Family values

The family is hotly contested ideological terrain. Some defend the traditional two-parent heterosexual family while others welcome its demise. Opinions vary about how much control parents should have over their children's upbringing. Family Values provides a major new theoretical account of the m...

Finding ourselves at the movies

Academic philosophy may have lost its audience, but the traditional subjects of philosophy—love, death, justice, knowledge, and faith—remain as compelling as ever. To reach a new generation, Paul W. Kahn argues that philosophy must take up these fundamental concerns as we find them in contemporar...

Following nature’s lead

In the spirit of E. F. Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful, a dazzling and revelatory exploration of what ancient ideas and ways of living can teach us about creating a more sustainable worldHow should we think and live in a world facing environmental catastrophe? In this urgent, original, and wide-r...

Food philosophy

This book is an introduction to the philosophical dimensions of food. David M. Kaplan shows how the different branches of philosophy contribute to a broader understanding of food and emphasizes how different narratives help us navigate the complex world of food.

Foragers, farmers, and fossil fuels

The best-selling author of Why the West Rules—for Now examines the evolution and future of human values Most people in the world today think democracy and gender equality are good, and that violence and wealth inequality are bad. But most people who lived during the 10,000 years before the ninete...

Free agents

An evolutionary case for the existence of free willScientists are learning more and more about how brain activity controls behavior and how neural circuits weigh alternatives and initiate actions. As we probe ever deeper into the mechanics of decision making, many conclude that agency—or free wil...

Freedom from fear

A provocative new history of liberalism that also provides a road map for today’s liberalsFreedom from Fear offers a striking new account of the dominant political and social theory of our time: liberalism. In a pathbreaking reframing of the historical debate, Alan Kahan charts the development of...

Freedom, resentment, and the metaphysics of morals

An innovative reassessment of philosopher P. F. Strawson’s influential “Freedom and Resentment”P. F. Strawson was one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century, and his 1962 paper “Freedom and Resentment” is one of the most influential in modern moral philosophy, prompting respo...

Friends and other strangers

Richard B. Miller aims to stimulate religious ethics through discussions of ethnography, ethnocentrism, relativism, and moral criticism; the ethics of empathy; moral responsibility in relation to children and friends; civic virtue, loyalty, war, and alterity; the normative and psychological dimen...

Friendship reconsidered

Digeser contends that our rich and varied practices of friendship multiply and moderate connections to politics. Along the way, she sets forth a series of ideals that appreciates friendship’s many forms and its dynamic relationship to individuality, citizenship, political and legal institutions, ...

From protagoras to aristotle

This is a collection of the late Heda Segvic's papers in ancient moral philosophy. At the time of her death at age forty-five in 2003, Segvic had already established herself as an important figure in ancient philosophy, making bold new arguments about the nature of Socratic intellectualism and th...

From urbanization to cities

The history and future of the ecological city.

Fundamentalism or tradition

Traditional, secular, and fundamentalist—all three categories are contested, yet in their contestation they shape our sensibilities and are mutually implicated, the one with the others. This interplay brings to the foreground more than ever the question of what it means to think and live as Tradi...

Gendered morality

In Gendered Morality, Zahra Ayubi rethinks the tradition of Islamic philosophical ethics from a feminist critical perspective. She calls for a philosophical turn in the study of gender in Islam based on resources for gender equality that are unlocked by feminist engagement with the Islamic ethica...

Genetic responsibility in germany and israel

Prenatal diagnosis, especially noninvasive prenatal testing, has changed the experience of pregnancy and prenatal care. This book presents conversations between leading scholars from Israel and Germany, featuring analyses of the reshaping of life by biomedicine and philosophical reflections on so...

Genuine pretending

This book presents an innovative reading of Daoist philosophy that highlights the critical and therapeutic functions of satire and humor. Moeller and D’Ambrosio show how the Zhuangzi expounds the Daoist art of “genuine pretending”: the paradoxical skill of enacting social roles without submitting...

Giving an account of oneself

A pathbreaking account of ethics beyond the classically imagined subject, reissued with a new preface.

Grief

An engaging and illuminating exploration of grief—and why, despite its intense pain, it can also help us growExperiencing grief at the death of a person we love or who matters to us—as universal as it is painful—is central to the human condition. Surprisingly, however, philosophers have rarely ex...

Halakhah

How the rabbis of the Talmud transformed Jewish law into a way of thinking and talking about everythingTypically translated as "Jewish law," halakhah is not an easy match for what is usually thought of as law. This is because the rabbinic legal system has rarely wielded the political power to enf...

Harley-davidson and philosophy

Haunting legacies

From mass murder to genocide, slavery to colonial suppression, acts of atrocity have lives that extend far beyond the horrific moment. They engender trauma that echoes for generations, in the experiences of those on both sides of the act. Gabriele Schwab reads these legacies in a number of narrat...

Hegel on sacred poetry

Víctor Ibarra B revisits Hegel's early works before 1800 and his dispute with Kant's concept of freedom, to offer a practical account of Hegel's view on sublime art within the context of his philosophy of love.

