This article is an introduction to the first English edition of Karl Kautsky's article series "The American Worker" (Karl Kautsky, “Der amerikanische Arbeiter”, Die neue Zeit, 24. 1905-1906, 1. Bd., 1906, H. 21, S. 676-683, H. 22, S. 717-727, H. 23, S. 740-752, H. 24, S. 773-787), which was a Marxist reply to Werner Somart's book Why Is There No Socialism in the United States? (Werner Sombart, Warum gibt es in den Vereinigten Staaten keinen Sozialismus?, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1906).

In Marxist circles it is common to refer to Karl Marx’s The Civil War in France for a theoretical analysis of the historical significance of the Paris Commune, and to Prosper-Olivier Lissagaray’s History of the Commune of 1871 for a description of the facts surrounding the insurrection of the Paris workers and its repression by the National Assembly led by Adolphe Thiers. What is less well-known is that Marx himself oversaw the German translation of Lissagaray’s book and made numerous additions (...) to it. In this article we describe Marx’s addenda to Lissagaray’s work, showing how they contribute to concretising his analysis of the Paris Commune and how they relate to the split in the International Working Men’s Association between Marxists and anarchists that took place after the Commune’s defeat. We also show how Marx’s additions to the German version of Lissagaray’s book were linked to his involvement with the recently created Socialist Workers’ Party of Germany and to his criticism of the programme it had adopted at the congress celebrated in the city of Gotha. (shrink)

The origins of the Transitional Programme in Trotsky’s writings have been traced in the secondary literature. Much less attention has been paid to the earlier origins of the Transitional Programme in the debates of the Communist International between its Third and Fourth Congress, and in particular to the contribution of its largest national section outside Russia, the German Communist Party, which had been the origin of the turn to the united-front tactic in 1921. This article attempts to uncover the roots (...) of the Transitional Programme in the debates of the Communist International. This task is important because it shows that the Transitional Programme’s slogans are not sectarian shibboleths, but the result of the collective revolutionary experience of the working class during the period under consideration, from the Bolshevik Revolution to the founding conference of the Fourth International. (shrink)

During its first four congresses, held annually under Lenin, the Communist International went through two distinct phases: while the first two congresses focused on programmatic and organisational aspects of the break with Social-Democratic parties, the third congress, meeting after the putsch known as the ‘March Action’ of 1921 in Germany, adopted the slogan ‘To the masses!’, while the fourth codified this new line in the ‘Theses on the Unity of the Proletarian Front’. The arguments put forward by the first two (...) congresses were originally drafted by leaders of the Russian Communist Party, but the initiative for the adoption of the united-front policy came from the German Communist Party under the leadership of Paul Levi. This article explores the historical circumstances that turned the German Communists into the pioneers of the united-front tactic. In the documentary appendix we add English versions of two documents drafted by Levi: the ‘Letter to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Germany’ on the Kapp Putsch, dated 16 March 1920, and thekpd’s ‘Open Letter’ of 8 January 1921, which gave rise to the united-front tactic. (shrink)

The decriminalisation of homosexuality was a measure originally adopted by the bourgeois revolutions, which was abandoned by the bourgeois parties as the rise of the labour movement led the bourgeoisie to seek a compromise with landlords, clergy and monarchy in different countries. The demand to decriminalise homosexuality was therefore taken over by the Marxist workers’ parties, such as the Social-Democratic Party of Germany before the First World War and the Bolshevik Party in Russia after the Revolution of October 1917. This (...) article outlines the cooperation between the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee led by Magnus Hirschfeld and Social Democracy to decriminalise homosexuality by removing Paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code before the First World War. It also describes the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Russia under Lenin, with the adoption of the first Soviet Penal Code in June 1922, and Magnus Hirschfeld’s relations with prominent figures of the early Soviet government such as N.A. Semashko, the first People’s Commissar of Public Health, and Anatoly Lunacharsky, the first People’s Commissar for Education. Those ties ceased with the Nazis’ rise to power in January 1933, which resulted in the destruction of the institutions created by Hirschfeld, such as the Institute for Sexual Science and the World League for Sexual Reform, while in the Soviet Union itself Stalin recriminalised homosexuality in March 1934, shortly before Hirschfeld’s death, linking homosexuality and fascism. (shrink)

