Philosophical Essays

Over the past few years, Brianna Wiest has gained renown for her deeply moving, philosophical writing. This new compilation of her published work features pieces on why you should pursue purpose over passion, embrace negative thinking, see the wisdom in daily routine, and become aware of the cognitive biases that are creating the way you see your life. Some of these pieces have never been seen; others have been read by millions of people around the world. Regardless, each will leave you thinking: This idea changed my life.

Have you ever felt a glitch in reality? A moment of déjà vu so intense it convinced you you’d lived this second before? Or a coincidence so strange it felt like a message from the universe? These moments are loose threads on the sweater of reality. This book grabs those threads and pulls. Journey through twenty of the most profound and unsettling thought experiments ever conceived. These aren't just dusty philosophical questions; they are living problems that haunt the frontiers of modern science and technology, presented here in clear, accessible language. Inside, you will confront ...

Pierre-Simon, Marquis de Laplace (1749-1827) is often described as the ‘French Newton’, though he lived a century later. His working life took him through the French Revolution, the Napoleonic era – during which he enjoyed various political positions – and afterwards, to the Bourbon...

A Classic Collection of Philosophical Essays: Spinoza, Immanuel Kant, Schopenhauer, Herbert Spencer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell and Many Others by Will Durant offers an insightful and comprehensive anthology of essays on some of the most influential philosophers in Western thought. This collection captures the essence of each thinker's contributions to philosophy, making complex ideas accessible and engaging for a broad audience. Spinoza: Durant explores Spinoza's pantheism and his view of a universe governed by natural laws, presenting his ideas on ethics, politics, and the nature of reality.

This edition of Matias Aires’s Reflections on the Vanity of Men presents a selection of one of the most significant works of 18th-century Christian moral philosophy in the Portuguese language. In these reflections, Aires offers a penetrating analysis of vanity as the central force shaping human behavior. He examines how vanity influences judgment, distorts moral perception, and operates not only in vice but also within actions commonly regarded as virtuous. Throughout the work, he explores themes such as honor, reputation, ambition, self-love, and the illusions sustained by society. He ...

James V. Schall is a treasure of the Catholic intellectual tradition. A prolific author and essayist, Schall readily connects with his readers on sundry topics from war to friendship, philosophy, politics, and to ordinary everyday living. In his newest work, The Mind That Is Catholic, he presents a retrospective collection of his academic and literary essays written in the past 50 years.

A grandmaster comes down from the mountain to heal more people. He gets called an asshole within an hour, mugged within a week, and spends the next twenty-one years learning to be a butcher. There are also protein pancakes. This is Volume One. From the Valley is a chapbook series about the gap between mastery in one terrain and competence in another. The series cadence is irregular by design. This is the only volume with a foundation — future volumes start where they start. The companion publication From the Mountain, free on Substack, carries the considered work: slow, patient writing ...

This annotated edition of Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground includes: • An original critical afterword, "The Mouse Beneath the Floor" • The philosophy: the Crystal Palace, free will, and 2 + 2 = 5 • Dostoevsky's war on reason, utopia, and the science of happiness • A biography of Dostoevsky; translated by Constance Garnett A volume in CLASSICS OF WORLD LITERATURE from Erato Press. "I am a sick man.... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man." So begins the strangest confession in literature — and, many argue, the first truly modern voice. A nameless retired clerk, forty ...

From Jim Holt, New York Times bestselling author of Why Does the World Exist?, comes When Einstein Walked with Gödel: Excursions to the Edge of Thought, an entertaining and accessible audiobook guide to the most profound scientific and mathematical ideas of recent centuries Does time exist?...

God. Atheism. Beauty. Can faith survive the university classroom? Can reason lead us back to God? And what does beauty have to do with truth? In this second volume of The Sleepy Seminarian series, David Suarez—Christian apologist, philosopher, and former Ivy League biology student—takes readers on a journey through the collision of theology, philosophy, and aesthetics. From Catholic–Protestant debates about salvation, to atheism’s self-defeating assumptions, to the transcendent logic of beauty as evidence for God, Eclectic Essays II: God, Atheism, and Beauty offers a rare mix of ...

