"To hear silence is to find stillness in the midst of the restlessness that makes creative life possible and the inescapability of death acceptable". So writes Mark C. Taylor in his latest book, a philosophy of silence for our nervous, chattering age...

"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone", Blaise Pascal wrote in 1654. But then there's Walt Whitman, in 1856: "Whoever you are, come forth! Or man or woman come forth! / You must not stay sleeping and dal...

Although David Hume's contributions to philosophy are well known, his work on economics has been largely overlooked. "A Philosopher's Economist" offers the definitive account of Hume's "worldly philosophy", and argues that economics served as a unify...

On his famous walk to Vincennes to visit the imprisoned Diderot, Rousseau had what he called an "illumination" – the realization that man was naturally good but becomes corrupted by the influence of society – a fundamental change in Rousseau's perspe...

In this unflinching look at the experience of suffering and one of its greatest manifestations – torture – J. M. Bernstein critiques the repressions of traditional moral theory, showing that our morals are not immutable ideals but fragile constructio...

Leo Bersani's career spans more than fifty years and extends across a wide spectrum of fields – including French studies, modernism, realist fiction, psychoanalytic criticism, film studies, and queer theory. Throughout this new collection of essays t...

David Graeber is not only one of today's most important living thinkers, but also one of the most influential. He is also one of the very few engaged intellectuals who has a proven track record of effective militancy on a world scale, and his impact...

The oeuvre of the Greek historian Xenophon, whose works stand with those of Plato as essential accounts of the teachings of Socrates, has seen a new surge of attention after decades in the shadows. And no one has done more in recent years to spearhea...

Although Hegel considered "Science of Logic" essential to his philosophy, it has received scant commentary compared with the other three books he published in his lifetime. Here philosopher Stanley Rosen rescues the "Science of Logic" from obscurity,...

"In an age in which the inexhaustible power of scientific technology makes all things possible, it remains to be seen where we will draw the line, where we will be able to say, here are possibilities that wisdom suggest we avoid". First published to...