Approaches to Political Thought raises three important questions concerning traditional political thought: (1) Why study the political writings and ideas of Plato, Machiavelli, and other long-dead writers? (2) Who among the writers, and which of their works, are worth studying? (3) How should they be studied? The book then explores ten contemporary approaches to understanding political thought and the diverse answers to these questions. The approaches covered include those of Leo ...

Encyclopedia of PhilosophyTABLE OF CONTENTS: I. Introduction II. Branches of Philosophy III. Schools of Thoughts IV. Political Philosophy V. Ancient Philosophy VI. Medieval Philosophy VII. Modern Philosophy List of Philosophers Glossary I. IntroductionIntroduction: Western philosophy Philosophical doctrines Ethics and political philosophy in the West Applied philosophy Eastern philosophy African philosophyEastern and Western Philosophy: Eastern WesternHistory of Western Philosophy: Ancient...

A challenging new look at the great thinkers whose ides have shaped our civilizationFrom Socrates to Sartre presents a rousing and readable introduction to the lives, and times of the great philosophers. This thought-provoking book takes us from the inception of Western society in Plato’s Athens to today when the commanding power of Marxism has captured one third of the world. T. Z. Lavine, Elton Professor of Philosophy at George Washington University, makes philos...

Many people regard Hegel's work as obscure and extremely difficult, yet his importance and influence are universally acknowledged. Professor Singer eliminates any excuse for remaining ignorant of the outlines of Hegel's philosophy by providing a broad discussion of his ideas and an account of his major works. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect w...

Now in its fourth edition, Philosophy: The Classics is a brisk and invigorating tour through the great books of western philosophy. In his exemplary clear style, Nigel Warburton introduces and assesses thirty-two philosophical classics from Plato’s Republic to Rawls’ A Theory of Justice. The fourth edition includes new material on:Montaigne EssaysThomas Paine Rights of ManR.G. Collingwood The Princ...

In Eclipse of Reason, Horkheimer discusses how the Nazis were able to project their agenda as "reasonable", but also identifies the Pragmatism of John Dewey as problematic, due to his emphasis on the instrumental dimension of reasoning. It is broken into five sections: Means and Ends, Conflicting Panaceas, The Revolt of Nature, The Rise and Decline of the Individual and On the Concept of Philosophy and deals with the concept of reason within the history of western philosophy. Horkheimer de...

George Grant -- philosopher, conservative, Canadian nationalist -- was one of Canada's most significant thinkers and the author of Lament for a Nation. In Technology and Empire, Grant reflects on the extent to which technology has shaped our modern culture.

What does it mean to be truthful? What role does truth play in our lives? What do we lose if we reject truthfulness? No philosopher is better suited to answer these questions than Bernard Williams. Writing with his characteristic combination of passion and elegant simplicity, he explores the value of truth and finds it to be both less and more than we might imagine.Modern culture exhibits two attitudes toward truth: suspicion of being deceived (no one wants to be fooled) and skepti...

Written in 1833-4, when Marx was barely twenty-five, this astonishingly rich body of works formed the cornerstone for his later political philosophy. In the Critique of Hegel's Doctrine of the State, he dissects Hegel's thought and develops his own views on civil society, while his Letters reveal a furious intellect struggling to develop the egalitarian theory of state. Equally challenging are his controversial essay On the Jewish Question and the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, wh...

Hegel (1770-1831) is one of the major philosophers of the nineteenth century. Many of the major philosophical movements of the twentieth century - from existentialism to analytic philosophy - grew out of reactions against Hegel. He is also one of the hardest philosophers to understand and his complex ideas, though rewarding, are often misunderstood.In this magisterial and lucid introduction, Frederick Beiser covers every major aspect of Hegel's thought. He places Hegel in the histo...

Literary Criticism from Plato to the Present provides a concise and authoritative overview of the development of Western literary criticism and theory from the Classical period to the present dayAn indispensable and intellectually stimulating introduction to the history of literary criticism and theoryIntroduces the major movements, figures, and texts of literary criticismProvides historical context and shows the interconnections between various t...

This e-book tries to describe fairly quickly, but at the same time precisely and in an articulated way, the structure in becoming of the thought of G.F.W. Hegel (1870-1831), an idealist German thinker. This work analyzes his thought from its first phase, animated by Jacobin and revolutionary ideals, similar to that ones of his friends Hölderlin and Schelling, to its conclusions, when the Hegelian thought seemed to accompany itself well - as ideological tool – to the movement of Restoration...