Table of contents

Since her death in 1986 and the publication of her letters and diaries in 1990, interest in the philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir has never been greater. In this engaging and timely volume, Margaret A. Simons and an international group of philosophers present 16 essays that reveal Beauvoir as one of the century's most important and influential thinkers. As they set Beauvoir's work into dialogue with Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Foucault, Levinas, and others, these essays consider questions such as Beauvoir's philosophical relationship with Sartre; her ethic of the erotic; her views on marriage, motherhood, and female friendship; and her interpretations of oppression and liberation. This book discusses the full range of Beauvoir's work, including The Second Sex, her unpublished diaries, autobiographical writings, novels, and philosophical essays, and broadens the scope and interpretive context of her unique philosophy. Contributors are Nancy Bauer, Debra Bergoffen, Suzanne Laba Cataldi, Edward Fullbrook, Eva Gothlin, Sara Heinämaa, Laura Hengehold, Stacy Keltner, Michà ̈le Le Doeuff, Ann Murphy, Shannon M. Mussett, Margaret A. Simons, Ursula Tidd, Andrea Veltman, Karen Vintges, Julie Ward, Gail Weiss.

On April 14, 1986, Simone de Beauvoir died in Paris. She was the “prettiest Existentialist”, who during her long and intense life had observed, described, analytically deconstructed and effectively changed the world that surrounded her, “one word at a time”. An engaged intellectual like her life partner and comrade Jean-Paul Sartre, she took actively part in most of the main social and political struggles of the 20th century, including, first and foremost, women’s emancipation and self-determination, as well as the decolonisation of French Algeria, and the denouncement of American imperialism in Vietnam and the marginalisation of elderly people in contemporary societies. This collection of essays, arising from the 18th International Conference of the Simone de Beauvoir Society held in Cagliari, Italy, in June 2010, provides a major contribution to the field of Beauvoirian studies with up-to-date research provided by scholars from a variety of disciplines that range from French literature to gender studies, from philosophy to social sciences, offering a multifaceted overview on the “state of the art” of research on the life and the works of Simone de Beauvoir, 30 years after her demise.

Existentialism exerts a continuing fascination on students of philosophy and general readers. As a philosophical phenomenon, though, it is often poorly understood, as a form of radical subjectivism that turns its back on reason and argumentation and possesses all the liabilities of philosophical idealism but without any idealistic conceptual clarity. In this volume of original essays, the first to be devoted exclusively to existentialism in over forty years, a team of distinguished commentators discuss the ideas of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and Beauvoir and show how their focus on existence provides a compelling perspective on contemporary issues in moral psychology and philosophy of mind, language and history. A further sequence of chapters examines the influence of existential ideas beyond philosophy, in literature, religion, politics and psychiatry. The volume offers a rich and comprehensive assessment of the continuing vitality of existentialism as a philosophical movement and a cultural phenomenon.

A critical exploration of James Benning's films, the material environments they explore and the perceptual environments they create

Gottlob Frege (1848–1925) was unquestionably one of the most important philosophers of all time. He trained as a mathematician, and his work in philosophy started as an attempt to provide an explanation of the truths of arithmetic, but in the course of this attempt he not only founded modern logic but also had to address fundamental questions in the philosophy of language and philosophical logic. Frege is generally seen (along with Russell and Wittgenstein) as one of the fathers of the analytic method, which dominated philosophy in English-speaking countries for most of the twentieth century. His work is studied today not just for its historical importance but also because many of his ideas are still seen as relevant to current debates in the philosophies of logic, language, mathematics and the mind. The Cambridge Companion to Frege provides a route into this lively area of research.

Updated edition of this important book, charting the development of Wittgenstein's philosophy of the mind, language, logic, and mathematics.

This book offers a comprehensive overview of one of the most important and frequently discussed accounts of morality. It will be an important resource for all those studying moral philosophy, political philosophy, political theory and history of ideas.

An expert survey of liberal approaches and liberal responses to diverse topics and controversies in contemporary political thought and practice.

This book provides a clear, comprehensive survey of Deleuze's philosophy, whilst also offering deep analysis of key aspects of his thought.