Th is work is a companion piece to "The American Worker," Karl Kautsky's reply to Werner Sombart’s Why Is There No Socialism in the United States? (1906), first published in English in the November 2003 edition of the journal Historial Materialism. In August 1909 Kautsky wrote an article on Samuel Gompers, the president of the American Federation of Labor, on the occasion of the latter's first European tour. Th e article was not only a criticism of Gompers’s anti-socialist "pure-and-simple" unionism (...) but also part of an ongoing battle between the revolutionary wing of German Social Democracy and the German trade-union officials. In this critical English edition we provide the historical background to the document as well as an overview of the issues raised by Gompers' visit to Germany, such as the bureaucratisation and increasing conservatism of the union leadership in both Germany and the United States, the role of the General Commission of Free Trade Unions in the abandonment of Marxism by the German Social-Democratic Party and the socialists’ attitude toward institutions promoting class collaboration like the National Civic Federation. (shrink)

Vera Zasulich’s shooting of Trepov, a governor of St Petersburg who had ordered the flogging of a political prisoner, in January 1878, catapulted her to international fame as a revolutionary heroine, a reputation that she put to good use by becoming one of the five ‘founding parents’ of Russian Marxism that created the ‘Group for the Emancipation of Labour’ in 1883. But her act of self-sacrifice also triggered, to her dismay, the institutionalisation of individual terrorist tactics in the Russian Populist (...) movement with the creation of the ‘People’s Will’ (Narodnaya Volya) Party in 1879. The organisation went into decline after the killing of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, and Populism itself was increasingly superseded by Marxism as the hegemonic force on the left with the rise of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP). But individual terrorist tactics reappeared with the creation of the Socialist Revolutionary Party in 1902, prompting Zasulich to write an article for Die neue Zeit, the theoretical organ of German Social Democracy, in which she both condemned the Neo-Populist tendency as deleterious to the rising labour movement and supported the organisational plans for the RSDLP sponsored by the Iskra group, developed at length by Lenin in his book What Is to Be Done?, published in March 1902. This article provides the background to Vera Zasulich’s article ‘The Terrorist Tendency in Russia’ (December 1902), setting it against the history of the Russian revolutionary movement from 1878 to 1902. (shrink)

This article analyses the intellectual and political trajectory of the Pasado y Presente group in Argentina, focusing on its main representative, José María Aricó (1931–91). Although usually described as ‘the Argentine Gramscians’, the ‘Gramscianism’ of the Pasado y Presente group was actually little more than a theoretical cover for its erratic political behaviour, which led them from Stalinism to Guevarism, from Guevarism to Maoism, from Maoism to Montoneros’s branch of Peronism, and from Peronism to Alfonsín’s Radicalism. Politically, their weakest point (...) was that they distanced themselves from Stalinism empirically, because of the popularity of foquism, without undertaking a thorough critique of Stalinism. This made them vulnerable to the ubsequent crisis of Stalinism, which they identified with a ‘crisis of Marxism’ sans phrase. What made them historically significant was that they articulated the radicalisation of a whole social layer in Latin America under the impact of the Cuban Revolution, as well as its subsequent deradicalisation and adaptation to bourgeois parliamentary democracy. The article closes with an analysis of Aricó’s intellectual legacy, particularly his well-known book Marx y América Latina (1980). (shrink)

