Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2023 -

Kumar (Boston Univ.) and Campbell (Dalhousie Univ.) are both scholars of philosophy and science (cognitive science and environmentalism, respectively) and in this excellent book, they explore the evolution of human morality as a biocultural adaptation and the resulting rise of collective living and human intelligence. The four section titles provide a portal into the book's rich content: "Moral Apes," "Moral Minds," "Moral Cultures," and "Moral Progress." Although the book is rife with technical terms and evolutionary complexity, it is a fun read. Those who expect detailed discussion of contemporary issues--such as factory farms, zoos, animal-to-human organ transplants, and the ethics of teaching apes human language--will be disappointed. Nevertheless, even the book's critics will agree that this study is an important addition to the literature on human morality and intelligence. The scholarly apparatus includes 22 pages of chapter notes, 45 pages of references, and a 7-page index.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers.

In this charming book (released in the "Thinking Art" series), Lopes (Univ. of British Columbia), Nanay (Univ. of Antwerp), and Riggle (Univ. of San Diego) provide a student-friendly point of entry to value theory. As the authors put it, the text is an "aesthetics appetizer" designed to serve as a single-unit instructional resource for an introductory philosophy class. The authors' presentation of the aesthetic life moves past narrow questions about fine art and instead focuses on three roughly overlapping possible answers to the question of how to live: aesthetic engagement should be seen as achievement (Nanay), as a means for the cultivation of individuality (Riggle), and as a way to satisfy the need to expand one's experience through the exploration of difference (Lopes). In addition to a note for instructors at the beginning that helpfully connects the book's content to other debates that might be covered in an introductory class, the book also includes a "breakout" dialogue in the form of an interview with the authors that explores some next steps and related issues. The volume is written in language accessible to nonspecialists and makes good use of examples.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates; general readers.

The thesis of this curious text is that humans are rational animals who all too often live in an epistemically polluted environment. The argument for this thesis flies in the face of many key tenets of contemporary cognitive science and also, perhaps surprisingly, of typical Enlightenment-driven philosophy. Levy (Macquarie Univ., Australia) defends the view that knowledge is "implicitly embedded in [the] social, and even physical, environment" (p. 59) and, thus, knowledge falters when this environment is "polluted." The remedy, according to Levy, is to embrace nudging. By changing the aspects of the "choice architecture" and "engineering the epistemic environment" (p. 146), one can contend with bad beliefs--beliefs that run counter to relevant epistemic authorities but are nevertheless held by large cohorts of individuals within a community. Levy is keenly aware of the controversial nature of nudging--it is often characterized as paternalistic, in violation of autonomy, and manipulative. He has responses to these charges and offers clear insight into just what must be negotiated epistemically in debates involving, for example, climate change, anti-vaccine campaigns, and election result denials. The text is succinct, substantive, provocative, and timely; the footnotes, references, and index are excellent.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

Commissioned by the French government to coincide with the International Exhibition of 1867, Ravaisson's report on the state of French philosophy of the day became one of the most significant works in the history of European thought. It influenced Henri Bergson, Marcel Proust, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Gilles Deleuze, and Jacques Derrida. Generations of candidates for the agregation memorized sections of the report to pass the highly competitive examination. Far from being simply a catalogue of achievements glorifying France, Ravaisson's report provides an overview of Western philosophy, an analysis of rival schools of thought under Napoleon III--including Auguste Comte's positivism and Victor Cousin's eclecticism--and a remarkable, intuitive sense of a new philosophical orientation: spiritualism. Today's readers could not hope for a better guide to the work than Sinclair (Queen's Univ. Belfast). His introduction is incisive; his translation precise; his editing, such as the addition of titles to the report's 36 chapters, clarifying. For more of Sinclair's exceptional scholarship on this pivotal figure of modern thought, see Felix Ravaisson: Selected Essays (2016) and Being Inclined: Felix Ravaisson's Philosophy of Habit (2019).Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

