philosophy essays

Hardcover. London, George Allen & Unwin, reprint, 1949, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 311 pages. The writings of German mathematician and philosopher GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ (1646-1716) have had an incalculable impact on modern science and technology, from physics and computers to law and psychology. But not everyone is a fervent fan. At the turn of the 20th century, the great British thinker Bertrand Russell uncovered what he believed was the hypocritical secret to Leibniz's philosophy: a hidden devotion to a logic he did not reveal in his writings. Here, Russell explores Leibniz's work from this perspective, examining the premises of Leibniz's work, the questions raised by his arguments, the validity of Leibniz's proofs, problems with his "philosophy of matter," and much more. First published in 1900, this is a replica of the 1937 second edition, and is complete with the original, extensive appendix of relevant extracts from Leibniz's work, essential for understanding Russell's critique. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Bristol UK, Thoemmes Press, reprint, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcovers, red cloth with gilt stamping to spines. A reprint of the 1758 Fourth Edition. Introduction by Victor Nuovo. 555 total pages plus Index. Vol. 1 with fading to spine and part of front cover, otherwise tight and clean.

Softcover. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, reprint, 1978, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 414 pages. A work of literary criticism in which Said differentiates between the concept of "origin" and "beginning", also reflecting reflexively on the role of criticism and of the intellectual within a larger culture. Clean copy.

Softcover. Evanston IL, Northwestern University , 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 325 pages. Devoted to the most important American Continental philosopher of his generation and one of the discipline's founding fathers, and featuring some of the field's most distinguished luminaries, this anthology constitutes a critical document in Continental philosophy, reflecting its recent history, its present state, and its debt to Calvin Schrag. Taking up themes central to Schrag's own philosophical concerns, these essays refer throughout to his salient "interventions" in the dialogue of late twentieth-century thought characterized as "postmodernity." In doing so, all contributors address, implicitly or directly, the question of philosophy's role and responsibility, or "task." The volume begins with an overview of this task and of Schrag's contributions to it, written from the perspective of a resolute defender of the phenomenological tradition that Schrag's work has extended and reconfigured. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Oxford UK, Clarendon Press, 1st, 1935, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with gilt lettering on spine, 347 pages. Light pencil notes on rear fly leaf, otherwise clean, tight copy. Volume 1 only of a two volume set.

Hardcover. Oxford UK, Clarendon Press, 1st, 1935, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with gilt lettering on spine, pages 349-708. A clean, tight copy. Volume 2 only of a two volume set.

Softcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 4th pr., 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 656 pages. John Rawls's work on justice has drawn more commentary and aroused wider attention than any other work in moral or political philosophy in the twentieth century. Rawls is the author of two major treatises, A Theory of Justice (1971) and Political Liberalism (1993); it is said that A Theory of Justice revived political philosophy in the English-speaking world. But before and after writing his great treatises Rawls produced a steady stream of essays. Some of these essays articulate views of justice and liberalism distinct from those found in the two books. They are important in and of themselves because of the deep issues about the nature of justice, moral reasoning, and liberalism they raise as well as for the light they shed on the evolution of Rawls's views. Some of the articles tackle issues not addressed in either book. They help identify some of the paths open to liberal theorists of justice and some of the knotty problems which liberal theorists must seek to resolve. A complete collection of John Rawls's essays. Owner's name on front fly leaf otherwise clean.

Hardcover. New York, Dodd, Mead and Company, 1st Edition, 1920, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 370 pages. Hardcover. Green cloth covers with gilt titles to cover & spine. Fraying, scuffing to edges. Light sunfade to spine. As is, with light pencil marking throughout. Cracked rear hinge.

Ithaca NY, Cornell University Press, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 366 pages. Previous owner's signature on front end paper. Markings in pencil to a handful pages. Else a clean, tight copy. Twelve original essays advance the understanding of theistic metaphysics and it's capacity to illuminate a variety of fundamental issues.

Hardcover. London, Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 2nd, 1874, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 164 pages, plus 24 pages of new works from publishers. Green cloth covers, gilt titles to spine, blind stamped titles and border to front cover. Light edgewear and rubbing to covers, spine cracked at inside of front hinge, previous owner's inscription to front endpaper, Edinburgh Medical Society stamp to title page, short pencil notations to rear endpaper; otherwise a very neat, tight copy.

Hardcover. UK, Oxford University Press, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 284 pages. Thirteen original essays by leading scholars explore aspects of Spinoza's ethical theory and, in doing so, deepen our understanding of the richly rewarding core of his system. Given its importance to his philosophical ambitions, it is surprising that his ethics has, until recently, received relatively little scholarly attention. Anglophone philosophy has tended to focus on Spinoza's contribution to metaphysics and epistemology, while philosophy in continental Europe has tended to show greater interest in his political philosophy. This tendency is problematic not only because it overlooks a central part of Spinoza's project, but also because it threatens to present a distorted picture of his philosophy. Moreover, Spinoza's ethics, like other branches of his philosophy, is complex, difficult, and, at times, paradoxical. The essays in this volume advance our understanding of his ethics and also help us to appreciate it as the centerpiece of his system. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, England, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, Reprint, 1962, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 480 pages. Hardcover. Previous owner's bookplate on front endpaper and names written on front flyleaf. Light pencil notes and underlining. Spine straight. Black cover boards, gilt title on spine. Split at gutter on title page, but binding good. Bradley was a leading member of the philosophical movement known as British idealism.

