Social & political philosophy
Showing 1–16 of 18 results
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Bullsh*t comparisons
£16.99Bullsh*t comparisons
Is Boris Johnson really like Winston Churchill? Are electric cars actually greener than petrol ones? Which is the world’s most successful university? Is Lisbon the new Barcelona? Should we compare the achievements of younger and older siblings even when we know it damages their self-worth? We make comparisons every day, but how helpful are they? Looking across a dazzling range of situations both familiar and unfamiliar, this title is a ground-breaking examination of the role of comparison in modern society, illuminated by examples spanning from the FIFA World Footballer of the year, to wine-tasting in London, hospital care in Sierra Leone and avocado farming in Colombia. Challenging us to think critically about the use of comparison through accessible, personal, and often amusing research, Andrew Brooks reveals the uses and abuses of comparisons in a book that isn’t like anything else you have read.
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Faith
£8.99Faith
This Very Short Introduction argues that all faith needs reason, putting contemporary discussions into historical perspective, and shows that faith also involves a commitment to action. It matters for all social life, because religion is typically directed at what is seen as of crucial importance for human life.
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Groupthink
£10.99Groupthink
Christopher Booker investigates global warming, political correctness (the new age of thought-crime) racism, sexism, positive discrimination, hostility to religion, the United States of Europe and even Charles Darwin. It is only by obtaining some sort of insight into the psychology of crowds that it can be understood how powerless they are to hold any opinions other than those that are imposed upon them.
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How to be a patriot
£10.99How to be a patriot
How do we define patriotism in a diverse society?
What divides us and what brings us together?
Why do we feel uncomfortable celebrating our country’s history?
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How to get over a breakup
£14.99How to get over a breakup
Breakups are the worst. On one scale devised by psychiatrists, only a spouse’s death was ranked as more stressful than a marital split. Is there any treatment for a breakup? The ancient Roman poet Ovid thought so. Having become famous for teaching the art of seduction in ‘The Art of Love’, he then wrote ‘Remedies for Love’ (Remedia Amoris), which presents 38 frank and witty strategies for coping with unrequited love, falling out of love, ending a relationship and healing a broken heart. ‘How to Get Over a Breakup’ presents an unabashedly modern prose translation of Ovid’s lighthearted and provocative work.
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How to Think Like a Philosopher
£10.99How to Think Like a Philosopher
As politics slides toward impulsivity, and outrage bests rationality, how can philosophy help us critically engage with real world problems? Drawing on decades of work in philosophy including a huge range of interviews with contemporary philosophers, Julian Baggini sets out how philosophical thought can promote incisive thinking. Introducing everyday examples and contemporary political concerns – from climate change to implicit bias – ‘How to Think Like a Philosopher’ is a revelatory exploration of the techniques, methods and principles that guide philosophy, and how they can be applied to our own lives.
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How Westminster works…and why it doesn’t
£10.99How Westminster works…and why it doesn’t
British politics is broken. Anyone sitting down to watch the news will get a firm sense that something has gone terribly wrong. Prime ministers are misleading and inadequate. Cabinet secretaries are uninformed and deluded. Many MPs are of the lowest imaginable quality. The legislation is sloppy, ineffective and broadly worded. Expertise is denigrated. Lies are rewarded. And deep-seated, long-lasting national problems go permanently unresolved. Most of us have a sense that the system doesn’t work – but do we know how to articulate exactly why? The reality is that despite all the coverage, hardly anyone understands how Westminster actually works. Our political and financial system is cloaked in secrecy, archaic terminology, ancient custom, impenetrable technical jargon and deliberate obfuscation.
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Lifescapes
£10.99Lifescapes
‘What is life?’ asked the poet Shelley, and could not come up with an answer. Scientists, too, have not solved the puzzle. Yet biographers and obituarists continue to corral lives in a few columns, or a few hundred pages, aware all the time how fleeting and elusive their subject is. In ‘Lifescapes’, acclaimed biographer and obituarist Ann Wroe reflects on a career spent pursuing life: a process, as she sees it, not of chronological narration but of trying to seize souls.
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On being unreasonable
£9.99On being unreasonable
Manners, order and respect – these are all ideals we subscribe to. In opposed positions, we ought to be able to ‘agree to disagree’. Today’s world is built from structures of standards and reason, but it is imperative to ask who constructed these norms, and why. We are more divided than ever before – along lines of race, gender, class, disability – and it’s time to question who benefits the most. What if our propensity to measure human behaviour against rules and reason is actually more problematic than it might seem? Kirsty Sedgman shows how power dynamics and the social biases involved have resulted in a wide acceptance of what people should and shouldn’t do, but they create discriminatory realities and amount to a societal façade that is dangerous for genuine social progress.