Flanagan (emer., Duke Univ.) argues that emotions, especially anger and shame, are things people do, not merely feel. For instance, some ways that people in Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and Democratic cultures (a cohort Joseph Henrich gave the acronym WEIRD) cultures do anger model and support bad behavior, such as being overly demanding, noisy, unwilling to listen, and demeaning of others. These are poor ways of doing anger--exemplified by the deadlocked and vengeful political discussions in the US. Similarly, WEIRD cultures misunderstand shame and view it as detrimental to the whole self. Shame from bad behavior and poor performance focuses too much on individuals instead of supporting wholesome, community-minded values that shame is designed to protect. The result is that a large number of people feel entitled and think that "just showing up in life" suffices. One benefit of this insightful book is that it presents a moral philosophy rounded in empirical studies of the practices of other cultures with better ways of teaching, understanding, and dealing with anger and shame. Flanagan recommends and provides careful attention to these practices in the hope that they will open up possibilities for developing new ways of expressing emotional behaviors.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.

Wilson (Graduate Center, CUNY) does yeoman's work contextualizing Immanuel Kant (1724-1804): she puts his views in the same neighborhood as the concerns to which he was reacting.Wilson gets at these concerns through Kant's lectures, shorter essays, and correspondence, rather than trying to divine his influences solely from what appears in his major systematic works. Whereas in his greater critical project Kant tidies things up into a grand and (he believed) internally consistent system, Wilson's consideration of his other works reveals the currents in which Kant's system floats along, identifying the issues to which he is responding and the framing debates and texts underlying his work. This book will be accessible to the uninitiated, but it will be most immediately useful to a reader who, like Wilson herself, has already had extensive experience grappling with Kant's work. Joining several recent works that place Kant more clearly in conversation with his peers and predecessors, this is an excellent book for specialists; it is also, one hopes, a book that will come to inform how experts read and teach Kant's work to nonspecialists in the future.Summing Up: Essential. Enterprising undergraduates, graduate students, researchers, faculty.

The 19th century witnessed both Friedrich Nietzsche's pronouncement that "God is dead" and Soren Kierkegaard's call for an "attack on Christendom." Nietzsche's claim has become something of a cultural touchstone, but Kierkegaard's vision has not received the attention it deserves. Through a careful reading of Kierkegaard's late work, including material from his journals, Millay (St. Olaf College) addresses this by arguing that the "attack on Christendom" is not merely of metaphorical value but also offers a profound account of an ascetic political theology that drives a decisive wedge between worldly comfort and Christian salvation. Rigorous argument meets beautiful prose in every chapter of this book, and Millay shows Kierkegaard to be most important when he is most polemical. Of particular note is Millay's engagement of Kierkegaard and James Cone regarding the social praxis entailed by a faith that calls for self-denial. This book is an excellent contribution to Kierkegaard scholarship; more important, it warns about the dangers that continue in light of a nationalistic populism that presents itself as "Christian." Those who care about the future of Christianity and of democracy should read this book.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

Rickles (history and philosophy of modern physics, Univ. of Sydney) provides a sophisticated yet accessible reflection on how the reality of death makes human choices meaningful. Some alarmists argue that any technological attempt to extend life represents the fear of death. Rickles acknowledges that fear, but urges readers to see that the limitation of death means one is required to make meaningful choices about how to use one's finite time. Death, he argues, is what makes a meaningful life possible. Using concepts drawn from Jungian psychoanalysis among other theories, Rickles argues that those who cannot accept their limitations seek endless possibilities and end up leading lives without significance, whereas those who can acknowledge that life is finite can make careful choices about how they will shape their finite lives in ways that have purpose. The way to live a meaningful life, according to Rickles, is to try to understand the forces that motivate one's actions and not be captive to psychological forces beyond one's awareness--which sounds like a call for psychotherapy. This is a thoughtful, accessible, and reflective book.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.

This is an extraordinary, fascinating, and entertainingly written book. Austin (Wake Forest Univ.) provides a comprehensive scholarly analysis of the philosophy of Epicurus (341-270 BCE), concentrating on the Epicurean mantra that human happiness is to be found in the experience of pleasure, thoughtfully understood as minimizing anxieties and pursuing the aspects of life that have true and perpetual meaning. Austin's approach is unique in that she interweaves this Epicurean philosophy into contemporary and popular approaches (some of them misleading) to the enrichment of everyday life. Released in the "Guides to the Good Life" series, this is a work of applied philosophy. Notes and references are excellent.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers.