El surgimiento y consolidación en el seno de la clase obrera de un estrato social —la burocracia sindical— que, aunque tenga su origen en dicha clase, con el tiempo adquiere privilegios e intereses que lo llevan a defender posiciones contrarias a la independencia política de los trabajadores, desarticulándolos políticamente y subordinándolos al Estado burgués, es un fenómeno universal del capitalismo. En este artículo, describiremos los intentos realizados por el zarismo ruso de crear artificialmente una burocracia sindical bajo la égida de (...) la policía entre 1898 y 1905. La peculiaridad de la experiencia rusa durante los años inmediatamente anteriores a la revolución de 1905 reside en el hecho de que no tuvo lugar, como ocurrió usualmente en otros países, mediante el otorgamiento de la libertad de huelga, de reunión y de asociación a los trabajadores y mediante la cooptación gradual de su estrato dirigente por el Estado burgués, sino como resultado de una iniciativa del Ministerio del Interior, y dentro de él de la Policía Secreta (Ojrana), en contraposición tanto a la política oficial del zarismo, que no legalizó los sindicatos hasta 1906, como a la del Ministerio de Finanzas, que controlaba a los inspectores de fábrica y era particularmente sensible a las presiones de los capitalistas. Las contradicciones de dicha política estallaron con la masacre perpetrada por el zarismo durante el “Domingo Sangriento” del 9 de enero de 1905, que dio comienzo a la primera revolución rusa y condujo a la legalización parcial de la actividad sindical. (shrink)

Argentine historiography in general, and the history of the Argentine Left in particular, does not receive the attention it deserves in the Anglo-Saxon academic world, due to linguistic and cultural barriers. In this article, we attempt to review for the English-reading public three recent contributions to the history of Marxism in Argentina (Horacio Tarcus's Marx en la Argentina: Sus primeros lectores obreros, intelectuales y científicos, Hernán Camarero's A la conquista de la clase obrera: Los comunistas y el mundo del trabajo (...) en la Argentina, 1920–1935 and Osvaldo Coggiola's Historia del trotskismo en Argentina y América Latina) covering the entire historical spectrum from the early history of Argentine socialism to the history of the PCA and, finally, to the history of local Trotskyism. We attempt to place these works in the context of Argentine historiography and of the political context in which those books were written. (shrink)

A materialist criticism of the interpretation of American history offered by Charles A. Beard finds that both the strengths and the weaknesses of the Progressive — or rather Populist — historians can be deduced from their character as intellectual representatives of the old middle class of petty proprietors. This class was especially influential in American history due to the presence of the "frontier," the petit-bourgeois regime of landed property, and the special character of American class coalitions. The way out of (...) the current impasse in American historical studies is to develop a materialist interpretation of American history having the peculiarities of U. S. capitalist development as its central theme and drawing on the insights provided by the Populist historians and their New Left critics. (shrink)

Argentine historiography in general, and the history of the Argentine Left in particular, does not receive the attention it deserves in the Anglo-Saxon academic world, due to linguistic and cultural barriers. In this article, we attempt to review for the English-reading public three recent contributions to the history of Marxism in Argentina covering the entire historical spectrum from the early history of Argentine socialism to the history of the PCA and, finally, to the history of local Trotskyism. We attempt to (...) place these works in the context of Argentine historiography and of the political context in which those books were written. (shrink)

During the late 1880s and early 1890s, German socialist immigrants grouped around a club called Vorwärts played a key role in the consolidation of the first socialist groups in Argentina. In the context of a deep economic and political crisis, Germán Avé-Lallemant (1835-1910) — a mining engineer and land surveyor born in Lübeck, who later served as the Argentine correspondent of Die Neue Zeit, the theoretical journal of German Social Democracy edited by Karl Kautsky — became the main personality of (...) Argentine socialism before the appearance of juan B. Justo's La Vanguardia in 1894. Distancing themselves from Lassalle and embracing a Marxist ideology more closely aligned with the political line of the SPD, the first Argentine socialist groups also sketched, under Lallemant's direction, an analysis of Argentine history stressing its backwardness and arguing that capitalism would play a progressive historical role in the immediate future — an analysis explaining their originally sympathetic attitude towards the new Radical Party. Lallemant's previously unresearched German writings, set against the background of contemporary political currents in Argentina and the Second International, shed new light on his role in the origins of Argentine socialism. (shrink)

