In Praise of the Whip: A Cultural History of Arousal is a new history of voluntary flagellation in Europe, from its invention in medieval relgious devotion to its use in the modern pornographic...

This expanded edition of James Ellington's preeminent translation includes Ellington's new translation of Kant's essay Of a Supposed Right to Lie Because of Philanthropic Concerns in which Kant...

These thirteen selections from the polemical writings of Henry D. Thoreau represent every stage in his twenty-two years of active writing. This edition, introduced by writer and historian Howard...

Written in the intense political and intellectual tumult of the early years of the Weimar Republic, Political Theology develops the distinctive theory of sovereignty that made Carl Schmitt one of the...

Moses Hess is a major figure in the development of both early communist and Zionist thought. The Holy History of Mankind appeared in 1837, and was the first book-length socialist tract to appear in...

In this fascinating book, Edward Said looks at the creative contradictions that often mark the late works of literary and musical artists."These studies . . . buzz with excitement and intelligence...

The author of the highly popular book Think, which Time magazine hailed as "the one book every smart person should read to understand, and even enjoy, the key questions of philosophy," Simon...

The New York Times bestseller – a “crystal-clear, constantly engaging” (Jared Diamond) exploration of the role that religious belief plays in our lives and our interactionsFor all the thousands of...

What is Love? provides a timely appreciation of Richard Carlile’s neglected shocker, Every Woman’s Book. Originally published in 1826, it scored a double first: as a progressive sex manual and as the...

"Don't talk to strangers" is the advice long given to children by parents of all classes and races. Today it has blossomed into a fundamental precept of civic education, reflecting interracial...

Make no mistake, the normative authority of the United States of America lies in ruins. Such is the judgment of the most influential thinker in Europe today reflecting on the political repercussions...

Walter Benjamin's essays on the great French lyric poet Charles Baudelaire revolutionized not just the way we think about Baudelaire, but our understanding of modernity and modernism as well. In...

Nietzsche characterized the philosopher as the man of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow--a description befitting Stanley Cavell, with his longtime interest in freedom in the face of an uncertain...

In this historic 1971 debate, two of the twentieth century’s most influential thinkers discuss whether there is such a thing as innate human nature.In 1971, at the height of the Vietnam War and at a...

“One of the few world intellectuals on whom we may rely to make sense out of our existential confusion.”—Nadine GordimerIn this sweeping philosophical work, Amartya Sen proposes that the murderous...

According to the *Guardian*, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is the 'doyenne of post-colonial studies'. Combining intellectual ease with a belief that practical political change can be affected by theory,...

Martha Nussbaum elaborates a critique of the role that shame & disgust play in our individual & social lives &, in particular, in the law. She argues that we should be wary of these emotions because...

Focusing on the new theories of human motivation that emerged during the transition from feudalism to the modern period, this is the first book of new essays on the relationship between politics and...

Berlin Childhood around 1900 remained unpublished during Walter Benjamin's lifetime. Now translated into English for the first time in book form, on the basis of the recently discovered final version...

Radical critic of a European civilization plunging into darkness, yet commemorator of the humane traditions of the old bourgeoisie--such was Walter Benjamin in the later 1930s. This volume, the third...