This is a book out of all literary categories, of an essay nature, written in the first person, autobiographical. It combines metaphysics, religion, esotericism, philosophy, science and psychology. The common denominator is the individual, the human being, and how it relates to the whole. It can be hard for those whose connection is positive, clear and defined. But it becomes an atypical survival manual for those who are lost, those who have not found themselves at all, or for those who need an explanation and meaning to their lives that has not achieved any creed, thought, or hope... "...

This annotated edition of Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich includes: • An original critical afterword, "Dying in the Third Person" • The philosophy: the syllogism of Caius and the fear of death • Tolstoy's own crisis, from A Confession to this novella • A biography of Tolstoy; the authorized Maude translation A volume in CLASSICS OF WORLD LITERATURE from Erato Press. "His life had been most simple and most ordinary — and therefore most terrible." A respected judge, a pleasant apartment, the right friends, a career climbed rung by careful rung — and then a small pain in his ...

Something’s missing in the world today, and maybe it’s been gone for centuries. The problem: most of us don’t have authentic beliefs or a clear path in life. What do we believe? Whatever they told us to believe. What do we do? Whatever other people are doing. How many lies have we welcomed into our lives without having seriously analyzed them? It’s the reason many of us feel empty inside—there’s nothing there but convenient mistruths, and at some level, we all know it. We then orient our lives based on these false beliefs, wasting our precious limited time among the living ...

Metaphors We Live By: Book XI Status, Comparison, & Hierarchy Nobody announced the hierarchy. It was not posted. It was not agreed to. It formed in the first meeting, hardened by the second, and felt natural by the third. Status is not assigned. It accumulates. Through posture, through signal, through the quiet social arithmetic that everyone is running and nobody admits to. Metaphors We Live By: Status, Comparison, & Hierarchy is a collection of forty essays examining the invisible structures of rank, the mechanics of comparison, and what the pursuit of position quietly costs the people ...

A spectre is haunting fear. We are constantly confronted with apocalyptic pandemics, world war, the climate catastrophe. Images of the end of the world and the end of human civilization are conjured up with ever greater urgency. Anxiously, we face a bleak future. Preoccupied with crisis...

Book IX Metaphors We Live By: Influence, Persuasion, & Authority Influence rarely announces itself. It is already present when you enter the room. In the reputation that arrived before you. In the hierarchy the group established before you spoke. In the frame that surrounded the argument before you heard it. By the time persuasion begins, much of the work has already been done. Metaphors We Live By: Influence, Persuasion, & Authority is a collection of forty essays examining how authority forms without being declared, how trust accumulates into persuasive power, and what influence quietly ...

People often believe relationships succeed or fail because of emotion. More often, they succeed or fail because of patterns no one realizes they are repeating. Identity does not form in isolation. It forms through attachment, approval, rejection, and adaptation. Long before people consciously choose who they want to be, relationships have already begun shaping who they become. Metaphors We Live By: Love, Relationships, & Identity is a collection of forty essays exploring how connection quietly shapes identity, belonging, and the versions of ourselves we carry into adulthood. Inside, you ...

Who needs philosophy? Ayn Rand's answer: Everyone. This collection of essays was the last work planned by Ayn Rand before her death in 1982. In it, she summarizes her view of philosophy and deals with a broad spectrum of topics. According to Ayn Rand, the choice we make is not whether to have a philosophy, but which one to have: a rational, conscious, and therefore practical one, or a contradictory, unidentified, and ultimately lethal one.

Tonight I'm Someone Else is a highly anticipated audiobook collection, from the writer Maggie Nelson has called, “bracingly good…refreshing and welcome,” that explores the myriad ways in which desire and commodification intersect. From graffiti gangs and Grand Theft Auto to sugar daddies...

What if the collapse isn’t coming; because it’s already here? In The Fall of the Empire: 100 Truths from the Edge of Collapse, Ali Muattar offers a searing, uncompromising series of reflections on the unraveling of global psychopathic empires; spiritually, politically, economically, and psychologically. Combining the fire of political dissent with the clarity of a philosopher’s lens, Muattar charts the long descent from colonial conquest to neoliberal decay, from genocides hidden by history to the rise of a psychopathic global order. This is not a call to panic, but to awaken. Through...