Rejecting the traditional values of political theory, Machiavelli drew upon his own experiences of office in the turbulent Florentine republic to write his celebrated treatise on statecraft. While...

Writing in an age when the call for the rights of man had brought revolution to America and France, Mary Wollstonecraft produced her own declaration of female independence in 1792. Passionate and...

In Either/Or, using the voices of two characters—the aesthetic young man of part one, called simply "A," and the ethical Judge Vilhelm of the second section—Kierkegaard reflects upon the search for a...

The first book by the author of the classic philosophical text Beyond Good and Evil.   The youthful faults of this work were exposed by the author himself in the brilliant Attempt at a...

Hannah Arendt is one of the most renowned political thinkers of the twentieth century, and her work has never been more relevant than it is today. Born in Germany in 1906, Arendt published her first...

You’re probably never going to be a saint. Even so, let’s face it: you could be a better person. We all could. But what does that mean for you?In a world full of suffering and deprivation, it’s easy...

Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965)--theologian, doctor, Nobel Peace Prize winner--was a remarkable figure of the twentieth century. An ordained pastor and an author, he was also a renowned musician. He...

Throughout his career Stuart Hall engaged with Marxism in varying ways, actively rethinking it to address the political and cultural exigencies of the moment. This collection of Hall's key writings...

The Hum of the World is an invitation to contemplate what would happen if we heard the world as attentively as we see it. Balancing big ideas, playful wit and lyrical prose, this imaginative volume...

An exemplary collection of work from one of the world's leading scholars of intellectual history "Földényi . . . stage[s] a broad metaphysical melodrama between opposites that he pursues...

"A genial exercise in public philosophy" (Kirkus, starred review) from one of the world's best-known popular philosophers"Simon Critchley is an international treasure—that rare and real philosopher...

A compelling guide to the fundamental place of humour and comedy within Western culture—by one of its greatest exponentsWritten by an acknowledged master of comedy, this study reflects on the nature...

Hermeneutics has frequently been dismissed as useful only for literary and textual analysis. Some consider it to be Eurocentric or inherently relativistic and thus unsuited to social critique...

Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality--the first volume of which was published in 1976--exerts a vast influence across the humanities and social sciences. However, Foucault's interest in the...

Hegel is making a comeback. After the decline of the Marxist Hegelianism that dominated the twentieth century, leading thinkers are rediscovering Hegel's thought as a resource for contemporary...

Where do we look when we look inward? In what sort of space does our inner life take place? Augustine said that to turn inward is to find oneself in a library of memories, while the Indian Buddhist...

Leadership, innovation, diversity, inclusiveness, sharing, accountability―such is the resounding administrative refrain we keep hearing in the contemporary Western university. What kinds of benefits...

The very idea of humanity seems to be in crisis. Born in the ashes of devastation after the slaughter of millions, the liberal conception of humanity imagined a suffering victim in need of salvation...

The fall of the Berlin Wall marked the end of the Cold War but also the rise of a melancholic vision of history as a series of losses. For the political left, the cause lost was communism, and this...

Recognition is one of the most debated concepts in contemporary social and political thought. Its proponents, such as Axel Honneth, hold that to be recognized by others is a basic human need that is...