The Best Individual Philosophers Books 2025

1. John Dewey's Theory of Art, Experience, and Nature [Paperback - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. Thomas Alexander shows that the primary, guiding concern of Dewey's philosophy is his theory of aesthetic experience. He directly challenges those critics, most notably Stephen Pepper and Benedetto Croce, who argued that this area is the least consistent part of Dewey's thought. The author demonstrates that the fundamental concept in Dewey's system is that of "experience" and that paradigmatic treatment of experience is to be found in Dewey's analysis of aesthetics and art. The confusions resulting from the neglect of this orientation have led to prolonged misunderstandings, eventual neglect, and unwarranted popularity for ideas at odds with the genuine thrust of Dewey's philosophical concerns. By exposing the underlying aesthetic foundations of Dewey's philosophy, Alexander aims to rectify many of these errors, generating a fruitful new interest in Dewey.

John Dewey's Theory of Art, Experience, and Nature, Used [Paperback]

2. Kierkegaard : An Introduction, Used [Paperback]

C. Stephen Evans provides a clear, readable introduction to Soren Kierkegaard (1813-55) as a philosopher and thinker. His book is organised around Kierkegaard's concept of the three 'stages' or 'spheres' of human existence, which provide both a developmental account of the human self and an understanding of three rival views of human life and its meaning. Evans also discusses such important Kierkegaardian concepts as 'indirect communication', 'truth as subjectivity', and the Incarnation understood as 'the Absolute Paradox'. Although his discussion emphasises the importance of Christianity for understanding Kierkgaard, it shows him to be a writer of great interest to a secular as well as a religious audience. Evans' book brings Kierkegaard into conversation with western philosophers past and present, presenting him as one who gives powerful answers to the questions which philosophers ask.

Kierkegaard : An Introduction, Used [Paperback]

3. Kant, Used [Paperback]

Kant by Stephan K?rner

Kant, Used [Paperback]

4. Richard Rorty [Paperback - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. Richard Rorty is one of the most oft-cited yet least understood philosophers of the twentieth century. This book offers an overview and introduction to Rorty's ideas, key writings and contributions to the various fields of philosophy. Chronologically organized, the book traces the development of Rorty's thought and examines all the key topics, and controversies, central to his work. Ronald A. Kuipers introduces Rorty's complex thought through the exploration of three Rortyan personas: The Philosophical Therapist, The Liberal Ironist, and the Anticlerical Prophet. This exploration of Rorty's multivalent yet deeply coherent intellectual identity is set against the background of Rorty's personal motivations for studying philosophy, and for pursuing the controversial questions he did. The book portrays how, in conversation with the traditions of American Pragmatism, Analytic Philosophy, and Continental Thought, Rorty weaves his own unique and original philosophy. Rorty's originality resides in his fresh approach to interrelated social and political problems, revealing a thinker who has important reasons for wading into controversial intellectual waters. This is the ideal companion to study of this hugely influential thinker.

Richard Rorty, Used [Paperback]

5. Infectious Nietzsche, Used [Paperback]

David Farrell Krell examines issues concerning health, illness, and creativity in the life na thought of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). Drawing on a wide variety of philosophical reflections on health-from Plato through the German Idealists-Krell engages a broad range of contemporary Nietzsche interpretation-from Heidegger and Derrida to Kofman and Irigaray. Anyone interested in a philosophical reflection on questions of genius and illness, and all readers of Nietzsche, will find Krell's book compelling.

