Philosophy

'There are certain words which possess, in themselves, when properly used, a virtue which illumines and lifts up towards the good'The philosopher and activist Simone Weil was one of the most courageous thinkers of the twentieth century. Here she writes,...

Translated by W.H.White and A.K.Stirling. With an Introduction by Don Garrett. Benedict de Spinoza lived a life of blameless simplicity as a lens-grinder in Holland. And yet in his lifetime he was expelled from the Jewish community in Amsterdam as a...

The book that set Second Wave feminism in motion, Friedan’s galvanising polemic channels the frustrations of the women trapped in an oppressive system of strict social convention in 1960s America. This ground-breaking work remains vital to this day as...

Originally written only for his personal consumption, Marcus Aurelius's Meditations has become a key text in the understanding of Roman Stoic philosophy. This Penguin Classics edition is translated with notes by Martin Hammond and an introduction by...

The Creative Act sits at the intersection of self-help and spirituality. With his extraordinary career in the music business, Rick Rubin has plenty to say about the art of being an artist and what it takes to be truly creative. We love the...

Blaise Pascal, the precociously brilliant contemporary of Descartes, was a gifted mathematician and physicist, but it is his unfinished apologia for the Christian religion upon which his reputation now rests. The Penseés is a collection of philosohical...

From a bold new voice in nonfiction, an exhilarating account of the lives and works of influential 17th and 18th century feminist philosophers Mary Wollstonecraft and her predecessors who have been written out of history, and a searing look at...

For those of us interested in the cognitive process of everyday thoughts. In Thinking Fast & Slow, we are reminded that human reason is flawed and our minds often mislead us. Kahneman does a brilliant job explaining the two minds system in a manner...

'One of the few great and perfect works of poetic imagination written during this century' -- Elias Canetti.WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ADAM THIRWELL.One morning, Gregor Samsa wakes up to find himself transformed into a giant insect. His family is...

C.S. Lewis's dazzling allegory about heaven and hell - and the chasm fixed between them - is one of his most brilliantly imaginative tales, as he takes issue with the ideas in William Blake's 'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell'. In a dream, the narrator...

A “startling, provocative and potently useful” (James McConnachie, Times) examination of the stupid things intelligent people do.   The Intelligence Trap explores cutting-edge ideas in our understanding of intelligence and...

Inspired by the true story of a political murder that horried Russians in 1869, Fyodor Dostoevsky conceived of Demons as a "novel-pamphlet" in which he would say everything about the plague of materialist ideology that he saw infecting his native land...

This landmark collection is the definitive introduction to the Buddha's teachings - in his own words.   The American scholar-monk Bhikkhu Bodhi, whose voluminous translations have won widespread acclaim, here presents selected discourses of the Buddha...

From the author of Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, the New York Times Bestseller and Best Book of the Year at NPR, the Boston Globe, Newsweek, and many more A collection of essays spanning politics, criticism, and feminism from one of the most-watched...

The ancient Toltecs believed that life as we perceive it is a dream.   We each live in our own personal dream, and all of our dreams come together to make the Dream of the Planet. Problems arise when we forget that the dream is just a dream and fall...

When the beautiful, ambitious actress Regina takes Fosca into her life and learns his amazing truth, she is obsessed with the thought that in his memory her performances will live forever. But, as he recounts the story of his existence over more than six...

The definitive edition of articles, interviews, and seminars by the renowned philosopher and historian.Few philosophers have had as strong an influence on the way we think about power and knowledge as Michel Foucault (1926–1984). His work has...

The 120 Days of Sodom is the most extreme book in the history of literature. The Marquis de Sade narrates the escalating sex-crimes of four libertines who barricade themselves in a remote castle with both male and female victims and accomplices for a...

That Machiavelli’s name has become synonymous with cold-eyed political calculation only heightens the intrinsic fascination of The Prince–the world’s preeminent how-to manual on the art of getting and keeping power, and one of the...

The Nobel Prize winner Elias Canetti all his life declared himself a “mortal enemy” of death—and here, in English at last, is his landmark book on the subject. The Book Against Death is the work of a lifetime: a collection of Elias...