Combining literary and philosophical analysis, this study defends an utterly innovative reading of the early history of poetics. It is the first to argue that there is a distinctively Socratic view...

The development of theorems in logic is generally thought to be a solitary and purely cerebral activity, and therefore unobservable by sociologists. In Weaving Self-Evidence, French sociologist...

Descartes thought that we could achieve absolute certainty by starting with radical doubt. He adopts this strategy in the Meditations on First Philosophy, where he raises sweeping doubts with the...

In Rousseau's Republican Romance, Elizabeth Wingrove combines political theory and narrative analysis to argue that Rousseau's stories of sex and sexuality offer important insights into the paradoxes...

Determining which moral principles should guide political action is a vexing question in political theory. This is especially true when faced with the "toleration paradox": believing that something...

This book consists of Gregory Vlastos' studies on a variety of themes in Plato's metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and social philosophy. Although many of the essays have appeared in various...

"Edward Said was an intellectual with a passion for justice and he allowed nothing to deter him in its pursuit. Edward Said: A Legacy of Emancipation and Representation reflects this."—Archbishop...

The English philosopher Michael Oakeshott (1901-1990) is known as a conservative who rejected philosophically ambitious rationalism and the grand political ideologies of the twentieth century on the...

From outlawing polygamy and mandating public education to protecting the rights of minorities, the framing of group life by the state has been a subject of considerable interest and controversy...

Introduced by Francis Fergusson, the Poetics, written in the fourth century B.C., is still an essential study of the art of drama, indeed the most fundamental one we have. It has been used by both...

In this provocative book, Stein Ringen argues that the world's democracies are failing to live up to their ideals--the United States and Great Britain most especially. The core value of democracy, he...

What kind of hypocrite should voters choose as their next leader? The question seems utterly cynical. But, as David Runciman suggests, it is actually much more cynical to pretend that politics can...

"A milestone in religious thought. . . . James combines a positive approach to religion with a non-dogmatic and thoroughly empirical approach to the religious life. The combination is not only rare...

In this book, Duncan Kelly excavates, from the history of modern political thought, a largely forgotten claim about liberty as a form of propriety. By rethinking the intellectual and historical...