This Focus Philosophical Library edition includes a new translation of Descartes' seminal discourse, with an original essay by Richard Kennington. This... text is designed to provide the student with a close translation, notes, and a glossary of key terms, facilitating access to ideas as they originally were presented and helping to make the translator's work transparent.

Since Descartes famously proclaimed, "I think, therefore I am," science has often overlooked emotions as the source of a person’s true being. Even... modern neuroscience has tended, until recently, to concentrate on the cognitive aspects of brain function, disregarding emotions. This attitude began to change with the publication of Descartes’ Error in 1995. Antonio Damasio—"one of the world’s leading neurologists" (The New York Times)—challenged traditional ideas about the connection between emotions and rationality. In this wondrously engaging book, Damasio takes the reader on a journey of scientific discovery through a series of case studies, demonstrating what many of us have long suspected: emotions are not a luxury, they are essential to rational thinking and to normal social behavior.

This authoritative translation by John Cottingham of the Meditations is taken from the much acclaimed three-volume Cambridge edition of the... Philosophical Writings of Descartes. It is based on the best available texts and presents Descartes' central metaphysical writings in clear, readable modern English.

This volume brings together some of the best articles on Descartes published in the last fifty years. Edited by the renowned Descartes specialist John... Cottingham, the selection covers the full range of Descartes's thought, including chapters on the central issues in Cartesian metaphysics, the relationship between mind and body, human nature and the passions, and the structure of scientific explanation.

Based on the new and much acclaimed two volume Cambridge edition of The Philosophical Writings of Descartes by Cottingham, Stoothoff, and Murdoch, this... anthology of essential texts contains the most important and widely studied of those writings, including the Discourse and Meditations and substantial extracts from the Regulae, Optics, Principles, Objections and Replies, Comments on a Broadsheet, and Passions of the Soul.

This collection of recent articles by leading scholars is designed to illuminate one of the greatest and most influential philosophical books of all... time. It includes incisive commentary on every major theme and argument in the Meditations, and will be valuable not only to philosophers but to historians, theologians, literary scholars, and interested general readers. Ideal for courses on the history of philosophy and those centered on Descartes specifically , this collection of recent articles by leading scholars is designed to illuminate for students one of the greatest and most influential philosophical books of all time. It includes incisive commentary on every major theme and argument in Meditations.

Scientist, mathematician, traveler, soldier--and spy--Rene Descartes was one of the founders of the modern world. His life coincided with an... extraordinary time in history: the first half of the miraculous seventeenth century, replete with genius in the arts and sciences, and wracked by civil and international conflicts across Europe. But at his birth in 1596 the world was still dominated by medieval beliefs in phenomena such as miracles and spontaneous generation. It was Descartes who identified the intellectual tools his peers needed to free themselves from the grip of religious authority and in doing so he founded modern philosophy.In this new biography, A. C. Grayling tells the story of Descartes' life, and places it in his tumultuous times--with the unexpected result that an entirely new aspect of the story comes to light.

Descartes' The World offers the most comprehensive vision of the nature of the world since Aristotle, and is crucial for an understanding of his later... writings, in particular the Meditations and Principles of Philosophy. Above all, it provides an insight into how Descartes conceived of natural philosophy before he started to reformulate his doctrines in terms of a skeptically-driven epistemology. This volume offers a new translation of the work together with related writings that illuminate it, including the first English translation of the complete text of The Description of the Human Body.

After September 11th , Ahmed Rashid's crucial book Taliban introduced American readers to that now notorious regime. In this new work, he returns to... Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia to review the catastrophic aftermath of America's failed war on terror. Called "Pakistan's best and bravest reporter" by Christopher Hitchens, Rashid has shown himself to be a voice of reason amid the chaos of present-day Central Asia. Descent Into Chaos is his blistering critique of American policy-a dire warning and an impassioned call to correct these disasterous strategies before these failing states threaten global stability and bring devastation to our world.

The chief diver of the Pearl Harbor salvage operations tells the whole story of the desperate attempts to save crewmembers caught inside their sinking... ships On December 7, 1941, as the great battleships Arizona, Oklahoma, and Utah lie paralysed and burning in the aftermath of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, a crack team of U.S. Navy salvage divers headed by Edward C. Raymer were hurriedly flown to Oahu from the mainland. The divers have been given a Herculean task; to rescue the sailors and Marines trapped below, and resurrect the pride of the Pacific fleet. Now for the first time, the chief diver of the Pearl Harbor salvage operations, Cmdr. Edward C. Raymer, USN (Ret.), tells the whole story, in the only book available that describes the raising and salvage operations of sunken battleships following the December 7th attack. Once Raymer and his crew of divers entered the interiors of the sunken shipwrecks, attempting untested and potentially deadly diving techniques, they experienced a world of total blackness, unable to see even the faceplates of their helmets. By memorising the ships' blueprints and using their sense of touch, the divers groped their way hundreds of feet inside the sunken vessels to make repairs and salvage vital war material. The divers learned how to cope with such unseen dangers as falling objects, sharks, the eerie presence of floating human bodies, and the constant threat of Japanese attacks from above. Though many of these divers were killed or seriously injured during the wartime salvage operations, on the whole they had great success performing what seemed to be impossible jobs. Among their credits, Raymer's crew raised the sunken battleships West Virginia, Nevada, and California.

The key to Williams' mystically oriented theological thought, Descent into Hell (arguably Williams' greatest novel) is a multidimensional story about... human beings who shut themselves up in their own narcissistic projections, so that they are no longer able to love, to 'co-inhere.' The result is a veritable hell.

In seventeen slices of life that defy the expected and launch us into the absurd, T.C. Boyle offers his unique view of the world. A primate-center... researcher becomes romantically involved with a chimp; a Norse poet overcomes bard-block; collectors compete to snare the ancient Aztec beer can, Quetzacoatl Lite; and Lassie abandons Timmy for a randy coyote. Dark humor, delirious fantasy, and surreal satire come together in this collection that brilliantly expresses just what the "evolution" of mankind has wrought.