Provides introductions to classic works of philosophy. This book guides the reader to an understanding of the text as a whole, exploring the reception and influence of this philosophical work.

Despite growing interest in her philosophy, Simone de Beauvoir remains widely misunderstood. She is typically portrayed as a mere intellectual follower of her companion, Jean-Paul Sartre. In Philosophical Writings, Beauvoir herself shows that nothing could be further from the truth. Beauvoir's philosophical work suffers from a lack of English-language translation or, worse, mistranslation into heavily condensed popular versions. Philosophical Writings provides an unprecedented collection of complete, scholarly editions of philosophical texts that cover the first twenty-three years of Beauvoir's career, including a number of recently discovered works. Ranging from metaphysical literature to existentialist ethics, Philosophical Writings brings together diverse elements of Beauvoir's work while highlighting continuities in the development of her thought. Each of the translations features detailed notes and a scholarly introduction explaining its larger significance. Revelatory and long overdue, Philosophical Writings adds to the ongoing resurgence of interest in Beauvoir's thought and to her growing influence on today's philosophical curriculum.

Major Works is the finest single-volume anthology of influential philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein's important writings. Featuring the complete texts of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, The Blue and Brown Books: Studies for 'Philosophical Investigations,' and On Certainty, this new collection selects from the early, middle, and later career of this revolutionary thinker, widely recognized as one of the most profound minds of all time.

The most comprehensive collection available of Bacon's philosophical and scientific writings, this volume offers Bacon's major works in their entirety, or in generous selections, revised from the classic 19th century editions of Spedding, Ellis and Heath. Selections from Bacon's natural histories round out this edition by showing the types of compilations that he believed would most contribute to the third part of his Great Instauration. In her General Introduction, Rose-Mary Sargent sketches Bacon's early life, education, and legal career, and discusses the major components of his philosophical works, and traces his influence on subsequent natural philosophy.

Mendelssohn's Philosophical Writings, helped propel its author to the forefront of the Berlin Enlightenment.

Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1996) has exerted a profound influence on 20th-century continental philosophy. This anthology, including Levinas's key philosophical texts over a period of more than forty years, provides an ideal introduction to his thought and offers insights into his most innovative ideas. Five of the ten essays presented here appear in English for the first time. An introduction by Adriaan Peperzak outlines Levinas's philosophical development and the basic themes of his writings. Each essay is accompanied by a brief introduction and notes. This collection is an ideal text for students of philosophy concerned with understanding and assessing the work of this major philosopher.

With an introduction by Charlotte R. Brown and William Edward Morris. David Hume (1711–1776) was the most important philosopher ever to write in English, as well as a master stylist. This volume contains his major philosophical works. A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–1740), published while Hume was still in his twenties, consists of three books on the understanding, the passions, and morals. It applies the experimental method of reasoning to human nature in a revolution that was intended to make Hume the Newton of the moral sciences. Disappointed with the Treatise’s failure to bring about such a revolution, Hume later recast Book I as An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (1751), and Book III as An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, which he regarded as ‘incomparably the best’ of all his works. Both Enquiries went through several editions in his lifetime. Hume’s works, controversial in his day, remain deeply and widely influential in ours, especially for his contributions to our understanding of the nature of morality, political and economic theory, philosophy of religion, and philosophical naturalism. This volume also includes Hume’s anonymous Abstract of Books I and II of the Treatise, and the short autobiographical essay, ‘My Own Life’, which he wrote just before his death.

What is the meaning of life? Are we truly free? How can we make ethical choices? Discover the answers to life's greatest questions. Demystifying the key ideas of the world's greatest philosophers, and exploring all of the most important branches of philosophical thought in a uniquely visual way, this book is the perfect introduction to the history of philosophy. How Philosophy Works combines bold infographics and jargon-free text to demystify fundamental concepts about the nature of reality. Covering everything from ethics to epistemology and phenomenology, the book presents the ideas and theories of key philosophical traditions and philosophers - from Plato and Socrates to Nietzsche and Wittgenstein via Kant - in a novel, easy-to-understand way. Its infographics will help you to understand the elements of philosophy on a conceptual level and, by tackling life's "big questions", it will help you to look at the world in an entirely new way. With its unique graphic approach and clear, authoritative text, How Philosophy Works is the perfect introduction to philosophy, and the ideal companion to DK's The Philosophy Book in the "Big Ideas" series.

This book is designed to explain the technical ideas that are taken for granted in much contemporary philosophical writing. Notions like 'denumerability', 'modal scope distinction', 'Bayesian conditionalization', and 'logical completeness' are usually only elucidated deep within difficult specialist texts. By offering simple explanations that by-pass much irrelevant and boring detail, Philosophical Devices is able to cover a wealth of material that is normally only available to specialists. The book contains four sections, each of three chapters. The first section is about sets and numbers, starting with the membership relation and ending with the generalized continuum hypothesis. The second is about analyticity, a prioricity, and necessity. The third is about probability, outlining the difference between objective and subjective probability and exploring aspects of conditionalization and correlation. The fourth deals with metalogic, focusing on the contrast between syntax and semantics, and finishing with a sketch of Gödel's theorem. Philosophical Devices will be useful for university students who have got past the foothills of philosophy and are starting to read more widely, but it does not assume any prior expertise. All the issues discussed are intrinsically interesting, and often downright fascinating. It can be read with pleasure and profit by anybody who is curious about the technical infrastructure of contemporary philosophy.

Martin Heidegger's reading of Aristotle was one of the pivotal influences in the development of his philosophy. First published in German in 1981 as volume 33 of Heidegger's Collected Works, this book translates a lecture course he presented at the University of Freiburg in 1931. Heidegger's careful translation and his probing commentary on the first three chapters of Book IX of Metaphysics show the close correlation between his phenomenological interpretation of the Greeks (especially of Aristotle) and his critique of metaphysics. Additionally, Heidegger's confrontation with Aristotle's Greek text makes a significant contribution to contemporary scholarship on Aristotle, particularly the understanding of potentiality in Aristotle's thought. Finally, the book exemplifies Heidegger's gift for teaching students how to read a philosophical text and how to question that text in a philosophical way.