Nigel Warburton

A collection of quirky, entertaining, and reader-friendly short pieces on philosophical topics that range from a theory of jerks to the ethics of ethicists.Have you ever wondered about why some people are jerks? Asked whether your driverless car should kill you so that others may live? Found a robot adorable? Considered the ethics of professional e...

From a leading philosopher of the mind comes this lucid, provocative argument that offers a radically new picture of human consciousness--panpsychism. Understanding how brains produce consciousness is one of the great scientific challenges of our age. Some philosophers argue that consciousness is something "extra," beyond the physical workings of t...

'One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman', wrote Simone de Beauvoir.This is a woman who was also to become a philosopher, a novelist, an existentialist, and a feminist icon. Her novels won prestigious literary prizes and The Second Sex transformed the way we think about sex and gender. She was also the long-term lover of Jean-Paul Sartre, but ...

An innovative and insightful exploration of the passionate early life of Socrates and the influences that led him to become the first and greatest of philosophers.Socrates: the philosopher whose questioning gave birth to the foundations of Western thought, and whose execution marked the end of the Athenian Golden Age. Yet despite his pre-eminence a...

An engaging look at the aphorism, the shortest literary form, across time, languages, and culturesAphorisms--or philosophical short sayings--appear everywhere, from Confucius to Twitter, the Buddha to the Bible, Heraclitus to Nietzsche. Yet despite this ubiquity, the aphorism is the least studied literary form. What are its origins? How did it deve...

From the celebrated author of American Philosophy: A Love Story and Hiking with Nietzsche, a compelling introduction to the life-affirming philosophy of William JamesIn 1895, William James, the father of American philosophy, delivered a lecture entitled "Is Life Worth Living?" It was no theoretical question for James, who had contemplated suicide d...

The story of the greatest of all philosophical friendships--and how it influenced modern thoughtDavid Hume is arguably the most important philosopher ever to have written in English, but during his lifetime he was attacked as "the Great Infidel" for his religious skepticism and deemed unfit to teach the young. In contrast, Adam Smith, now hailed as...

From one of Americas most brilliant writers, a New York Times bestselling journey through psychology, philosophy, and lots of meditation to show how Buddhism holds the key to moral clarity and enduring happiness.At the heart of Buddhism is a simple claim: The reason we sufferand the reason we make other people sufferis that we dont see the world cl...

"[A] lucid and thoughtful book... In a spirit of reconciliation, Crane proposes to paint a more accurate picture of religion for his fellow unbelievers." --James Ryerson, New York Times Book ReviewContemporary debate about religion seems to be going nowhere. Atheists persist with their arguments, many plausible and some unanswerable, but these make...

Utilitarianism may well be the most influential secular ethical theory in the world today. It is also one of the most controversial. It clashes, or is widely thought to clash, with many conventional moral views, and with human rights when they are seen as inviolable. Would it, for example, be right to torture a suspected terrorist in order to preve...

In this thought-provoking book, Massimo Pigliucci shares his journey of discovering the power of Stoic practices in a philosophical dialogue with one of Stoicism's greatest teachers.Who am I?What am I doing?How ought I to live my life?Stoicism teaches us to acknowledge our emotions, reflect on what causes them and redirect them for our own good. Wh...

Paley's classic examination of Christian theology identifies and attributes aspects of human physiology to divine creation, arguing that the appearance of man itself is a basis upon which we can determine the existence of God. This edition includes the anatomical illustrations. The book commences with the famous watchmaker analogy - the propositio...

Hume's brilliant and dispassionate essay "Of Miracles" has been added in this expanded edition of his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, which also includes "Of the Immortality of the Soul", "Of Suicide", and Richard Popkin's illuminating Introduction....

A boy befriends a young caveman in this modern children's classic of friendship and adventure. Barney isn't supposed to go near the chalk pit. His grandmother and sister both told him the edge could give way and he could fall in--but what else is he supposed to do on a miserable gray day? It's not long before Barney falls into the pit and bumps h...

Ever wondered who you really are? This collection enlivens this central question in the philosophy of mind. The questions posed in this book are at the heart of all philosophical reasoning. They're the ultimate questions about the self. The Mind's I contains a variety of approaches to answering the question, "Who am I?" Editors Hofstadter & Dennett...

Colin Wilson's classic exploration of the rebel as genius, with a new introduction by Gary Lachman. When the upstart English writer Colin Wilson debuted on the literary scene with The Outsider in 1956, it marked one of the opening notes of the cultural revolution of the sixties. Wilson celebrated the misfit not as a figure be "fixed" and reintegrat...

Peter Singer is often described as the world's most influential philosopher. He is also one of its most controversial. The author of important books such as Animal Liberation, Practical Ethics, Rethinking Life and Death, and The Life You Can Save, he helped launch the animal rights and effective altruism movements and contributed to the development...