philosophy western

Hardcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 2007, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket. 553 pages, b&w illustrations. A spectacular reading of Western philosophy, religion, and mythology that draws on early maps and atlases, Plato, Kant, and Wittgenstein, Thomas Pynchon, Gilgamesh, and Marcel Duchamp, Abysmal is itself a minimalist guide to the terrain of Western culture. Olsson roams widely but always returns to the problems inherent in reason, to question the outdated assumptions and fixed ideas that thinking cartographically entails. A work of ambition, scope, and sharp wit, Abysmal will appeal to an eclectic audience--to geographers and cartographers, but also to anyone interested in the history of ideas, culture, and art. Name written on front fore-edge of book, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 1176 pages. We live in an age of disenchantment. The number of self-professed "atheists" continues to grow. Yet many still feel an intense spiritual longing for a connection to what Aristotle called the "eternal and divine." For those who do, but demand a God that is compatible with their modern ideals, a new theology is required. This is what Anthony Kronman offers here, in a book that leads its readers away from the inscrutable Creator of the Abrahamic religions toward a God whose inexhaustible and everlasting presence is that of the world itself. Kronman defends an ancient conception of God, deepened and transformed by Christian belief--the born-again paganism on which modern science, art, and politics all vitally depend. Brilliantly surveying centuries of Western thought--from Plato to Augustine, Aquinas, and Kant, from Spinoza to Nietzsche, Darwin, and Freud--Kronman recovers and reclaims the God we need today. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Continuum, reprint, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 258 pages. Dialectic of Enlightenment is undoubtedly the most influential publication of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. Written during the Second World War and circulated privately, it appeared in a printed edition in Amsterdam in 1947. "What we had set out to do," the authors write in the Preface, "was nothing less than to explain why humanity, instead of entering a truly human state, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism." Yet the work goes far beyond a mere critique of contemporary events. Historically remote developments, indeed, the birth of Western history and of subjectivity itself out of the struggle against natural forces, as represented in myths, are connected in a wide arch to the most threatening experiences of the present. The book consists in five chapters, at first glance unconnected, together with a number of shorter notes. The various analyses concern such phenomena as the detachment of science from practical life, formalized morality, the manipulative nature of entertainment culture, and a paranoid behavioral structure, expressed in aggressive anti-Semitism, that marks the limits of enlightenment. The authors perceive a common element in these phenomena, the tendency toward self-destruction of the guiding criteria inherent in enlightenment thought from the beginning. Using historical analyses to elucidate the present, they show, against the background of a prehistory of subjectivity, why the National Socialist terror was not an aberration of modern history but was rooted deeply in the fundamental characteristics of Western civilization. Spine faded, Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Macmillan, reprint, 1929, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with gilt letterng on spine and front cover, 242 pages. Does Civilization Need Religion? sets out from the fact that religion's inability to make its ethical and social resources available for the solution of the moral problems of modern civilization is one, and the neglected one, of the two chief causes responsible for its debilitated condition. It is convinced that if Christian idealists are to make religion socially effective they will be forced to detach themselves from the dominant secular desires of the nations as well as from the greed of economic groups. It aims to show that though neither the orthodox nor the modern wing of the Christian Church seems capable of initiating a genuine revival which will evolve a morality capable of challenging and maintaining itself against the dominant desires of modern civilization's needs, there are resources in the Christian religion which make it the inevitable basis of any spiritual regeneration of Western civilization. Does Civilization Need Religion? maintains that the task of redeeming Western society rests in a peculiar sense upon Christianity, which has reduced the eternal conflict between self-assertion and self-denial to the paradox of self-assertion through self-denial and made the Cross the symbol of life's highest achievement. It is persuaded that the idea of a potent but yet suffering divine ideal which is defeated by the world but gains its victory in the defeat must continue to remain basic in any morally creative worldview. Names on front fly leaf otherwise a clean copy.

