Books in Philosophy

This page provides a selection of philosophers and subjects in some of my areas of interest. Books highlighted in blue are available to order through Amazon.com. Just click on them to read a fuller description and/or order. Links at the bottom of each entry lead to more detailed accounts for this philosopher on this site.

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Continental Thought

 G.W.F. Hegel

Hegel's work is of great significance for nearly every continental thinker to follow him, heavily influencing Sartre, Heidegger, de Beauvoir, Habermas, Derrida, and many others. In the English-speaking world, the loose movement known as "analytical Hegelianism" has been gaining ground through the work of thinkers such as Brandom, Pinkard, McDowell, and Pippin.

Here are just a few of Hegel's editions in print in English:

And a select number of good introductions to various facets of Hegel's work, many of them written for the student or intelligent non-philosopher:

 Martin Heidegger

Many of this controversial thinker's books have been available in translations of varying quality from Harper Collins in inexpensive editions for quite a while. In my opinion, HC is to be commended--especially as a mainstream publisher--for taking the chance on publishing Heidegger and keeping him in print. Recently, SUNY press has begun to issue some new translations and editions, including an important new version of Being and Time.

From the University of Chicago Press:

Indiana University Press translations of Heidegger:

Books about Heidegger's thought and life:

 

 Jurgen Habermas

Habermas is the living heir to the Frankfurt School of social research founded by Horkheimer and Adorno. Like these two critical theorists, Habermas has a broad range of research interests, and he is equally comfortable in philosophical, historical, and sociological debates. Unlike Horkheimer and Adorno, however, his answer to the question of "What is Enlightenment?" is not a pejorative one. Rather, Habermas has sought to redeem the role of reason, particularly its role in constituting social action. His most influential contribution in this respect has been the Theory of Communicative Action, published in English in two volumes:

Several good titles on Habermas's work are:

[More on Habermas]

Ethics and Moral Psychology

 Alasdair MacIntyre

MacIntyre, currently at the University of Notre Dame, has taught at Oxford, the University of Essex, and was a visiting professor at Princeton. His work has passed through various phases of emphasis during his long career, but has always been concerned with broad ethical issues in a way that distinguishes him from many analytical 20th-century thinkers.

  • Against the Self-Images of the Age...an early collection of essays.
  • A Short History of Ethics...has a heavy emphasis on Greek ethics.
  • After Virtue...his most famous work is a stinging attack on modern ethical theory targeting philosophers primarily in the contemporary analytical tradition.
  • Whose Justice, Which Rationality? ...MacIntyre's criticism of the modern Western tradition continues and deepens as he develops his ideas of cultural incommensurability and different strains of ethical rationality.
  • Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry ...the text of his 1988 Gifford Lectures.
  • Dependent Rational Animals

 Charles Taylor

Taylor got his start in Marxism, but has done a good deal of work in rehabilitating the expressivist side of Hegel into today's discourse. His Hegel and Modern Society (1979) is a condensation of the much larger Hegel (1975) that essentially made his reputation. He has published three volumes of papers:

The thread that runs through much of Taylor's work is a concern for the modern western identity, both of groups and individuals:

  • Sources of the Self is his magnum opus on this subject and one of the most significant works in the philosophy of culture. which gave fuel to Taylor's delivery of the William Massey Lectures published as
  • The Ethics of Authenticity are the published version of Taylor's William Massey Lectures.
  • Two important pieces by Taylor on the problems of pluralism are "The Politics of Recognition" in Multiculturalism (Princeton, 1994) and "Nationalism and Modernity" in The Morality of Nationalism (Oxford, 1997).
  • Varieties of Religion Today is Taylor's recent lecture commentary on William James's 1902 Varieties of Religious Experience. While this work isn't as true to James as some might like, it does remedy certain genuine deficiencies in the original "Varieties."

For an overview of Taylor's rich and subtle thought, take a look at:

[More on Taylor]

Pragmatism

 William James

"Human nature is once for all so childish that every reality becomes a sham somewhere, and in the minds of Presidents and Trustees the Ph.D. degree is in point of fact already looked upon as a mere advertising resource, a manner of throwing dust in the Public's eyes."

--James, "The Ph.D. Octopus"

Our most famous home-grown American philosopher is also the one most analytically-trained contemporary students have no clue about. Read on!

Works about James:

 John Dewey

"It is the fact, I repeat, that so many philosophies terminate in conclusions that make it necessary to disparage and condemn primary experience, leading those who hold them to measure the sublimity of their 'realities' as philosophically defined by remoteness from the concerns of daily life, which leads cultivated common sense to look askance at philosophy." --Dewey, Experience and Nature

Dewey's collected works have been published in twenty-seven volumes by Southern Illinois University Press at Carbondale--more information here. Following are some of the most significant texts from America's foremost exponent of democracy as a way of life--an attitude sorely wanting in the America of our "brave new world."

Political theory:

Some of Dewey's extensive work on child-centered education:

Interpretation and extension of Dewey's extremely rich version of pragmatism is a burgeoning field. Interesting, much of the work in this are is being done by non-philosophers. Here are just a few recent publications:

 Richard Rorty

Infuriating, enervating, entertaining, Richard Rorty never fails to challenge and provoke. Rorty's original interest in analytic philosophy turned to a devastating critique of the same tradition in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. While Rorty here identifies Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Dewey as the three most significant thinkers of the twentieth century, his book stands in the traditions both of humanism and of the refutation of epistemology as a sub-discipline of philosophy. Rorty's own positive philosophy of contingency, redescription, and private self-reconstruction is presented in a number of other volumes: 

Rorty has also edited two books, The Linguistic Turn (a survey of mainly positivist linguistic philosophy) and Philosophy in History.

Books of note about Rorty's work include:

[More on Rorty]

You may also be interested in...

 Works by Robert Brandom

 Works by Horkheimer & Adorno

 Works by Donald Davidson

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