Philosophy

Rhetoric gives our words the power to inspire. But it's not just for politicians: it's all around us, whether you're buttering up a key client or persuading your children to...

We might think we are through with the past, but the past isn't through with us. Tragedy permits us to come face to face with the things we don't want...

If you want to know your Socrates from your Sartre and your Confucius from your Kant, strap in for this whirlwind tour of the highlights of philosophy. Philosophy is a...

Composed in the 5th century BC, Sun Tzu's Art of War is the earliest-known treatise on military strategy, and is still hugely popular around the world for its perceptive tactical...

The I Ching is one of the oldest Chinese texts and the world's oldest oracle. Accumulated from over 2,500 years of diviners, sages and shamans and born out of the...

Billions of dollars were hastily poured into the global banking system in a frantic attempt at financial stabilisation. So why has it not been possible to bring the same forces...

The intensive research coupled with public silence during the last decade of Marx's life represented a new, theoretical 'post-Capital' threshold. This phase corresponded - not accidentally - with intensive studies...

Why are we so obsessed by the pursuit of happiness? With new ways to measure contentment we are told that we have a right to individual joy. But at what...

There should no longer be any doubt: global capitalism is fast approaching its terminal crisis. But if the end of capitalism seems to many like the end of the world,...

Monty was just like any other dog. A scruffy and irascible Maltese terrier, he enjoyed barking at pugs and sniffing at trees. But after yet another dramatic confrontation with the...

In this joyous introduction to the major debates in Western philosophy, we see how cartoons can shed light and humour on life's Big Questions. Topics such as gender, morality and...

Who are we? How should we live? Professor James Miller introduces twelve great philosophers who dedicated their lives to answering these questions. From Plato, who risked his reputation to tutor...

One of the world's favourite poets, Kahlil Gibran was never more profound than when he wrote about love. He believed it was the raison d'etre of the universe.With the simplicity...

A comprehensive philosophy of contemporary life and politics, by one of the sharpest critics of the presentWe live in an age of impotence. Stuck between global war and global finance,...

Althusser delivered these lectures on Rousseau's Discourse on the Origins of Inequality at the Ecole normale superieure in Paris in 1972. They are fascinating for two reasons. First, they gave...

In this urgent response to violence, racism and increasingly aggressive methods of coercion, Judith Butler explores the media's portrayal of armed conflict, a process integral to how the West prosecutes...

Hiking with Nietzsche is a tale of two philosophical journeys - one made by John Kaag as an introspective teenager, the other seventeen years later in radically different circumstances: now...

It is not words, song, or art that are tremendous, but the human soul, and what is set in motion when it is stirred to the depths. Where Epics Fail...

Sunday Times bestsellerAnd Yet... gathers the previously uncollected essays of the late Christopher Hitchens into a final volume of peerless prose from one of the great thinkers of our times.Christopher...

We turn to Machiavelli at every tumultuous period in history - he is the one who knows how to philosophize in dark times. In fact, since his death in 1527,...

Since the Enlightenment, western culture has written off ecstatic experience as a form of mental illness. But why should rationality be considered the highest part of human nature when we...

How to Think is a contrarian treatise on why we're not as good at thinking as we assume - but how recovering this lost art can rescue our inner lives...

The Danish philosopher, theologian and author Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) is widely considered to be one of the most important religious thinkers of the modern age. He is known as the...

In today's world of cultural climate change, argues Jonathan Sacks, we have outsourced morality to the markets on the one hand, and to government on the other. If the market...

Niccolo Machiavelli provides a remarkably uncompromising picture of the true nature of power, no matter what era or by whom it is exercised. Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library, a...