To understand play, we need a bottom-up phenomenology of play. This phenomenology highlights the paradox that it is the players who play the game, but it is also the game which makes us players. Yet what is it that plays us, when we play? Do we play the...

This book evaluates the potential of the pragmatist notion of habit possesses to influence current debates at the crossroads between philosophy, cognitive sciences, neurosciences, and social theory. It deals with the different aspects of the pragmatic...

The Skillfulness of Virtue provides a new framework for understanding virtue as a skill, based on psychological research on self-regulation and expertise. Matt Stichter lays the foundations of his argument by bringing together theories of self-regulation...

John J. Stuhr, a leading voice in American philosophy, sets forth a view of pragmatism as a personal work of art or fashion. Stuhr develops his pragmatism by putting pluralism forward, setting aside absolutism and nihilism, opening new perspectives on...

The sexual exploitation of children by adults has a long, fraught history. Yet how cultures have reacted to it is shaped by a range of forces, beliefs, and norms, like any other social phenomenon. Changes in how Anglo-American culture has understood...

Heidegger has often been reproached for his alleged neglect of practical issues, specifically his "inability" to propose or articulate an ethics or politics. This book investigates the extent to which Heidegger's thought can be read as a crucial resource...

Drawing on the work of popular American writers, American philosophers, and Continental thinkers, this book provides a new interpretation of pragmatism and American philosophy.

This philosophical ode to finding joy in simple things explores how walking has influenced history’s greatest thinkers—from Henry David Thoreau and John Muir to Gandhi and Nietzsche.“It is only ideas gained from walking that have any worth.” —NietzscheIn...

Late in life, Foucault identified with “the critical tradition of Kant,” encouraging us to read both thinkers in new ways. Kant’s “Copernican” strategy of grounding knowledge in the limits of human reason proved to stabilize political, social-scientific,...

Pragmatism is America's best-known native philosophy. It espouses a practical set of beliefs and principles that focus on the improvement of our lives. Yet the split between classical and contemporary pragmatists has divided the tradition against itself...

Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben takes a close look at why the sense of taste has not historically been appreciated as a means to know and experience pleasure or why it has always been considered inferior to actual theoretical knowledge. Taste,...

Agamben is the rare writer whose ideas and works have a broad appeal across many fields, and Nymphs will engage not only the author's devoted fans in philosophy, legal theory, sociology, and literary criticism but also his growing audience among art...

One of Europe's greatest living philosophers, Giorgio Agamben, analyzes the life and work of one of Europe's greatest poets, Friedrich Hölderlin. What does it mean to inhabit a place or a self? What is a habit? And, for human beings, doesn't living...

A new reading of Plato’s philosophy that reveals it as deeply shaped by his experiences in Athens. Plato is a key figure from the beginnings of Western philosophy, yet the impact of his lived experience on his thought has rarely been explored. Born...

From a leading popular philosopher, an uplifting meditation on the nature and power of optimism. In this book Lars Svendsen embarks on a profound exploration of the nature of hope, asking what exactly hope is and how it differs from related phenomena...

A bold and wide-ranging study across centuries, examining the conflict between "conventional" and "magical" nominalism in philosophy, history, aesthetics, political theory, and photography. In this magisterial new book, intellectual historian Martin Jay...

Since Dewey’s career and public services were even more extensive and varied than his writings, a knowledge of them is necessary for any adequate interpretation of his ideas and publications. This big and important biography traces the events of Dewey’s...

Slight shelf wear. Pages are clean and binding is tight.

“The world viewed from the inside, the world defined and determined according to its “intelligible character”––it would be “will to power” and nothing else.” Cryptic passages like this one from section 36 of Beyond Good and Evil have been the source of...