Daniel Gaido’s The Formative Period of American Capitalism provides a thorough accounting of classical Marxist writing on the history of US capitalism. He combines insights from the classical Marxist and US Trotskyist traditions with an engagement with a selection of recent historical research to produce a provocative interpretation of the origins and rise of capitalism in the US. However, his failure to critically interrogate the classical Marxist and US Trotskyist traditions on the US or engage with the growing (...) historical research on the origins and trajectory of US capitalism weakens his contribution. (shrink)

It is common to hear talk of the aim of belief and to find philosophers appealing to that aim for numerous explanatory purposes. What belief 's aim explains depends, of course, on what that aim is. Many hold that it is somehow related to truth, but there are various ways in which one might specify belief 's aim using the notion of truth. In this article, by considering whether they can account for belief 's standard of correctness and the epistemic (...) norms governing belief, I argue against certain prominent specifications of belief 's aim given in terms of truth, and advance a neglected alternative. (shrink)

The _Physics_ is a foundational work of western philosophy, and the crucial one for understanding Aristotle's views on matter, form, essence, causation, movement, space, and time. This richly annotated, scrupulously accurate, and consistent translation makes it available to a contemporary English reader as no other does—in part because it fits together seamlessly with other closely associated works in the New Hackett Aristotle series, such as the _Metaphysics_, _De Anima_, and forthcoming _De Caelo_ and _On Coming to Be and Passing Away_. (...) Eventually the series will include all of Aristotle's works. Sequentially numbered endnotes provide the information most needed at each juncture, while a detailed Index of Terms indicates places where focused discussion of key notions occurs. An illuminating general Introduction describes the book that lies ahead, explaining what sort of work it is and what sorts of evidence it relies on. (shrink)

Infallibilism is the view that a belief cannot be at once warranted and false. In this essay we assess three nonpartisan arguments for infallibilism, arguments that do not depend on a prior commitment to some substantive theory of warrant. Three premises, one from each argument, are most significant: if a belief can be at once warranted and false, then the Gettier Problem cannot be solved; if a belief can be at once warranted and false, then its warrant can be transferred (...) to an accidentally true belief; if a belief can be at once warranted and false, then it can be warranted and accidentally true. We argue that each of these is either false or no more plausible than its denial. Along the way, we offer a solution to the Gettier Problem that is compatible with fallibilism. (shrink)

The social sciences playa variety of multifaceted roles in the policymaking process. So varied are these roles, indeed, that it is futile to talk in the singular about the use of social science in policymaking, as if there were one constant relationship between two fixed and stable entities. Instead, to address this issue sensibly one must talk in the plural about uses of dif ferent modes of social scientific inquiry for different kinds of policies under various circumstances. In some cases, (...) the influence of social scientific research is direct and tangible, and the connection between the find ings and the policy is easy to see. In other cases, perhaps most, its influence is indirect-one small piece in a larger mosaic of politics, bargaining, and compromise. Occasionally the findings of social scientific studies are explicitly drawn upon by policymakers in the formation, implementation, or evaluation of particular policies. More often, the categories and theoretical models of social science provide a general background orientation within which policymakers concep tualize problems and frame policy options. At times, the in fluence of social scientific work is cognitive and informational in nature; in other instances, policymakers use social science primarily for symbolic and political purposes in order to le gitimate preestablished goals and strategies. Nonetheless, amid this diversity and variety, troubling general questions persistently arise. (shrink)