Hardcover. London, SCM Press Ltd., 1st, 1955, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Poor, Hardcover, bound in original publishers gray fleck cloth, with black title/design labels. 337 pages. Dust jacket chipped, bottom third of spine gone. Internally clean.

Softcover. Albany NY, State University of New York Press, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Engaging the Philosophical Contributions of Calvin O. Schrag. Softcover, 214 pages. Providing developments and advancements concerning the thought of Calvin O. Schrag, this book includes the first full-length interview with the American continental philosopher and covers his long and illustrative philosophical contribution to thinking about the consequences of communication. The influence of Schrag's work is significant and broad, and these nine thought-provoking pieces by leading scholars whose work has been influenced by his philosophy presents the best contemporary thought on communicative praxis. Encompassing questions of democracy, the public and private spheres, and relations inside organizational structures, to questions of giving and ethics, rhetoric and narrative, suffering and love, this is a wellspring of insight and provocation for both those already familiar with Schrag's work and those seeking a keen invitation to his many critical reflections. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. London/NY, Bloomsbury, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 346 pages. This volume makes the key essays of 19th century French philosopher Felix Ravaisson available in English for the first time. In recent years, Ravaisson has emerged as an extremely important and influential figure in the history of modern European philosophy. The volume contains the classic 1838 dissertation Of Habit, studies of Pascal, Stoicism and the wider history of philosophy together with the Philosophical Testament that he left unfinished when he died in 1900. The volume also features Ravaisson's work in archaeology, the history of religions and art-theory, and his essay on the Venus de Milo, which occupied him over a period of twenty years after he noticed, when hiding the statue behind a false wall in a dingy Parisian basement during the Franco-Prussian war, that it had previously been presented in a way that deformed its original bearing and meaning. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, SCM Press Ltd, 1st UK, 1959, Hardcover, pale blue textures cloth with black stamping, gilt title on spine. 435 pages.

Hardcover. NY, Teachers College Press, 1st, 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn, unclipped dust jacket, 140 pages. A collection of essays by the German sociologist and philosopher concerning man's relationship to culture. Clean copy, minor wear to dust jacket.

Hardcover. New York, State University of New York Press, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 233 pages. Hardcover. Dust jacket with light wear. Clean unmarked text.

Hardcover. NY/London, Oxford University Press, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 470 pages. This central volume in the Collected Essays brings together John Finnis's wide-ranging contribution to central issues in political philosophy. The volume begins by examining the general theory of political community and social justice. It includes the powerful and well-known Maccabaean Lecture on Bills of Rights -- a searching critique of Ronald Dworkin's moral-political arguments and conclusions, of the European Court of Human Rights' approach to fundamental rights, and of judicial review as a constitutional institution. It is followed by an equally searching analysis of Kant's thought on the intersection of law, right, and ethics. Other papers in the book's opening section include an early assessment of Rawls's A Theory of Justice, a radical re-interpretation of Aquinas on limited government and the significance of the private/public distinction, and a challenging paper on virtue and the constitution. The volume then focuses on central problems in modern political communities, including the achievement of justice in work and distribution; the practice of punishment; war and justice; the public control of euthanasia and abortion; and the nature of marriage and the common good. There are careful and vigorous critiques of Nietzsche on morality, Hart on punishment, Dworkin on the enforcement of morality and on euthanasia, Rawls on justice and law, Thomson on the woman's right to choose, Habermas on abortion, Nussbaum and Koppelman on same-sex relations, and Dummett and Weithman on open borders. The volume's previously unpublished papers include a foundational consideration of labor unions, a fresh statement of a new grounding for the morality of sex, a surprising reading of C.S. Lewis's Abolition of Man on contraception, and an introduction reviewing some of the remarkable changes inprivate and public morality over the past half-century.

Hardcover. NY/London, Oxford University Press, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 350 pages. The essays in Intention and Identity explore themes in Finnis' work touched on only lightly, if at all, in Natural Law and Natural Rights, developing profound accounts of personal identity and existence; group identity and common good; and intention and choice as action- and self-shaping. In his many-faceted study of what it is to be a human person, and a human community, Finnis not only engages with contemporary philosophers and bioethicists such as Peter Singer, Michael Lockwood and John Harris, with thinkers from other traditions such as Karol Wojtyla (John Paul II), and with judges in the highest courts. He also offers illuminating and deeply considered readings of Shakespeare and Aquinas, and debates with Roger Scruton, Joseph Raz, Hans Kelsen, John Rawls, Glanville Williams, Richard Posner, Ronald Dworkin and others. The role of intention in the criminal law and the law of civil wrongs is searchingly explored through case-law, as are judicial attempts to understand conditional and preparatory intentions. Moral or bioethical issues discussed include in vitro fertilization, cloning, abortion, euthanasia, and 'brain death', patriotism, multi-culturalism andimmigration.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1st US, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 222 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Black & white illustrations throughout. Clean, tight copy.

Softcover. Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 482 pages. Previous owner's signature on front end paper, else a clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to wrappers.