What is knowledge? How does it differ from mere belief? Do you need to be able to justify a claim in order to count as knowing it? How can we know that the outer world is real and not a dream?Questions like these are ancient ones, and the branch of philosophy dedicated to answering them - epistemology - has been active for thousands of years. In this thought-provoking Very Short Introduction, Jennifer Nagel considers these classic questions alongside new puzzles arising from recent discoverie...

What is meaning? How is linguistic communication possible? What is the nature of language? What is the relationship between language and the world? How do metaphors work? The Philosophy of Language, considered the essential text in its field, is an excellent introduction to such fundamental questions. This revised edition collects forty-eight of the most important articles in the field, making it the most up-to-date and comprehensive volume on the subject. Revised toaddress changing trends an...

'Grayling brings satisfying order to daunting subjects' Steven Pinker

In very recent times humanity has learnt a vast amount about the universe, the past, and itself. But through our remarkable successes in acquiring knowledge we have learned how much we have yet to learn: the science we have, for example, addresses just 5 per cent of the universe; pre-history is still being revealed, with thousands of historical sites yet to be explored; and the new neurosciences of mind and brain are just b...

In the 1960s a radical concept emerged from the great French thinker Jacques Derrida. Read the book that changed the way we think; read Writing and Difference, the classic introduction.

In this remarkable work, Weil analyses the causes of oppression, its mechanisms and forms, and questions revolutionary responses while presenting a prophetic view of a way forward.

In this brilliant, provocative and controversial work, Russell questions the reliability of our assumptions about knowledge – how it is we come to know what we ‘know’ – and investigates the relationship between ‘individual’ and ‘scientific’ knowledge.

With a new foreword by Scott Austin

'I hope that these essays may illustrate the thesis that all history is or should be the history of problem situations, and that in following this principle we may further our understanding of the Presocratics and other thinkers of the past. The essays also try to show the greatness of the early Greek philosophers, who gave Europe its philosophy, its science, and its humanism.' - Karl Popper, from the preface

The World of Parmenides is a brilliant explora...

An examination of the concepts of nothingness and freedom, both of which are derived from the ability of consciousness to imagine objects both as they are and as they are not - ideas that would drive Sartre's existentialism and entire theory of human freedom.