Ritual is usually understood as pointing to some essence beyond the ritual act itself. This ambitious interdisciplinary study offers a convincing challenge to this understanding. The authors begin by seeking to explain how the conventional idea arose in the first place. They locate its origin in a post-Protestant and post-Enlightenment vision of ritual action that emphasizes ri...(展开全部)

Originally published in 1766, Lessing's seminal tract is a turning point in the study of Western art. In this essay on the origins, forms, and influences of painting and poetry, Lessing helped frame modern conceptions of the artistic medium, and founded our modernist assumptions of the uniqueness of the individual arts.

托马斯·罗伯特·马尔萨斯（1766—1834），英国经济学家，牧师，著名学者，主要研究领域为政治经济学和人口学。《人口原理》是他最重要的著作，对后世产生了重大影响。他在书中提出了重要的人口过剩问题，并预言，人口增长率是不可维持的，持续的人口增长最终会导致贫困。尽管本书引起了很大的争议，但其无疑是十八至十九世纪最重要的著作之一，影响深远，甚至达尔文和他的自然选择理论都受到其影响。

经济思想史上里程碑式的伟大著作，提供了新古典经济学方法论的标准表述。

Many emotions attenuate more rapidly than the significance of the considerations that gives rise to them as we accommodate ourselves to what happens. Grief often diminishes quickly, even though the dead continue to matter to us; anger often evaporates, even though the injustice to which it responds remains undiminished. Nonetheless, such accommodation seems somehow all right: I...(展开全部)

This monograph purports to provide a solution to semantical paradoxes like the Liar. The authors base this solution on J. L. Austin's idea of truth, which is fundamental to situation semantics. They compare two models of language, propositions and truth, one based on Russell and the other on Austin, as they bear on the Liar Paradox. In Russell's view, a sentence expresses a pro...(展开全部)

本书为公版书，为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品，供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。

Ethical questions dominate current political and academic agendas. While government think-tanks ponder the dilemmas of bio-ethics, medical ethics and professional ethics, respect for human rights and reverence for the Other have become matters of broad consensus. Alain Badiou, one of the most powerful voices in contemporary French philosophy, explodes the facile assumptions beh...(展开全部)

Alain Badiou, one of the most powerful voices in contemporary French philosophy, shows how our prevailing ethical principles serve ultimately to reinforce an ideology of the status quo and fail to provide a framework for an effective understanding of the concept of evil.

亚当·弗格森(Adam Ferguson , 1723 - 1816) 是18 世纪苏格兰启蒙运动的主要思想家之一。18 世纪, 在法国启蒙运动发生的同时, 英伦北部的苏格兰有着另一场启蒙运动, 他们倡导的原则与法国思想有着很大的区别, 具体表现在: 他们几乎一致反对自然状态说和社会契约论, 对理性普遍采取低调态度或者有着不同的解释, 强调情感的力量, 并从英国传统的经验主义出发, 对社会变迁的原因和规律、对商业文明所面临的新问题进行了探索和解释。其中著名的思想家有大卫·休谟、亚当·斯密等等, 在他们当中, 亚当·弗格森对新兴的商业文明进行了颇有先见的批判, 使他与休谟和斯密对近代商业文明的乐观主义相区别开来, 也意味着弗格森的社会思想与苏格兰启蒙运动学术主流相左。