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On freedom
£25.00On freedom
Timothy Snyder has been called ‘the leading interpreter of our dark times’. As a historian, he has given us startling reinterpretations of political collapse and mass killing. As a public intellectual, he has turned that knowledge toward counsel and prediction, working against authoritarians. His book ‘On Tyranny’ has inspired millions around the world to fight for freedom. Freedom is the great American commitment, but as Snyder argues, we have lost sight of what it means – and this is leading us into crisis. Too many of us look at freedom as the absence of state power: We think we’re free if we can do and say as we please, and protect ourselves from government overreach. But true freedom isn’t so much freedom from, as freedom to – the freedom to thrive, to take risks for futures we choose by working together. Freedom is the value that makes all other values possible.
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On leadership
£25.00On leadership
Tony Blair learnt the precepts of governing the hard way: by leading a country for over ten years. In that time he came to understand that there were certain key characteristics of successful government that he wished he had known when he started. Since then, he has seen how, though circumstances and contexts differ enormously, the challenges of governing are basically the same in any nation, whatever its stage of development. Unfortunately, while practical guides to other professions abound, governing is treated as a dimension of politics, not as an art and science in its own right, and practical, non-partisan advice is consequently hard to find. Now Tony Blair has written the manual on political leadership that he would have wanted back in 1997, sharing the insights he has gained from his personal experience and from observing other world leaders at first hand.
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Philosophy of Religion
£8.99Philosophy of Religion
Philosophy of religion contains some of our most burning questions about the role of religion in the world, and the relationship between believers and God. Tim Bayne considers the core debates surrounding the concept of God; the relationship between faith and reason; and the problem of evil, before looking at reincarnation and the afterlife.
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Philosophy of the home
£10.99Philosophy of the home
A bedroom, a kitchen, a bathroom – are these rooms all that make a home? Not at all, argues Emanuele Coccia. The buildings we inhabit are of immense psychological and cultural significance. They play a decisive role in human flourishing and, for hundreds of years, their walls and walkways, windows and doorways have guided our relationships with others and with ourselves. They reflect and reinforce social inequalities; they allow us to celebrate and cherish those we love. They are the places of return that allow us to venture out into the world. In this intimate, elegantly argued account, Coccia shows how the architecture of home has shaped, and continues to shape, our psyches and our societies, before then masterfully leading us towards a more creative, ecological way of dwelling in the world.
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Sapiens
£12.99Sapiens
100,000 years ago, at least six human species inhabited the earth. Today there is just one. Us. How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? How did we come to believe in gods, nations and human rights; to trust money, books and laws; and to be enslaved by bureaucracy, timetables and consumerism? And what will our world be like in the millennia to come? Bold, wide-ranging and provocative, ‘Sapiens’ challenges everything we thought we knew about being human: our thoughts, our actions, our power … and our future.
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Slow down
£22.00Slow down
Can green capitalism save the planet? Is it even trying? Not when the very logic of the capitalist system pits it against Earth’s life support systems, as the Japanese philosopher Kohei Saito demonstrates in one of the most astonishing bestsellers of recent times. Drawing on cutting-edge research across multiple disciplines, Saito shows how nothing but a transformation of our economic life can save us from climate collapse. Karl Marx himself reached this breakthrough at the end of his life, long before climate change had even begun. What few people realise is that it radically altered his vision of proletarian revolution. Now that we are entering our own end-game, we must grasp Marx’s final lesson before it is too late.
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The identity trap
£25.00The identity trap
For much of their history, societies have violently oppressed ethnic, religious and sexual minorities. It is no surprise then that many who passionately believe in social justice have come to believe that members of marginalized groups need to take pride in their identity if they are to resist injustice. But over the past decades, a healthy appreciation for the culture and heritage of minorities has transformed into an obsession with group identity in all its forms. A new ideology – which Yascha Mounk terms the ‘identity synthesis’ – seeks to put each citizen’s matrix of identities at the heart of social, cultural and political life. This, he argues, is The Identity Trap. Mounk traces the intellectual origin of these ideas. He tells the story of how they were able to win tremendous power over the past decade.
£25.00