Social Media Philosophy

A study of the spiritual practices developed by the nineteenth-century American Transcendentalist movement and a case for their necessity today.

History's greatest men and minds - Epicurus, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Sun Tzu, Seneca, Beaudelaire, Sir Francis Bacon, George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, and Winston Churchill chime in during this lighthearted look at etiquette, health, fitness, culture, the arts, sports, the good life, wine, women and song.

When we think about whether we are good people leading a good life, we usually think about actions. Bad people do bad things that hurt others. Good people do good things that help others, and they avoid doing bad things. Simple. But while our actions certainly have consequences, today our inactions have far greater and far graver consequences. Bad actions can result in the suffering of a few or several dozen others; inaction can result in the extreme misery of thousands.

Data-driven instruction is the philosophy that schools should focus on two simple questions: How do you know if are students learning? And when they are not, what do you do about it? Driven by Data 2.0 is a practical guide that answers these questions to empower schools to achieve significant gains in student achievement.

Everyone deplores narcissism, especially in others. The vain are by turns annoying or absurd, offending us whether they are blissfully oblivious or proudly aware of their behavior. But are narcissism and vanity really as bad as they seem? Can we avoid them even if we try? In Mirror, Mirror, Simon Blackburn, the author of such best-selling philosophy books as Think, Being Good, and Lust, says that narcissism, vanity, pride, and self-esteem are more complex than they first appear and have innumerable good and bad forms.

A century ago, a typical US college campus was a sanctuary of privilege, with white men of means constituting nearly the entire student population. Today, half of US undergraduates live at or near the poverty line, and universities are more diverse than ever. But teaching and curricula have not caught up, resulting in stark inequities. Black and Hispanic students graduate at lower rates than their white and Asian counterparts, economically insecure and disabled students face persistent disadvantages, and in STEM disciplines gender imbalances remain the norm.

Montessori in Action: Building Resilient Montessori Schools delivers a practical and actionable method to provide a strong Montessori experience for all children, families, and educators. The first of its kind, this book offers listeners a collection of modern and concrete ways to build an equitable and resilient Montessori program.

In Maria Montessori's Philosophy, Patrick R. Frierson discusses historical influences on Montessori's philosophical views, focusing on showing how her commitment to children led her to profound insights about a wide range of philosophical questions, from foundational metaphysics to applied ethics and politics. Her metaphysics, grounded in the concept of life as she observes it developing in the child, helps to address fundamental questions about the nature of the universe and the emergence of consciousness and value within it.

Stoicism as a Warrior Philosophy grapples with these questions and more. Authored by a serving military professional, it breaks down the most advanced concepts of Stoicism into plain language without oversimplifying. Exhaustively researched, steeped in original sources, and informed by examples from the cutting edge of modern conflict, it builds upon ancient thinking to develop innovative theories of patriotic duty and ethical warfighting.

"The golden tractate" (Aureus) by Hermes Trismegistus is a classic text of Hermetic and ancient Philosophy about natural and divine magic; it will strongly influence the later Alchemic literature. The Golden Tractate of Hermes, first created in the Renaissance and rendered into English in 1850, is one of a number of texts from its era attempting to explain alchemy, along with the works of Pontanus and Artephius.

In Districts That Succeed, long-time education writer Karin Chenoweth turns her attention from effective schools to effective districts. Leveraging new, cutting-edge national research on district performance as well as in-depth reporting, Chenoweth profiles five districts that have successfully broken the correlation between race, poverty, and achievement.

Western philosophers have long claimed that God, if such a being exists, is a personal force capable of reason, and that the path to a good human life is also the path to a happy one. But what if these claims prove false, or at least deeply misleading? The Aztecs of central Mexico had a rich philosophical tradition, recorded in Latin script by Spanish clergymen and passed down for centuries in the native Nahuatl language—one of the earliest transcripts being the Huehuetlatolli, or Discourses of the Elders, compiled by Friar Andres de Olmos circa 1535.

Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson, narrated by Richard Stibbard, is a foundational work of transcendentalist philosophy that explores the profound connection between humanity and the natural world.

In How to Be, Adam Nicolson takes us on a glorious, immersive journey. Grounded in the belief that places give access to minds, however distant and strange, this book reintroduces us to our earliest thinkers through the lands they inhabited. To know the mental occupations of Homer or Heraclitus, one must visit their cities, sail their seas, and find landscapes not overwhelmed by the millennia that have passed but retain the atmosphere of that ancient life. Nicolson takes us to the dawn of investigative thought and a nexus of cross-cultural connection.

A leading scholar-practitioner and ardent proponent of culturally responsive forms of education, Jeffrey M. R. Duncan-Andrade aims to settle the debates over whether we should work toward a public education system built on the goal of equality, in which identical resources are provided for all students, or equity, in which different resources are offered in response to differences in student interests and needs.

Although Albert Camus is recognized as an important novelist and political commentator, he is often still underrated as a philosopher. Camus' Philosophy, focussing on Camus' explicitly philosophical writings, provides a detailed examination of his intellectual development, and argues that his work constitutes a coherent, carefully argued meditation on central philosophical themes.

Barack Obama famously said that the purpose of social movements is to get a seat at the table. However, as Deva Woodly argues in Reckoning—a sweeping account of the meaning and purpose of the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL)—the value of such movements is something much more profound: they are necessary for the health and survival of democracy. Drawing from on-the-ground interviews with activists in the movement, Woodly analyzes the emergence of the M4BL, its organizational structure and culture, and its strategies and tactics.

This book is a profound exploration of the external influences that shape human consciousness, from healing rituals to digital devices. In this voyage through thousands of years of psychosomatic healing, distinguished anthropologist and sociologist Roger Bartra examines the placebo effect as a key to our understanding of human consciousness. Shamans and Robots demonstrates how biology and technology become intertwined within human culture by using the various histories of ritual and symbolic healing to speculate about future developments in artificial intelligence.

John Stuart Mill (1806-73) is widely regarded as the leading liberal philosopher, economist, and political theorist of nineteenth century Britain. In his lifetime, he was best known for his System of Logic (1843) and the Principles of Political Economy (1848). Today Mill is chiefly identified with On Liberty (1859), perhaps the definitive text of modern liberal statement of its subject, and probably the single most important work of modern political thought.

Les essais composant ce livre explorent six d’entre elles, à savoir la dignité humaine, l’intelligence, la liberté, le bonheur, la mort et la beauté.