1. Happiness, then and now -- Happiness, eudaimonia, and practical reasoning -- Happiness as eudaimonia -- Happiness and virtuous activity -- New directions from old debates -- 2. Happiness then: the sufficiency debate -- Aristotle's case against the sufficiency thesis -- 3. Happiness now: rethinking the self -- Socrates' case for the sufficiency thesis -- Epictetus and the stoic self -- The Stoics' case for the sufficiency thesis -- The embodied conception of the self -- The embodied conception and psychological (...) well-being -- The Stoics' case against the embodied conception. (shrink)

This article examines Robert Alexy's account of legal validity. It concludes that Alexy's account of legal validity lacks sufficient support given the author's methodological commitments. To reach that conclusion, it assesses the plausibility of simultaneously maintaining that the participant's perspective has conceptual privilege in the explanation of the nature of law, that legal discourse is a special case of general practical discourse, and that unjust considerations can be legally valid norms.

Western philosophers have made significant contributions to the establishment of government around the world. Philosophers like Plato, Locke, Hobbes, and Machiavelli dramatically influenced the government system not just in foreign countries but also in the Philippines. Hence, this seminar paper explored the political notions of four Western philosophers and positioned them in Duterte’s six years of presidency. In pursuit of this study, the researcher employed a systematic literature review. A systematic review process is used to collect articles, and then a (...) qualitative approach is used to assess them. The researcher came up with four major themes in this study particularly (1) Duterte is a Dictator, not a Philosopher-King, (2) Violators of natural rights, (3) the Sea-monster of Davao, and lastly (4) Love, fear, cruelty, and Duterte. Thus, the researcher concurred that all of the philosophical ideas of the four Western philosophers did not fit or even violated during Duterte’s six years of presidency in the Philippines. (shrink)

Sometimes it takes years of debate for philosophers to discover what it is they really disagree about. Sometimes they talk past each other in long series of books and articles, never guessing at the root disagreement that divides them. But occasionally a day comes when something happens to coax the cat out of the bag. "Aha!" one philosopher exclaims to another, "so that's why you've been disagreeing with me, misunderstanding me, resisting my conclusions, puzzling me all these years!".

Realists about possible worlds typically identify possible worlds with abstract objects, such as propositions or properties. However, they face a significant objection due to Lewis (1986), to the effect that there is no way to explain how possible worlds-as-abstract objects represent possibilities. In this paper, I describe a response to this objection on behalf of realists. The response is to identify possible worlds with propositions, but to deny that propositions are abstract objects, or indeed objects at all. Instead, I argue (...) that realists should follow Prior (1971) and others in treating higher-order quantification (e.g. quantification into predicate or sentence position) as a genuine form of quantification in its own right, and so in particular, not to be analysed in terms of first-order quantification over abstract objects. I argue that from this ‘higher-orderist’ perspective, there is a relatively straightforward answer to the question of how possible worlds-as-propositions succeed in representing possibilities. (shrink)

Realists about possible worlds typically identify possible worlds with abstract objects, such as propositions or properties. However, they face a significant objection due to Lewis (1986), to the effect that there is no way to explain how possible worlds-as-abstract objects represent possibilities. In this paper, I describe a response to this objection on behalf of realists. The response is to identify possible worlds with propositions, but to deny that propositions are abstract objects, or indeed objects at all. Instead, I argue (...) that realists should follow Prior (1971) and others in treating higher-order quantification (e.g. quantification into predicate or sentence position) as a genuine form of quantification in its own right, and so in particular, not to be analysed in terms of first-order quantification over abstract objects. I argue that from this ‘higher-orderist’ perspective, there is a relatively straightforward answer to the question of how possible worlds-as-propositions succeed in representing possibilities. (shrink)

