Explains what the sciences have to say about planning and action, language, memory, attention, emotions and vision. This book traces the historical development of ideas about the brain and its function from antiquity to the age of neuro-imaging.
Outlines the development of sign study from its classical precursors to contemporary post-structuralism. This title identifies the key semioticians and their work and explains the simple concepts behind difficult terms. It is suitable for those who wish to know why signs are crucial to human existence.
This examination of Simone de Beauvoir's form of existentialism pays special attention to her work, "The Ethics of Ambiguity", in which de Beauvoir draws from many thinkers in the continental tradition to argue that one's own freedom is intertwined with that of others.
Presents the history of development through the ages of Plato's "Atlantis" story - the imperialist island state that disappeared in a cataclysm, leaving Athens to survive it. Instead of simply focusing on the various attempts to 'find' Atlantis, the author re-examines the very different uses made of the myth in different contexts and periods.
Existentialism is back Carpe diem - 'seize the day' - is one of the oldest pieces of life advice in Western history. But its true spirit has been hijacked by ad men and self-help gurus, reduced to the instant hit of one-click online shopping, or slogans like 'live in the now'. We need to reclaim it to ...
This exciting new text presents the first overview of Jean Jacques Rousseau's work from a political science perspective. Was Rousseau--the great theorist of the French Revolution--really a conservative?
Philosophers have always enjoyed asking awkward and provocative questions, such as: What is the nature of reality? What are human beings really like? This book is a comprehensive graphic guide to the thinking of various philosophers of the Western world from Heraclitus to Derrida. It examines and explains their key arguments and ideas.
What exactly is postmodernism? This graphic guide explains the maddeningly enigmatic concept that has been used to define the world's cultural condition.
Addresses such questions as: What is the place of individual choice and consequence in a post-Holocaust world of continuing genocidal ethnic cleansing? Is "identity" now a last-ditch cultural defence of ethnic nationalisms and competing fundamentalisms? And how do we define "rights", self-interest and civic duties?
Michel Foucault's work was described at his death as 'the most important event of thought in our century'. This book places his work in its turbulent philosophical and political context, and explores his mission to expose the links between knowledge and power in the human sciences, their discourses and institutions.
