"This is a beautiful book, full of ideas that could help restore America’s genius for freedom and promise.” — Thomas Moore, New York Times bestselling author of Care of the Soul A lifelong Emerson lover, teacher, and spiritual seeker reveals how American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson’s twelve essential teachings hold the answer to living an authentic and fulfilling life, one that is in har[Bokinfo]

One of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century details the events of his career and describes meetings with people who have shaped the philosophical and political character of recent history

"Here is the first Kant-biography in English since Paulsen's and Cassirer's only full-scale study of Kant's philosophy. On a very deep level, all of Cassirer's philosophy was based on Kant's, and accordingly this book is Cassirer's explicit coming to terms with his own historical origins. It sensitively integrates interesting facts about Kant's life with an appreciation and critique of his works. Its value is enhanced by Stephen Körner's Introduction, which places Cassirer's Kant-interpretation in its historical and contemporary context." - Lewis White Beck ; "The first English translation (well done by James Haden) of a 60-year-old classic intellectual biography. Those readers who know Kant only through the first Critique will find their understanding of that work deepened and illuminated by a long explication of the pre-critical writings, but perhaps the most distinctive contribution is Cassirer's argument that the later Critiques, and especially the Critique of Judgment, must be understood not as merely applying the principles of the first to other areas but as subsuming the latter into a larger and more comprehensive framework." - Frederick J. Crown, The Key Reporter ; "Kant's Life and Thought is that rare achievement: a lucid and highly readable account of the life and work of one of the world's profoundest thinkers. Now for the first time available in an admirable English translation, the book introduces the reader to two of the finest minds in the history of philosophy." - Ashley Montagu --

Menaḥem Mendel Schneerson (1902-1994) was the seventh and seemingly last Rebbe of the Habad-Lubavitch dynasty. Marked by conflicting tendencies, Schneerson was a radical messianic visionary who promoted a conservative political agenda, a reclusive contemplative who built a hasidic sect into an international movement, and a man dedicated to the exposition of mysteries who nevertheless harbored many secrets. Schneerson astutely masked views that might be deemed heterodox by the canons of orthodoxy while engineering a fundamentalist ideology that could subvert traditional gender hierarchy, the halakhic distinction between permissible and forbidden, and the social-anthropological division between Jew and Gentile. While most literature on the Rebbe focuses on whether or not he identified with the role of Messiah, Elliot R. Wolfson, a leading scholar of Jewish mysticism and the phenomenology of religious experience, concentrates instead on Schneerson's apocalyptic sensibility and his promotion of a mystical consciousness that undermines all discrimination. For Schneerson, the ploy of secrecy is crucial to the dissemination of the messianic secret. To be enlightened messianically is to be delivered from all conceptual limitations, even the very notion of becoming emancipated from limitation. The ultimate liberation, or true and complete redemption, fuses the believer into an infinite essence beyond all duality, even the duality of being emancipated and not emancipated--an emancipation, in other words, that emancipates one from the bind of emancipation. At its deepest level, Schneerson's eschatological orientation discerned that a spiritual master, if he be true, must dispose of the mask of mastery. Situating Habad's thought within the evolution of kabbalistic mysticism, the history of Western philosophy, and Mahayana Buddhism, Wolfson articulates Schneerson's rich theology and profound philosophy, concentrating on the nature of apophatic embodiment, semiotic materiality, hypernomian transvaluation, nondifferentiated alterity, and atemporal temporality.

Throughout the ages philosophers have examined their own lives in an attempt both to find some meaning and to explain the roots of their philosophical perspectives. This volume is an introduction to philosophical autobiography, a rich but hitherto ignored literary genre that questions the self, its social context, and existence in general. The author analyzes representative narratives from antiquity to postmodernity, focusing in particular on three case studies: the autobiographies of St. Augustine, Rousseau, and Sartre. Through the study of these exemplary texts, philosophical reflection on the self emerges as a valid alternative to Freudian psychoanalysis and as a way of promoting self-renewal and change.

Groundless is, at the same time, Vilém Flusser's autobiography and a singular title in the author's literary production as a thinker. Written in 1973, one year after his return to Europe, when the author was only fifty-three years old, this work addresses a variety of themes, beyond the experiences of the one who reports them. Through an experimental structure, Vilém Flusser presents to the readers a series of philosophical dialogues that he maintained with the people who marked him during his life in Brazil. Among them, Alex Bloch, Haroldo de Campos, João Guimarães Rosa, Milton Vargas, Dora Ferreira da Silva, Vicente Ferreira da Silva, Miguel Reale, Samson Flexor, and Mira Schendel. In a letter to Milton Vargas of 1973, Flusser writes: "To write a biography at 53 means 'to make biography', in the sense in which Hegel says that to write the history of philosophy means to make history and philosophy. ... to write a biography is not contemplation, but action ..." With this intention in mind, Vilém Flusser wrote a book where he explores how his past experiences, especially the experiences within the Brazilian reality, influenced him in the formation of his philosophical project. The particularity with which he describes this process in Portuguese makes it a work of great value in the field of philosophy and communication and deserves to be published in English translated from its original version in Portuguese. This edition differs from the posthumous German edition of 1993 in that it restores the structure of the text to the author's original manuscript. Groundless is a key text for the study and understanding of Vilém Flusser's work as a philosopher.