This paper will attempt to assess the primary differences between what I take to be the two primary philosophical "traditions" in contemporary French philosophy, using Derrida (transcendence) and Deleuze (immanence) as exemplary representatives. The body of the paper will examine the use of these terms in three different areas of philosophy on which Derrida and Deleuze have both written: subjectivity, ontology, and epistemology. (1) In the field of subjectivity, the notion of the subject has been critiqued in two manners, either (...) by appealing either to the transcendence of the other (Levinas, Derrida) or to the immanent jlux of experience itself, in relation to which the Ego itself is trancendent (Deleuze, Foucault, Sartre, James). (2) In the field of ontology, a purely "immanent" ontology would be an ontology in which there is neither a "beyond" or an "otherwise" Being, nor "interruptions" in Being, both of which would require an appeal to a formal element of transcendence (Deleuze). Such a "transcendent" and aporetic structure, which can never appear or be present as such within Being, is what lies at the basis of the project of deconstruction, with its attendant aporias (Derrida). (3) This distinction, finally, finds parallels in Kant's epistemology, for whom the possible experience is conditioned by purely immanent criteria (Deleuze), whereas what goes beyond the limits of possible experience is transcendent (Derrida). Drawing on these three thread of analysis, the paper concludes with an assessment of what is at stake in the ethical differences between the two traditions. The question of "transcendence" is "What mast I do?", which is the question of morality (a duty or obligation that is beyond being, an "ought" beyond the "is"). The question of "immanence" is "What can I do?" (my power or capacity as an existing individual within being). For Levinas and Derrida, ethics precedes ontology because it is derived from an element of transcendence (the Other); for Deleuze, ethics is ontology because it is derived from the immanent relation of beings to Being at the level of their existence (Spinoza). (shrink)

In this groundbreaking book, Daniel D. Novotny explores one of the most controversial topics of Suarez's philosophy: "beings of reason." Beings of reason are impossible intentional objects, such as blindness and square-circle.

Consequentialists say we may always promote the good. Deontologists object: not if that means killing one to save five. “Consequentializers” reply: this act is wrong, but it is not for the best, since killing is worse than letting die. I argue that this reply undercuts the “compellingness” of consequentialism, which comes from an outcome-based view of action that collapses the distinction between killing and letting die.

The problem known as Buridan’s Ass says that a hungry donkey equipoised between two identical bales of hay will starve to death. Indecision kills the ass. Some philosophers worry about human analogs. Computer scientists since the 1960s have known about the computer versions of such cases. From what Leslie Lamport calls ‘Buridan’s Principle’—a discrete decision based on a continuous range of input-values cannot be made in a bounded time—it follows that the possibilities for human analogs of Buridan’s Ass are far (...) more wide-ranging and securely provable than has been acknowledged in philosophy. We are never necessarily decisive. This is mathematically provable. I explore four consequences: first, increased interest of the literature’s solutions to Buridan’s Ass; second, a new asymmetry between responsibility for omissions and responsibility for actions; third, clarification of the standard account of akrasia; and, fourth, clarification of the role of credences in normative decision-theory. (shrink)

The Jewish Philosophy Reader is the first comprehensive anthology of classic writings on Jewish philosophy from the Bible to postmodernism. The Reader is clearly divided into four separate parts: Foundations and First Principles, Medieval and Renaissance Jewish Philosophy, Modern Jewish Thought, and Contemporary Jewish Philosophy. Each part is clearly introduced by the editors. The readings featured are representative writings of each era listed above and are from the following major thinkers: Abrabanel, Baeck, Bergman, Borowitz, Buber, Cohen, Crescas, Fackenheim, Geiger, Gersonides, (...) Goodman, Graetz, Halevi, Hartman, Heschel, Hess, Hirsch, Ibn Ezra, Ibn Gabirol, Ibn Paquda, Kellner, Kook, Krochmal, Leibowitz, Levinas, Maimonides, Maybaum, Mendelssohn, Novak, Philo, Plaskow, Rosenzweig, Saadia, Scholem, Seeskin, Soloveitchik, Spinoza, Strauss, Wolf, Zunz. (shrink)

