Three Days To See is a remarkable essay by the renowned author and activist, Helen Keller. This work invites readers into the imaginative and perceptive world of Keller, who, despite being blind and deaf, offers an inspiring perspective on experiencing life.
In this essay, Keller imagines what she would do if she were given just three days to see the world. She shares her desires to witness the beauty of nature, the faces of loved ones, and the vibrant life of a bustling city. Her reflections are both profound and heartfelt, encouraging readers to appreciate the simple joys and wonders of the world around them.
This essay not only highlights Keller's incredible insight but also serves as a powerful reminder of the value of sight and the richness of human experience. It is a timeless piece that continues to inspire and move readers across generations.
Darwin's Dangerous Idea is a groundbreaking and accessible book by Daniel C. Dennett, a renowned philosopher and cognitive scientist. Dennett focuses his unerringly logical mind on the theory of natural selection, demonstrating how Darwin's great idea transforms and illuminates our traditional view of humanity's place in the universe.
Dennett vividly describes the theory itself and extends Darwin's vision with impeccable arguments to their often surprising conclusions. He challenges the views of some of the most famous scientists of our day, offering a powerful defense of evolutionary thinking.
This work explores every aspect of evolutionary theory, showing why it is fundamental to our existence and affirms our convictions about the meaning of life. Dennett's engaging style makes the complex subject matter accessible and compelling for any thinking person.
Essays and Lectures by Ralph Waldo Emerson covers the most productive period of his life, 1832–1860. Emerson, known as America's eloquent champion of individualism, acknowledges the countervailing pressures of society in American life. As he extols what he called “the great and crescive self,” he also dramatizes and records its vicissitudes.
This volume includes indispensable and renowned works such as “The American Scholar” - our intellectual Declaration of Independence, “The Divinity School Address”, considered atheistic by many of his listeners, and the summons to “Self-Reliance”. More embattled realizations appear in “Circles” and “Experience”. Emerson also offers wide-ranging portraits of Montaigne, Shakespeare, and other “representative men,” along with astute observations on the habits, lives, and prospects of the English and American people.
This collection includes Nature; Addresses, and Lectures (1849), Essays: First Series (1841), and Essays: Second Series (1844), plus Representative Men (1850), English Traits (1856), and The Conduct of Life (1860). These works established Emerson’s colossal reputation in America and earned him admirers abroad, including Carlyle, Nietzsche, and Proust.
Emerson’s enduring power is felt throughout American literature: in those like Whitman and major twentieth-century poets who seek to corroborate his vision, and among those like Hawthorne and Melville who questioned, qualified, and struggled with it. His vision reverberates in American philosophy, notably in the writings of William James and John Dewey, and in the works of his European admirers.
Follow the exhilarating, exploratory movements of Emerson's mind in this comprehensive gathering of his work. This volume is not merely another selection of essays; it includes all his major books, conveying the exhilaration and exploratory energy of perhaps America's greatest writer.
The Satanic Bible was first published by Anton LaVey in 1969. It is a collection of essays, observations, and rituals that outlines LaVey's Satanic ideology. The book contains the core principles of the Church of Satan and is considered the foundation of the philosophy and dogma that constitute LaVeyan Satanism.
Far from a manual for conquering the realms of earth, air, fire, and water, The Satanic Bible is LaVey's manifesto of a new religion, separate from the traditional Judeo-Christian definitions of Satanism. While LaVey rails against the deceit of the Christian church and white magicians, he weaves his own philosophy centered around self-indulgence.
The book claims the heritage of various ancient deities categorized by Christianity as "evil," and attempts to shatter the classical depiction of Satanism as a cult of black mass and child sacrifice. Instead, it presents a surprisingly logical argument in favor of a life focused on self-indulgence.
Ultimately, The Satanic Bible is less of a "bible" and more of a philosophy, with rituals included for entertainment, forming the backbone of a religion that LaVey brought into the public eye as a legitimate belief system.
Since its first publication in 1945, Lord Russell's A History of Western Philosophy has been universally acclaimed as the outstanding one-volume work on the subject—unparalleled in its comprehensiveness, its clarity, its erudition, its grace and wit.
In seventy-six chapters, he traces philosophy from the rise of Greek civilization to the emergence of logical analysis in the twentieth century. Among the philosophers considered are: Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, the Atomists, Protagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Cynics, the Sceptics, the Epicureans, the Stoics, Plotinus, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, Benedict, Gregory the Great, John the Scot, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, William of Occam, Machiavelli, Erasmus, More, Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, the Utilitarians, Marx, Bergson, James, Dewey, and lastly the philosophers with whom Lord Russell himself is most closely associated—Cantor, Frege, and Whitehead, co-author with Russell of the monumental Principia Mathematica.