The acclaimed author of The Vertigo Years tells the remarkable story of the Parisian salon that hosted the eighteenth centurys greatest minds and changed the course of Western philosophy Acclaimed historian, Philipp Blom, retraces the fortunes and characters of the men, that fr…
Using an impressive array of material from literature, archaeology and social theory, and demonstrating an abiding interest in Freud's work and its influence on his own, Edward Said explores the profound implications in Moses and Monotheism for middle-east politics today. He pro…
This book looks at Kierkegaard with a fresh perspective shaped by the history of ideas, framed by the terms romanticism and modernism. 'Modernism' here refers to the kind of intellectual and literary modernism associated with Georg Brandes, and such later nineteenth and early tw…
From Machiavelli to Rousseau, reading theorists as responding to the conflicts of their time.
The formation of the modern state, the rise of capitalism, the Renaissance and Reformation, the scientific revolution and the Age of Enlightenment have all been attributed to the 'early modern' period. Nearly everything about its history remains controversial, but one thing is c…
The Enlightenment shaped modernity. Western values of representative democracy and basic human rights and freedoms form an interlocking system that derives directly from the Enlightenment's philosophical revolution. This is uncontested--yet remarkably few historians or philosoph…
Examining the principle of freedom propagated by the French Revolution, and the kind of individual created by it, this text looks at the lives and ideas of eight cultural critics from the 18th century to the present day: Rousseau, Robespierre, Stendhal, Michelot, Bergson, Peguy,…
Traces the journey taken by the ideas of three of the greatest scientists of antiquity - Euclid, Galen and Ptolemy - through seven cities and over a thousand years. We follow them from sixth-century Alexandria to ninth-century Baghdad, from Muslim Cordoba to Catholic Toledo, fro…
The story of the greatest of all philosophical friendships--and how it influenced modern thought David Hume is widely regarded as the most important philosopher ever to write in English, but during his lifetime he was attacked as "the Great Infidel" for his skeptical religious v…
What is the nature of friendship, and what is its significance in our lives? How has friendship changed since the ancient Greeks began to analyze it, and how has modern technology altered its very definition? In this exploration of friendship through the ages, one of the most th…
In this remarkably wide-ranging book Professor Lowenthal analyses the ever-changing role of the past in shaping our lives. A heritage at once nurturing and burdensome, the past allows us to make sense of the present whilst imposing powerful constraints upon the way that present …