How the World Thinks: A Global History of Philosophy by Julian Baggini

$27.99 NZD

Category: Philosophy

Julian Baggini's How the World Thinks is there to fill the Sapiens-size hole in your life' Observer's guide to Autumn in culture In this groundbreaking global overview of philosophy, Julian Baggini travels the world to provide a wide-ranging map of human thought. One of the great unexplained wonders of human history is that written philosophy flowered entirely separately in China, India and Ancient Greece at more or less the same time. These early philosophies have had a profound impact on the development of distinctive cultures in different parts of the world. What we call 'philosophy' in the West is not even half the story. Julian Baggini sets out to expand our horizons in How the World Thinks, exploring the philosophies of Japan, India, China and the Muslim world, as well as the lesser-known oral traditions of Africa and Australia's first peoples. Interviewing thinkers from around the globe, Baggini asks questions such as: why is the West is more individualistic than the East? What makes secularism a less powerful force in the Islamic world than in Europe? And how has China resisted pressures for greater political freedom? Offering deep insights into how different regions operate, and paying as much attention to commonalities as to differences, Baggini shows that by gaining greater knowledge of how others think we take the first step to a greater understanding of ourselves. ...Show more

Philosophers: Their Lives and Works by Dorling Kindersley Publishing Staff

$48.00 NZD

Category: Philosophy

From Confucius and Plato to Karl Marx and Noam Chomsky, this book brings together more than 100 illustrated biographies of the world's great philosophers. Introduced with a stunning portrait of each featured philosopher, the biographies trace the ideas, friendships, loves, and rivalries that inspired t he great thinkers and influenced their work, providing revealing insights into what drove them to question the meaning of life, and come up with new ways of understanding the world and the history of ideas. Lavishly illustrated with photographs and paintings of philosophers, their homes, friends, studies, and their personal belongings, together with pages from original manuscripts, first editions, and correspondence, this book introduces the key ideas, themes, and working methods of each featured individual, setting their ideas within a wider historical and cultural context. Charting the development of ideas across the centuries in both the East and West, from ancient Chinese philosophy to the work of contemporary thinkers, Philosophers provides a compelling glimpse into the personal lives, loves, and influences of the great philosophers as they probed into life's "big ideas". ...Show more

The Return of Marco Polo's World - War, Strategy, and American Interests in the Twenty-First Century by Robert D. Kaplan

$37.00 NZD

Category: Philosophy

A bracing assessment of U.S. foreign policy and world disorder over the past two decades, anchored by a major new Pentagon-commissioned essay-from the renowned geopolitical analyst and bestselling author of The Revenge of Geography and The Coming Anarchy. "Elegant and humane . . . a prophecy from an ob server with a depressingly accurate record of predictions."-Bret Stephens, The New York Times Book Review In the late thirteenth century, Marco Polo began a decades-long trek from Venice to China. The strength of that Silk Road-the trade route between Europe and Asia-was a foundation of Kublai Khan's sprawling empire. Now, in the early twenty-first century, the Chinese regime has proposed a land-and-maritime Silk Road that duplicates exactly the route Marco Polo traveled. In the major lead essay, recently released by the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment, Robert D. Kaplan lays out a blueprint of the world's changing power politics that recalls the late thirteenth century. As Europe fractures from changes in culture and migration, Eurasia coheres into a single conflict system. China is constructing a land bridge to Europe. Iran and India are trying to link the oil fields of Central Asia to the Indian Ocean. America's ability to influence the power balance in Eurasia is declining. This is Kaplan's first collection of essays since his classic The Coming Anarchy was published in 2000. Drawing on decades of firsthand experience as a foreign correspondent and military embed for The Atlantic, as well as encounters with preeminent realist thinkers, Kaplan outlines the timeless principles that should shape America's role in a turbulent world- a respect for the limits of Western-style democracy; a delineation between American interests and American values; an awareness of the psychological toll of warfare; a projection of power via a strong navy; and more. From Kaplan's immediate thoughts on President Trump ("On Foreign Policy, Donald Trump Is No Realist," 2016) to a frank examination of what will happen in the event of war with North Korea ("When North Korea Falls," 2006), The Return of Marco Polo's World is a vigorous and honest reckoning with the difficult choices the United States will face in the years ahead. "These essays constitute a truly pathbreaking, brilliant synthesis and analysis of geographic, political, technological, and economic trends with far-reaching consequences. The Return of Marco Polo's World is another work by Robert D. Kaplan that will be regarded as a classic."-General David Petraeus (U.S. Army, Ret.) ...Show more

How to Be an Existentialist - 10th Anniversary Edition by Gary Cox

$31.99 NZD

Category: Philosophy

The 10th anniversary edition of a witty classic about the philosophy of existentialism. It is also a genuine self-help book offering clear advice on how to live according to the principles of existentialism formulated by Nietzsche, Sartre, Camus, and the other great existentialist philosophers. An attac k on contemporary excuse culture, the book urges us to face the hard existential truths of the human condition. By revealing that we are all inescapably free and responsible - 'condemned to be free, ' as Sartre says - the book aims to empower the reader with a sharp sense that we are each the master of our own destiny. Cox makes fun of the reputation existentialism has for being gloomy and pessimistic, exposing it for what it really is - an honest, uplifting, and potentially life changing philosophy This striking 10th anniversary edition with a substantial new preface includes more pointers on how to be a true existentialist, including how to be an existentialist at a time when environmental issues are becoming ever more pressing and our 'post-truth' world increasingly subjects us to the politically polarising power of simplistic social media. ...Show more

