In this classic text, Kant sets out to articulate and defend the Categorical Imperative - the fundamental principle that underlies moral reasoning - and to lay the foundation for a comprehensive account of justice and human virtues. This new edition and translation of Kant's work is designed especially for students. An extensive and comprehensive introduction explains the central concepts of Groundwork and looks at Kant's main lines of argument. Detailed notes aim to clarify Kant's thoughts and to correct some common (...) misunderstandings of his doctrines. (shrink)

This new translation is an extremely welcome addition to the continuing Cambridge Edition of Kant’s works. English-speaking readers of the third Critique have long been hampered by the lack of an adequate translation of this important and difficult work. James Creed Meredith’s much-reprinted translation has charm and elegance, but it is often too loose to be useful for scholarly purposes. Moreover it does not include the first version of Kant’s introduction, the so-called “First Introduction,” which is now recognized as indispensable (...) for an understanding of the work. Werner Pluhar’s more recent translation, which does include the First Introduction, is highly accurate when it confines itself to rendering Kant’s German. However, it is often more of a reconstruction than a translation, containing so many interpretative interpolations that it is often difficult to separate out Kant’s original text from the translator’s contributions. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews have provided a translation that compares to or exceeds Pluhar’s in its literal approach to the German, but that confines all interpretative material to footnotes and endnotes, so that the text itself, with all its unclarities and ambiguities, lies open to view. In addition, Guyer, as editor of the volume, has provided a great deal of valuable supplementary material. This includes an introduction with an outline of the work and details of the history of its composition and publication, and a wealth of endnotes offering clarifications of the text, background information, and, most strikingly, many references to related passages in Kant’s voluminous writings, particularly in connection with Kant’s earlier writings related to aesthetics. The edition also records differences among the first three editions of the work, and—of particular interest—erasures from and additions to Kant’s manuscript of the First Introduction. Although the introduction and endnotes reflect interpretative views that are sometimes disputable, this supplementary material makes the present edition into a valuable resource even for those able to read the text in German. (shrink)

The Critique of the Power of Judgment (a more accurate rendition of what has hitherto been translated as the Critique of Judgment) is the third of Kant's great critiques following the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of Practical Reason. This entirely new translation of Kant's masterpiece follows the principles and high standards of all other volumes in The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. This volume includes: for the first time the indispensable first draft of Kant's (...) introduction to the work; the only English edition notes to the many differences between the first (1790) and second (1793) editions of the work; and relevant passages in Kant's anthropology lectures where he elaborated on his aesthetic views. All in all this new edition offers the serious student of Kant a dramatically richer, more complete and more accurate translation. (shrink)

One of the reasons for the disappearance of beauty in the artistic ideology of the late twentieth century has been the seeming similarity of beauty to certain kinds of kitsch. Beauty has also been associated with flawlessness and with glamour. I will content that the flawless and the glamorous are actually categories of kitsch, and that the dominance of these images in marketing has contributed to our societal tendency to confuse them with beauty. The quests for flawlessness and glamour are (...) both self-sabotaging, a premise on which the marketing of beauty depends. These false paradigms of beauty have ob cured the fact that human beauty manifests an ideal of balance and health that is neither self-conscious nor a consequence of deliberate effort. I will defend the relevance of this ideal to beauty to our personal and cultural well-being. (shrink)

Considering everything from Nike ads, emaciated models, and surgically altered breasts to the culture wars and the O.J. Simpson trial, Susan Bordo deciphers the hidden life of cultural images and the impact they have on our lives. She builds on the provocative themes introduced in her acclaimed work _Unbearable Weight_—which explores the social and political underpinnings of women's obsession with bodily image—to offer a singularly readable and perceptive interpretation of our image-saturated culture. As it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between (...) appearance and reality, she argues, we need to rehabilitate the notion that not all versions of reality are equally trustworthy. Bordo writes with deep compassion, unnerving honesty, and bracing intelligence. Looking to the body and bodily practices as a concrete arena where cultural fantasies and anxieties are played out, she examines the mystique and the reality of empowerment through cosmetic surgery. Her brilliant discussion of sexual harassment reflects on the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill controversy as well as the film _Disclosure_. She suggests that sexuality, although one of the mediums of harassment, is not its essence, and she calls for the recasting of harassers as bullies rather than sex fiends. Bordo also challenges the continuing marginalization of feminist thought, in particular the failure to read feminist work as cultural criticism. Finally, in a powerful and moving essay called "Missing Kitchens"—written in collaboration with her two sisters—Bordo explores notions of bodies, place, and space through a recreation of the topographies of her childhood. Throughout these essays, Bordo avoids dogma and easy caricature. Consistently, and on many levels, she demonstrates the profound relationship between our lives and our theories, our feelings and our thoughts. (shrink)

