• Share this:

One of our premier series, Contemporary Continental Philosophy contains an extensive collection of works in continental philosophy. New in the series this month, Gadamer and the Social Turn in Epistemology, by Carolyn Culbertson, explores Gadamer's hermeneutic theory of understanding and puts this theory into conversation with several social epistemologies, including feminist epistemology.

"Culbertson offers not only a detailed and elegant reading of Truth and Method and relevant essays, she returns to Gadamer's work to show its importance to ongoing debates in social and feminist epistemologies. Gadamer and the Social Turn in Epistemology will be of interest to instructors and students both in philosophy and neighboring social sciences and humanities. It will also be of interest to philosophers interested in Gadamer and the hermeneutical tradition as well as researchers working on or with social and feminist epistemologies." —Tobias Keiling, The University of Warwick

The Philosophical Animal: On Zoopoetics and Interspecies Cosmopolitanism, by Eduardo Mendieta, argues that humans are animals that philosophize about their condition by fictionalizing other animals.

"This eloquent discussion brings a range of continental figures and European traditions of philosophy to bear on the question of the animal. From Habermas to Derrida, and all that lies between, Mendieta's discussion is unique and thought-provoking." — Cynthia Willett, author of Interspecies Ethics

Our Contemporary French Thought series is devoted to French thinkers in the continental tradition. The Politics of Emancipation: The Miguel Abensour Reader, by Miguel Abensour and edited by Martin Breaugh & Paul Mazzocchi, is a systematic overview of French Philosopher Miguel Abensour's groundbreaking work and the two inseparable projects that govern it: a radical critique of all forms of domination and a search for a politics of emancipation.

"This is an excellent collection of important and representative texts by a highly original thinker, whose message is deeply relevant to current concerns. It is enhanced by judicious editorial work and above all by a superb editors' introduction that will undoubtedly be a crucial touchstone for English readers seeking a point of entry into Abensour’s work." — Warren Breckman, coeditor of the two-volume The Cambridge History of Modern European Thought

The American Philosophy and Cultural Thought series is a home for exegetical and exploratory philosophical work on traditions, movements, and thinkers that have enlivened intellectual life and culture in North America, regardless of origin, from pre-colonial to contemporary times. New in paperback, America's Forgotten Poet-Philosopher: The Thought of John Elof Boodin in His Time and Ours, by Michael A. Flannery, is an illuminating study of the ideas and influences of a near-forgotten American philosopher.

"This is a superbly written, quite concise account of a lesser-known, but clearly important American philosopher of the first half of the twentieth century. Boodin's work clearly deserves to be better known, and Flannery does an excellent job in providing a very well-written account of this interesting individual’s contribution." — Patrick H. Armstrong, author of All Things Darwin

The Ancient Greek Philosophy series includes scholarship on rhetoric, ethics, politics, science, and justice, with books on Plato, Aristotle, various pre-Socratic thinkers such as Anaximander, and the Neoplatonists. New in paperback, Plato's Reasons: Logician, Rhetorician, Dialectician, by Christopher W. Tindale

"Tindale has done an admirable job of showing that Plato's ambivalent relationship with rhetoric doesn't end with middle dialogues such as the Gorgias and Phaedrus. He convincingly demonstrates that Plato not only continues to keep rhetoric in the forefront of his later dialogues, but also rehabilitates it and grants it a significant, albeit subordinate role to play." — John Harris, University of Alberta

"This is a groundbreaking work that contributes in a masterful way not to just one field but several, such as Platonic philosophy, rhetoric, and theory of argumentation. Tindale also provides a link between classical philosophy and modern issues of informal logic. For the first time, the classical triad of logic, rhetoric, and dialectic central to informal logic and argumentation theory are applied to the complete oeuvre of Plato." — Manfred Kraus, University of Tübingen, Germany

The Environmental Philosophy and Ethics series includes original works in the philosophy of environmental ethics and secondary works examining how philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, John Dewey, Friedrich Nietzsche, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Gilles Deleuze speak to environmental concerns. New in paperback, Value, Beauty, and Nature: The Philosophy of Organism and the Metaphysical Foundations of Environmental Ethics, by Brian G. Henning, argues that, to make progress within environmental ethics, philosophers must explicitly engage in environmental metaphysics.

"Value, Beauty, and Nature provides in one volume a clear and concise introduction to both process metaphysics and process environmental ethics and the connection between the two. Henning makes a strong case for the need to bring metaphysical concepts to bear on issues in environmental philosophy in that ecoholism and related positions are already implicitly metaphysical. He shows the problems involved if metaphysical generality is either ignored altogether or left implicit in environmental ethics, and also makes a strong case for process metaphysics, in particular. In many ways, process thinkers, as Henning shows, led the way in the early days of environmental ethics, yet their views have not yet received the attention they deserve." — Daniel Dombrowski, author of Process Mysticism

Happy reading and come back and see what's new next month!