Outgrowing God: A Beginner's Guide to Atheism by Richard Dawkins

$38.00 NZD

Category: Philosophy | Reading Level: 4 Non Fiction

Should we believe in God? In this new book, written for a new generation, the brilliant science writer and author of The God Delusion, explains why we shouldn't. Should we believe in God? Do we need God in order to explain the existence of the universe? Do we need God in order to be good? In twelve chap ters that address some of the most profound questions human beings confront, Dawkins marshals science, philosophy and comparative religion to interrogate the hypocrisies of all the religious systems and explain to readers of all ages how life emerged without a Creator, how evolution works and how our world came into being. For anyone hoping to grapple with the meaning of life and what to believe, Outgrowing God is a challenging, thrilling and revelatory read. ...Show more

A Call for Revolution by The Dalai Lama & Sofia Stril-Rever

$12.99 NZD

Category: Philosophy

A RALLYING CRY FOR THE WHOLE WORLD, BY ONE OF THE MOST RESPECTED LEADERS OF OUR TROUBLED TIMES.   This eloquent, impassioned manifesto is possibly the most important message The Dalai Lama can give us about the future of our world. It's his rallying cry, full of solutions for our chaotic, aggress ive, divided times: no less than a call for revolution. Are we ready to hear it? Are we ready to act? ...Show more

Plato at the Googleplex - Why Philosophy Won't Go Away by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein

$39.99 NZD

Category: Philosophy

Imagine that Plato came to life in the twenty-first century and embarked on a multi-city speaking tour. How would he mediate a debate between a Freudian psychoanalyst and a 'tiger mum' on how to raise the perfect child? How would he handle the host of a right-wing news program who denies there can be mo rality without religion? What would Plato make of Google, and of the idea that knowledge can be crowdsourced rather than reasoned out by experts? Plato at the Googleplex is acclaimed thinker Rebecca Newberger Goldstein's dazzling investigation of these conundra. With a philosopher's depth and erudition and a novelist's imagination and wit, Goldstein probes the deepest issues confronting us by allowing us to eavesdrop on Plato as he takes on the modern world; it is a stunningly original plunge into the drama of philosophy, revealing its hidden role in today's debates on religion, morality, politics and science. ...Show more

The Shorter Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy by CRAIG EDWARD

$122.00 NZD

Category: Philosophy

The Examined Life : How We Lose and Find Ourselves by Stephen Grosz

$32.99 NZD

Category: Philosophy

As heard on Book of the Week, Radio 4. 'This book is about change.' We are all storytellers - we make stories to make sense of our lives. But it is not enough to tell tales. There must be someone to listen. In his work as a practising psychoanalyst, Stephen Grosz has spent the last twenty-five years unc overing the hidden feelings behind our most baffling behaviour. The Examined Life distils over 50,000 hours of conversation into pure psychological insight, without the jargon. This extraordinary book is about one ordinary process: talking, listening and understanding. Its aphoristic and elegant stories teach us a new kind of attentiveness. They also unveil a delicate self-portrait of the analyst at work, and show how lessons learned in the consulting room can reveal as much to him as to the patient. These are stories about our everyday lives: they are about the people we love and the lies that we tell; the changes we bear, and the grief. Ultimately, they show us not only how we lose ourselves but how we might find ourselves too. ...Show more

What Do We Really Know? The Big Questions in Philosophy by Simon Blackburn

$27.99 NZD

Category: Philosophy

In What Do We Really Know? Simon Blackburn addresses the twenty most-asked philosophical questions, including 'Can machines think?', 'What is the meaning of life?', 'Is death to be feared?', 'Why be good?', 'What am I?' and 'What do we really know?' Each 3000-word essay examines a question that has eter nally perplexed enquiring minds, and provides answers from history's great thinkers. ...Show more

Running with the Pack: Thoughts from the Road on Meaning and Mortality by Mark Rowlands

$35.00 NZD

Category: Sport

'Most of the serious thinking I have done over the past twenty years has been done while running.' Mark Rowlands has run for most of his life. He has also been a professional philosopher. And for him the two - running and philosophising - are inextricably connected. In Running with the Pack he tells us about the most significant runs of his life - from the entire day he spent running as a boy in Wales, to the runs along French beaches and up Irish mountains with his beloved wolf Brenin, and through Florida swamps more recently with his dog Nina. Intertwined with this honest, passionate and witty memoiare the fascinating meditations that those runs triggered, including: how running makes him feel free, a la Jean-Paul Sartre; how running injuries make him think of death and Heidegger; how running for him is play, and therefore the antithesis of the American dream, with its ferocious work ethic; and how pondering why he runs puts him in mind of Aristotle's search for causes. He ends by describing running a mid-life marathon with absolutely no training. Woven throughout the book are profound meditations on mortailty, midlife and the meaning of life. This is a highly original and moving book that will make the philosophically inclined want to run, and those who love running become intoxicated by philosophical ideas. ...Show more

Brutal Simplicity of Thought: How it Changed the World by Maurice Nathan Saatchi

$29.99 NZD

Category: Philosophy

The principles of creativity revealed in deceptively simple words and pictures by the man behind the world's most successful advertising agency. Simplicity looks easy. It's not. It's easier to complicate than simplify. This book presents stunningly simple examples of concepts that have changed the worl d - from the single piece of paper that became the American Declaration of Independence, giving birth to the most powerful nation in the history of the world, to the symbol and line that enables us to write music. Thought-provoking and incisive, Brutal Simplicity of Thought is the distillation, in words and pictures, of the Saatchi method of creativity. Whether you are a student, a manager, self-employed or a CEO, this book has something to teach us all: simplicity rules. ...Show more