Few contemporary philosophers have had such a wide-ranging influence as Nussbaum (b. 1947). Grounded in a sustained engagement with Aristotle, Nussbaum's scholarship stands as almost a glossary of the main issues in social and political philosophy. Politically, she is a liberal, and her work touches on education, feminism, fairness, animal rights, disability, religious expression, the emotions, multiculturalism, and international relations. Despite such a sweeping philosophical record, there has not been much scholarship considering her work as an organic whole. Robshaw (Open Univ., UK) sets out to provide an introduction to Nussbaum's thought, one that presents it as unified in its philosophical trajectory. Written in lucid and accessible prose, the book progresses chronologically through Nussbaum's oeuvre, and each chapter focuses on a particular theme as developed by Nussbaum in specific books. In a time of rampant threats to democratic society from polarization to conspiracy theories, Nussbaum's political thought is valuable for addressing how people can think and live together. As Robshaw observes, Nussbaum is clever, but much more important, she is wise. Those who read this book will want to read Nussbaum.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty.

In A Philosophy of Beauty Gill (Edinburgh) argues that few philosophers are more germane to the contemporary world's focus on style, imagery, and self-aggrandizement than Anthony Ashley Cooper, the Third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713). On Gill's retelling, Shaftesbury's singular blend of literary criticism, moral psychology, and discourse ethics offers readers a wide array of critical tools for negotiating the misinformation that predominates on social media platforms, something that Shaftesbury knew about firsthand as the victim and target of overheated, politicized "froth." Shaftesbury's confessional style is an instructive phenomenon as it reveals his partisan engagement in the information wars of his era; but his reactionary stance is offset by the fact that he is also a longitudinal thinker who critiques the modernist dream of subduing contingency because of its forgetfulness of human nature. Gill's work casts new light on an author often overlooked as an ancestor of moral sense theory, inviting comparison with such contemporary voices as Annie Dillard and Greta Thunberg. If his premises are true, Gill reveals the cost of failure to "live up to the sublime," which Shaftesbury regards as the imperative to shape the human mind beautifully and wisely.Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and researchers; general readers

Linden (formerly, New York Univ.; now researching public attitudes about radical life extension) makes a provocative argument against the inevitability of aging and death. He points out that scientific, technological, and medical advances can substantially extend lives beyond today's life spans, so people should encourage these prospects rather than simply accept, as most do, inevitable aging and death. The author expresses his views lucidly, contrasting various religious and philosophical viewpoints, often taking exception to the so-called "wise view" of mortality, which claims life and death are inevitable biological experiential processes in which aging gradually prepares one for one's own welcomed ending in death. Much of Linden's book focuses on important and popular questions associated with death, and in various chapters he takes up some timely death-related subjects, such as the social functionality of death surpluses from overpopulation and the imagined dangers of a graying population. This thoughtful, well-researched work is not without elements of philosophical sophistry, reflecting the thinking of its author, who was born in 1968 and has yet to experience his own aging.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers.

This work explores the history of European intellectual life of the 16th century and claims that much of that life was a rejection of the prevalence and influence of prior philosophical thought and traditions, especially speculative metaphysics. Levitin (All Soul's College, Univ. of Oxford, UK) draws from and goes beyond his earlier volume, Ancient Wisdom in the Age of New Science (2015). The author argues that the transformation that occurred at this time was seen as an emancipation of knowledge, especially in the areas of theology and emerging science. This emancipation ranged over issues of what were taken as legitimate, fruitful concerns about the world, how those concerns were investigated, and why they were pursued. Focusing on theologian Pierre Bayle and physicist Isaac Newton but expanding his attention far beyond just them, Levitin makes a powerful case for the need to reconceptualize understanding of the Enlightenment and its subsequent history and influence on modern thought. The book is a paradigm of academic scholarship. The author's research and presentation are comprehensive and extensive, but he is aware of controversial claims and is open to critical arguments from others.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.