Hardcover. Durham UK, Acumen, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in blue cloth, with red title block, gilt lettering, 348 pages. The early modern period in philosophy - encompassing the 16th to the 18th centuries - reflects a time of social and intellectual turmoil. The Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Counter-Reformation, and the birth of the Enlightenment all contributed to the re-evaluation of reason and faith. The revolution in science and in natural philosophy swept away two millennia of Aristotelian certainty in a human-centered universe. Covering some of the most important figures in the history of Western thought - notably Descartes, Locke, Hume and Kant - "Early Modern Philosophy of Religion" charts the philosophical understanding of religion at a time of intellectual and spiritual revolution. "Early Modern Philosophy of Religion" will be of interest to historians and philosophers of religion, while also serving as an indispensable reference for teachers, students and others who would like to learn more about this formative period in the history of ideas. Lacks dust jacket. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Viking Press, 1st, 1970, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 146 pages. Lukacs was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher, aesthetician, literary historian, and critic. He was one of the founders of Western Marxism, an interpretive tradition that departed from the Marxist ideological orthodoxy of the Soviet Union. He developed the theory of reification, and contributed to Marxist theory with developments of Karl Marx's theory of class consciousness. He was also a philosopher of Leninism. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Santa Cruz, CA, Flesk Publications, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 304 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Color illustrations. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Harvey Dunn was one of twentieth century America's most powerful illustrators, painters and teachers. This comprehensive volume covers a major portion of his illustrations and paintings for the first time. Content includes illustration art, pioneer and western works, and his powerful World War I pieces inspired by his battlefield sketches. Also included are the rarely seen nudes, portraits, and murals. Paintings from museums and private collections showcase the full range of this talented American artist. For this book, many original paintings were tracked down and re-photographed in order to reintroduce the work of this important artist. Until now, most of Dunn's paintings and illustrations have been unavailable to the public in their original form. Locations of pictures in public collections are listed, as are the original publication dates and places. Additionally, a section is devoted to the artist's working and teaching methods. Also included is a reprinting of Dunn's "An Evening in the Classroom," compiled from notes made during critiques, passing on his inspirational teaching philosophy. A comprehensive list of Dunn's students with sample art is included as well.

Softcover. Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 217 pages. Emotions have long been a central concern in philosophy, psychological and sociological studies. When anthropologists began to study emotion, they challenged many assumptions shared by Western academics and lay persons by exposing the cultural variability of emotional meanings. In this collection of original essays by anthropologists concerned with the relationship of language and emotion, it is argued that the key focus to the study of emotion might be the politics of social life rather than the psychology of the individual. Through close studies of talk about emotion and emotional discourses in social contexts from poetry and song to therapeutic narratives, scholars who have worked in India, Fiji, the United States, Egypt, Senegal and the Solomon Islands show how emotion is tied to politics of everyday interaction. Their arguments and cross-cultural findings will intrigue and provoke anyone who has thought about the relationship between emotion, language and social life. The book will be of special interest to those who find the boundaries between cultural, psychological and linguistic anthropology, sociology, cross-cultural psychiatry, and social psychology too confining. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 1st transl., 1944, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 246 pages. Philosophical aesthetics has seen an amazing revival over the past decade, as a radical questioning of the very grounds of Western epistemology has revealed that some antinomies of aesthetic experience-and in particular of the limits of the aesthetical-can be viewed as a general, yet necessarily open model for human understanding. In this revival, no text in the classical corpus of Western philosophy has been more frequently discussed than the complex paragraphs modestly inserted into Kant's Critique of Judgment as sections 23-29: the Analytic of the Sublime.This book is a rigorous explication de texte, a close reading of these sections. First, Lyotard reconstitutes, following the letter of Kant's analysis, the philosophical context of his critical writings and of the European Enlightenment. Second, because the analytic of the sublime reveals the inability of aesthetic experience to bridge the separate realms of theoretical and practical reason, Lyotard can connect his reconstitution of Kant's critical project with today's debates about the very conditions-and limits-of presentation in general.

Softcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, reprint, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 253 pages. Friedrich Nietzsche's work has had a significant impact on the intellectual life of non-Western cultures and elicited responses from important thinkers outside of the Anglo-American philosophical traditions as well. Bringing together thirteen internationally renowned scholars, this is the first collection of essays to address the connection between Nietzsche's ideas and philosphies in India, China, and Japan. The contributors are Roger T. Ames, Johann Figl, Chen Guying, Michel Hulin, Arifuku Kogaku, David A. Kelly, Glen T. Martin, Sonoda Muneto, Graham Parkes, okochi Ryogi, Eberhard Scheiffele, Mervyn Sprung, and Joan Stambaugh.

Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press,, 1st, 1967, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 402 pages. "Miss Lang focuses on the content of Pa Chin novels and short stories, which vividly describe the life of Chinese youth. She also pays great attention to the western, particularly Russian and French, influences on his political philosophy."

Hardcover. Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 340 pages. Proclus was the most important figure in Neo-Platonism when it was established as the dominant philosophy of Late Antiquity. Neo-Platonism is not only the final flowering of Greek thought but also the mode in which it was transmitted to the Byzantine, Western European and Islamic civilisations. Stripping away the complexities surrounding this traditionally difficult philosopher, Lucas Siorvanes takes the reader through Proclus' metaphysics and theory of knowledge with original research examining all aspects of Proclus' work. This is the first book which places Proclus in his complete intellectual context and sheds new light on aspects of Proclus' thought, to which previous scholars have rarely done justice. - Presents a general survey of Proclus and his Neo-Platonism- Introduces results of original research, mainly on his metaphysics, theory of knowledge and science. All areas of Proclus' philosophical interest are covered including religion, physics, astronomy, mathematics and poetry. His philosophy is found in all these because concern with being and truth is central to all. Also introduced is the neglected area of his natural philosophy with its remarkable freshness of thought punctuated by the rejection of Aristotelian science and Ptolemy's cosmology. In this book, Proclus is shown as much more than just a metaphysician.

Hardcover. Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket with mild edgewear. 295 pages. Stoicism is now widely recognized as one of the most important philosophical schools of ancient Greece and Rome. But how did it influence Western thought after Greek and Roman antiquity? The contributors recruited for this volume include leading international scholars of Stoicism as well as experts in later periods of philosophy. They trace the impact of Stoicism and Stoic ideas from late antiquity through the medieval and modern periods. Name on front fly leaf otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a very good dust jacket with fading to spine, 403 pages. The concept of the atom is very near scientific bedrock, touching first causes, fundamental principles, our conception of the nature of reality. This book is a translation from the French of a history of atomic thought and theory, from ancient Greece to the present day. Pullman grounds his coverage of scientific theory always in the religious and philosophical context of the times, covering the whole period of Western civilization, including in passing the major scientific philosophies of the Muslim world and India. The transition of atomism from a philosophical position to an experimental science, in the mid-19th century, is well handled, and the coverage is nicely rounded out by a treatment of the first visual proof of atoms' material existence by direct microscopic imaging of individual atoms about 10 years ago. Name on front fly leaf otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Edinburgh University Press, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards, 210 pages. All students of Western political thought encounter Niccolo Machiavelli's work. Nevertheless, his writing continues to puzzle scholars and readers who are uncertain how to deal with the seeming paradoxes they encounter. 'The Political Philosophy of Niccolo Machiavelli' is a clear account of Machiavelli's thought, major theories and central ideas. It critically engages with his work in a new way, one not based on the problematic Cambridge-school approach. Geared towards the specific requirements of students who need to reach a sound understanding of Machiavelli's ideas, it is the ideal companion to the study of this influential and challenging philosopher.

Hardcover. Amherst NY, Prometheus Books, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 554 pages. More than one hundred years ago Western scholars began to investigate the origins of Islam, using the highest standards of objective historical scholarship of the time. Their aim was to determine what could be known about Muhammad and the rise of early Islam quite apart from the pious and totally unobjective traditions preserved by the Muslim religious community. In some ways this research was inspired by a similar investigation of Christianity made famous by Albert Schweitzer's Quest of the Historical Jesus. Today although much has been learned about early Christianity, little comparable progress has been made in the field of Islamic Studies. Here objective historical research has long been severely handicapped both by the resistance of Muslim societies to Western analysis of their sacred traditions and by the apologetic approaches of many Western scholars, who have compromised their investigations for fear of offending Muslim sensibilities. It is in this context that Ibn Warraq presents this important anthology of the best studies of Muhammad and early Islam ranging from the very beginnings of Islamic Studies in the nineteenth century to contemporary research. Clean copy.