Vintage Feminism: classic feminist texts in short form WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR Every day, women around the world are confronted with a dilemma – how to look. In a society embroiled in a cult of female beauty and youthfulness, pressure on women to conform physically is constant and all-pervading. In this shortened edition you will find the essence of Wolf’s groundbreaking book. It is a radical, gripping and frank exposé of the tyranny of the beauty myth, its (...) oppressive function and the destructive obsession it engenders. (shrink)

"This book is as seductive as the phenomenon that it explores. With courage, love, and joy, Frueh crosses into unexplored terrains of beauty and pleasure, where she finds a grotesquely captivating creature: Monster/Beauty. By illuminating her journey with thoughtful insight and engaging prose, she encourages readers to join her in her quest to articulate fresh ways of thinking about the aesthetic and the erotic and of theorizing the flux of lived experience." —John Alan Farmer, senior editor of Art Journal "Monster/Beauty (...) is a daringly provocative experiment in personal and erotic writing and an important book for anyone interested in breaking normative codes of beauty, pedagogy, and authorial methodology. In a richly self-revealing text, Frueh proposes nothing less than a Rabellaisian re-ordering of aesthetic embodiments within social relations." —Mira Schor, author of Wet: On Painting, Feminism, and Art Culture "Giving new meaning to "embodied writing," this book goes farther than any other toward getting the body into the text. Joanna Frueh is a performance artist first-she is also an art historian, a singer, a poet, a bodybuilder, a professor, an academic celebrity of modest fame, but her performances collapse these distinctions. Frueh's intensely personal, intensely physical prose brings an aura of presence to the book that rivals the effect she achieves on stage." —Robyn Warhol, co-editor of Feminisms "This book is monstrous--full of gorgeous hypermuscular women, step-mothers, and vampires; full of ravishing muscular sex, classroom erotics, splendid aging. It is a performance in which Frueh explores and celebrates her body, its powers and beauties, and those of her friends and lovers." —Alphonso Lingis, author of Excesses, Abuses, and Dangerous Emotions "A welcome voice in contemporary feminist theory, Frueh's Monster/Beauty reminds us of the pleasures of thinking, teaching and creating in wholly embodied, sensual and passionate acts. Frueh poetically enacts the self as an aesthetic/erotic project, affirming the many different and beautiful selves we can become. It is a joy to read." —Marsha Meskimmon, author of We Weren't Modern Enough: Women Artists and the Limits of German Modernism "Joanna Frueh is a hero. I sleep better knowing she's out there writing and thinking." —Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours. (shrink)

This collection of essays by one of the preeminent Kant scholars of our time transforms our understanding of both Kant's aesthetics and his ethics. Guyer shows that at the very core of Kant's aesthetic theory, disinterestedness of taste becomes an experience of freedom and thus an essential accompaniment to morality itself. At the same time he reveals how Kant's moral theory includes a distinctive place for the cultivation of both general moral sentiments and particular attachments on the basis of the (...) most rigorous principle of duty. Kant's thought is placed in a rich historical context including such figures as Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, Burke, Kames, as well as Baumgarten, Mendelssohn, Schiller, and Hegel. Other topics treated are the sublime, natural versus artistic beauty, genius and art history, and duty and inclination. These essays extend and enrich the account of Kant's aesthetics in the author's earlier book, Kant and the Claims of Taste. (shrink)

"The location of the author’s investigations, the body itself rather than the sphere of subjective representations of self and of function in cultures, is wholly new.... I believe this work will be a landmark in future feminist thinking." —Alphonso Lingis "This is a text of rare erudition and intellectual force. It will not only introduce feminists to an enriching set of theoretical perspectives but sets a high critical standard for feminist dialogues on the status of the body." —Judith Butler Volatile (...) Bodies demonstrates that the sexually specific body is socially constructed: biology or nature is not opposed to or in conflict with culture. Human biology is inherently social and has no pure or natural "origin" outside of culture. Being the raw material of social and cultural organization, it is "incomplete" and thus subject to the endless rewriting and social inscription that constitute all sign systems. Examining the theories of Freud, Lacan, Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida, etc. on the subject of the body, Elizabeth Grosz concludes that the body they theorize is male. These thinkers are not providing an account of "human" corporeality but of male corporeality. Grosz then turns to corporeal experiences unique to women—menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, lactation, menopause. Her examination of female experience lays the groundwork for developing theories of sexed corporeality rather than merely rectifying flawed models of male theorists. (shrink)