Social Philosophy

In Free to Learn, developmental psychologist Peter Gray argues that our children, if free to pursue their own interests through play, will not only learn all they need to know but will do so with energy and passion. Children come into this world burning to learn, equipped with the curiosity, playfulness, and sociability to direct their own education. Yet we have squelched such instincts in a school model originally developed to indoctrinate, not to promote intellectual growth.

Who needs philosophy? Ayn Rand's answer: Everyone. This collection of essays was the last work planned by Ayn Rand before her death in 1982. In it, she summarizes her view of philosophy and deals with a broad spectrum of topics. According to Ayn Rand, the choice we make is not whether to have a philosophy, but which one to have: a rational, conscious, and therefore practical one, or a contradictory, unidentified, and ultimately lethal one.

The Progressive Era witnessed the nation's most convulsive upheaval, a time of radicalism far beyond the Revolution or anything since. In response to the birth of modern America, one small group of middle-class Americans seized control of the nation and attempted to remake society from bottom to top. They accomplished an astonishing range of triumphs, yet the progressive movement collapsed as the war came to an end amid race riots, strikes, high inflation, and a frenzied Red scare.

Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931) was a Lebanese American of Assyrian descent, an artist, poet and writer. He was born Gibran Khalil Gibran in Lebanon (at the time a Syrian Province of the Ottoman Empire) and spent much of his productive life in the United States. While most of Gibran's early writings were in Syriac and Arabic, most of his work published after 1918 was in English. Gibran also took part in the New York Pen League, also known as the "immigrant poets" (al-mahjar), alongside other important Lebanese American authors.

In a new and more accessible translation, this foundational text argues that we alone create our values and our existence is characterized by freedom and the inescapability of choice. Far from being an internal, passive container for our thoughts and experiences, human consciousness is constantly projecting itself into the outside world and imbuing it with meaning.

In this dazzling debut, Carla Shalaby, a former elementary school teacher, explores the everyday lives of four young "troublemakers", challenging the ways we identify and understand so-called problem children. Time and again, we make seemingly endless efforts to moderate, punish, and even medicate our children, when we should instead be concerned with transforming the very nature of our institutions, systems, and structures, large and small.

Who is psychologist, professor, best-selling author, and YouTube personality Dr. Peterson? What does he believe in? Who are his followers? And why is he so controversial? These are among the many questions raised in this compelling, exhaustively researched account of his life - from Peterson’s early days as a religious-school student in small-town Canada to his tenure at Harvard to his headline-making persona of the present day.

Education can be transformed if we eradicate our fixation on big data like standardized test scores as the supreme measure of equity and learning. Instead of the focus being on “fixing” and “filling” academic gaps, we must envision and rebuild the system from the student up—with classrooms, schools and systems built around students’ brilliance, cultural wealth, and intellectual potential. Street data reminds us that what is measurable is not the same as what is valuable and that data can be humanizing, liberatory and healing.

Few wars have been fought by each side with greater intensity of conviction in the rightness of its cause or with more abundant personal heroism than the War Between the States. The story begins with a great responsibility falling on Vincent Wingfield, the teenage son of a widowed Virginia plantation owner. Vincent must decide what course of action he should take when a problem arises on the plantation.

A landmark in the history of thought, Rene Descartes' Meditations helped bring critical thinking and skepticism to the Western world. Modern philosophers are still captivated by Descartes' radical and controversial departure from his previous beliefs, which has both inspired reverence and provoked anger.

Plato's dialogue in the Symposium, which has as its topic the subject of love, explores the idea of love as a means of ascent to contemplation of the Divine. For Plato, generally, to love other human beings is to direct one's mind to love of Divinity. One proceeds from recognition of another's beauty to appreciation of Beauty as it exists apart from any individual, to consideration of Divinity, the source of Beauty, to love of Divinity.

The Behavior Code unlocks a wealth of proven practices to help teachers, counselors, and parents identify the messages underlying challenging student behaviors and respond in supportive ways.

Ellenberg chases mathematical threads through a vast range of time and space, from the everyday to the cosmic, encountering, among other things, baseball, Reaganomics, daring lottery schemes, Voltaire, the replicability crisis in psychology, Italian Renaissance painting, artificial languages, the development of non-Euclidean geometry, the coming obesity apocalypse, Antonin Scalia's views on crime and punishment, the psychology of slime molds, what Facebook can and can't figure out about you, and the existence of God.

Philosophy begins with questions about the nature of reality and how we should live. These were the concerns of Socrates, who spent his days in the ancient Athenian marketplace asking awkward questions, disconcerting the people he met by showing them how little they genuinely understood. This engaging book introduces the great thinkers in Western philosophy and explores their most compelling ideas about the world and how best to live in it.

The latest and most bitterly contested battle in the culture war is the controversy over Darwin and intelligent design. But much of what you've heard about it is wrong. Jonathan Wells, a battle-hardened veteran with doctorates in biology and theology, sets the record straight.

Colleges and universities constitute a special type of organization; and their complex mission, dynamics, personnel structures, and values require a distinct set of understandings and skills to lead and manage them well.

Featuring all-new translations from the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, the playwright Seneca, or the slave-turned-philosopher Epictetus, as well as translations from lesser-known luminaries such as Zeno, Cleanthes, and Musonius Rufus, The Daily Stoic provides 366 days of Stoic ideas and activities.

Widely considered the greatest self-help book of all time, As a Man Thinketh reveals how our thoughts determine our character, circumstances, health, appearance, and achievements. The choice is yours: Either master your mind to create the life you want, or remain mired in frustration and failure. In this 21st-century edition, best-selling author Sam Torode entirely rephrases Allen's ideas in contemporary English, making his wisdom available to today's listeners.

The Origins and History of Consciousness draws on a full range of world mythology to show how individual consciousness undergoes the same archetypal stages of development as human consciousness as a whole. Erich Neumann was one of C. G. Jung's most creative students and a renowned practitioner of analytical psychology in his own right. In this influential book, Neumann shows how the stages begin and end with the symbol of the Uroboros, the tail-eating serpent.

In this groundbreaking work, Sara Ahmed demonstrates how queer studies can put phenomenology to productive use. Focusing on the “orientation” aspect of “sexual orientation” and the “orient” in “orientalism,” Ahmed examines what it means for bodies to be situated in space and time. Bodies take shape as they move through the world directing themselves toward or away from objects and others. Being “orientated” means feeling at home, knowing where one stands, or having certain objects within reach. Orientations affect what is proximate to the body or what can be reached.