Structured, to some extent, like a Tarantino script, Caprice No. 25 surprises not only by exploring an underground world, by outlining a plot that is typical of detective novels, but also by casting an unusual perspective whereby the brutal universe of sex and drug trafficking is filtered by the wounded consciousness of the character-narrator. Benumbed by the loss of love, he reconstructs, through ingenious games of memory, the outlines of an absent femininity in passages of a remarkably s...

Conceived as a set of six dialogues between two inquisitive minds, the Uncertain Old Man and the Certain Old Man, this book is a foray into the mechanisms of meaning making and meaning breaking in maxims. Encapsulating human experience, both communal and individual, maxims are seen to effect the abstraction of personal emotion into behavioural norm. The reflective and self-reflexive register of the dialogues is interspersed with passages of highly poetic reminiscences about lost love; the...

Conceived as a set of six dialogues between two inquisitive minds, the Uncertain Old Man and the Certain Old Man, this book is a foray into the mechanisms of meaning making and meaning breaking in maxims. Encapsulating human experience, both communal and individual, maxims are seen to effect the abstraction of personal emotion into behavioural norm. The reflective and self-reflexive register of the dialogues is interspersed with passages of highly poetic reminiscences about lost love; thes...

Spinoza's Ethics is one of the most significant texts of the early modern period, important to history, philosophy, Jewish studies and religious studies. It had a major influence on Enlightenment thinkers and the development of the modern world. In Ethics, Spinoza addresses the most fundamental perennial philosophical questions concerning the nature of God, human beings and a good life. His startling answers synthesize the longstanding traditions of ancient Greek and Jewish philosophy with...

How ancient skepticism can help you attain tranquility by learning to suspend judgmentAlong with Stoicism and Epicureanism, Skepticism is one of the three major schools of ancient Greek philosophy that claim to offer a way of living as well as thinking. How to Keep an Open Mind provides an unmatched introduction to skepticism by presenting a fresh, modern translation of key passages from the writings of Sextus Empiricus, the only Greek skeptic whose works ...

An introduction to Epicurus' Canon of Truth, the theory of knowledge that underlies Epicureanism. This work collects the remaining ancient sources and sets forth the foundation on which Epicurus erected his philosophy of happy living.

Kant is not considered as one of the more accessible philosophers, and most of his monumental works are too long and beyond reach of an average reader. This short book is still fairly advanced and conceptually sophisticated, but fortunately due to its length it does not go much too deep in philosophical concepts.The book deals on several occasions with the central concept in Kants moral philosophy, and that is the concept of categorical imperative. This imperative can be summed up ...

Aristotles' 'Metaphysics' is one of the most important texts in Ancient Philosophy. This GuideBook looks at the Metaphysics thematically and takes the student through the main arguments found in the text. The book introduces and assesses Aristotle's life and the background to the Metaphysics, the ideas and text of the Metaphysics and Aristotle's philosophical legacy.

René Descartes is often described as the first modern philosopher, but much of the content of his "Meditations on First Philosophy" can be found in the medieval period that had already existed for more than a thousand years. Does God exist? If so, what is his nature? Is the human soul immortal? How does it differ from the body? What role do sense experience and pure reason play in knowing?Descartes stands out from his predecessors because of the method he developed to treat these a...

Arguably the most influential western philosophical mind since Aristotle, Immanuel Kant was born in 1724 in the Köningsberg, a city in Eastern Prussia where he would live his entire life. A lifelong academic, at sixteen years old Kant entered the University of Köningsberg, where he would go on to tutor for nine years, and then teach. Kant's major concerns involved both religion and science, as he sought reconciliation between the two. His writings on metaphysics and science played a major ...

On the Improvement of Understandingby Benedict de Spinoza Translated by R. H. M. Elwes"On the Improvement of Understanding by Benedict de Spinoza [1883]."

This new and updated edition of Christopher Shields and Robert Pasnau's The Philosophy of Aquinas introduces the Aquinas' overarching explanatory framework in order to provide the necessary background to his philosophical investigations across a wide range of areas: rational theology, metaphysics, philosophy of human nature, philosophy of mind, and ethical and political theory. Although not intended to provide a comprehensive evaluation of all aspects of Aquinas' far-reaching writ...