In this book of brief essays, the author applies his controversial ways of thinking to issues like climate change, extreme poverty, animals, abortion, euthanasia, human genetic selection, sports doping, the sale of kidneys, the ethics of high-priced art, and ways of increasing happiness. Singer asks whether chimpanzees are people, smoking should be outlawed, or consensual sex between adult siblings should be decriminalized, and he reiterates his case against the idea that all human life is sacred, applying his arguments to some recent cases in the news. In addition, he explores, in an easily accessible form, some of the deepest philosophical questions, such as whether anything really matters and what is the value of the pale blue dot that is our planet. --

Essays of Michel de Montaigne, Volumes 2 and 3 Translated by Charles Cotton and edited by William Carew Hazlitt, these volumes of Michel de Montaigne's Essays delve into the human condition through a variety of thought-provoking topics. Volume 2 includes essays on subjects such as sorrow, idleness, and the nature of our affections. Volume 3 explores themes including the force of imagination, the punishment of cowardice, and the philosophical inquiry into death. Each essay offers a unique perspective on human nature, often drawing from Montaigne's personal reflections and classical sources.

"Through a fertile mixture of insights gleaned from linguistics and from sociology and ethnology, Lévi-Strauss elaborated his theory of structural unity in culture and became the preeminent representative of structural anthropology. La Pensée sauvage, published in French in 1962, was his crowning achievement. Ranging over philosophies, historical periods, and human societies, it challenged the prevailing assumption of the superiority of modern Western culture and sought to explain the unity of human intellection. Fatefully titled The Savage Mind in English, the original translation nevertheless sparked a fascination with Lévi-Strauss's work among generations of Anglophone readers. Wild Thought: A New Translation of "La Pensée sauvage" rekindles that spark. An indispensable addition to any philosophical and anthropological library, this new translation, with critical annotations for the contemporary reader, restores the accuracy and integrity of the book that changed the course of twentieth-century thought"--

Defining craftsmanship far more broadly than "skilled manual labor," Richard Sennett maintains that the computer programmer, the doctor, the artist, and even the parent and citizen engage in a craftsman's work. Craftsmanship names the basic human impulse to do a job well for its own sake, says the author, and good craftsmanship involves developing skills and focusing on the work rather than ourselves. In this thought-provoking book, one of our most distinguished public intellectuals explores the work of craftsmen past and present, identifies deep connections between material consciousness and ethical values, and challenges received ideas about what constitutes good work in today's world. The Craftsman engages the many dimensions of skill--from the technical demands to the obsessive energy required to do good work. Craftsmanship leads Sennett across time and space, from ancient Roman brickmakers to Renaissance goldsmiths to the printing presses of Enlightenment Paris and the factories of industrial London; in the modern world he explores what experiences of good work are shared by computer programmers, nurses and doctors, musicians, glassblowers, and cooks. Unique in the scope of his thinking, Sennett expands previous notions of crafts and craftsmen and apprises us of the surprising extent to which we can learn about ourselves through the labor of making physical things --

Die Großstädte und das Geistesleben ist ein 1903 erschienener Aufsatz des Soziologen Georg Simmel, mit dem dieser die Grundlagen der Stadtsoziologie schuf. Das tiefste Problem des modernen Lebens ist nach Georg Simmel der Anspruch des Individuums nach der Selbstständigkeit und Eigenart seines Daseins gegen die Übermächte der Gesellschaft, das geschichtlich Ererbte der äußerlichen Kultur und Technik des Lebens zu bewahren. Der Großstädter ist - im Gegensatz zum Kleinstädter - einer "Steigerung des Nervenlebens" ausgesetzt. Darin besteht die Basis für den Typus großstädtischer Individualität. Georg Simmel (1858-1918) war ein deutscher Philosoph und Soziologe. Er leistete wichtige Beiträge zur Kulturphilosophie, war Begründer der "formalen Soziologie" und der Konfliktsoziologie. Simmel stand in der Tradition der Lebensphilosophie, aber auch der des Neukantianismus.

