Philosophy Ethics

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted reimagines the debate on poverty, making a “provocative and compelling” (NPR) argument about why it persists in America: because the rest of us benefit from it. A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, The New...

In Tending the Heart of Virtue, Vigen Guroian illuminates the power of classic tales and their impact on the moral imagination. He demonstrates how these stories teach the virtues through vivid depictions of the struggle between good and evil, while he also unveils components of the good, the true, and the beautiful in plot and character. With clarity and elegance, Guroian reads deeply into the classic stories.

The Craftsman explores the relation between the hand and the head. Richard Sennett argues that working with physical things stimulates people to think. Craftsmanship, says Sennett, names the basic human impulse to do a job well for its own sake, and good craftsmanship involves developing skills and focusing on the work rather than ourselves. The computer programmer, the doctor, the artist, and even the parent and citizen all engage in a craftsman's work. In this thought-provoking book, Sennett explores the work of craftsmen past and present.

Philosophical Investigations was published in 1953, two years after the death of its author. In the preface written in Cambridge in 1945 where he was professor of philosophy he states: ‘Four years ago I had occasion to re-read my first book (the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus) and to explain its ideas to someone. It suddenly seemed to me that I should publish those old thoughts and the new ones together: that the latter could be seen in the right light only by contrast with and against the background of my old way of thinking.’

The essential guide for ethical decision-making in the 21st century, The Power of Ethics depicts “ethical decision-making not in a nebulous philosophical space, but at the point where the rubber meets the road” (Michael Schur, producer and creator of The Good Place). It’s not your...

Ethics is one of the most unique works in Western philosophy, an attempt to handle metaphysics, theology, anthropology, and ontology through the lens of geometric proofs. Spinoza felt that the path to happiness is through reason, in the use of the mind to demystify our existence and liberate us from passions and superstitions.

What makes us moral beings? How do we decide what is good and what is evil? And has it always been that way? Hanno Sauer's sweeping new history of humanity, covering five million years of our universal moral values, comes at a crucial moment of crisis for those values, and helps to explain how they arose—and why we need them. Modern societies are in crisis: a shared universal morality seems to be a thing of the past. Hanno Sauer explains why this appearance is deceptive: in fact, there are universal values that all people share.

Publicado por primera vez en 1781 y revisado en 1787, Crítica de la Razón Pura es considerada la obra maestra de Kant y una de las piezas centrales de la filosofía moderna. Kant busca responder a preguntas fundamentales sobre la naturaleza del conocimiento humano, la relación entre la experiencia y la realidad, y los límites de la razón. La Crítica de la Razón Pura marcó un punto de inflexión en la filosofía al proponer que ni el empirismo ni el racionalismo por sí solos podían explicar completamente el conocimiento humano.

The book is one of the most influential ethical treatises of all time. Written in 350 BC, it identifies happiness as life's goal. How do we achieve this goal? Not through the satisfactions that come from pleasure, wealth, or fame. According to Aristotle, the true path to happiness lies in contemplation of philosophic truth. This is the only action through which humans can exercise their distinctively unique trait: the ability to reason.

Control is a book about what geneticist Adam Rutherford calls “a defining idea of the twentieth century.” Inspired by Darwin’s ideas about evolution, eugenics arose in Victorian England as a theory for improving the British population, and quickly spread to America. With disarming wit and scientific precision, Rutherford explains why eugenics still figures prominently in the twenty-first century, despite its genocidal past. And he confronts insidious recurring questions, revealing the intellectual bankruptcy of the idea, and the scientific impossibility of its realization.

Derek Parfit (1942–2017) is the most famous philosopher most people have never heard of. Widely regarded as one of the greatest moral thinkers of the past hundred years, Parfit was anything but a public intellectual. Yet his ideas have shaped the way philosophers think about things that affect us all: equality, altruism, what we owe to future generations, and even what it means to be a person. In Parfit, David Edmonds presents the first biography of an intriguing, obsessive, and eccentric genius.

In Thomas Ligotti's first nonfiction outing, an examination of the meaning (or meaninglessness) of life through an insightful, unsparing argument that proves the greatest horrors are not the products of our imagination but instead are found in reality. "There is a signature motif discernible in...

'The two foes of human happiness are pain and boredom.' Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) was one of the most influential philosophers of the 19th century because his humanistic, atheistic, if pessimistic views chimed with a new secularism that was emerging from a Western society dominated by religion. Despite his rather forbidding image (and a few outdated views), he is one of the most approachable German philosophers, and this is certainly evident in these two key works, The Wisdom of Life and Counsels and Maxims.

We're all searching for answers to the biggest questions: How can we be good? Find calm? Properly grieve? Beat FOMO? Work out what truly matters? Well, the good news is that the wisest minds in history asked the exact same questions—and they found answers. The ancient philosophy of Stoicism shows us that we are already in possession of the very tools we need to excavate this much-needed wisdom for ourselves. So into the past we go with Brigid Delaney, to a time not unlike our own: one full of pandemonium, war, plagues, pestilence, treachery, corruption, anxiety, and overindulgence.

This first new translation of Kierkegaard's masterwork in a generation brings an essential work of modern philosophy to vivid life. While the majority of Kierkegaard's work leading up to The Concept of Anxiety dealt with the intersection of faith and knowledge, here the renowned Danish philosopher turns to the perennial question of sin and guilt. First published in 1844, this concise treatise identified - long before Freud - anxiety as a deep-seated human state, one that embodies the endless struggle with our own spiritual identities.

How can you reconcile yourself with the lives you will never lead, with possibilities foreclosed, and with nostalgia for lost youth? How can you accept the failings of the past, the sense of futility in the tasks that consume the present, and the prospect of death that blights the future? In this self-help book with a difference, Kieran Setiya confronts the inevitable challenges of adulthood and middle age, showing how philosophy can help you thrive. You will learn why missing out might be a good thing, how options are overrated, and when you should be glad you made a mistake.

Authored with insightful comments and artful, eloquent prose, Seneca’s Letters to Lucilius are a testament to the ancient Greek and Roman thought which shaped the modern world. In this audiobook, you will discover 124 letters on the art of stoicism - the powerful philosophy which is growing ever more popular in the modern world.

A pathbreaking neuroscientist reveals how our social instincts turn Me into Us, but turn Us against Them - and what we can do about it. The great dilemma of our shrinking world is simple: never before have those we disagree with been so present in our lives. The more globalization dissolves national borders, the more clearly we see that human beings are deeply divided on moral lines - about everything from tax codes to sexual practices to energy consumption - and that, when we really disagree, our emotions turn positively tribal.

In Truth Matters, Cornel West and Robert P. George address a range of social issues on which Americans today are bitterly divided. Their book models robust intellectual engagement and civil discourse as they explore vital questions surrounding the idea of truth and its foundational role in our lives.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER David Brooks challenges us to rebalance the scales between the focus on external success—“résumé virtues”—and our core principles. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE ECONOMIST With the wisdom, humor, curiosity, and sharp insights that...