to machines and communicating across vast distances.

What does it mean to be human in the 21st century? How do we be real people in a world of online personas and "authentic" simulated experiences? In this innovative examination of our present reality, award-winning writer Laurence Scott charts the ways our traditional mental models of the world have started to fray. Effortlessly applying philosophy to the quotidian, Scott "makes banal things shimmer with meaning" (Guardian).

Peter Sloterdijk porträtiert philosophische Temperamente von der Antike bis in das 20. Jahrhundert...

In The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke, Jeffrey C. Stewart offers the definitive biography of the father of the Harlem Renaissance, based on the extant primary sources of his life and on interviews with those who knew him personally. He narrates the education of Locke, including his becoming the first African American Rhodes Scholar, earning a PhD in philosophy at Harvard University, and his long career as a professor at Howard University. And yet he became most closely associated with the flowering of Black culture in Jazz Age America.

Hoy en día, el mundo se vacía de cosas y se llena de información inquietante como voces sin cuerpo. La digitalización desmaterializa y descorporeíza el mundo. En lugar de guardar recuerdos, almacenamos inmensas cantidades de datos. Los medios digitales sustituyen así a la memoria, cuyo trabajo hacen sin violencia ni demasiado esfuerzo. La información falsea los acontecimientos.

In this fascinating book, David Barash highlights an intriguing patch of common ground between scientific and religious thought, illuminating the many parallels between biology and Buddhism, allowing listeners to see both in a new way. Indeed, he shows that there are numerous places where the Buddhist and biological perspectives coincide. For instance, the cornerstone ecological concept - the interconnectedness and interdependence of all things - is remarkably similar to the fundamental insight of Buddhism.

In this enlightening Very Short Introduction, Simon Critchley shows us that Continental philosophy encompasses a distinct set of philosophical traditions and practices, with a compelling range of problems all too often ignored by the analytic tradition. He discusses the ideas and approaches of philosophers such as Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Habermas, Foucault, and Derrida. He also introduces key concepts such as existentialism, nihilism, and phenomonology, by explaining their place in the Continental tradition.

Revolutions, reformations, and the Renaissance—it took a lot of movements to turn medieval Europe into what we know today. The world was shaped by Europe’s contributions to art, literature, science, culture, religion, and technology.

Evolutions brings to life the latest scientific thinking on the birth of the universe and the solar system, the journey from a single cell all the way to our human minds. Reawakening our sense of wonder and terror at the world around us and within us, Oren Harman uses modern science to create new and original mythologies.

David Hume es considerado el filósofo en lengua inglesa más importante que jamás haya existido. Sin embargo, en vida se le atacó por su escepticismo religioso, se le llamó el Gran Infiel y se le consideró inapto para instruir a los jóvenes. Adam Smith, en cambio, fue un profesor reverenciado de filosofía moral y a menudo se le ensalza como padre fundador del capitalismo. Lo más asombroso, con todo, es que los dos mantuvieron, según lo define Rasmussen, la amistad más grande que se conoce entre dos filósofos.

Aquí hay un extracto del Estoicismo Y La Fortaleza Mental: durante la antigüedad surgieron una gran cantidad de escuelas filosóficas, muchas de ellas contribuyeron con grandes ideas de progreso para la humanidad con un impacto tan relevante que incluso hoy en día muchos de esos pensamientos siguen siendo válidos. Tal es el caso de la escuela estoica de filosofía, que se cree que desapareció durante los primeros siglos de la era actual, y a pesar de la realidad de que los registros literarios no están en cantidad, su pensamiento ha evolucionado a lo largo de los años.

How is it that, half a century after Brown v. Board of Education, educational opportunities remain so unequal for black and white students, not to mention poor and wealthy ones? In his important new book, Five Miles Away, a World Apart, James E. Ryan answers this question by tracing the fortunes of two schools in Richmond, Virginia - one in the city and the other in the suburbs. Ryan shows how court rulings in the 1970s, limiting the scope of desegregation, laid the groundwork for the sharp disparities between urban and suburban public schools that persist to this day.

Do you admire those who seem to have it figured out and keep their cool, no matter what’s happening all around them? Here’s how you can do it too. The fact is modern living can be confusing, physically and mentally taxing as well as emotionally draining. For everyone. Don’t worry, it isn’t just you. For millennia, Stoicism has cleared a path for practitioners through the maze of difficulties and distractions that make living such a challenge. The good news is that Stoicism is a practical philosophy. It is immediately applicable to any situation.

Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is one of the greatest guides to human flourishing ever written, but its length and style have left many readers languishing. How to Flourish is a colloquial new translation by Susan Sauve Meyer that makes Aristotle's timeless insights about how to lead a good life more engaging and accessible than ever before.

In this collection of essays and epigrams, E.M. Cioran gives us portraits and evaluations—which he calls "admirations"—of Samuel Beckett, Jorge Luis Borges, F. Scott Fitzgerald, the poet Paul Valery, and Mircea Eliade, among others. In alternating sections of aphorisms—his "anathemas"—he delivers insights on such topics as solitude, flattery, vanity, friendship, insomnia, music, mortality, God, and the lure of disillusion.

In the tradition of Daniel Boorstin, the co-founder of Omni delivers an original work of history that demonstrates why modern science rests on a foundation built by ancient and medieval non-European societies. "If you think that modern science is rooted in the golden age of Greece, you owe it to yourself to [hear this] book," says Library Journal.