This book presents a history of spiritual exercises from Socrates to early Christianity, an account of their decline in modern philosophy, and a discussion of ...

The debate about the nature of modernity and postmodernity has become central to intellectual culture today. In this work, two distinguished social theorists make a distinctive contribution to this continuing discussion.

“Supposing that truth is a women-what then?” This is the very first sentence in Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil . Not very often are philosophers so disarmingly explicit in their intention to discomfort the reader. In fact, one might say that the natural state of Nietzsche’s reader is one of perplexity. Yet it is in the process of overcoming the perplexity that one realizes how rewarding to have one’s ideas challenged. In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche critiques the mediocre in (...) modernity and challenges the reader to accept their state of becoming and accept improvisation and creativity of the process. Nietzsche’s book is carefully designed to disorient the reader, to systematically provoke and tease her to the point of stealing away her certainties. It is challenging yet rewarding to overcome the perplexities of Nietzsche’s teachings. (shrink)

Challenging and rewarding in equal measure, _Phenomenology of Perception_ is Merleau-Ponty's most famous work. Impressive in both scope and imagination, it uses the example of perception to return the _body_ to the forefront of philosophy for the first time since Plato. Drawing on case studies such as brain-damaged patients from the First World War, Merleau-Ponty brilliantly shows how the body plays a crucial role not only in perception but in speech, sexuality and our relation to others. Perhaps above all, Merleau-Ponty's (...) insights about the embodied mind are a bold and refreshing challenge to the new era of virtual reality and artificial intelligence, as scientists and psychologists discover the centrality of the body to mind and intelligence. (shrink)

An Ethics of Personality d addresses the ultimate question of modern ethics: how is morality possible after the `death of God'. It is the closing volume - General Ethics d and Philosophy of Morals d - of Agnes Heller's trilogy A Theory of Morals. d.

Divided into three essays, this title offers an investigation into the origins of our moral values, or as the author calls them 'moral prejudices'. It addresses the concept of guilt and its role in the development of civilization and religion. It also considers suffering and its role in human existence.

'Literature is not innocent,' stated Georges Bataille in this extraordinary 1957 collection of essays, arguing that only by acknowledging its complicity with the knowledge of evil can literature communicate fully and intensely. These literary profiles of eight authors and their work, including Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal and the writings of Sade, Kafka and Sartre, explore subjects such as violence, eroticism, childhood, myth and transgression, in a work of rich allusion and powerful argument. [Abstract from the (...) Penguin Modern Classics 2012 re-issue = ISBN-10: 0141195576 / ISBN-13: 9780141195575]. (shrink)

This is an anatomy of the ethical and political preconceptions which underlie theories of justice. The author takes as her cue Hegel's description of modernity in which politics and ethics have fallen out of harmony with one another.

Letters from a Stoic, include Seneca's complete surviving collection of 124 letters. The letters focus on many themes of Stoic philosophy such as the contempt of death, the stout-heartedness of the sage, and virtue as the supreme good.

INTRODUCTION Is there a * Renaissance ideal of man'? The consciousness that man is a historical being is a product of bourgeois development ; the condition ...

"Exemplary Scholarship.... Ruprecht invites the reader to a bold dialogue". -- Christianity and Literature.