Hegel's social ethics

Hegel’s Social Ethics offers a fresh and accessible interpretation of G. W. F. Hegel’s most famous book, the Phenomenology of Spirit. Drawing on important recent work on the social dimensions of Hegel’s theory of knowledge, Molly Farneth shows how his account of how we know rests on his account o...

Hopeful pessimism

Why “hopeful pessimism” is not a contradiction in terms but a powerful source of moral and political commitmentThe climate debate is rife with calls for optimism. While temperatures rise and disasters intensify, we are asked to maintain optimism and hope, as if the real threat is pessimism and de...

How does the psychiatrist know?

A new philosophical investigation into how psychiatrists draw diagnostic conclusions.

How to be a friend

A splendid new translation of one of the greatest books on friendship ever writtenIn a world where social media, online relationships, and relentless self-absorption threaten the very idea of deep and lasting friendships, the search for true friends is more important than ever. In this short book...

How to be caring

A vivid new translation of selections from an inspiring guide to self-transformation through kindness by an eighth-century Buddhist monkWritten by the medieval Indian Buddhist monk Shantideva, The Bodhicaryavatara is one of the most beloved and frequently taught works in Buddhism and a favorite o...

How to be free

A superb new edition of Epictetus’s famed handbook on Stoicism—translated by one of the world’s leading authorities on Stoic philosophyBorn a slave, the Roman Stoic philosopher Epictetus (c. 55–135 AD) taught that mental freedom is supreme, since it can liberate one anywhere, even in a prison. In...

How to be stoic

An inviting new translation of essential selections from Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, distilling the timeless wisdom of one of Stoicism’s most influential worksHow do you keep calm when the world seems to be falling apart around you? When Marcus Aurelius was emperor, the Roman Empire was at the...

How to care about animals

An entertaining and enlightening anthology of classical Greek and Roman writings on animals—and our vital relationships with themHow to Care about Animals is a fascinating menagerie of passages from classical literature about animals and the lives we share with them. Drawing on ancient writers fr...

How to cope

A vivid and accessible new translation of essential selections from Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy—a moving classic about facing life’s worst events with courage and hopeWhat do you do when your life has fallen apart? Fifteen hundred years ago, a Roman nobleman named Boethius (ca. 480–524 C...

How to do the right thing

How ancient Stoicism can help teach us to treat others—and ourselves—more fairly and mercifully There are times when we’ve all felt that we haven’t been treated as we deserve—that we’ve been misjudged, shortchanged, or given a raw deal. And, at one time or another, other people have probably felt...

How to do things with emotions

An expansive look at how culture shapes our emotions—and how we can benefit, as individuals and a society, from less anger and more shameThe world today is full of anger. Everywhere we look, we see values clashing and tempers rising, in ways that seem frenzied, aimless, and cruel. At the same tim...

How to find happiness

Does happiness come from the pursuit of pleasure or moral virtue? A vivid new translation of Cicero’s exploration of a timeless question“Of course, we all want to be happy.” So wrote the Roman statesman, orator, and philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero. He and his fellow Greek and Roman philosophers...

How to flourish

Aristotle’s essential guide to human flourishing—the Nicomachean Ethics—in a lively new abridged translationAristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics is one of the greatest guides to human flourishing ever written, but its length and style have left many readers languishing. How to Flourish is a carefully a...

How to get over a breakup

A modern translation of the ancient Roman poet Ovid’s Remedies for Love—a witty and irreverent work about how to fall out of loveBreakups are the worst. On one scale devised by psychiatrists, only a spouse’s death was ranked as more stressful than a marital split. Is there any treatment for a bre...

How to grieve

An engaging new translation of a timeless masterpiece about coping with the death of a loved oneIn 45 BCE, the Roman statesman Cicero fell to pieces when his beloved daughter, Tullia, died from complications of childbirth. But from the depths of despair, Cicero fought his way back. In an effort t...

How to have willpower

Lively new translations of two classical works that offer wise advice about how to resist temptationHow to Have Willpower brings together two profound ancient meditations on how to overcome pressures that encourage us to act against our own best interests—Plutarch’s essay On Dysopia or How to Res...

How to keep your cool

Timeless wisdom on controlling anger in personal life and politics from the Roman Stoic philosopher and statesman SenecaIn his essay “On Anger” (De Ira), the Roman Stoic thinker Seneca (c. 4 BC–65 AD) argues that anger is the most destructive passion: “No plague has cost the human race more dear....

How to lose yourself

Inviting new translations of classical Buddhist texts about why the self is an illusion—and why giving it up can free us from sufferingFrom self-realization and self-promotion to self-help and the selfie, the modern world encourages us to be self-obsessed. We are even told that finding ourselves ...

How to say no

An entertaining and enlightening collection of ancient writings about the philosophers who advocated simple living and rejected unthinking conformityThe Cynics were ancient Greek philosophers who stood athwart the flood of society’s material excess, unexamined conventions, and even norms of polit...

How to talk about love

Explore the nature of love in this charming new translation of selections from Plato’s great dramatic work, the SymposiumWhat is love? In poetry, songs, fiction, movies, psychology, and philosophy, love has been described, admired, lamented, and dissected in endless ways. Is love based on physica...