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Polity is committed to publishing high-quality original work and key textbooks in the field of philosophy. Our list embraces continental philosophy and the analytical tradition, and we are actively expanding our publishing programme in both.
We publish some of the leading European philosophers, such as Theodor Adorno, Jürgen Habermas, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jacques Derrida, Paul Ricoeur, Gianni Vattimo and Norberto Bobbio. We also publish many distinguished philosophers in the English-speaking world, including Brian Barry, Richard Rorty, Alasdair MacIntyre, Richard Bernstein, Quentin Skinner, John Dunn, Carole Pateman, Nancy Fraser, Seyla Benhabib, Robert Goodin, Philip Pettit and Christopher Hookway.
Visit our highlights page for more information on our new and forthcoming general interest titles.
Theodore Gracyk: The Philosophy of Art
"Gracyk's Philosophy of Art mingles deft presentation of philosophical positions with insightful examples of artworks that illustrate or challenge those positions. This clear and methodical introduction considers fine art as well as popular culture, and the text is interspersed with thought-provoking exercises. An excellent read for students and professionals alike."
Kevin Timpe, Carolyn Korsmeyer, University at Buffalo (SUNY)
Michael Bacon: Pragmatism
"This book offers an engaging and engrossing introduction to and overview of a rich philosophical tradition. Particularly valuable is its survey of a variety of recent and contemporary developments by thinkers who build on and carry forward that tradition."
Robert B. Brandom, University of Pittsburgh
Joshua Alexander: Experimental Philosophy
"The first of its kind; the only book that features a sustained argument for the general relevance of experimental philosophy to philosophical debates."
Adam Feltz, Schreiner University
Patrick Curry: Ecological Ethics 2e
"Ecological Ethics is the best practical introduction to the role of philosophy in understanding the greatest environmental challenges of our time. Everyone who wants to make a difference should read it."
David Rothenberg, New Jersey Institute of Technology and author of Survival of the Beautiful and Why Birds Sing
David West: Continental Philosophy 2e
“This second edition does more than introduce continental philosophy; it makes it interesting and intriguing.”
Philip Pettit, Princeton University
Joseph Keim Campbell: Free Will
“Campbell’s book shows a masterful grasp of the available positions. He does a great job of summarizing and systematizing a very complex literature, but also contributes very keen insights of his own throughout the discussion. This volume would be excellent not only for upper-division undergraduates, but also for beginning graduate students, as it wonderfully lays out the terrain in a very useful way.”
Kevin Timpe, Northwest Nazarene University
Richard Shapcott: International Ethics
“Unfailingly lucid and admirably comprehensive, International Ethics skilfully guides the reader through the complexities of recent debates on the morality of war and intervention, poverty and social justice, and the rights of asylum seekers and refugees. A strong argument for a cosmopolitan ethic of respecting persons, displaying hospitality and avoiding harm is advanced in this impressive work which deserves pride of place in courses on global ethics.”
Andrew Linklater, Aberystwyth University
Kimberley Hutchings: Global Ethics
“Global Ethics guides students through the complex array of ethical dilemmas that constitute the modern international order. With clarity of prose and appreciation of the political and contextual nature of ethical debate, Hutchings provides an outstanding example of a textbook in international political and ethical theory. The practice based reflective exercises and annotated bibliographies make this an ideal teaching tool.”
Anthony F Lang, University of St Andrews
Lisa Bortolotti: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science
“Without presupposing any prior knowledge of either philosophy or science, Lisa Bortolotti explains all the central issues clearly and adds some interesting twists of her own. This is an excellent first book for anybody who wants to understand the relation between scientific theorizing and reality.”
David Papineau, King's College, London
Noel Stewart: Ethics: An Introduction to Moral Philosophy
"Noel Stewart presents us with a long-awaited undergraduate text that combines normative ethics, practical (or applied) ethics, and metaethics. This excellently written book can be used for a sophisticated one-semester ethics course or for two separate courses, one combining normative and practical or combining normative and metaethics. The metaethics section is a clear, elegant, and accessible introduction to the topic. All in all, the text provides a lucid introduction to the themes and issues across the spectrum of ethics."
Sherrill Begres, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Oliver Leaman: Islamic Philosophy: An Introduction, 2e
"Everyone who teaches Islamic philosophy knows that Professor Leaman is the gold standard for clear, orderly exposition. This new edition of his Islamic Philosophy will only confirm that reputation. To those trained only in European and American philosophy, Islamic thought can seem an impenetrable maze of names and dates, but Professor Leaman clearly lays out the development of the ideas in a way that shows their relation to Medieval European thought and, as well as the unique problems Islam (and especially Sufism) brought to philosophy. From the understanding of the nature of the Qur'an, to the importance of God's oneness, to the relation of God to the universe, Professor Leaman guides the reader through complex argument in a way that will reward students of all levels of expertise. This text is a must for any Islamic Philosophy course."
