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All philosophy is a footnote to Plato. No other person so shaped the Western world and the way we think about it. Plato’s questions remain as real for us today as they were 2500 years ago, and as human beings, we can not avoid their presence nor shirk our responsibility to attempt to answer them: What is Justice? What is Truth? What is Beauty? What kind of society should we build? How do we know what we know? Plato For Beginners introduces the reader to Socrates, Plato’s mentor whose martyrdom led Plato to formulate a new system of knowledge based on reason. Socrates was found guilty and sentenced to death for introducing other divinities. He was also found guilty of corrupting youth. Plato For Beginners also covers the history of Greece as well as the life and ideas of this great philosopher and his influence over time, from early Christianity to the 20th century. The reader learns what he meant by Truth, Beauty, and the Good. Classical dialogues such as Symposium, Phaedo, The Apology and The Republic are all explored in the context of his time and our own. |
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If you are like most people, you’re not sure what Postmodernism is. And if this were like most books on the subject, it probably wouldn’t tell you. Besides what a few grumpy critics claim, Postmodernism is not a bunch of meaningless intellectual mind games. On the contrary, it is a reaction to the most profound spiritual and philosophical crises of our time—the failure of the Enlightenment. Jim Powell takes the position that Postmodernism is a series of “maps” that help people find their way through a changing world. Postmodernism For Beginners features the thoughts of Foucault on power and knowledge, Jameson on mapping the postmodern, Baudrillard on the media, Harvey on time-space compression, Derrida on deconstruction and Deleuze and Guattari on rhizomes. The book also discusses postmodern artifacts such as Madonna, cyberpunk sci-fi, Buddhist ecology and teledildonics. |
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Sartre For Beginners is an accessible, yet sophisticated introduction to the life and works of the famous French philosopher, Jean Paul Sartre. Sartre was a member the French underground during World War II, a novelist, a playwright, and a major influence in French political and intellectual life. The book opens with a biographical section, introducing the significant events in the life of the man who coined the term, “Existentialism.” Then it examines Sartre’s early philosophical works. Ideas from Sartre’s other fictional and dramatic works are discussed, but the greatest part of the book is the presentation of the main concepts from Sartre’s Being and Nothingness (1943). These ideas include the topics of consciousness, freedom, responsibility, absurdity, “bad faith”, authenticity and the hellish confrontation with other people. Finally, the book deals with Sartre’s modification of his earlier existentialism to compliment his conversion to a kind of “existential” Marxism. Sartre For Beginners summarizes the work of the most renowned philosopher of the 20th century. |
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STRUCTURALISM AND POSTSTRUCTURALISM FOR BEGINNERS “In its less dramatic versions,” writes author Donald Palmer, “structuralism is just a method of studying language, society, and the works of artists and novelists. But in its most exuberant form, it is a philosophy, an overall worldview that provides an account of reality and knowledge.” Poststructuralism is a loosely knit intellectual movement, comprised mainly of ex-structuralists who either became dissatisfied with the theory or felt they could improve it. Structuralism and Poststructuralism For Beginners is an illustrated tour through the mysterious landscape of these two theories. The book’s starting point is the linguistic theory of Ferdinand de Saussure. The book moves on to the anthropologist and literary critic Claude Levi-Strauss; the semiologist and literary critic Roland Barthes; the Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser; the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan; the deconstructionist Jacques Derrida. The book concludes by examining the postmodern obsession with language and with the radical claim of the disappearance of the individual—obsessions that unite the work of all of these theorists. |
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Zen from its foundation in China of the 6th Century AD, has always been more than a religion. It is an intriguing system of principles and practice designed to give each individual the experience of eternity in a split second, the knowledge of divinity in every living thing. To create a book about Zen, however, is risky. It is one thing to describe the factual history of this exotic strain of Buddhism. It’s quite another to successfully convey the crazy wisdom of the Zen masters, their zany sense of their uncanny ability to pass on the experience of enlightenment to their students. The authors of Zen For Beginners have clearly overcome these considerable risks. The books uses an engaging mix of clear, informative writing and delightful illustrations to document the story of Zen from its impact on Chinese and Japanese culture to its influence on American writers such as Japanese culture to its influence on American writers such as Ginsberg and Kerouac. |