Open Court: 208 books

Despised by the intellectual establishment, Ayn Rand continues to attract many thousands of devoted followers. Her "Objectivist" movement preaches an uncompromising hard line on politics, art, sex, and psychological health. Though much has been written about Rand, The Ayn Rand Cult is the...

Fifty-five years after Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand is more in the news than ever. Ayn Rand Explained is an accurate and riveting account of Rand’s life, work, and influence, with the emphasis on her ideas. The book covers Rand’s career, from youth in Soviet Russia to Hollywood screenwriter and then...

Heidegger Explained is a clear and thorough summary of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger (1889–1976). It gives a fascinating explanation of all stages of Heidegger’s life and career, and shows his entire philosophy to emerge from one simple but profound insight. Many philosophers believe...

Since the 1930s, philosophy has been divided into two camps: the analytic tradition which prevails in the Anglophone world and the continental tradition which holds sway over the European continent. A Parting of the Ways looks at the origins of this split through the lens of one defining episode:...

Patocka's celebrated Introduction, here made available in English for the first time, is not an introduction in the ordinary sense of the term. Patocka ranges over the whole of Husserl's output, from The Philosophy of Arithmetic to The Crisis of the European Sciences, and traces the evolution of all...

What is the number one? How can we be sure that 2+2=4? These apparently ssimple questions have perplexed philosophers for thousands of years, but discussion of them was transformed by the German philosopher Gottlob Frege (1848-1925). Frege (pronounced Fray-guh)believed that arithmetic and all mathematics...

Ockham Explained is an important and much-needed resource on William of Ockham, one of the most important philosophers of the Middle Ages. His eventful and controversial life was marked by sharp career moves and academic and ecclesiastical battles. At 28, Ockham was a conservative English theologian...

What is art? The arts establishment has a simple answer: anything is art if a reputed artist or expert says it is. Though many people are skeptical about the alleged new art forms that have proliferated since the early twentieth century, today's critics claim that all such work, however incomprehensible,...

The Philosophy of Umberto Eco stands out in the Library of Living Philosophers series as the volume on the most interdisciplinary scholar hitherto and probably the most widely translated. The Italian philosopher’s name and works are well known in the humanities, both his philosophical and literary...

In Koch's Solitude, both solitude and engagement emerge as primary modes of human experience, equally essential for human completion. This work draws upon the vast corpus of literary reflections on solitude, especially Lao Tze, Sappho, Plotinus, Augustine, Petrarch, Montaigne, Goethe, Shelley, Emerson,...

In 1920, Ludwig von Mises proclaimed that all attempts to establish socialism would come to grief, for reasons of informational efficiency. At first, socialists and economists took Mises's argument seriously, but by the end of the Second World War, a consensus prevailed that Mises had been discredited....

This dramatic re-evaluation of Sartre’s ethical theory establishes its author as a leading American exponent of phenomenology and wins many new followers for Sartre in the English-speaking world.

One of the leading ethical thinkers of the modern age, Peter Singer has repeatedly been embroiled in controversy. Protesters in Germany closed down his lectures, mistakenly thinking he was advocating Nazi views on eugenics. Conservative publisher Steve Forbes withdrew generous donations to Princeton...

Since 1968's Night of the Living Dead, zombie culture has steadily limped and clawed its way into the center of popular culture. Today, zombies and vampires have taken over TV shows, comic books, cartoons, video games, and movies. Zombies, Vampires, and Philosophy drags the theories of famous philosophers...