Infectious Nietzsche, Used [Paperback]

6. Bertrand Russell, Used [Paperback]

With extraordinary concision and clarity, A. J. Ayer gives an account of the major incidents of Bertrand Russell's life and an exposition of the whole range of his philosophy. "Ayer considers Russell to be, except possibly for Wittgenstein, the most influential philosopher of our time. In this book [he] gives a lucid account of Russell's philosophical achievements."?James Rachels, New York Times Book Review "I am sure [this] is the best introduction of any length to Russell, and I suspect that it might serve as one of the best introductions to modern philosophy. . . . Ayer begins with a brief, austere, and balanced account of Russell's life: as in Russell's autobiography this means his thought, books, women, and politics. Tacitus (and Russell) would have found the account exemplary. Ayer ends with a sympathetic and surprisingly detailed survey of Russell's social philosophy. But the bulk of this book consists of a chapter on Russell's work in logic and the foundations of mathematics, followed by a chapter on his epistemological views and one on metaphysics. . . . I find it impossible to imagine that this book will not remain indefinitely the very best book of its sort."? Review of Metaphysics "The confrontation or conjunction of Ayer and Russell is a notable event and has produced a remarkable book?brilliantly argued and written."?Martin Lebowitz, The Nation

Bertrand Russell, Used [Paperback]

7. On the Genealogy of Morality [Paperback - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. This new edition is the product of a collaboration between a Germanist and a philosopher who is also a Nietzsche scholar. The translation strives not only to communicate a sense of Nietzsche's style but also to convey his meaning accurately--and thus to be an important advance on previous translations of this work. A superb set of notes ensures that Clark and Swensen's Genealogy will become the new edition of choice for classroom use.

On the Genealogy of Morality, Used [Paperback]

8. Spacings--of Reason and Imagination: In Texts of Kant, Fichte, Hegel [Paperback - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. By applying the tools of deconstruction to crucial texts of German Idealism, John Sallis reveals the suppressed but essential role of imagination in even the most ambitious attempts to represent pure reason. Sallis focuses on certain operations of "spacing" in metaphysics--textual lapses and leaps in which reason is displaced or suspended or abridged. In the project of establishing priority of reason, such operations can appear only in disguise, and Sallis reveals the play of imagination and metaphor that masks them. Concentrating on what has been called the closure of metaphysics, he examines texts in which the suppression of spacing would be carried out most rigorously, texts in which even metaphysics itself is seen as only an errant roaming, a spacing that must still be secured, to be replaced by a pure space of truth. And yet, in these very texts Sallis identifies outbreaks of spacing that would disrupt the tranquil space of reason. Rather than closure, he finds an opening of reason to imagination. Sallis's reading of a metaphorical system in the Critique of Pure Reason reveals a fissuring and historicizing of what would otherwise be called pure reason. Next he traces in Fichte's major work as well as in several lesser-known texts a decentering from reason to imagination, which he characterizes as a power of hovering between opposites and beyond being. Sallis then returns to the Critique of Pure Reason to expose, in relation to the famous question of the common root of reason and sensibility, a certain eccentricity of reason. Proceeding to the Critique of Judgment, he traces a divergence of sublime nature away from that supersensible space of reason to which Kant would otherwise assimilate it--a withdrawal toward an abyss. Finally, Sallis turns to Hegel's Encyclopedia , supplementing his reading with previously unknown notes from Hegel's lectures on those sections dealing with imagination; his reading of those sections serves to expose, within the most rigorous reduction of spacing in the history of metaphysics, an irrepressible and disseminative play of imagination.

Spacings--of Reason and Imagination: In Texts of Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Used [Paperback]

9. Discourse on the Method [Paperback - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. The Discourse on the Method is a philosophical and mathematical treatise published by Rene Descartes in 1637. Its full name is Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason, and Searching for Truth in the Sciences. The Discourse on Method is best known as the source of the famous quotation "Je pense, donc je suis," "I think, therefore I am."This is one of the most influential works in the history of modern science"

Discourse on the Method, Used [Paperback]

10. Nietzsche Within Your Grasp [Paperback - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-190-0) was one of the most influential philosophers of the 19th century - an iconoclastic, often misunderstood writer whose works have had a pervasive impact on our culture. This concise overview illuminates Nietzsche's radical pronouncements and puzzling aphorisms and provides critical commentary on major works such as The Birth of Tragedy; Human, All Too Human; Thus Spake Zarathustra; Beyond Good and Evil; and Ecce Homo.

Nietzsche Within Your Grasp, Used [Paperback]