Wie handelt man richtig, wenn das moralische »Richtig« dem gesetzlichen »Richtig« widerspricht? Wie reagiert man auf Missachtungen der Menschenrechte durch höchste Regierungsinstanzen? Wie können wir urteilen über die, in deren Haut wir nicht stecken? Mit diesen Fragen, die Hannah Arendt bereits vor über 50 Jahren beschäftigten, werden wir heute wieder verstärkt konfrontiert. Damals wie heute...

Responsibility and Judgment gathers together unpublished writings from the last decade of Arendt’s life, where she addresses fundamental questions and concerns about the nature of evil and the making of moral choices. At the heart of the book is a profound ethical investigation, Some Questions of Moral Philosophy, in which Arendt confronts the inadequacy of traditional moral truths as standards...

Immanuel Kant, der bedeutendste Philosoph der Neuzeit, wurde vor 300 Jahren geboren. Aber sein revolutionäres Denken ist bis heute aktuell. Kant erklärte die Entstehung unseres Planetensystems, begründete eine neue Form von Metaphysik und formulierte den kategorischen Imperativ. Kant war Wegbereiter des Kosmopolitismus und der Idee der Menschenwürde. Sein Denken hat nicht nur die Philosophie...

»Wie dieses Buch zu lesen sei, um möglicherweise verstanden werden zu können, habe ich hier anzugeben mir vorgesetzt. – Was durch dasselbe mitgetheilt werden soll, ist ein einziger Gedanke. Dennoch konnte ich, aller Bemühungen ungeachtet, keinen kürzern Weg ihn mitzutheilen finden, als dieses ganze Buch. – Ich halte jenen Gedanken für Dasjenige, was man unter dem Namen der Philosophie sehr...

This book contains essays devoted to the formation of Russian historiosophy and ideas about the special historical path of Russia. The origins of such ideas are the idea of competition between Russia and the West, adopted back in the Petrine era. The author traces competitive overtones in the works of P.Ya.Chaadaev, S.S.Uvarov, I.V.Kireevsky, A.S.Khomyakov, K.S.Aksakov, S.P.Shevyrev,...

Nietzsche was one of the most revolutionary and subversive thinkers in Western philosophy, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra remains his most famous and influential work. It describes how the ancient Persian prophet Zarathustra descends from his solitude in the mountains to tell the world that God is dead and that the Superman, the human embodiment of divinity, is his successor. Nietzsche's utterance...

Sparked by Thoreau’s outrage at American slavery and the American-Mexican war, Civil Disobedience is a call for every citizen to value his conscience above his government. Within this 19th century essay, Thoreau explains government of any sort – including democracy – does not possess more wisdom or justice than its individual citizens, and that it is every citizen’s responsibility to avoid...

Written as an eloquent defence of the faith at a time when the Roman Empire was on the brink of collapse, this great theological and philosophical work by St Augustine, bishop of Hippo, examines the ancient pagan religions of Rome, the arguments of the Greek philosophers and the revelations of the Bible. Pointing the way forward to a citizenship that transcends worldly politics and will last...

Written during the turmoil of the English Civil War, Leviathan is an ambitious and highly original work of political philosophy. Claiming that man's essential nature is competitive and selfish, Hobbes formulates the case for a powerful sovereign—or Leviathan—to enforce peace and the law, substituting security for the anarchic freedom he believed human beings would otherwise experience. This...

Even during his lifetime, Albert Camus was called the ‘Conscience of the West,’ and he was awarded the Nobel Prize for ‘his important literary work, which with clear seriousness illuminates the problems of human conscience in our time.’ Camus's rejection of cruelty and violence is evident in both his life and his works. In his essay ‘Reflections on the Guillotine,’ published when capital...

Immanuel Kant is the greatest philosopher of Western Europe, one of the leading thinkers of the Enlightenment, the founder of German classical philosophy, the founder of critical idealism, who made a decisive contribution to the development of the European philosophical tradition. ‘Critique of Practical Reason’ is Immanuel Kant's main ethical treatise, which develops the ideas of his...