Both new and seasoned psychotherapists wrestle with the relationship between psychological distress and inequality across race, class, gender, and sexuality. How does one address this organically in psychotherapy? What role does it play in therapeutic action? Who brings it up, the therapist or the patient? Daniel José Gaztambide addresses these questions by offering a rigorous decolonial approach that rethinks theory and technique from the ground up, providing an accessible, evidence-informed reintroduction to psychoanalytic practice. He re-examines foundational thinkers from three (...) traditions—Freudian, relational-interpersonal, and Lacanian—through the lens of revolutionary psychiatrist Frantz Fanon, and offers a detailed analysis of Fanon’s psychoanalytic practice. Drawing on rich yet grounded discussions of theory and research, Gaztambide presents a clinical model that facilitates exploration of the social in the clinical space in a manner intimately related to the patient’s presenting problem. In doing so, this book demonstrates that clinicians no longer have to choose between attending to the personal, interpersonal, or sociopolitical. It is a guide to therapeutic action “on the couch,” which envisions political action “off the couch” and in the streets. Decolonizing Psychoanalytic Technique provides a comprehensive, practice-oriented and compelling guide for students, practitioners, and scholars of critical, multicultural and decolonial approaches to psychotherapy. (shrink)

This exceptional anthology immerses students in such powerful ideas that they will find themselves not just reading about, but actually participating in, the kind of philosophical thinking that can change the way they look at their lives and the world around them. Now in a new edition, The Experience of Philosophy features eighty-five readings that challenge students' thinking about God, freedom, reality, nothingness, death, and their own identities. Provocative and accessible, these selections have been carefully chosen for their ability to (...) draw students out of an ordinary frame of reference into exciting new territory. Although the editors include many classic sources from philosophers such as Plato, Descartes, Locke, and Kant, the emphasis is on contemporary writings. Articles by Derek Parfit, Bertrand Russell, and others help students see philosophy's links to literature, the natural sciences, and the physical and social sciences. The sixth edition features twelve new essays--by Augustine, Alvin Plantinga and Daniel Kolak, Georges Rey, Fred Dretske, David Reisman, Paul Teller, Clea F. Rees, Padmasiri de Silva, Daniel Kolak, Karl Marx, Anand Chandavarkar, and Vincent Hendricks--as well as more text boxes offering excerpts from other relevant works. The Experience of Philosophy, Sixth Edition, integrates helpful pedagogical aids including section introductions, a brief introduction to each selection, biographical information on each author, and questions before and after each reading to reinforce main ideas and promote thinking. Further readings after each selection direct students to additional material on related issues. Ideal for introductory philosophy courses, The Experience of Philosophy, Sixth Edition, encourages students to "do" philosophy, rather than just read about its history. (shrink)

We are bombarded with more information each day than our brains can process especially in election season. It's raining bad data, half-truths, and even outright lies. Daniel J. Levitin shows how to recognize misleading announcements, statistics, graphs, and written reports revealing the ways lying weasels can use them.

Deleuze’s philosophy of immanence, because it vigorously rejects every appeal to the beyond, is often presumed to be indifferent to the concerns of religion. This book argues against such a presumption. It does so, first of all, by emphasising how both Deleuze’s thought and the notion of religion are motivated by a demand to create new modes of existence, or to imagine and enact a future that would substantively break with the present configuration of being. If Deleuze’s thought and the (...) notion of religion intersect in this regard, then their divergence must be located elsewhere, namely in the distinction between immanence and transcendence. The book thus argues that the enemy of Deleuze’s thought is not religion in general but instead the specific operation of transcendence. Furthermore, it argues that since Deleuze’s thought is not simply anti-religious, it cannot be identified with secularism. Along these lines, the book shows how Deleuzian immanence is able both to oppose religious transcendence and to enter an allliance with immanent accounts of the name of God. The effect of this is to suspend the paralysing debate between religion and the secular in order to attend to the ways in which immanence – whether “religious” or “secular” – is able to break with the present and to create the future. (shrink)