Explores overlapping concerns and themes in African(a) and continental philosophy. In Existence and Heritage, Tsenay Serequeberhan examines what the European philosophical tradition has to offer when encountered from the outsider perspective of postcolonial African thought. He reads Kant in the context of contemporary international relations, finds in Gadamer's work a way of conceiving relations among differing traditions, and explores Heidegger's...

Heinrich Zimmer (1890–1943) was an Indologist, linguist, and historian of South Asian art. Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) was the author of many books on comparative mythology, including The Hero with a Thousand Faces and The Masks of God. A Princeton Classics edition of an essential work of twentieth-century scholarship on India Since its first publication, Philosophies of India has been considered a monumental exploration of the foundations...

The Dialogues of Plato, written between 427 and 347 b.c., rank among the most important and influential works in Western thought. Most famous are the first four, in which Plato casts his teacher Socrates as the central disputant in colloquies that brilliantly probe a vast spectrum of philosophical ideas and issues. Socrates' ancient words are still true, and the ideas found in Plato's Dialogues still form the foundation of a thinking person's education....

What is "Chinese philosophy?" What is "philosophy" itself? How can one understand unfamiliar philosophical stances? How can comparison become a prominent philosophical tool? In this book, Massimiliano Lacertosa examines these questions by proposing an ethical understanding of the aesthetic encounter with the other and the world. Through the analysis of the works of Laozi, Zhuangzi, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, among others, this book explores the possibilities...

A noted scholar elucidates the distinguishing characteristics of the works of several Jewish thinkers of the Middle Ages. In addition to summaries of the main arguments and teachings of Moses Maimonides, Isaac Israeli, Judah Halevi, Abraham Ibn Daud, Hillel ben Samuel, Levi ben Gerson, and others, the author offers insightful analyses.

"The concept of the universal was born in the lands we now call Europe, yet it is precisely the universal that is Europe's undoing. All European politics is caught in a tension: to assert a European identity is to be open to multiplicity, but this very openness could dissolve Europe as such. This book reflects on Europe and its changing boundaries over the span of twenty centuries. A work of philosophy, it consistently draws on concrete events. From...

Offers philosophical and psychological reflections on cruelty and tenderness. The Cudgel and the Caress explores the enduring significance of tenderness and cruelty in a range of works across philosophy, psychoanalysis, and literature. Divided into two parts, the book initially focuses on tenderness, with David Farrell Krell delivering original readings of Homer's Iliad, Sophocles's Antigone, and writings by Hölderlin, Hegel, Freud, and Derrida...

Wing-tsit Chan (1901–1994) was the Anna R. D. Gillespie Professor of Philosophy at Chatham University and professor emeritus of Chinese philosophy and culture at Dartmouth College. A monumental compendium of Chinese thought, from pre-Confucianism to Chinese Communism A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy covers the entire historical development of Chinese philosophy from its ancient origins to today, providing the most wide-ranging and authoritative...

Scott Soames, formerly Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University, is now Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern California. He is the author of Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century, Volumes 1 and 2 (Princeton), Beyond Rigidity, and Understanding Truth. In this book, Scott Soames defends the revolution in philosophy led by Saul Kripke, Hilary Putnam, and David Kaplan against attack from those wishing to revive descriptivism...

One of the founders of existentialism, the eminent philosopher Karl Jaspers here presents for the general reader an introduction to philosophy. In doing so, he also offers a lucid summary of his own philosophical thought. In Jaspers' view, the source of philosophy is to be found "in wonder, in doubt, in a sense of forsakenness," and the philosophical quest is a process of continual change and self-discovery.-Print ed.