"Everyone is fascinated by crime." "When you look at the history of song, romantic love songs may be the dominant mode of songwriting, but second would probably be songs involving crime--murder ballads, political protest songs; crime is a major theme in all songwriting," says Harper Simon. He offers a new and expansive contribution to this legacy with Meditations on Crime , an ambitious multi-media project that includes an album he produced of musical collaborations with a sweeping range of contributors (Julia Holter, Gang Gang Dance, King Khan, the Sun Ra Arkestra) and a book he edited featuring essays by such notables as Miranda July, Hooman Majd, and Jerry Stahl, alongside artwork from giants like Cindy Sherman, Tracey Emin, Julian Schnabel, and Raymond Pettibon. The genesis of Meditations on Crime came in 2016 as the confluence of several ideas. Simon was interested in collaborating with musicians he knew and admired, to create a vinyl LP with an accompanying book--"a beautiful physical object to stand outside the digital world." Given what America was going through during that particular election year, though, he also thought it was a time that called for something more politically charged. Meditations on Crime --if you get down to it, crime is politics and politics is crime, so crime can go a lot of different ways. It seemed to be a way of approaching the moment that was a little more subtle and left space to explore." The songs were developed in a variety of ways: Sometimes Simon sent his collaborators guitar tracks or demos he was working on and had them write over that, sometimes he collaborated on lyrics. On the Sun Ra Arkestra track, he composed melodic themes and went to the group's home base of Philadelphia with the legendary producer Hal Willner, where they fleshed out two songs (Willner passed away in 2020 from Covid; "to have that creative moment with him makes it really touching for me," says Simon. As he reached out to more musicians ("I kind of just went with my gut, and one person led to the next"), Simon retained a consistent backing band for most of the tracks to keep some cohesion. He played most of the guitars, with Paz Lenchantin from the Pixies on bass and Carla Azar, who has played with everyone from Jack White to PJ Harvey to The Who, on drums, as well as members of Ariel Pink's band and Nick Zinner from the Yeah Yeah Yeah's. For the book, Simon points to "On Crime," the essay by Nigerian novelist and poet Ben Okri, as a central piece. "It almost felt like an introduction because it was so philosophical," he says. "It really set the tone and the book started to become less political and more interesting. Once that tone was set, you could go to this beautiful essay on war crimes by Janine di Giovanni, the famous foreign correspondent. You could see it go to a humorous piece by Jerry Stahl or an interview with Kenneth Anger. Wayne Kramer from the MC5 has a foundation called Jail Guitar Doors that brings musical instruments and songwriting to prisoners, and has spent time in prison himself, so I thought he would have an interesting perspective."

A provocative collection of essays by one of the foremost thinkers of second-wave feminism In a career spanning four decades, Alix Kates Shulman has written on issues ranging from marriage, sex, and divorce to religious identity, age, and family devotion. Throughout her diverse body of work runs a staunch advocacy of equal rights and social justice. Beginning with her provocative essay "A Marriage Agreement," written in 1969, and continuing through to the heartrending "Caring for an Ill Spouse, and Other Caregivers," written in 2011, this collection provides a window into the social movements that defined an era. Witty, stirring, and poignant, A Marriage Agreement and Other Essays illustrates how each generation, in Shulman's words, "can do no more than add its bit to the endless river of consciousness and change."

On the last day of his life, Otto Neurath had given help to a Chinese philosopher who was writing about Schlick. Only an hour before his death he said to me: "Nobody will do such a thing for me." My answer then was: "Never mind, you have Bilston, isn't that better?" There were con sultations in new housing schemes, an exhibition, and hopes for a fruitful relationship of longer duration. I did not dream at that time that I would one day work on a book like this. The idea came from Horace M. Kallen, of the New School for Social Research, New York, years later; to encourage me he sent me his selection from William James' writings. Later I met Robert S. Cohen. Carnap had sent him to me with the message: "If you want to find out what my political views were in the twenties and thirties, read Otto Neurath's books and articles of that time; his views were also mine." In this way Robert Cohen became ac quainted with Otto Neurath. Even more: he became interested; and when I asked him, would he help me as an editor of an Otto N eurath volume, he agreed at once. In previous years I had already asked a number of Otto Neurath's friends to write down for me what they especially remembered about him.

