The global impact of Asian production of the wage goods consumed in North America and Europe is only now being recognized, and is far from being understood. Asian women, most only recently urbanized and in the waged work force, are at the center of a process of intensive labor for minimal wages that has upended the entire global economy. First published in 1997, this prescient study is the best available summary of this crucial process as it took hold at the very end of the twentieth centu...

A historical, literary, and philosophical study that transforms our understanding of reading"Peter Szendy offers a subtle, persuasive, and unprecedented account of the time of reading and its scene of address, one that is as archaic as it is contemporary. When we read, are we listening to a voice or being read to? If it is not a private and monologic exercise, how do we understand the populated scene of reading? What reads when we read, and how does reading push an...

The brilliant thinker who taught us about the banality of evil explores another brilliant thinker and his concept of love.Hannah Arendt, the author of The Origins of Totalitarianism and The Human Condition, began her scholarly career with an exploration of Saint Augustine's concept of caritas, or neighborly love, written under the direction of Karl Jaspers and the influence of Martin Heidegger. After her German academic life came to a hal...

Philosophy for busy people. Read a succinct account of the philosophy of Hegel in just one hour.With Hegel philosophy became very difficult indeed – even the great man himself conceded that ‘only one man understands me, and even he does not.’ His dialectical method produced the most grandiose metaphysical system known to humanity, and included absolutely everything, its most vital element being the dialectic of the thesis, antithesis and synthesis. This method arose from Hegel’s am...

A spectre is haunting us: fear. We are constantly confronted with apocalyptic scenarios: pandemics, world war, the climate catastrophe. Images of the end of the world and the end of human civilization are conjured up with ever greater urgency. Anxiously, we face a bleak future. Preoccupied with crisis management, life becomes a matter of survival.But it is precisely at such moments of fear and despair that hope arises like a phoenix from the ashes. Only hope can give us back a life...

In this remarkable little book, Andre Comte-Sponville introduces the reader to the western philosophical tradition in a series of sparkling chapters on the 'big questions'. In doing so he reveals the essential bones of philosophical thought and shows why philosophy is relevant in our day-to-day lives.In his brilliant and concise writing on morality, politics, love, death, knowledge, freedom, God, atheism, art, time, Man, and wisdom, he inspires the central question of philosophy - ...

From the distinguished polymath George Steiner comes a profound and illuminating vision of the inseparability of Western philosophy and its living language.With his hallmark forceful discernment, George Steiner presents in The Poetry of Thought his magnum opus: an examination of more than two millennia of Western culture, staking out his claim for the essential oneness of great thought and great style. Sweeping yet precise, moving from essential detail to bracing illustrat...

In his best-selling book You Must Change Your Life, Peter Sloterdijk argued exercise and practice were crucial to the human condition. In The Art of Philosophy, he extends this critique to academic science and scholarship, casting the training processes of academic study as key to the production of sophisticated thought. Infused with humor and provocative insight, The Art of Philosophy further integrates philosophy and human existence, richly detailing the foundations of this rela...

Giorgio Agamben's Homo Sacer was one of the seminal works of political philosophy in recent decades. It was also the beginning of a series of interconnected investigations of staggering ambition and scope, investigating the deepest foundations of Western politics and thought.The Use of Bodies represents the ninth and final volume in this twenty-year undertaking, breaking considerable new ground while clarifying the stakes and implications of the project as a whole...

An eminent philosopher reflects on the nature of friendship, past and presentFriends are a constant feature of our lives, yet friendship itself is difficult to define. Even Michel de Montaigne, author of the seminal essay "Of Friendship," found it nearly impossible to account for the great friendship of his life. Why is something so commonplace and universal so hard to grasp? What is it about the nature of friendship that proves so elusive?In On Friends...

CONTENTEthics in Spinoza’s EthicsSteven Barbone & Jungwoo SeoSpinoza On God And NatureDino JakušićSpinoza’s Political PhilosophySandra Leonie FieldAre Pluralistic Societies Doomed to Collapse? Spinoza and His Conservative CriticsJason WallerMoby Dick: A Spinozist Tritone FugueAhmet AktaşThe Philosopher Spinoza and the SciencesFilip A. A. BuyseSpinoza’s Politics of Immanent Tra...

Characters in some languages, particularly Hebrew and Arabic, may not display properly due to device limitations. Transliterations of terms appear before the representations in foreign characters.This is an encyclopedic dictionary of close to 400 important philosophical, literary, and political terms and concepts that defy easy—or any—translation from one language and culture to another. Drawn from more than a dozen languages, terms such as Dasein (German), pr...