Mark Webb, Texas Tech University
Beverley Clack & Brian R. Clack: The Philosophy of Religion 2e
“With an unusual lightness of touch, the Clacks offer a superbly clear tour of the major arguments that draws on an exceptional range of illustrations and insights, closing with a discussion of religion post-9/11 that will help all who are seriously concerned to develop a truly thoughtful approach to religion for our time.”
George Pattison, Christ Church, University of Oxford
Dan O'Brien: An Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge
"You would have bet against anyone being able to present a concise, rigorous, thoroughly enjoyable introduction not just to all the central areas of epistemology but also to such difficult topics as Wilfrid Sellars' Myth of the Given, Wittgenstein's private language arguments and John McDowell's theory of experience. You would have lost. Dan O'Brien's text is just excellent. The author is an ideal guide through the maze of views that constitutes modern theory of knowledge."
Laurence Goldstein, Christ Church, University of Kent
Alison Stone: An Introduction to Feminist Philosophy
"Moving deftly through an impressive range of literature in psychoanalysis, gender theory, equality–difference debates, and complex questions about gender essentialism, Stone offers a thoughtful, scholarly and practical introduction to a range of interpretive strategies and symbolic structures that sustain gendered oppression and subordination. The book is a fine resource for professional philosophers, and an excellent, accessible teaching text."
Lorraine Code, York University, Toronto
Adam Swift: Political Philosophy
"A triumph of a book that illuminates the last two decades of politics and points the way to the next…How does philosophy affect politics? Through books like this."
James Purnell MP
Keith Maslin: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind
"A lucid and masterly survey of the problems that arise in this area, written in a way that should encourage readers to think for themselves about the issues."
Professor Roger Trigg, University of Warwick
Patrick Baert: Philosophy of the Social Sciences: Towards Pragmatism
In this ground-breaking new text, Patrick Baert analyses the central perspectives in the philosophy of social science, critically investigating the work of Durkheim, Weber, Popper, critical realism, critical theory, and Rorty's neo pragmatism.
Alexander Miller: Introduction to Contemporary Metaethics
"An Introduction to Contemporary Metaethics provides for the first time a critical survey of famous figures in 20th Century metaethics together with in-depth discussions of contemporary philosophers and will be an invaluable resource for students, teachers and professional philosophers with interests in contemporary metaethics."
Philosophical Inquiry
Individual chapters deal with: the open-question arguments and Moore’s attack on ethical naturalism; A. J. Ayer’s emotivism and the rejection of non-naturalism; Simon Blackburn’s quasi-realism; Allan Gibbard’s norm-expressivism; J. L. Mackie’s ‘error-theory’ of moral judgement; anti-realist and best opinion accounts of moral truth; the non-reductionist naturalism of the ‘Cornell realists’; Peter Railton’s naturalistic reductionism; the analytic functionalism of Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit; the contemporary non-naturalism of John McDowell and David Wiggins; and the debate between internalists and externalists in moral psychology.
Key Concepts in Philosophy is a major new series of concise and accessible books that introduce students to some of the core concepts in philosophy. Each author will get to the heart of the debate about these concepts – to chart their evolution, the battles over meaning and usage, and to discuss any current controversies.
This series makes available to a wide audience the ideas of some of the most influential thinkers of our time. Cutting across the boundaries between academic disciplines and between different traditions of thought, the series addresses European as well as Anglo-American thinkers. The books are written in a clear and concise way, making them suitable for students and for the interested general reader.
New and published titles of particular interest to philosophy students and lecturers are listed below. Please check other subject pages for further titles in this series.
This series makes available to a wide audience the ideas of some of the most influential classic thinkers of our time. The books situate thinkers within their social and historical contexts, showing how their work emerged from a particular setting and addressed some of the concerns of their time. They are written in a clear and concise way, making them suitable for students and for the interested general reader.
Dale E. Miller, J.S. Mill
Forthcoming:
Key Concepts is a series of concise and accessible textbooks exploring core concepts in the social sciences. The books focus on concepts that are central to each discipline and have a high degree of complexity surrounding them. For more information on individual titles please see the series webpage: www.polity.co.uk/keyconcepts.
This ground-breaking series sets a new agenda for debates in the social sciences and humanities. Each volume in the series sheds light on a particular issue or theme shaping social, political, economic, and cultural life in the new millennium. Written by internationally renowned scholars who are leaders in their field, books in this series provide original and accessible overviews of some of the most important topics of our age.