We are desperately in need of a new Story-specifically a new Story of Value, an Outrageous Love Story-as a way to meet the outrageous pain of the world. This is the only true response to the current meta-crisis, the amalgamation of interlocking political, educational, spiritual, ecological, and cultural crises that threatens not merely the total disruption of all social systems, but either the death of humanity or the death of our humanity. This series of oral essays outlines the contours of a new Story of Value. Most importantly, they clearly show how we-both individually and collectively-can transform our lives and become an "imaginal cell," an ontological activist, for the sake of the whole. Through profound "writual" practices like writing a Sacred Autobiography and composing Outrageous Love Letters, we start to move from a pathologized life to a mythic life. We begin to play our instruments as part of Unique Self Symphony. We become Homo amor, the New Human and the New Humanity, irreducibly unique incarnations of Eros, of the Intimate Cosmos that lives in, as us, and through us-for the sake of Reality itself. These oral essays are based on talks delivered by Marc at the Eros Mystery School at Kasteel de Berckt in Baarlo, Netherlands, August 2019.

"Like most of his theatrical pieces, Felix Guattari's Parmenides is a brief but extremely suggestive dialogue that brings life to his concerns about psychoanalysis, semiotics, the history of philosophy, and contemporary post-theatre. Edited by Gary Genosko and Carlos A. Segovia, this volume includes the facsimile edition of the original manuscript followed by its transcription and its annotated translations into English, German, Spanish, Japanese, Polish and Russian. Accompanying commentaries, diagrams, and studies of the text give an incredibly in-depth analysis of Guattari's theatrical work and its significance to his wider body of thought. Among these, Gary Genosko highlights Guattari's engagement with dialogue and language; Carlos A. Segovia examines his elaboration on Greek mythology; and Flore Gacin-Marrou looks at Guattari's role as a playwright among his other literary work, which ranged from screenplays to novels. This volume also includes another of Guattari's short theatrical pieces, Socrates, which was the only one of his plays to reach the stage, and which expands on one of the book's central themes in his dialogue with classical philosophy." -- OCLC.

Joseph Margolis, known for his considerable contributions to the philosophy of art and aesthetics, pragmatism, and American philosophy, has focused primarily on the troublesome concepts of culture, history, language, agency, art, interpretation, and the human person or self. For Margolis, the signal problem has always been the same: how can we distinguish between physical nature and human culture? How do these realms relate? The Cultural Space of the Arts and the Infelicities of Reductionism identifies a conceptual tendency that can be drawn from the work of the twentieth century's best-known analytic philosophers of art: Arthur Danto, Richard Wollheim, Kendall Walton, Nelson Goodman, Monroe Beardsley, No‘l Carroll, and Jerrold Levinson, among others. This trend threatens to impoverish our grasp and appreciation of the arts by failing to do justice to the culturally informed nature of the arts themselves. Through his analysis, Margolis sets out to retrieve an adequate picture of the essential differences between physical nature and human culture& mdash;particularly through language, history, meaning, significance, the emergence of the human self or person, and the essential features of human life& mdash;all to explain how such difference bears on our perception of paintings and literature. Clearly argued and provocatively engaging, Margolis's work reestablishes what is essential to a productive encounter with art.

This book is a selection of articles by David Zilberman, a prolific author, whose tragic untimely death did not allow to finish many of his undertakings. Zilberman’s work represents a fresh word in the way of philosophizing or philosophy-building and the technique of modal methodology. This book comprises of thirteen independent articles that are not related by content. The point of thematic convergence of these articles is the way they reflect the new way of methodological thinking through the application and benefits of modalization or modal methodology that unfolds unbound possibilities of philosophic elaborations. By shifting constantly from one position to another, Zilberman disclosed the antinomicity of all types of thought. Such an approach led him to outline for the first time his major attempt to start creating not "systems" but "sums" of philosophies so that the philosophical activity would be able to re-emerge on the slopes of such "sums." The book can be used as a starting point of a discussion, especially in study of philosophy. We imagine it can be used in undergraduate classes on World Philosophies or Intercultural Philosophy courses. With that, it can serve as a useful resource for adding intercultural elements into Western-centered courses.