David Hume is the greatest and also one of the most provocative philosophers to have written in the English language. No philosopher is more important for his careful, critical, and deeply perceptive examination of the grounds for belief in divine powers and for his sceptical accounts of the causes and consequences of religious belief, expressed most powerfully in the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and The Natural History of Religion. The Dialogues ask if belief in God can be inferred ...

What is knowledge? How does it differ from mere belief? Do you need to be able to justify a claim in order to count as knowing it? How can we know that the outer world is real and not a dream?Questions like these are ancient ones, and the branch of philosophy dedicated to answering them - epistemology - has been active for thousands of years. In this thought-provoking Very Short Introduction, Jennifer Nagel considers these classic questions alongside new puzzles arising from recent discoverie...

What is meaning? How is linguistic communication possible? What is the nature of language? What is the relationship between language and the world? How do metaphors work? The Philosophy of Language, considered the essential text in its field, is an excellent introduction to such fundamental questions. This revised edition collects forty-eight of the most important articles in the field, making it the most up-to-date and comprehensive volume on the subject. Revised toaddress changing trends an...

In The Fundamentals of Ethics, Fifth Edition, author Russ Shafer-Landau employs a uniquely engaging writing style to introduce students to the essential ideas of moral philosophy. Offering more comprehensive coverage of the good life, normative ethics, and metaethics than any other text of its kind, this book also addresses issues that are often omitted from other texts, such as the doctrine of doing and allowing, the doctrine of double effect, ethicalparticularism, the desire-satisfaction th...

In this fully revised and updated third edition of China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know, Jeffrey Wasserstrom and Maura Elizabeth Cunningham provide cogent answers to the most urgent questions regarding the newest superpower, and offer a framework for understanding China's meteoric rise from developing country to superpower. Focusing their answers through the historical legacies--Confucian thought, Western and Japanese imperialism, the Mao era, and the massacre near Tiananmen...

Why do human beings believe in divinities? Why do some seek eternal life, while others seek escape from recurring lives? Why do the beliefs and behaviors we typically call "religious" so deeply affect the human personality and so subtly weave their way through human society?Ideal as a supplementary text in introductory religion courses or as the main text in theory and method in religious studies or in sociology of religion courses, Ten Theories of Religion, Fourth Edition, offers an illumina...

This book introduces readers to the concepts of political philosophy - authority, democracy, freedom and its limits, justice, feminism, multiculturalism, and nationality. Accessibly written and assuming no previous knowledge of the subject, it encourages the reader to think clearly and critically about the leading political questions of our time.

Cynthia Freeland explains why innovation and controversy are valued in the arts, weaving together philosophy, art theory, and many engrossing examples. She discusses blood, beauty, culture, money, sex, web sites, and research on the brain's role in perceiving art. This clear, lively book will engage the public, introductory students, and teachers in the arts.

Media and Public relations combines practical hands-on strategies with firm grounding in the theories of media relations. To successfully integrate theory and practice, the text uses case studies as the basis of theoretical argument. The text examines how communications practitioners deliver messages to the media, how the media receives the messages and how the media deals with the message prior to dissemination to the public.

It takes a comprehensive look at the different types of media in A...