Modern Philosophy

This volume also includes a collection of essays entitled The Educational Frontier, Dewey's articles on logic, the outlawry of war, and philosophy for the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, and his reviews of Alfred North Whitehead's Adventures of Ideas, Martin Schutze's Academic Illusions in the Field of Letters and the Arts, and Rexford G. Tugwell's Industrial Discipline and the Governmental Arts.

There is a cause, or a reason, behind everything that happens. This is the fundamental view behind the classical proposition the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which, in 1813, Schopenhauer chose as his subject for further examination in his doctoral dissertation On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason....

With dizzying social transformations in everything from gender to social justice, it may seem like there's never been a more tumultuous period in history. But a single year in the late 18th century saw a number of influential transformations—or even revolutions—that changed the social trajectory of the Western world. By understanding how those events influenced today's cultural landscape, Christians can more effectively bear witness to God's truth in a post-Christian age.

One of Nietzsche’s earliest works, The Birth of Tragedy (1872) is a remarkable source of inspiration. It is here that the philosopher expresses his frustration with the contemporary world and urges man to embrace Dionysian energy once more. He refutes European culture since the time of Socrates, arguing that it is one-sidedly Apollonian and prevents man from living in optimistic harmony with the sufferings of life.

The Clockwork Universe is the story of a band of men who lived in a world of dirt and disease but pictured a universe that ran like a perfect machine. A meld of history and science, this book is a group portrait of some of the greatest minds who ever lived as they wrestled with natures most sweeping mysteries. The answers they uncovered still hold the key to how we understand the world.

The period from 1933 to 1943 was one of the darkest and most chaotic in human history, as the Second World War unfolded with unthinkable cruelty. It was also a crucial decade in the dramatic, intersecting lives of some of history’s greatest philosophers. There were four women, in particular, whose parallel ideas would come to dominate the twentieth century—at once in necessary dialogue and in striking contrast with one another.

It has been proclaimed many times, but perhaps never more convincingly than now, when every news cycle seems to deliver further confirmation of a world gone mad. Is this the endgame? Author Spencer Klavan is a classicist, with a Ph.D. from Oxford, and a deep understanding of the West. His analysis: The situation is dire. But every crisis we face today, we have faced before. And we can surmount each one. Klavan brings to the West’s defense the insights of Plato, Aristotle, the Bible, and the Founding Fathers to show that in the wisdom of the past lies hope for the future.

The Reveries of the Solitary Walker was one of the last works written by the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) and was, in fact, not quite complete. It was published four years after his death and came quickly to be regarded as one of his most poetic works. It consists of 10 Walks (only the final ‘Walk’ was unfinished) during which he muses on a variety of topics including thoughts on issues which featured strongly in his notable life as a philosopher and commentator, including education and political philosophy.

Kierkegaard wasn't really a philosopher in the academic sense. Yet he produced what many people expect of philosophy. His subject was the individual and his or her existence, the "existing being." In Kierkegaard's view, this purely subjective entity lay beyond the reach of reason, logic, philosophical systems, theology, or even "the pretenses of psychology." Nonetheless, it was the source of all these subjects. The branch of philosophy to which Kierkegaard gave birth has come to be known as existentialism.

Modern Esoteric examines the flaws in modern history and looks at how conspiracy theories, esoteric knowledge, and fringe subjects can be used to help change the dead-end course humanity seems to be following. The Lifeology section explores the long "alternative narrative" of life on this planet. In the Control section, author Brad Olsen examines how Big Brother is here in the New World Order, and how they keep the knowledge of humankind's true nature from the mass population. Finally, the Thrive section looks at all the ways humans are evolving to achieve their full potential.

A best-selling journalist’s illuminating tour through the hidden legacies and modern realities of British empire that exposes how much of the present-day United Kingdom is actually rooted in its colonial past. Empireland boldly and lucidly makes the case that in order to understand America, we must first understand British imperialism. Empire—whether British or otherwise—informs nearly everything we do.

Have you heard that language is violence and that science is sexist? Have you read that certain people shouldn't practice yoga? Or been told that being obese is healthy, that there is no such thing as biological sex, or that only White people can be racist? Are you confused by these ideas, and do you wonder how they have managed to challenge the logic of Western society? In this probing volume, Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay document the evolution of the dogma that informs these ideas, from its coarse origins in French postmodernism to its refinement within activist academic fields.

Soren Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher, theologian, and religious author interested in human psychology. He is regarded as a leading pioneer of existentialism and one of the greatest philosophers of the 19th Century.

In 1793 William Smith, a canal digger, made a startling discovery that was to turn the fledgling science of the history of the earth - and a central plank of established Christian religion - on its head. He noticed that the rocks he was excavating were arranged in layers; more important, he could see quite clearly that the fossils found in one layer were very different from those found in another. And out of that realization came an epiphany.

In this rich, irreverent, and compelling history, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg takes us across centuries, from ancient Miletus to medieval Baghdad and Oxford, from Plato's Academy and the Museum of Alexandria to the cathedral school of Chartres and the Royal Society of London. He shows that the scientists of ancient and medieval times not only did not understand what we understand about the world--they did not understand what there is to understand or how to understand it.

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.

Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is a core text of modern philosophy. Presenting an examination of the nature of human reason, its central argument is that the way in which man perceives his environment is a direct consequence of the mind’s ability to act on this environment and convert it into something meaningful. The work brings together two opposing schools of philosophy—rationalism and empiricism—and proposes a third way, which came to be known as transcendental idealism. The work proved to be hugely influential, not least on Marx, Heidegger and Nietzsche.

Evil threatens human reason, for it challenges our hope that the world makes sense. For 18th-century Europeans, the Lisbon earthquake was manifest evil. Today we view evil as a matter of human cruelty, and Auschwitz as its extreme incarnation. Examining our understanding of evil from the Inquisition to contemporary terrorism, Susan Neiman explores who we have become in the three centuries that separate us from the early Enlightenment. In the process, she rewrites the history of modern thought and points philosophy back to the questions that originally animated it.

This is the third volume in the All and Everything series, consisting of four books. These audiobooks are written according to entirely new principles of logical reasoning and strictly directed toward the solution of the following three cardinal problems. The third volume deals with the assistance of the arising, in the mentation, and in the feelings of the listener, of a veritable, non-fantastic representation not of that illusory world which they now perceive, but of the world existing in reality.

Twenty-seven years ago, Matthieu Ricard gave up a promising career as a scientist to study Tibetan Buddhism—not as a detached observer but by immersing himself in its practice under the guidance of its greatest living masters. Years later, this project was born, and Ricard met with his father, Jean-Francois Revel—a French philosopher who became world famous for his challenges to both Communism and Christianity. At an inn, these two profoundly thoughtful men explored questions that have occupied humankind throughout its history.