Softcover. Cambridge University Press, reprint, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Two softcover volumes: Vol. 1: Books 1-V, 364 pages. Vol. 2: Books VI-X and Indexes, 531 pages. Previous owner's name, otherwise clean. James Adam (1860-1907) was a Scottish classics scholar who taught at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. A strong defender of the importance of Greek philosophy in a well-rounded education, Adam published a number of Plato's works including Protagoras and Crito. This two-volume critical edition of the Republic (1902) was another major contribution to the field. Though his preface claims 'an editor cannot pretend to have exhausted its significance by means of a commentary,' Adam's depth of knowledge and erudite analysis of the Greek text ensured that his edition remained the standard reference for decades to follow, and it remains a thought-provoking evaluation of one of the great works of Western thought.

Hardcover. Lake Oswego OR, Metamorphous Press, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, b&w illustrations, 104 pages. A veteran piano tuner presents a non-technical, literary view of the quixotic tuning system used on keyboard instruments for hundreds of years. Focuses on the "comma", which is the pitch difference by which (9/8)^12 > (2/1), discusses its history, its importance in piano tuning, and philosophically what it all means. Winner of the Western States Book Award for creative nonfiction in 1986.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Belknap Press / Harvard University Press, 1st, 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 896 pages. This masterly study has a grand sweep. It ranges over centuries, with a long look backward over several millennia. Yet the history it unfolds is primarily the story of individuals: thinkers and dreamers who envisaged an ideal social order and described it persuasively, leaving a mark on their own and later times. The roster of utopians includes men of all stripes in different countries and eras--figures as disparate as More and Fourier, the Marquis de Sade and Edward Bellamy, Rousseau and Marx. Fascinating character studies of the major figures are among the delights of the book. 1980 National Book Award winner. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Softcover. Canada, Penguin Books, reprint, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 640 pages. The Western world is full of paradoxes. We talk endlessly of individual freedom, yet we've never been under more pressure to conform. Our business leaders describe themselves as capitalists, yet most are corporate employees and financial speculators. We call our governments democracies, yet few of us participate in politics. We complain about invasive government, yet our legal, educational, financial, social, cultural and legislative systems are deteriorating. All these problems, John Ralston Saul argues, are largely the result of our blind faith in the value of reason. Over the past 400 years, our "rational elites" have turned the modern West into a vast, incomprehensible, directionless machine, run by process-minded experts--"Voltaire's bastards"--whose cult of scientific management is empty of both sense and morality. Whether in politics, art, business, the military, entertain-ment, science, finance, academia or journalism, these experts share the same outlook and methods. The result, Saul maintains, is a civilization of immense technological power whose ordinary citizens are increasingly excluded from the decision-making process.In this wide-ranging anatomy of modern society and its origins--whose "pages explode with insight, style and intellectual rigor" (Camille Paglia, The Washington Post)--Saul presents a shattering critique of the political, economic and cultural estab-lishments of the West. Clean copy.

Softcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 316 pages. Few twentieth-century thinkers have proven as influential as Walter Benjamin, the German-Jewish philosopher and cultural and literary critic. Richard Wolin's book remains among the clearest and most insightful introductions to Benjamin's writings, offering a philosophically rich exposition of his complex relationship to Adorno, Brecht, Jewish Messianism, and Western Marxism. Wolin provides nuanced interpretations of Benjamin's widely studied writings on Baudelaire, historiography, and art in the age of mechanical reproduction. In a new Introduction written especially for this edition, Wolin discusses the unfinished Arcades Project, as well as recent tendencies in the reception of Benjamin's work and the relevance of his ideas to contemporary debates about modernity and postmodernity. Clean, bright copy.